When NATO leaders adjourned the 2025 edition of their annual summit last summer, President Donald Trump emerged from the gathering with nothing but compliments for an alliance he frequently blasts as a charity case. He had reason to be gleeful. After significant pressure from the White House ahead of the summit, NATO members agreed to increase their defense spending to 5% of GDP by 2035, more than double the previous benchmark.
“When I came here, I came here because it was something I’m supposed to be doing, but I left here a little bit different, differently,” Trump told reporters at the concluding press conference. “I watched the heads of these countries get up, and the love and the passion that they showed for their country was unbelievable.”
Trump is an impatient man who wants immediate results — and to be seen as the one driving them.
Those heads of state and government will be lucky to survive this year’s summit with similar accolades. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, the organization’s bona-fide “Trump Whisperer,” hoped to make this year’s summit a success, but Trump is yet again souring on the alliance for all sorts of reasons. NATO is likely trending in one direction: an organization whose primary security guarantor is tired of the status quo and is leaving other members to pick up the slack.
Ahead of the summit, Rutte deployed an extensive game plan to keep the U.S. leader’s favor. His first step: tell everybody with eyes and ears that Trump, and Trump alone, is the big, strong man responsible for shaking NATO out of its peacetime slumber. Second, show the president that his pressure tactics are in fact working. When Rutte was at the White House last week, he pulled out a big chart, titled “the Trump Trillion,” to demonstrate NATO’s $1.2 trillion in European and Canadian defense spending since 2017, the first year of Trump’s first term. Finally, try to convince the Americans that NATO is a big job creator for the United States and a golden goose for the American defense industry. As one NATO diplomat proffered on the eve of the summit, “It’s all about Trump management.”
Yet what Washington’s European and Canadian allies consistently fail to grasp is that the Trump administration is, if not moving on from Europe, at least interested in doing so. While slavish praise from Rutte may buy the alliance some more time to get its act together and replace whatever U.S. military platforms are scheduled to rotate out, Trump is an impatient man who wants immediate results — and to be seen as the one driving them.
If anybody has any doubts about this, consider Trump’s opening remarks as he sat with this year’s summit host, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Trump’s press conference was a Festivus-like “airing of grievances.” The Europeans, he said, let the U.S. down by refusing to assist its war against Iran. NATO, he stated for the umpteenth time, was a disappointment and likely wouldn’t return the favor for all the good the U.S. has done for NATO’s defense.
Individual personalities weren’t spared either. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni was a nice person, Trump added, but she made “a mistake”: by not allowing the U.S. Air Force to use Italian military bases for bombing runs against Iranian targets. U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Trump hinted, may have ruined his own political career by not heeding Washington’s wartime requests. And yes, America still wanted to acquire Greenland from Denmark because the Danes weren’t doing much to help the island ward off the mystical Russian and Chinese ships harassing the icy island.
Despite the statistics NATO bureaucrats shove in his face, Trump is highly unlikely to stop complaining about paltry European and Canadian defense budgets.
That last item will be especially irritating for Washington’s NATO allies. Many thought Greenland was no longer an issue after NATO adopted a new mission, Arctic Sentry, specifically catered to addressing U.S. complaints about security in the Arctic. By beefing up the NATO troop presence there, the operation was also designed to give Trump a reason to let go of his long-standing fixation on Greenland. Despite this, Trump seems as obsessed with the ice-covered island today as he was in January, when he left a U.S. invasion on the table and threatened select European allies with additional tariffs for failing to support American annexation of the territory.
A similar dynamic is likely to play out with respect to defense spending. Partly due to Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine and Trump’s own pressure campaign, Washington’s NATO allies are increasing their defense budgets. European countries are collaborating on new military projects to improve deterrence against Moscow, including a new European joint strike fighter, air defense network and deep-strike missile system. Germany, which used to be one of NATO’s most fickle members, is now on course to spend $124 billion on its military by 2027, a 32% hike from this year’s levels.
In other words, there’s no dispute that real progress is being made. There’s also no dispute that Trump can legitimately claim some credit for the uptick. It’s not a coincidence that NATO’s total non-U.S. defense spending has gone up every single year of Trump’s presidency.
Yet as with Greenland’s status, and despite the statistics NATO bureaucrats shove in his face, Trump is highly unlikely to stop complaining about paltry European and Canadian defense budgets in relation to America’s own. And even if he did, there will always be another excuse for him to whine and demand concessions. After Greenland, it was Iran. Then it was Europe’s trade policies and tax on digital services. Then it was defense budgets. And then it was Greenland again.
European leaders obviously find all of this frustrating. One the one hand, they want to show Trump that NATO is trying to address his concerns. But on the other, those same leaders are fearful that remedying them will just provide Washington with more reason to downsize the U.S. troop presence in Europe at a time when states along the alliance’s eastern flank warn about the possibility of Russian destabilization nearly every day. Already, the White House’s U.S. National Security Strategy and the Pentagon’s National Defense Strategy both prioritize the Western Hemisphere and Western Pacific above the European theater. The Pentagon is now in the middle of a 6-month evaluation of the U.S. force posture in Europe; and the Trump administration has informed allies that the United States is puling some combat aircraft and naval vessels from the alliance’s operations.
As this week’s summit shows, attempting to flatter Trump into a rosier view of NATO is unlikely to work over the long-term. NATO would be better off preparing for the day when the U.S. is no longer around or, more likely, views European stability as a far lesser priority than other regions. Trump’s behavior is forcing the issue now, whether NATO likes it or not.
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