President Donald Trump departed Monday for a two-day NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, where allied leaders plan to unveil tens of billions of dollars in new defense contracts, and where the American president intends to make clear that pledges on paper are not the same as tanks on the ground.
The trip marks the first NATO summit held in Turkey and puts Trump face-to-face with leaders he has spent years prodding to spend more on their own militaries. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte is expected to showcase what the alliance frames as historic progress toward a new 5% of GDP defense spending target, with allies eager to demonstrate they are answering Trump's longstanding burden-sharing demands.
But the White House is not arriving in a congratulatory mood. U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker made the administration's posture plain ahead of the summit.
"President Trump fully expects that all allies will step up immediately and get on the path to 5% and do it with urgency."
That was Whitaker's message, as reported by Breitbart. The ambassador also noted that while Poland, the Nordic nations, the Baltic states, and Germany have made significant progress, others continue to lag behind. The summit, Whitaker said, will measure whether allies are actually fulfilling their commitments, not just making them.
Rutte plans to put hard numbers on the table. The Washington Examiner reported that NATO will announce tens of billions of dollars in new defense contracts at Ankara, with member nations expected to present concrete plans to reach the 5% GDP requirement by 2035. The alliance is also introducing a formal "report card" system to track compliance, a mechanism that carries the unmistakable fingerprints of American pressure.
Rutte himself acknowledged not every ally is on board. "If one or two still have to be convinced, we have ways to do that," the secretary-general said.
NATO is projected to spend $258 billion on defense across 2025 and 2026. The 5% target, raised from the old 2% floor that most members failed to meet for years, was adopted at last year's summit and credited directly to Trump's insistence.
For context, Trump has been making this argument across two terms in office. The pattern is familiar: Trump demands, allies squirm, critics call him reckless, and then spending numbers quietly tick upward. The difference now is that the administration is putting enforcement mechanisms behind the rhetoric, and signaling that American force posture in Europe may shift accordingly.
Behind the spending headlines sits a more consequential development. The Pentagon is conducting a review of U.S. force posture in Europe, and administration officials have indicated it could eventually reduce America's military footprint as European nations assume greater responsibility for their own conventional defense. Officials stated any changes would reflect global strategic priorities rather than politics.
The Pentagon's 2026 National Defense Strategy declared that Washington expects Europe to "take primary responsibility for its own conventional defense," as noted in a New York Post analysis by retired Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies' John Hardie. The pair argued Trump should use Ankara to establish a clear transition framework, but warned against abrupt moves that could invite Russian aggression before European forces are ready to fill the gap.
That concern is not hypothetical. The Pentagon canceled an Armored Brigade Combat Team's rotational deployment to Poland in May, a decision that sparked alarm among Eastern European allies who sit closest to Russia's western border.
Trump has shown a willingness to use hard leverage to get results, a style that has occasionally shocked even members of his own party. The force posture review is leverage of a different magnitude. If European allies believe American troops might actually leave, the incentive to spend rises sharply.
Defense spending is the summit's headline issue, but the war in Ukraine will dominate the sideline meetings. Trump is scheduled to meet separately with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday. NATO leaders are also expected to announce additional military assistance for Ukraine, though specific details have not been disclosed.
The Zelenskyy meeting carries added weight because Trump recently spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The substance of that conversation has not been made public, but the sequencing, Putin, then Zelenskyy, at a NATO summit, suggests the administration is actively working possible paths toward ending the war.
Luke Coffey of the Hudson Institute framed the opportunity in transactional terms: "If NATO members play their cards right... it'll allow President Trump to take a victory lap." That calculus cuts both ways. If allies deliver real spending increases and credible defense plans, Trump gets vindication for a decade of pressure. If they show up with vague promises and distant timelines, the president has every reason to accelerate the drawdown.
Trump's approach to foreign alliances has always reflected the same instinct he brings to domestic policy fights, a willingness to act decisively when he believes the status quo rewards free riders at American expense.
Trump's choice to attend the Ankara summit was influenced in part by his relationship with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The two leaders are scheduled to meet bilaterally during the trip. Just the News reported that Trump traveled to Ankara on July 6, 2026, with the Erdogan meeting a centerpiece of the visit.
Turkey occupies a complicated position within NATO, a member state that has at times frustrated Western allies with its diplomatic balancing act between Washington and Moscow. But Turkey also controls the strategic gateway between Europe and the Middle East, and its cooperation matters on issues from counterterrorism to energy security.
Freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz is also expected to be on the agenda, senior U.S. officials indicated. The waterway has taken on renewed strategic importance following the U.S. military campaign against Iran, and NATO members are weighing their role in its aftermath.
The breadth of the agenda, spending enforcement, Ukraine, Iran, force posture, bilateral diplomacy, reflects a summit designed less for ceremonial photo ops and more for hard negotiations. That suits a president who has never hidden his impatience with NATO's traditional pace of consensus-building.
What Ankara represents is the logical extension of a pressure campaign Trump began in his first term. For years, European leaders treated the 2% GDP spending target as aspirational. Many didn't meet it. Trump called them out publicly. The foreign policy establishment clutched its pearls. And then, slowly, defense budgets started rising.
Now the target is 5%, the deadline is 2035, and the enforcement tools include formal report cards and a Pentagon review that could reshape America's military presence on the continent. The dynamic within the Republican Party itself has sometimes reflected similar tensions between Trump's expectations and institutional resistance, as seen in recent internal GOP debates over the president's legislative priorities.
Montgomery and Hardie, writing in the New York Post, captured the balance the administration is trying to strike: "Trump should emphasize that he seeks not to disengage from Europe, but to strengthen NATO through proper burden-sharing." They also warned: "Withdrawing US capabilities before the Europeans can replace them risks inviting Russian aggression."
That tension, between pressure and prudence, will define the next 48 hours in Ankara. Trump is scheduled to hold a news conference Wednesday, where the results of the summit's negotiations will become clearer.
The question hanging over the alliance is not whether Trump is serious. That debate ended years ago. The question is whether NATO's laggards finally believe it, and whether their checkbooks reflect it. The administration has made clear it is keeping score, and this president has never been shy about acting when he concludes the other side isn't holding up its end.
American taxpayers have subsidized European defense for three-quarters of a century. If Ankara produces real commitments backed by real money, it will be because one president refused to accept polite excuses as a substitute for allied responsibility.
