Trump Calms NATO Allies at Summit Amid Shared Defense Goals and Tensions

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — The NATO summit was ideally arranged for Donald Trump, featuring a condensed agenda and a pre-arranged commitment to boost defense spending, allowing the U.S. president to step in with a sense of initial triumph.

While Trump raised eyebrows with his statement that NATO’s collective defense clause was subject to interpretation prior to his arrival, he departed with a different perspective, noting the “love and passion” displayed by European NATO leaders for their nations during the talks.

Leaders reaffirmed their dedication to viewing an attack on one member as an attack on all, committing to increase their defense spending to 5% of GDP by 2035, up from the current 2%.

This target is divided into two segments: 3.5% allocated for essential defense needs such as military forces, and an additional 1.5% aimed at enhancing national resilience through improvements in infrastructure and manufacturing capabilities.

A European defense official, who spoke to The Moscow Times anonymously to provide candid commentary, indicated that there is a supplementary document detailing which expenditures will count towards meeting the 1.5% goal.

However, the phrasing of this document was diluted to permit Spain—currently the lowest spender on defense among NATO members—to allocate less than 3.5% as long as it complies with the updated capability standards established on June 5. Several leaders voiced their dissatisfaction with Spain, while Belgium and Slovakia also hinted they might struggle to meet the revised targets.

Rutte informed the press on Monday that Spain had not received an exemption from the targets but had a differing interpretation of the expenditure required to achieve its new goals.

“I have always held Spain’s contribution to NATO in high regard,” he remarked. “The reality is that Spain believes it can meet the targets with a spending percentage of 2.1%. NATO is quite certain that Spain will need to spend 3.5% in total.”

The specifics of those capability targets remain undisclosed.

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kęstutis Budrys advocated for the release of some of this information, citing Europe’s depleted ammunition caches and air defense resources.

“What NATO possesses is well-known to the Russians. So who are we keeping this under wraps from? Our own societies?” Budrys questioned.

His Polish counterpart, Radek Sikorski, was more hesitant.

“I will have to reflect on that. We ought to retain some secrets within NATO,” he remarked to The Moscow Times.

In addition to the new financial commitments, the summit resulted in the introduction of a comprehensive defense industrial strategy aimed at enhancing defense production across the alliance and generating jobs.

During a press briefing, Secretary General Mark Rutte outlined plans for manufacturing thousands of tanks and armored vehicles, along with millions of rounds of artillery ammunitions to build up stockpiles intended to deter potential Russian aggression.

He also declared an anticipated fivefold increase in air defense capabilities.

Numerous European nations have diminished their reserves by sending missile systems and munitions to Ukraine, which has had to deplete these resources in defense of its cities and critical infrastructure against persistent Russian missile and drone strikes.

The resulting shortages are costly and time-intensive to rectify due to supply chain issues affecting manufacturers.

At a press conference following the summit, Trump expressed support for providing additional Patriot missile systems to Ukraine.

“We will explore whether we can make some available. They are quite difficult to acquire. We need them as well. We are supplying them to Israel, and they are extremely effective,” he stated.

However, the U.S. president did not elaborate on Washington’s backing for Ukraine.

“We’ll see how things unfold,” he responded when queried about whether the U.S. would contribute further to the $8 billion pledged by NATO allies for the current year.

Both Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky shared a favorable view of their one-on-one discussion, with Trump stating that the Ukrainian president «couldn’t have been nicer” and Zelensky categorizing their interaction as “good” and “substantive.”

Although Zelensky mentioned discussions about Kyiv acquiring U.S. air defense systems, Trump vaguely indicated «to see if we can make some available,” adding that Washington was also providing such systems to Israel.

In a notable deviation from the last three summits since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the closing summit statement did not denounce Moscow for its aggressive actions. Moreover, despite Rutte’s assertion that Ukraine’s pursuit of membership remains “irreversible,” the statement refrained from mentioning Kyiv’s aspirations to join following Trump’s dismissal of the idea.

The European defense official countered that the softened language was not an attempt to placate the U.S., which in February sided with Moscow in rejecting a UN resolution condemning Russia’s conduct and supporting Ukraine’s territorial integrity.

“The summit was not concerned with Russia. It was focused on NATO, our own defensive posture, and our capabilities. This was our primary concern, and the only one, to be frank,” the official told The Moscow Times.

Nevertheless, the specter of Moscow hovered over the discussions.

Rutte reiterated that Russia remains “the most significant and direct threat to this alliance” and pointed out that intelligence assessments from countries like Germany have concluded that Russia may test NATO’s unity by 2030.

“There is significant concern among many NATO circles … that within three, five, or seven years, Russia could successfully launch an attack against us if we do not begin investing today,” Rutte cautioned.

NATO has also determined that Russia can sustain its military activities in Ukraine at the current pace until at least 2027, an anonymous senior official of the alliance shared with the BBC’s Russian service at the summit.

John Foreman, the British defense attaché in Moscow from 2019 to 2022, stated he viewed the summit as successful due to the absence of major disruptions or unexpected statements from Trump.

“If we compare this summit to last year’s, the threat posed by Trump was akin to an orange asteroid on the horizon, with uncertainty regarding his commitment to NATO,” he noted to The Moscow Times.

For the time being, the answer to that uncertainty is affirmative.