The recent NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, has been hailed as a resounding success. For one thing, European leaders managed to avoid a blow-up from U.S. President Donald Trump by assiduously presenting him with tributes: namely, evidence of their increased military spending. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, meanwhile, came closer to the lifting of U.S. sanctions that might allow Turkey to finally buy F-35s.
Then, there was the joint communique, a document that has often been a problem during Trump’s time in office. The Ankara communique was undoubtedly milquetoast, but it did contain all the correct platitudes and buzzwords, from the allies’ “ironclad commitment to [their] collective defense under Article 5 of the Washington Treaty” to their dedication to a “360-degree approach to deterrence and defense.”
The recent NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, has been hailed as a resounding success. For one thing, European leaders managed to avoid a blow-up from U.S. President Donald Trump by assiduously presenting him with tributes: namely, evidence of their increased military spending. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, meanwhile, came closer to the lifting of U.S. sanctions that might allow Turkey to finally buy F-35s.
Then, there was the joint communique, a document that has often been a problem during Trump’s time in office. The Ankara communique was undoubtedly milquetoast, but it did contain all the correct platitudes and buzzwords, from the allies’ “ironclad commitment to [their] collective defense under Article 5 of the Washington Treaty” to their dedication to a “360-degree approach to deterrence and defense.”
Leaders even went home with a lovely parting gift. Erdogan presented each one with a loaded revolver engraved with their name—either a thoughtful gesture or a bureaucratic nightmare, depending on which country the leader in question was from. Even the sudden resumption of air strikes against Iran during the summit did not derail proceedings.
So far, so good.
However, it’s notable that at the end of the communique, NATO leaders committed to future meetings but did not set a date for a meeting next summer. That reflects the increasingly common wisdom that NATO summits in the Trump era present little more than an opportunity for strife and presidential blow-ups from the U.S. contingent, as well as an obstacle to steady, bureaucratic process.
And for all the positive vibes and photo opportunities, the summit also highlighted that while there has been significant progress on burden-sharing over the last few years, particularly in terms of spending, NATO’s other member states remain divided on a fundamental question: What are they trying to achieve with all this new spending?
Two Marks encapsulate the two sides of this disagreement: Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte. Even though what often seems to distinguish the two men are rhetorical and stylistic choices—Carney is willing to openly confront Trump, while Rutte’s cloying sycophancy has become an object of ridicule—they are, in fact, making fundamentally different arguments about the future of the trans-Atlantic alliance, which the Wall Street Journal recently described as “opposing poles of a years-old debate coming to a boil in Europe.”
First up is Rutte. Since he took up his role as NATO’s secretary-general, he has become known as the “Trump whisperer,” a man so good at flattering the United States’ chief executive that he might be able to defuse the possibility of a Trump withdrawal from NATO. His primary weapon in this fight is military spending, and unlike previous secretary-generals, he has a lot to show on this front.
Canada and Europe have committed to spending an additional $1.2 trillion since Rutte came into his role; Germany alone is planning to spend approximately $125 billion on defense in 2027, while Poland is aiming toward using 5 percent of its GDP on defense spending. European states are finally getting serious about developing their own concrete capabilities, even if they still squabble about procurement, budgets, and industrial parochialism.
But Rutte has also been quite clear that this spending is not intended to displace U.S. capabilities; it is instead a way to sustain continued U.S. commitments to Europe for the future. This includes a commitment to “buy American” over a focus on indigenous European defense capabilities. For years, European leaders have fretted that if they spent more on defense, then it might drive the United States away. Rutte has instead argued that defense spending is a way to convince the U.S. president not to draw down U.S. troops—a sign of good faith from European states.
Carney, in contrast, has emerged as a notable critic of Trump. This is unsurprising: Trump’s criticisms of Canada and his repeated, unwarranted threats to tariff and even invade his country’s northern neighbor almost certainly helped Carney get elected in the first place. Yet for all the political benefits that Carney could derive from criticizing the U.S. president, his statements have been surprisingly strategic.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, earlier this year, Carney shocked attendees by telling them that middle powers such as Canada and its European allies must figure out how to exert themselves in an increasingly multipolar world if they do not want to be the prey of great powers. The speech made headlines in large part because he suggested, albeit obliquely, that both the United States and China might be such predatory great powers. Carney followed this speech with a visit to Beijing, emphasizing his central point: that even longtime U.S. allies and neighbors like Canada need to figure out how to hedge.
In Ankara, Carney continued to persuade NATO’s middle powers to unite in the face of a United States that is “reassessing its priorities.” Carney’s model, in notable contrast to Rutte’s, suggests that non-American NATO members must develop independent defense capabilities—not only as a hedge against a drawdown in potential U.S. capabilities but as a way of reducing dependency and vulnerability to a United States that has become increasingly erratic.
Ankara was a particularly interesting place to posit such an approach. If European states or Canada were to adopt this approach, their policy might ultimately look a lot more like that of Turkey, long an important but questionably committed member of the NATO alliance. Throughout the war on terror, and even since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, Erdogan’s Turkey has been willing to support the alliance but only so far as it aligns with Turkish needs and preferences.
The Ankara summit, however, suggests that while European leaders may increasingly agree on the need to grow military spending and develop military capabilities, they are still split between these opposing worldviews. Leaders like French President Emmanuel Macron have long agreed with Carney’s viewpoint. Indeed, France was Carney avant la lettre, pushing the notion of European strategic autonomy from the United States back when such ideas were profoundly heretical in a European policy context. Rutte, meanwhile, was backed in Ankara by others, including British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Though Starmer may be on his way out of office, his successor appears equally likely to support Rutte’s viewpoint.
The implications of this disagreement are profound; it strongly impacts what states feel they should invest in during this transition. Is it enough to merely emphasize increased spending? Or do European states need to move expeditiously toward specific capabilities? There is also little room in right now for either those who want a complete rupture with the United States or a return to the pre-Trump status quo, such as the U.S. Defense Department’s proposed NATO 3.0, an approach that would sustain the trans-Atlantic alliance but reduce the U.S. presence on the continent.
Still, whether the Carney or Rutte school of thought prevails, NATO leaders can once again breathe a sigh of relief that another summit has come and gone without yet another Trump blow-up—if only all the alliance’s problems could be so easily solved with flattery and a photo opportunity.
