Mark Rutte arrived in Washington in late June armed with oversized display boards and a clear strategy: keep Donald Trump engaged and committed to NATO.
The NATO secretary-general pointed to large boards bearing gold-colored headlines, including one titled “The Trump Trillion,” as he praised the American president’s influence on alliance defense spending.
Rutte highlighted an additional $1.2 trillion in defense spending by European allies and Canada since 2017, when Trump first took office, framing the figure as a direct achievement of Trump’s presidency.
The flattery came just days before NATO’s 32 allied nations gather in Ankara on July 7 for a summit shadowed by uncertainty over American commitment to European security.
Claudia Major, a trans-Atlantic security expert at the German Marshall Fund think tank, said worried leaders will be looking “to please Trump and to make a case for NATO” at the summit.
Rutte has placed defense production at the center of the Ankara agenda, with plans to unveil what he calls a “defense industrial revolution” involving tens of billions of dollars in new contracts and procurement deals.
Major described the strategy as an effort “to show that there is a market for the US industry and also to make an economic case in favor of NATO that Trump hopefully will find attractive.”
The uncertainty surrounding Trump’s intentions was highlighted at a NATO defense ministers’ meeting in Brussels on June 18, when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced a formal review of American troop deployments in Europe.
Hegseth delivered a blunt warning to assembled ministers: “We’re going to keep a close eye on allies who are not doing that, and who say no, or maybe, or wait and see when it matters most. It’s a review that some countries will fail, and others will pass with flying colors.”
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius urged caution over the pace of any American military drawdown, warning that the priority must be avoiding dangerous gaps in capability during any transition period.
“It’s about a road map. It’s about a synchronized way of doing it,” Pistorius said, stressing that mismanaged transitions could leave Europe exposed to real military shortfalls.
Major reinforced that warning, saying that if the United States steps back from Europe, allies must act fast given “the threat from Russia and the overall geopolitical fragility around Europe.”
European NATO allies and Canada increased defense spending by 20% in real terms in 2025 compared to the previous year, reflecting sustained pressure from Washington to shoulder more of the collective burden.
Support for Ukraine is also central to the Ankara agenda, with NATO’s European members and Canada expected to pledge 70 billion euros in military aid to Kyiv both this year and next, according to AFP.
Rutte has repeatedly called for Ukraine aid to be distributed more evenly among NATO partners, as tensions persist over burden-sharing within the alliance.
Major warned that a display of division at the summit would carry serious strategic consequences, saying open disputes or public criticism would weaken “the political cohesion and with that also the military deterrence and defense message.”
There is some cautious optimism following Trump’s cooperative tone at the G7 summit in France, where he joined other leaders in backing additional sanctions on Russia targeting oil exports and the banking sector.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz described the G7 outcome as setting “a new tone in trans-Atlantic unity and determination,” adding that it may have opened “perhaps for the first time, a chance for peace.”
The Ankara summit declaration is expected to reaffirm Article 5, NATO’s mutual-defense clause, and maintain language describing Russia as a long-term threat to Euro-Atlantic security, both of which are top priorities for European governments.
Deterrence ultimately depends on the credibility of that commitment, and whether the alliance can project genuine unity in Ankara will define the summit’s strategic significance far more than any procurement deal.
