Newsman: President Donald Trump head to the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, this week as an unstable ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran and Trump’s feud with his NATO allies continue. Turkey on The war with Iran and the Russia-Ukraine conflict being the main talking points with NATO allies in the Summit.
Matt Whitaker, the U.S. ambassador to NATO, said Sunday that the summit will measure the progress of NATO allies’ commitment to spend 5% of their GDP on defense and said that the U.S. would also “take stock of our allies’ expanding NATO’s capabilities in support of the burden-shifting going on here on the European continent.”
“Some allies are doing more than others. Poland, the Nordic countries, the Baltic countries lead the way, and Germany is on track for the 5%, reaching it in 2029. But many others are lagging behind,” Whitaker said.
The summit will be held Tuesday and Wednesday at the Beştepe Presidential Compound and chaired by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. The formal opening is scheduled for Tuesday and the event is expected to conclude the following day, when Trump will hold a news conference.
The summit comes fresh off of Rutte’s visit to the White House on June 24, when he said NATO is entering a new phase centered on greater European responsibility while keeping the U.S. engaged in the alliance. Rutte framed the summit as the moment when member countries begin implementing the spending and capability commitments made at last year’s Hague summit.
Rutte said the summit will be the beginning of a transatlantic “defense industrial revolution,” promising announcements of “tens of billions” of dollars in defense-related contracts. He ventured that this year’s summit is “more important” than last year’s in the Hague because of implementation of concrete investments aimed directly at Russia.
“Vladimir, we will defend ourselves,” Rutte addressed Russian President Vladimir Putin in a speech to the Atlantic Council last week.
While in Turkey, the president is expected to take part in a bilateral meetings with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and participate in a number of working sessions.
White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said Sunday that Trump will meet separately with Zelenskyy on Wednesday afternoon in addition to other meetings with NATO leaders.
Trump’s trip will be brief. He is expected to leave the White House Monday night and return to the U.S. on Wednesday evening.
The summit also comes after Trump has repeatedly floated the idea of leaving NATO. As recently as April, Trump expressed frustration with European allies amid the U.S.’s war with Iran, as many members have been reluctant to join military operations in re-opening and patrolling the Strait of Hormuz.
“Oh yes, I would say [it’s] beyond reconsideration. I was never swayed by NATO,” Trump said in April when asked if he would reconsider the U.S.’s membership after the conflict ends. “I always knew they were a paper tiger, and Putin knows that too, by the way.”
Trump has been extremely critical of NATO allies over their ability to share the burden of contributing to the post-World War II alliance.
Trump continued his criticism of some NATO allies as recently as last week.
“Ridiculous for the U.S.A. to continue along this one sided path when the relationship is not reciprocal. They were not there for us,” Trump wrote last Thursday on his social media platform.
“The United States spends more money on NATO than any other country, by far, to protect them, without getting any benefit from so doing,” the president also claimed on Thursday in a post on social media.
Whitaker said, “The United States remains a proud NATO member,” but “we have responsibilities elsewhere in the world as the world’s only superpower.”
While Trump claims that allies spend “on NATO,” that’s not how the alliance works. Member states must spend 2% of their GDP on their own national defense budgets. The U.S. is NATO’s largest defense spender by virtue of having the world’s largest defense budget. But taken as a percentage of GDP, the US has hovered around 3% range — less than Poland and Baltic allies.
Trump said last Wednesday he would not have attended the summit were it not for his relationship with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and suggested he plans to bring a significant offer, or a “big gift bag” for his host — potentially including the sale of dozens of F-35 fighter jets to the country.
“I am going to the summit out of respect for President Erdogan … Except for the fact that it was being held in Turkey by President Erdogan, I don’t think I would have gone to it,” Trump said before a meeting with Rutte in the Oval Office in June.
Turkey is seeking to join the U.S. F-35 program, but it is prohibited from doing so as long as it possesses Russian-made air defenses.
“I’m probably going to do something that’s going to make him very happy,” Trump said.
he White House did not respond to a request for comment on the call.
