What NATO’s latest summit reveals about the alliance’s future
Professor Christoph Bluth, Professor of International Relations and Security at the University of Bradford, argues that NATO emerged from its recent summit militarily stronger but politically more fragile. In this expert analysis, he explores growing tensions over defence spending, Ukraine, Iran and US leadership, and assesses what this means for the future of the alliance. As global security challenges intensify, he suggests NATO’s greatest test may be managing internal divisions while maintaining collective strength.
The NATO summit was a display of NATO’s new operating reality: public turbulence, private damage limitation, and just enough military substance to prevent the politics from overwhelming the strategy.
On paper, the summit delivered. NATO reaffirmed the collective defence commitment of Article 5 despite the doubts previously expressed by Trump, announced major defence-industrial initiatives, and pledged €70 billion in military assistance to Ukraine for 2026.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte presented the summit as proof that the Alliance is “rebalancing” and that European allies and Canada are assuming greater responsibility for their own security. But that was the official summit.
The real summit was the one conducted around Donald Trump. Trump did not simply complain about free-riding in the abstract. Germany, historically Washington’s favourite target for defence-spending complaints, was not the central villain this time. Instead, Spain was attacked as a “terrible partner” and a “wasted cause”, with Trump even demanding a halt to trade with Madrid.
The issue was not just about money. It was Spain’s refusal to align itself with Washington over Iran and its rejection of Trump’s demands for much higher defence spending. The message was brutal: NATO loyalty is no longer measured only by contributions to European defence, but by political alignment with the United States across the world. Nor had Trump’s earlier insistence that the United States should acquire Greenland entirely disappeared from the political backdrop.
Although not a formal summit issue, it remained an uncomfortable reminder that Washington’s disagreements with allies now extend beyond defence spending to questions touching the sovereignty of NATO members themselves. That makes the Ankara summit more important than a conventional NATO gathering.
The burden-sharing debate has come full circle. Having spent decades urging Europeans to invest more in their own defence, Washington now confronts the unintended consequence of its own success: a growing share of that investment is being directed towards building a European defence-industrial base rather than buying American.
Trump dismissed this implication, insisting instead that higher European defence spending would also benefit American defence companies. But Trump also questions whether allies are sufficiently obedient to Washington’s wider strategic agenda. Spain became the test case because it resisted both the spending pressure and the Iran line more decisively than other NATO partners. The result was a public attack on an ally inside a summit supposedly designed to project cohesion.
The contrast with Turkey was striking. Trump praised President Erdoğan warmly, suggested that US-Turkish relations were better than ever, and signalled willingness to lift sanctions imposed over Turkey’s purchase of the Russian S-400 air-defence system. He also indicated that he would consider allowing Turkey to purchase advanced US aircraft (the F-35 issue), despite existing legal and congressional obstacles. The risk is that Turkey would operate the F-35 in the same defence ecosystem as a Russian-designed S-400 system. Even if the S-400 were not connected to NATO networks, it could observe F-35 flights, collect data on the aircraft’s radar signature, electronic emissions and operating patterns, and help Russia refine ways to detect or track the jet.
Yet Trump treated Erdoğan not as a problem to be managed, but as a valuable strong leader. That creates an awkward tension inside NATO.
Many allies remain deeply uncomfortable with Erdoğan’s authoritarian drift, the crackdown on opposition politics, and Turkey’s ambiguous balancing between Russia, the West and the Middle East. Reuters noted that concerns about Turkish human rights and press freedoms were rarely expressed, even as allies increasingly saw Turkey as a bulwark on NATO’s southeastern flank.
Turkey emerged from the summit not only as host but as one of its principal diplomatic beneficiaries. Ukraine, meanwhile, received mixed messages. On the positive side, Trump’s announcement that the United States would give Ukraine a licence to produce Patriot air-defence systems was genuinely significant. Kyiv has been desperate for more air defence as Russia intensifies missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian cities, and the right to produce Patriots could matter more over time than another short-term delivery package. NATO’s €70 billion pledge for 2026 also keeps Ukraine embedded in the Alliance’s strategic planning, even without membership. Ukraine increasingly argues that NATO needs Ukraine as much as Ukraine needs NATO. After more than four years of high-intensity war, its armed forces have become among the most battle-hardened and operationally innovative in Europe, giving Kyiv grounds to argue that it has earned membership rather than merely qualified for protection.
But the politics are still uncertain. Ukraine did not get accession. It did not get a NATO security guarantee. It got equipment, production rights and sympathy. That is valuable, but it is still a substitute for the commitment Kyiv actually wants. The Ankara message to Ukraine was therefore double-edged: NATO will help you survive, but it is still not ready to bring you inside the wire.
The summit was also overshadowed by the renewed confrontation with Iran. Trump declared the interim accord with Iran over, after new US military strikes following attacks on tankers, and used the NATO platform to denounce Tehran in extraordinarily harsh terms.
That changed the atmosphere of the summit. Instead of being a meeting about Russia, Ukraine and European rearmament, Ankara became entangled with a widening Middle Eastern crisis. For many European allies, this is precisely the danger: NATO’s cohesion over Russia is being pulled into disputes over Iran, trade, Greenland and personal relationships with leaders such as Erdoğan.
The deeper conclusion is that NATO is becoming stronger militarily but less predictable politically. Defence spending is rising. Procurement is accelerating. Ukraine support continues. Turkey is being drawn closer again. But the price is a more transactional alliance, in which US reassurance is tied to deference, flattery and compliance. Rutte’s task was to turn quarrels into proof of resilience.
The harder truth is that the quarrels are now part of the system. Ankara did not show NATO falling apart. It showed something subtler: an alliance learning to function around disruption. That may be enough for now. It is not the same as unity. Ankara demonstrated that NATO can still function despite deep political disagreements. Whether it can continue to do so if those disagreements widen is a question the summit deliberately left unanswered.
Christoph Bluth is Professor of International and Relations and Security in the Depatrtment of Peace Studies and International Development at the University of Bradford.