International Alliance with Trump: what to expect from the NATO summit
This year's NATO summit in The Hague will probably go down in history as one of the shortest in recent decades.
25.06.2025, 04:32
SDA
After the banquet on Tuesday evening, only a single two-and-a-half-hour working session is on the agenda for today's meeting. The main aim is to keep Donald Trump happy, who, as president of the world's most powerful military power, will decide the fate of NATO at the end of the day.
Will he succeed? After agreeing on a text for the planned final declaration, many alliance partners were confident that a major debacle could be avoided. According to the document available to the German Press Agency, the following important topics will play a major role - but some others will not. An overview:
Five percent is the new two percent
Under the impact of Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine and extreme pressure from US President Donald Trump, Germany and the other allies agreed on a new target for the level of national defense spending at the weekend. The draft of the final declaration adopted by all 32 allies states: In the face of profound threats and security challenges, "Allies commit to invest 5 percent of GDP annually in essential defense requirements and defense and security-related spending (...) by 2035 at the latest."
An amount of at least 3.5 percent of GDP is to be allocated to traditional military expenditure. In addition, it will be possible, for example, to include expenditure on combating terrorism and infrastructure that can be used for military purposes. This could include investments in railroad lines, armored bridges and expanded ports. Until recently, the NATO requirement was that at least two percent must be invested.
Commitment to Article 5
With Trump as president, will the USA still stand by its obligation to provide assistance under Article 5 of the NATO treaty? In other words, to the agreement that an ally can count on the support of the allies in the event of an attack and that an attack on one member is considered an attack on all? Statements by the Republican have repeatedly raised doubts about this in the past. In return for the five percent promise, the allies now expect that this will not happen again.
The summit declaration should state: "We, the Heads of State and Government of the North Atlantic Alliance, have come together in The Hague to reaffirm our commitment to NATO - the strongest alliance in history - and to the transatlantic alliance." They remain united and determined to protect the one billion citizens in the alliance states.
Continued uncertainty for Ukraine
A pledge of 40 billion euros in aid and the promise to support Ukraine on the "irreversible path" to NATO membership: At last year's NATO summit in Washington, Russia's war against Ukraine was clearly still one of the top issues. This year will be different due to Trump's course. The only official working session will focus on the topic of defense spending in the absence of the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Selenskyj.
Unlike in previous years, no meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council was convened at the level of the heads of state and government. The text of the summit declaration contains the vague sentence "The Allies reaffirm their enduring sovereign commitments to support Ukraine, whose security contributes to our own".
Selenskyj can chalk up a small success to the fact that it is to be put in writing that NATO states can count military support for his country towards their defense spending. This was already the case in the past, but Ukraine feared that this could change due to Trump's policies.
Free trade only for military equipment
Is Trump violating the founding treaty of NATO with his customs decisions at the expense of allies? Article 2 of the treaty states that the contracting parties "will endeavor to eliminate differences in their international economic policies and to promote economic cooperation between any or all of the parties". The text for the summit declaration now at least states that the ongoing trade conflict should not have a negative impact on current rearmament efforts.
A Spaniard as a threat?
Could the summit end in a debacle after all? At the beginning, many participants were concerned about public statements made by Spain's head of government Pedro Sánchez. Under pressure from his left-wing government partners, he publicly stated that he did not consider the 5% target to be binding for his country.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte made every effort to prevent this from becoming a major issue for Trump. In a personal greeting to the Republican, he wrote that "everyone had been persuaded to sign the 5 percent pledge". And with regard to the pressure that Trump had put on this issue, he added: "You will achieve something that no American president has achieved for decades."
Rutte was alluding to the fact that Trump's predecessors Barack Obama and Joe Biden had already campaigned for the Europeans to invest a significantly higher proportion of their gross domestic product in defense. However, their efforts had only limited success.
Reunion in Turkey
Hardly anyone in NATO wants to speculate publicly about a possible failure. Instead, long-term plans are already being made for the next summit meetings. According to the text for the final declaration, next year's summit is to be held in Turkey, followed by Albania in 2027.
