On Both Sides of The Atlantic: Even if successful, the Hague summit will be a step towards deepening the NATO crisis rather than resolving it

5% in favour of Trump

The NATO summit in The Hague will be held in a pared-down format. Aside from side events, such as the Alliance Defence Industry Forum, the main plenary session will be the only one and will last two and a half hours, instead of the usual three sessions of similar length. The ageing and irritable American president struggles to concentrate on complex issues for any length of time and tends to become aggressive in such moments. Trump is pushing for a quick breakthrough and, should a sufficiently substantial outcome fail to materialise, he may derail the summit, as he did in 2018, according to Kurt Volker, former US ambassador to NATO and Donald Trump's special envoy for Ukraine in 2017–2019. Alternatively, he might leave early, as he did at the recent G7 meeting in Canada.

It must be said, however, that younger European leaders are skilled at speaking at length and with great conviction, without necessarily making any decisions. The communiqué of the current summit is expected to comprise five paragraphs, whereas the communiqué from the last anniversary forum ran to 44. But few today are likely to revisit those 44 paragraphs or demand fulfilment of the plans and pledges outlined therein. The brevity of the new communiqué, however, is not merely a sign of efficiency: it conceals a latent political conflict. According to Newsweek sources, under US pressure the draft communiqué contains only a fleeting reference to Ukraine, with no pledges of sustained support in the war with Russia and no mention of its future NATO membership (in the previous communiqué, the process was described as irreversible, although no one could say what that actually meant).

The new defence investment plan is, according to NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, the summit’s key document, and sets a spending benchmark of 5% of GDP, comprising 3.5% for direct defence spending and 1.5% for related expenditures. President Trump demanded this 5% target from European allies, although the figure itself lacks a clear rationale. According to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI),US defence spending exceeded 5% of GDP between 1949 and 1990, averaging 7.7% over that period. From 1990 to 2013, it averaged 4.05%, and from 2014 to the present it was 3.4%. However, those levels of spending reflected America’s role as the principal global superpower with a worldwide military presence. Most European NATO members do not aspire to such ambitions.

How much, then should they be spending? Fundamentally, the issue of increased defence spending is, for the time being, not a matter of consensus, but there is fairly broad agreement on the need. In 2024, according to SIPRI estimates, European members of the alliance already spent $454 billion on defence; the United States, $997 billion; China, $314 billion; and Russia, $149 billion. Thus, in financial terms, Europe’s current defence potential amounts to half that of the US, is one and a half times greater than China’s, and three times greater than Russia’s. Nonetheless, it is a common refrain that Europe is wholly unprepared to repel a potential Russian aggression. When adjusted for purchasing power parity, the gap in defence spending with Russia shrinks considerably, to a ratio of around 1.3–1.4. However, Russia is currently engaged in a full-scale war against Ukraine, which consumes a significant portion of its defence resources. In any case, it is worth first clarifying why, despite such substantial defence expenditure, Europe appears and feels so defenceless, and precisely what that defencelessness consists of.

On the eve of the Hague summit, NATO defence ministers agreed a new set of targets for defence capabilities. The details of the plan are classified, but, according to Politico, during a speech at Chatham House in London, Rutte stated that Europe needs to increase its air and missile defence systems fivefold, acquire thousands more armoured vehicles and tanks, and produce millions of artillery shells. 'We need to double our support capabilities: logistics, supply, transport and medical services,' he listed. NATO countries also plan to expand purchases of warships, drones, long-range missiles, and aircraft, including no fewer than 700 F-35s, he added. The formation of short-term emergency plans to address gaps in Europe’s defences may well become the most practical and uncontested outcome of this summit. In the long-term and strategic perspective, however, matters look far more uncertain.

The division of ‘Trump's numbers’ according to the 3.5 + 1.5% formula is a sleight of hand by Rutte, intended to make the demand at least marginally acceptable to European capitals. Nevertheless, one NATO member, Spain, has already formally refused to comply, and the wording of the corresponding commitment in the agreed document has been softened to avoid appearing too binding. This, in turn, will open the door for other countries to opt out. In any event, the official deadline for fulfilling this non-binding commitment is 2035. The previous pledge, to raise defence spending in all alliance countries to 2% of GDP, was made eleven years ago, in 2014, and has still not been fully met. According to data from the Atlantic Council’s defence spending tracker, eight countries, including Canada, Slovenia, Belgium and Italy, still fall short of the target.

Bilateral uncertainty: to leave or to stay?

But even if NATO’s European leaders took seriously the task of forming a long-term strategy for the alliance’s development, they would be confronted with truly insoluble problems. No one today has a clear answer as to whether the alliance will exist in the foreseeable future, or in what form. In this regard, Trump continues to maintain what is often referred to as strategic ambiguity. He periodically signals that he sees NATO as a burden for the US, does not treat Article 5 of the alliance’s charter as a binding commitment, and intends to redirect part of America’s forces and capabilities from the European to the Pacific theatre.

Trump’s interpreters claim that these threats and the uncertainty they generate are intended to push European leaders to take more responsibility for their own region. But how can one act when there is no understanding of the true aims of a key partner, nor any clarity about his intentions even in the short term? For example, Europe was recently alarmed by rumours that Trump had no intention of appointing a new commander of US and NATO forces in Europe. This scenario is allegedly in line with plans to turn the alliance into a 'dormant' structure. In the end, Europe breathed a sigh of relief, writes Politico, when Trump did appoint Lieutenant General Alexus Grynkewich to the role. However, this move may only be a temporary fix and does not dispel the underlying uncertainty.

According to the Financial Times, German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius spent months trying to obtain clarity from his US counterpart, Pete Hegseth, regarding America’s plans for NATO, particularly in terms of a possible reduction in American involvement in European security. One can write any numbers into the communiqué – 3.5, 5 or even 6% – but it is difficult to plan any meaningful increase in spending without knowing what needs and vulnerabilities may arise in the near future, should the US begin to withdraw from the alliance. Yet it appears Hegseth had nothing to tell his German colleague, even if he wanted to. Washington intends to outline its new defence doctrine only this summer, and no one knows what it will contain. According to Kurt Volker, 'a discussion [with allies] about what the US will withdraw from Europe will only take place at the end of this year.' Most likely, even Trump himself lacks a clear vision of how relations with European partners should evolve. His 'strategic ambiguity' is, in fact, more of a tactical ambiguity, that is a desire to keep his options open amid a lack of overarching strategy.

However, whether it is tactical or strategic, this ambiguity is creating internal divisions within Europe over which response strategy to pursue. One approach argues that, when faced with such unreliability from the US, Europe must assume responsibility for its own security and move towards achieving strategic autonomy (a position long championed by France) meaning, ultimately, the creation of its own armed forces and political independence, no longer serving as a mere adjunct to the US. This debate surfaced again after the Oval Office conflict between Volodymyr Zelensky and the Trump administration, though it has since largely faded(→ Re: Russia: From Strategic Autonomy to Defence Alliance).

Another group of European politicians believes the priority must be to do everything possible to keep the US from leaving NATO, to accept American demands, and to build a new defence architecture based on the alliance — but with a stronger European role in armaments and command structures. From this perspective, even discussing 'strategic autonomy' at this point only pushes the US further towards exiting the alliance. According to the Financial Times, citing its sources, Pistorius’s inquiries about US intentions irritated other European capitals, as they were seen as a trigger for a 'self-fulfilling scenario'. One NATO diplomat told the paper that American hesitancy around troop withdrawals is, in fact, helpful to Europe, because the longer Washington takes to decide, the more time Europe has to find ways of compensating for the loss of the US presence and persuading its own citizens of the need for higher defence spending.

The logic of this camp is that a sudden US withdrawal from European NATO structures would create a massive security vacuum and require an equally massive and rapid increase in spending, for which European voters are unprepared. For this reason, they argue, current plans for European military self-sufficiency are a fantasy that would ultimately generate further political instability across the continent. European countries would need to spend at least $1 trillion to compensate for the deterrence capabilities lost with an American departure, according to analysts at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). And Bloomberg Economics experts estimate that it would take Europe 10 years and around $3 trillion to build its own military potential up to the level of a global power. That said, $300 billion a year is roughly the amount that would be added if 'greater' Europe were to raise its defence spending from 2% to 3.5% of GDP.

Friends, enemies and fellow travellers: a view from both sides of the Atlantic

That said, it would be entirely wrong to attribute NATO’s current problems solely to Trump’s erratic nature and his tendency to follow political instinct in the absence of a coherent strategy – or solely to the indecisiveness and lack of resolve among European leaders. In reality, NATO’s crisis has much deeper roots. Unlike during the Cold War, or even in more recent times, the United States and Europe today have differing perceptions of existential threats and of the strategies required to confront them.

The Trump administration views China as the primary threat and hopes to secure Russian neutrality in its confrontation with Beijing. Europe, by contrast, sees the existential threat in Russia and would (ideally) like to secure China’s neutrality. Tellingly, at America’s insistence, the draft communiqué for the summit contains no mention of Russian aggression against Ukraine which, incidentally, is the main trigger for Europe’s re-evaluation of its security priorities and objectives. At the G7 summit in Canada, Trump even lamented the absence of Vladimir Putin, fully aware that the remaining seven participants (including Ursula von der Leyen) considered it essential that the summit communiqué include a clause condemning Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. It is that very aggression which, for European leaders, forms the starting point for their understanding of today’s global situation and the challenges facing Europe. At the current summit, gestures of support for Ukraine are also scheduled for the first day, while Trump is still absent.

However, the situation is further complicated by the fact that not all European politicians, and even less so, the electorate, share the main European leaders’ view of existential threats and their significance. This divergence further paralyses Europe’s resolve in seeking a way out of the current predicament.

One way or another, the strategic decision to shift US focus from Europe to China and the Indo-Pacific region was not made under Trump. However, under Joe Biden’s administration, both China and Russia were treated as near-equivalent threats, mutually reinforcing in terms of alliance-wide concern. Trump has diverged from this view, placing his bets on 'neutralising' Russia, and as a result, the two sides of the alliance have now developed entirely different understandings of goals and threats. Under such conditions, any attempt to formulate a coherent strategy for NATO’s development and consolidation inevitably leads to mutual suspicion or accusations of bad faith. Therefore, regardless of whether Trump causes a scandal in The Hague, or Rutte’s herculean efforts succeed and everything proceeds relatively smoothly, it will make no real difference. NATO is, at this moment, in crisis, and this crisis, it seems, is still approaching its climax.