The head of NATO wants the alliance’s annual summit meeting next month to be short and sweet, European officials and diplomats say, to prevent the kind of open disunity over Ukraine that marred the gathering two years ago.
But two things could leave the alliance’s secretary general, Mark Rutte, presiding over a more difficult event: President Trump, who is expected to attend, is at odds with allies over Ukraine’s future. And Ukraine itself wants to join NATO, an outcome Mr. Trump opposes.
The NATO summit, set for June 24-25 in the Netherlands, comes as the United States is retreating from maintaining primary responsibility to protect Europe, creating significant uncertainty about the continent’s security. Trump administration officials have warned their European counterparts that major changes in American troop rotations are imminent even as they seek to reassure allies that the United States is committed to NATO.
At the same time, Mr. Trump is winding down support for Ukraine, has abandoned efforts to reach a cease-fire in the war and seeks to normalize relations with Russia.
Given all that, Ukraine’s role in the summit is uncertain, not least because of Mr. Trump’s dismissiveness toward President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is also expected to attend.
It is not even clear that Mr. Zelensky will be invited to the main opening dinner.
“I fully expect Zelensky to be at The Hague,” Matthew G. Whitaker, the new American ambassador to NATO, said at a conference this month in Tallinn, Estonia. “In what capacity, we’re discussing.”
Officials suggested that this summit will not include a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council, where allies sit with Ukraine as equals, as in previous years. Some indicated that after the dinner on the first evening, NATO leaders will meet for only a few hours the next day, to ratify new spending goals that can help European allies replace the United States over time as the prime guarantor of the continent’s conventional defense.
NATO is also planning a parallel defense industry forum, which Mr. Zelensky might attend.
Under President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Mr. Zelensky had important roles in the past two NATO summit meetings. Two years ago, in Lithuania, the summit went badly when Mr. Zelensky and his allies sought a firmer commitment to a timeline for Ukraine to join NATO. (Last year in Washington, the meeting was less eventful and dominated by questions about Mr. Biden’s acuity.)
In 2008, NATO agreed that both Ukraine and Georgia “will become members of NATO” but did not specify a date or a path. Mr. Biden and some other leaders did not regard Ukraine as ready for membership while it was still at war with Russia and resisted setting any date or process. Last year’s version of the communiqué that NATO issues at the end of each summit promised continuing aid to Kyiv, but about membership simply said that Ukraine was on an “irreversible path to full Euro-Atlantic integration, including NATO membership.”
Officials said that this year’s communiqué would be short and concise and was still being drafted.
European allies have vowed to continue supporting Ukraine to reach an equitable peace settlement and then provide security guarantees to prevent Russia from further incursions. While they hope for backup support from the United States, they do not expect Mr. Trump and Congress to approve any further money for Ukraine.
But so far Mr. Trump has not interfered with shipments of American weapons under the $61 billion in aid approved while Mr. Biden was in office. Nor has Mr. Trump again interrupted U.S. satellite and intelligence information supplied to Ukraine, as he did briefly when he was angry with Mr. Zelensky for his initial refusal to back a temporary cease-fire.
President Vladimir Putin of Russia has made it clear that he is in no rush to end the war, but Mr. Trump has notably not followed through on threats to increase economic pressure on Russia, instead arguing last week that “Russia wants to do large-scale TRADE with the United States when this catastrophic ‘blood bath’ is over, and I agree.” Mr. Trump continued: “There is a tremendous opportunity for Russia to create massive amounts of jobs and wealth. Its potential is UNLIMITED.”
Mr. Whitaker worked hard in Tallinn to reassure allies that the United States was committed to the alliance, to collective defense and to its nuclear umbrella over Europe. “We will remain in this alliance and remain a great partner and a great ally,” he said.
But he warned that an ongoing review of American troop posture, scheduled to finish later this year, could mean the withdrawal or repositioning of some of the 84,000 American troops in Europe.
Mr. Whitaker assured officials that “we are not going to allow any security gaps” to emerge in NATO before European forces could replace key American capabilities. But he said that the United States wanted to move as quickly as possible. “Make no mistake,” he added, “this is not going to be a decade-long conversation.”
Uncertainty about the future of U.S. troops in Europe will complicate NATO’s efforts to revise its countries’ military requirements, said Torrey Taussig, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, as well as European planning for how to replace American support for both NATO and Ukraine. “Discussing new NATO capability targets without knowing what the U.S. position will be or what Ukraine will need and how it impacts those capabilities” will risk creating a vacuum down the road, she said.
Michael Kofman, a military and Ukraine expert at the Carnegie Endowment, said that it would be difficult for Europeans to both meet NATO targets for their own defense and support Ukraine indefinitely. “It will require trade-offs,” he said.
Trump administration officials appear to care little about precisely how other allies invest their military spending, so long as the total reaches 5 percent of their annual economic output. Mr. Rutte has proposed a compromise likely to be backed at the summit: that allies agree to spend 3.5 percent of their economic output on hard military power and another 1.5 percent on what he has termed “military-related” expenses by 2032. Those expenses can include items or categories that NATO has not traditionally deemed as spending on security, such as upgrades to roads or bridges that could be used to transport troops or equipment.
Mr. Rutte has said that agreement on the new spending goal, which replaces the old one of 2 percent of economic output on the military, will be the centerpiece of this year’s summit meeting.
In the latest official figures, 23 of NATO’s 32 member states currently meet or surpass the current threshold. And officials and experts all agree that the spending goal must now be considerably higher.
The United States will also commit toward the same spending goal of 5 percent as other NATO members, Mr. Whitaker said in response to a question in Estonia. Currently the United States spends about 5 percent of its defense budget on Europe, not counting nuclear and space spending, according to estimates by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. That represents roughly $50 billion out of the Pentagon’s 2024 budget of $997 billion.
The institute estimates that Europe would need to spend roughly $1 trillion over time to replace U.S. capabilities engaged in Europe. But experts like Camille Grand, a former senior NATO official, think that figure is too high, and is in any case roughly what Europeans would spend under the new spending targets over the next 10 years or so.
NATO and the European Union — most of its 27 members are part of NATO, too — have already done much since Russia invaded Ukraine to enhance deterrence.
NATO is stronger, fairer and more lethal than it was before the invasion, said Radmila Shekerinska, NATO’s new deputy secretary general. But there is a lot more to do, she conceded, and NATO is working to achieve consensus on the spending goals before the summit. “This is our core goal,” she said. “It’s a huge deal, but it’s not a done deal.”
Steven Erlanger is the chief diplomatic correspondent in Europe and is based in Berlin. He has reported from over 120 countries, including Thailand, France, Israel, Germany and the former Soviet Union.
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