When NATO leaders meet at The Hague on Tuesday, there will be much talk about President Trump and his efforts to contain Iran. But Russia will be the elephant in the room.
Any doubts about the wisdom of the war in Iran or the American intervention are expected to be suppressed, not only because most allies do not want Tehran to have a bomb but also because the summit has been structured to avoid riling Mr. Trump. The announced cease-fire, if it holds, might also help calm any nerves.
For NATO, the looming issue is Russia, which is at the heart of the meeting focused on increased military spending. But it, too, will be an awkward backdrop as the member countries tiptoe around the American president, with his notably ambiguous relationship with Moscow. (As of early Tuesday, Mr. Trump was still expected to attend the summit.)
Mr. Trump has demanded that NATO members spend a lot more money on defense, but he doesn’t say what that new spending is for.
Mark Rutte, the alliance secretary general, has no doubt — it is to deter a militarized Russia that is already at war on NATO’s borders, in Ukraine. With a bit of hyperbole, he recently told Britons that either they spend what NATO is asking “to keep our societies safe” or “you better learn to speak Russian.”
In April, Mr. Rutte said, “We all agree in NATO that Russia is the long-term threat to NATO territory, to the whole of the Euro-Atlantic territory.”
But that is not entirely true.
Mr. Trump has evinced intermittent frustration with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia for resisting a cease-fire in Ukraine but has refused to impose sanctions on Russia or even to admit that Russia is to blame for invading Ukraine. He wants to reopen economic and diplomatic relations with Moscow and has consistently belittled and undercut President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine.
At the Group of 7 summit in Canada last week, Mr. Trump left early, complained that Russia was not a part of the group and canceled a meeting with Mr. Zelensky. Mr. Trump is expected to keep his visit to The Hague similarly short, to less than 24 hours. It will be the first NATO leaders’ summit of his second term.
A new NATO strategy toward Russia and the Russian threat, to replace the approach adopted in the late 1990s, when the alliance saw Russia as a potential partner, was supposed to be adopted at the summit. But the new strategy has been scrapped at Washington’s insistence, to avoid a conflict with Mr. Trump and his so far futile efforts to negotiate with Russia over Ukraine.
Similarly, a session of the NATO-Ukraine Council, where the alliance leaders meet with Mr. Zelensky, was never a prospect, given Mr. Trump’s ambivalence toward the Ukrainian leader, although lower-level ministers are expected to meet.
New spending targets are meant to be the focus and the accomplishment of this brief summit, which starts Tuesday with a dinner hosted by the Dutch royal family and ends with one morning session on Wednesday followed by what is expected to be a historically short communiqué.
Mr. Zelensky’s role is considerably reduced from recent summits, where his battle against Russia was a central focus. But he has agreed to come after some hesitation, according to two senior European officials. He will attend the dinner and have bilateral meetings.
The draft communiqué, if allies agree to it, does tie Russia’s aggression in Ukraine to the need to increase military spending, one of the officials said. But it makes no mention of NATO’s promise of eventual membership to Ukraine and Georgia, as previous summit communiqués have done. Past commitments, Mr. Rutte has explained with some exasperation, are considered settled and do not need to be repeated.
Mr. Rutte’s aim is to ensure that the meeting displays unity and gives Mr. Trump a victory on increased spending. Mr. Rutte has gotten alliance agreement to commit to spending 5 percent of national income on defense, with 3.5 percent on core military needs to meet NATO’s requirements. That is a big jump from the 2 percent goal set in 2014 and now considered inadequate in the face of Russia’s militarization.
In addition, allies will aim to spend another 1.5 percent of national income on militarily useful items like better roads and bridges, better emergency health care and better civilian preparation for war — a workaround to help more nations reach Mr. Trump’s goal.
The deadline to hit that goal is not yet settled and could vary. And no one expects every country to hit 5 percent, as Spain has said it cannot do, but each member will be asked to commit to meeting NATO’s new military requirements.
Mr. Rutte’s overall hope is to limit the chance of division over contentious issues like Russia and aid to Ukraine — contentious, at least, for Mr. Trump and two of his populist supporters, Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary and Prime Minister Robert Fico of Slovakia.
The three leaders believe, in essence, that good relations with Russia are vital for European security, that the war in Ukraine makes NATO more vulnerable rather than less, and that NATO should spend to defend itself, not to fight Russia in Ukraine.
That runs against the grain with the rest of NATO, which considers Ukraine the front line of defense against Russia. To that end, NATO countries are pledging billions to aid Ukraine, both financially and militarily.
The president of the Czech Republic, Petr Pavel, a former general, put it well last week when he summarized his outlook for the summit.
On the one hand, he said, expectations for the summit are high, especially for new targets for military spending, but the goals are also limited because of the U.S. administration’s “approach.”
“I understand that the secretary general wants deliberately to limit the scope of the summit to the necessary minimum to avoid any disagreements and disunity,” he said, adding that the most important thing was to show NATO was united on its main principles.
Those principles are the alliance’s commitment to collective defense and support for Ukraine, he said. Still, he acknowledged that the communiqué was likely to lack strong language about Ukraine, even as the country faced a Russian summer offensive and diminished help from the United States.
Mr. Trump has made it clear that Europe must take the bulk of the responsibility for aiding and supplying Ukraine, as he himself seems to have moved on from pressing Mr. Putin on a cease-fire.
An absence of a clear achievement for Ukraine makes it clear how different NATO is in the time of Mr. Trump. And what Mr. Zelensky takes away from the summit is an open question, said Michael R. Carpenter, the former U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
“Does Zelensky go home after that summit feeling that the alliance has his back?” he asked. “Or does he feel that the alliance has tiptoed its way through a summit without really offering substantial and vocal support for Ukraine?”
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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