NATO Summit Tests Alliance as Trump Demands ‘Loyalty’
ANKARA — NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte arrives at this week’s summit in Ankara facing his most formidable challenge yet: U.S. President Donald Trump is no longer satisfied with allies simply spending more on defense — he wants their “loyalty,” a demand that signals a potentially seismic shift in the transatlantic relationship. The 36th NATO summit, hosted by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at his Presidential Complex on July 7-8, will test whether the alliance can manage Trump’s mercurial leadership while confronting critical security threats from Russia and navigating the aftermath of the U.S.-Iran war.
The ‘Loyalty’ Problem
Trump’s demand marks a fundamental escalation from his previous focus on burden-sharing. “We don’t need their money — we don’t need anything,” Trump said, according to AP News. “I just want loyalty.”
This shift from transactional to relational expectations poses a unique challenge for Rutte, who has spent much of his tenure employing flattery and data-driven arguments to keep the United States anchored to the alliance. At a White House meeting last month, Rutte presented Trump with a chart labeled “The Trump Trillion” in gold letters, showing $1.2 trillion in additional defense spending by European allies and Canada since 2017. But as the AP report noted, Trump’s demand for “loyalty” is “hard to capture on any chart.”
The Iran War Hangover
Trump’s anger stems in large part from Europe’s response to the war he launched alongside Israel against Iran earlier this year — a campaign conducted without consulting NATO allies. Several European countries restricted U.S. use of their bases for the operation, leaving Trump feeling betrayed. Rutte gently pushed back during their Oval Office meeting, noting that up to 5,000 U.S. planes took off from European bases before the April ceasefire, but the argument appeared to have little effect.
Foreign Policy reported that Trump has continued to rail against the alliance, posting on Truth Social that “the United States spends more money on NATO than any other country, by far, to protect them, without getting any benefit from so doing.”
U.S. Military Disengagement
The Pentagon has added to allied anxieties by announcing it is scaling back the number of troops, warships, aircraft and drones it would make available if a NATO member came under attack, while launching a six-month review of U.S. forces in Europe. This comes at a time when Russia has been probing Europe’s defenses with drone flights near military bases across multiple countries, according to a study released on July 2.
Retired Gen. Richard Shirreff, former NATO Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, told Foreign Policy that he expects “a desperate effort to try and keep Trump and America in the camp and a continuation of the head-in-the-sand approach of the NATO secretary-general about the reality that America under Trump cannot be trusted as a NATO ally.”
Erdogan’s Pivotal Role
Trump has made clear that his attendance at the summit is due almost entirely to his close personal relationship with Erdogan. “I would not have gone for most people,” Trump said, according to AP News. “But he called me up… And so I’m going out of respect to President Erdogan.”
Erdogan has cultivated this relationship strategically. He snubbed President Joe Biden’s invitation to visit the U.S. in 2024, signaling his preference for Trump — a bet that has paid off handsomely. Trump appointed his close friend Tom Barrack as ambassador to Turkey, the Department of Justice dropped a major case against Turkey’s Halkbank, and Trump is now signaling a potential sale of F-35 fighter jets to Turkey, which was barred in 2019 after Ankara purchased Russian S-400 missile defense systems.
Philip Gordon, former National Security Adviser for Vice President Kamala Harris and now at the Brookings Institution, told AP News that Trump’s relationship with Erdogan “is consistent with what seems to be a pattern of his preference. It has often been pointed out he seems to have better relationships with adversaries and autocrats, and he certainly says nicer things about them than with allies.”
Rutte’s Flattery Strategy Under Scrutiny
Rutte’s approach of heavy flattery — including the carefully choreographed Oval Office presentation with American flag-themed props — has drawn criticism. His predecessor, Jens Stoltenberg, wrote in his memoir about chairing a 2018 summit that Trump nearly upended, warning that “if an American president says he no longer wishes to defend the other allies and leaves a NATO summit in protest, then the NATO treaty and its security guarantee aren’t worth very much.”
Yet the strategy has yielded results. At last year’s summit in The Hague, Rutte secured a major defense spending pledge from allies to reach 5% of GDP by 2035, and Trump left “a happy man,” calling his NATO partners a “nice group of people.”
A Low Bar for Success
The summit has been deliberately structured to minimize the potential for controversy: Trump flies in for a dinner on July 7, followed by a single formal session on July 8. As Turkish Minute reported, allies hope to avoid a blow-up by showcasing new spending, inking billions of dollars in contracts, and lavishing hospitality.
Peter Bator, Slovakia’s former ambassador to NATO, captured the remarkably low expectations when he said success means “Trump not go against NATO, or criticize NATO or undermine NATO’s role. We need Trump, at least, to stay silent on that.”
What to Watch For
Three key questions hang over the summit: whether Trump will follow through on threats to reduce U.S. troop presence in Europe; whether the F-35 sale to Turkey will proceed despite bipartisan congressional opposition; and whether the alliance can produce a meaningful strategy on Ukraine, whose president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has been invited as a non-NATO member.
The transatlantic alliance, the cornerstone of Western security for over seven decades, is navigating perhaps its most uncertain period since its founding. The summit’s success may ultimately be measured not by what is achieved, but by what is avoided: a public rupture between the United States and its closest allies.