WPR (World Politics Review) ColumnEurope For NATO, Appeasing Trump Came at a High Price Nathalie Tocci Jun 27, 2025June 27, 2025

 WPR (World   Politics Review)

ColumnEurope

For NATO, Appeasing Trump Came at a High Price

Nathalie Tocci

Jun 27, 2025June 27, 2025

For NATO, Appeasing Trump Came at a High Price

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, U.S. President Donald Trump and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte attend a plenary meeting during the NATO Summit, in The Hague, Netherlands, June 25, 2025 (Press Association photo by Kin Cheung via AP Images).

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The highest priority of the behind-the-scenes diplomatic preparations for this week’s NATO Summit in The Hague was to prevent a major disaster. In the midst of wars in Europe and the Middle East, the fact that the principal aim was for nothing to go abysmally wrong may have looked like a rock-bottom level of ambition. But with U.S. President Donald Trump in the White House, a “no surprises” summit was considered essential for the alliance’s cohesion.

The strategy revolved around concentrating on NATO’s means: a new defense spending target of 5 percent of GDP. In satisfying a demand that Trump has made central to his second-term approach to the alliance, the summit was a spectacular diplomatic success.

However, the price paid was neglect of the details of NATO’s end goals—namely, the threats the alliance is meant to deter. Yes, the final communique did mention the long-term threat posed by Russia to the trans-Atlantic alliance, which was more than many observers, myself included, had expected. But scratching the surface of the “no surprises” summit, yet another nail may have been unknowingly placed in NATO’s coffin this week in The Hague. 

Trump’s disdain for alliances in general and Europe in particular has been apparent for a long time. Since returning to office in late January, he has threatened to annex Canada, a NATO ally, and invade Greenland, a semi-autonomous territory belonging to Denmark, also a NATO member. He initially reversed U.S. policy on the Russia-Ukraine war by adopting Moscow’s talking points on the conflict’s cause and insisting that Kyiv negotiate an unfair peace deal. Though he has since seemed to have put the war on the backburner, European allies increasingly see Ukraine’s independence and security as integral to their own. The Trump administration has also explicitly backed extremist far-right parties in Europe, many of which are considered threats to liberal democracy and European integration.

Against this backdrop, avoiding catastrophe in The Hague was an achievement. The strategy hinged on massaging Trump’s ego by agreeing on the raised defense spending target, which Trump had probably proposed more to irk Europeans and pave the way for a trans-Atlantic rupture than because of any genuine concern for European security.

Nevertheless, NATO allies played along, led by Secretary-General Mark Rutte, whose over-the-top flattery of Trump—which included referring to him as “daddy,” ascribing to him and him alone the summit’s successful conclusion, and endorsing the U.S. attack on Iran—embarrassed many Europeans, myself included.

Rutte’s genuflection aside, however, European allies mostly agreed that, in light of Russia’s growing threat to Europe, the defense spending target of 2 percent of GDP—which was agreed to in 2014, but will only be attained by all members by the end of this year—was no longer sufficient. Several laggards were cajoled into ramping up their efforts, and they eventually came on board. Spain refused to budge, but agreed not to hold up the consensus needed for alliance decision-making.

NATO finds itself in the paradoxical situation of having agreed on new ambitious spending targets without any explicit mention of what this money is for.

In practice, NATO has set a 3.5 percent of GDP target for “hard” defense spending on things like weapons platforms and armaments, which more or less amounts to the financial cost of the capability targets NATO allies have already agreed to reach. In fact, several European allies, notably in the north and east, are already edging toward that elevated spending level, while others have met or overtaken it. The remaining 1.5 percent of GDP is dedicated to “soft” defense spending on broader inputs to improve security, including infrastructure resilience and protection. In short, adopting the 5 percent of GDP goal and letting Trump boast about the achievement as if it were his own are seen as bearable if it keeps Trump happy.

However, the person most responsible for higher European defense spending, as with all things related to the defense of Europe, is Russian President Vladimir Putin. The spending target adopted in The Hague amounts to a gradual shifting of the burden of defending Europe from Russia across the Atlantic, and it goes hand in hand with the expected partial withdrawal of U.S. forces from Europe.

The rest of the strategy behind the “no surprises” NATO Summit hinged on dodging difficult questions. This was aided by the fact that Trump has grown relatively uninterested in Europe since his bombastic promises to end the Ukraine War in 24 hours fell flat. It helped, too, that the summit itself was stripped down to the bare minimum, lasting only a couple of hours rather than several days, as is typical, allowing Trump to stay for just an afternoon in The Hague.

Trump’s disinterest in Europe, Europe’s fear of Trump’s unpredictability and, above all, the dramatic mismatch in the two sides’ approach to Russia explained the summit’s silence on almost every other urgent topic facing the alliance. The gathering did not feature a leaders’ level NATO-Ukraine Council meeting, as has become standard since Russia’s invasion began. While the final communique did at least mention the threat Russia poses to the alliance, the summit did not showcase a new strategy for countering that threat, as agreed at last year’s summit in Washington. This was meant to be unveiled in The Hague, but plans for the new strategy were shelved when Trump was reelected, in anticipation of unbridgeable disagreements.

So, NATO finds itself in the paradoxical situation of having agreed on new ambitious spending targets without any explicit mention of what this money is for. Optimists say that, with Trump in office, this summit’s outcomes are the most that can be hoped for. NATO allies will boost defense spending, a necessary, albeit insufficient, condition to deter and defend Europe against Russia. There was no major political crisis, with Trump zipping in and out of The Hague without having blown up any trans-Atlantic bridges. In such circumstances, lying low is an understandable diplomatic reaction, in the hope and quasi-religious belief that better political times will come. It’s possible this will turn out to be true, and most observers—again, myself included—hope it does.

But it’s a mistake to ignore the pessimist’s view. NATO has agreed on spending targets that only a handful of allies will meet. Having barely reached the 2 percent of GDP target a decade after it was adopted, this now sets the scene for extending the perpetual trans-Atlantic disputes on defense spending indefinitely into the future. And while increased spending is necessary, it alone will not change the fundamental structure of NATO, in which the U.S. is the unmatched majority shareholder since inception by design.

The U.S. is and will likely always be NATO’s strategic, operational and technological spine. Yet if the U.S. and Europe can no longer talk about, let alone agree on, deterring and defending Europe from Russia, this resurfaces the question of what NATO’s purpose is, at a moment when the answer had become clearer than at any time since the end of the Cold War.

International organizations, including NATO, are generally not killed in a single blow. In this respect, they have incredible resilience. Yet they can wither from within and then fade away into insignificance. NATO’s “no surprises” summit in The Hague may look like a stunning diplomatic success. It could end up being remembered in the future as a political failure whose silence was deafening.

Nathalie Tocci is director of the Istituto Affari Internazionali, part-time professor at the School of Transnational Governance (European University Institute) and honorary professor at the University of Tubingen. She has been special adviser to the EU high representative. Her WPR column appears monthly.