White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt amplified a Fox News opinion piece by U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matt Whitaker on Monday, sharing it as Trump departed for the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey — an event the administration is framing as the moment the alliance must convert last year’s historic spending pledges into actual military capability.
“President Trump pushed NATO to pay up. Now allies must turn pledges into power,” Leavitt wrote on X, linking to the Whitaker piece.
“Declarations are not deterrence. Commitments are not capabilities,” Whitaker wrote in the Fox News op-ed. “Ankara must be a summit of action. The Hague gave us the mandate; Ankara must give us the momentum — concrete milestones, measurable capability targets, and mechanisms that ensure Allies deliver.”
What Was Pledged at The Hague
At last year’s NATO summit in The Hague, all 32 member states agreed to increase their annual defense spending to 5 percent of GDP by 2035 — 3.5 percent on core military requirements and 1.5 percent on broader security-related investments including critical infrastructure and defense industrial capacity.
The pledge was a dramatic expansion of the 2 percent GDP benchmark set in 2014, which many allies had long struggled to meet. Since 2017, European allies and Canada have increased defense investment by more than $1.2 trillion, with nearly $139 billion added since The Hague summit alone — roughly half of it spent on American equipment, according to Whitaker’s op-ed. Allies currently hold over $60 billion in orders with American defense companies.
The picture nonetheless remains uneven. “Some allies are doing more than others,” Whitaker told reporters Sunday. “Poland, the Nordic countries, the Baltic countries lead the way, and Germany is on track for the 5%, reaching it in 2029. But many others are lagging behind.”
The “NATO 3.0” Vision
The Whitaker op-ed laid out what the administration calls “NATO 3.0” — a vision in which Europe takes on the conventional defense of the continent while the United States provides more focused support, including its nuclear umbrella. “The goal is not simply to spend more,” Whitaker wrote. “It is to shift the conventional defense of Europe to Europeans, with the United States providing critical but more focused support.”
That framework has been formally outlined by Elbridge Colby, the U.S. undersecretary of defense for policy, at a gathering of NATO defense ministers earlier this year. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has announced a six-month review of U.S. military presence in Europe, with senior U.S. officials confirming it “very well may lead” to changes in force posture, according to ABC News.
The administration has also framed the alliance’s increased spending as a boon to the American defense industrial base. “Allied demand drives American production. American production drives Allied capability. Allied capability drives deterrence. And deterrence keeps the peace,” Whitaker wrote. European nations are expected to announce tens of billions of dollars in new contracts with American defense companies at the summit.
The Fractures Underneath
Beneath the administration’s confident framing, analysts say the alliance is under more internal strain than at any point in years. The U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran in February were launched without prior consultation with most NATO allies, with France openly criticizing the decision and Spain refusing to allow the U.S. to carry out operations from its bases, according to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Trump called out NATO publicly last week, writing on Truth Social that it was “ridiculous for the U.S.A. to continue along this one-sided path when the relationship is not reciprocal.”
Stephen Wertheim of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace wrote ahead of the summit that the illusion of appeasing Trump through spending pledges is now gone among European allies. “This time, it should be clear not only that Trump will remain aggrieved at his North Atlantic allies for as long as he is president, but also that NATO is undergoing a structural shift,” Wertheim wrote. In Washington’s vocabulary, he noted, “burden-shifting” has now supplanted “burden-sharing.”
Ukraine, Iran and the Summit Agenda
Beyond defense spending, two active conflicts are hanging over the summit. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is attending and is expected to meet Trump on Wednesday to push for more U.S.-made interceptors, according to Foreign Policy. Russian strikes on Kyiv killed at least 20 people in the days before leaders convened, and Russia has continued to increase attacks against Ukrainian civilians as the war enters its fifth year.
The Iran ceasefire and the Strait of Hormuz — now reopened toll-free — are also expected to feature prominently. A senior U.S. official told ABC News that many NATO allies “don’t have the necessary ships or assets to contribute to a meaningful maritime effort” despite expressing willingness to help. The gap between allied intentions and allied capabilities — the same gap Whitaker’s op-ed was written to close — is the central challenge the Ankara summit has been convened to address.
Trump’s trip will be brief. He departed Monday evening and is expected to return to the U.S. Wednesday evening after holding a press conference. He has bilateral meetings scheduled with Erdogan, Zelenskyy and Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa. A bipartisan group of U.S. senators led by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) also traveled to Ankara, seeking to signal to allies that congressional support for NATO remains strong regardless of the president’s posture toward the alliance.