Allianz in difficult times: Alliance with Trump: What can be expected from the NATO summit

This year’s NATO summit in the Haag will probably be one of the shortest of the past decades in history. After the festival on Tuesday evening, only one two and a half hour working session is on the program at the meeting today. The aim is to keep Donald Trump happy, who, as President of the most powerful military power in the world, decides on NATO’s fate at the end of the day.

Will that succeed? After the agreement on a text for the planned final declaration, many allies had confidence that a very large debacle could be prevented. The following important topics will play a major role according to the document available to the German Press Agency – but some others will not. An overview:

Five percent are the new two percent

Under the impression of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and extreme pressure from US President Donald Trump, Germany and the other alliance partners have already agreed on a new target for the amount of national defense spending at the weekend. The draft assumed by all 32 Allies for the final declaration states: In view of the profound threats and challenges for security, “the Allies undertake to invest 5 percent of GDP annually in fundamental defense requirements as well as in defense and security expenses (…)”.

An amount of at least 3.5 percent of GDP is to be paid to classic military spending. In addition, expenses for fighting terrorism and militarily usable infrastructure will also be credited. This could be investments in railway lines, tank -compatible bridges and extended ports. Until the end, NATO’s requirement was that at least two percent had to be invested.

Are the United States with Trump as President as President for the obligation to assist them in accordance with Article 5 of the NATO contract? So to the agreement that an allies can count on the support of the Allies in the event of an attack and an attack on a member is evaluated as an attack on everyone? In the past, the Republican’s statements had repeatedly aroused doubts. In return for the five percent promise, the Allies now expect that this is no longer possible.

In the declaration of summit it is said: “We, the heads of state and government of the North Atlantic Alliance, have come together in the Hague in order to reaffirm our commitment to NATO- the strongest alliance of history- and to the transatlantic alliance.” You remain united and determined to protect the one billion citizens in the alliance states.

Persistent uncertainty for Ukraine

An auxiliary commitment of 40 billion euros and the promise to support Ukraine on the “irreversible path” for NATO membership: at the NATO summit last year in Washington, Russia’s war against Ukraine was still clearly one of the top topics. This year it will be different because of Trump’s course. The only official working meeting should be about defense spending in the absence of the President of Ukraine, Wolodymyr Selenskyj.

Unlike in previous years, no session of the NATO-UKRAINE council was called at the level of the heads of state and government. In the text for the summit declaration, the vague sentence “The Allies reaffirm their permanent sovereign obligations to support Ukraine, the security of which contributes to our own”.

As a small success, Selenskyj can book that it should be stated in writing that NATO countries can have military support for his country credited to her defense spending. It was recently handled in such a way, but Ukraine feared that this could change because of Trump’s politics.

Free trade only for armaments goods

Does Trump with his pay decisions at the expense of Allies against the founding contract of NATO? Article 2 states that the contracting parties “will endeavor to eliminate opposites in their international economic policy and to promote economic cooperation between individual or all parties”. In the text for the summit declaration, it is now at least stated that the ongoing trade conflict should not have any negative effects on the current upgrade efforts.

Could the summit still end in a debacle? At the beginning, many participants worried public statements by Spain’s head of government Pedro Sánchez. Under the pressure of left-wing government partners, the latter publicly announced that he saw the 5 percent goal for his country as not binding.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte tried with all the forces not to make this a big topic for Trump. In a personal welcome to the Republican, he wrote that “everyone had been” signed the 5 percent commitment “. And with a view to the pressure that Trump had made on this topic, he added: “You will achieve something that no American president has achieved for decades.”

Rutte thus alluded to the fact that Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama and Joe Biden had already campaigned for the Europeans to invest a significantly higher part of their gross domestic product in defense. However, their efforts had only limited success.

Reunion in Turkey

Hardly anyone wants to speculate publicly about a possible failure in NATO. Instead, it will be planned for the next top meetings in the long term. According to the text for the final declaration, the summit is scheduled to be organized in Turkey next year, in 2027 in Albania.