NATO leaders gathered in Ankara this week and walked out with $50 billion (€43 billion) in defence production and procurement deals, while the alliance said it was on a credible path to spending 5% of GDP on defence by 2035. The money covers submarines, Patriot missile defence systems, interceptors and ammunition. For everyone else, it means more public wealth routed into the machinery of war, with the Brussels-and-capitals crowd calling it responsibility.
Ahead of the summit, diplomats scrambled to prepare a joint statement reaffirming Article 5, the alliance’s collective-defense pledge that an armed attack on one member is an attack on all. The ritual matters because NATO keeps selling the same old promise: security through escalation, deterrence through more hardware, and peace through permanent readiness for violence. The summit in Ankara gave that logic a fresh invoice.
Billions for the War Economy
NATO also chose Swedish company Saab to manufacture surveillance planes to replace the Airborne Warning and Control System currently operated with US Boeing planes. Another major commitment, NATO’s Drone Hedge, will put $40 billion (€35 billion) into counter-drone capabilities over the next five years to cover the whole alliance. It also focuses on hiring and training pilots, and it will be fully interoperable across all allied states. Interoperable, in NATO language, means the war machine gets smoother, faster, and easier to run across borders.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte told the Defence Industry Forum on Tuesday: “Drones have fundamentally altered, as we all know, the character of modern warfare. They have become a decisive factor on the battlefield. This is clear from what we see in Ukraine, in the Middle East, and across the alliance.” He also said, “New capabilities are being delivered, industry is expanding production, and European Allies and Canada are assuming greater responsibility for our shared security.” The phrase “shared security” does a lot of work there. It covers the transfer of money, contracts, and political cover to arms makers and defence ministries.
Daniel Fiott, Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussels, said: “The really interesting thing is how much work the European allies have done behind the scenes when it comes to defence and arms deals.” He added: “Working together on difference aspects of security, and frankly that's what we need. We need more of it, and we need it on steroids at this precise moment in time.” Behind the scenes is where the deals happen. In public, the alliance wraps them in solemn language and flags.
Europe’s Platform of Power Projection
Trump appeared to approve the licensing of US Patriot defence systems to Ukraine. Sitting next to Ukrainian President Zelenskyy ahead of their meeting in Ankara, Trump said: “A little birdie told me this, about the fact that we’ll give them the right to make Patriots. We’ll show them how to do it, it’s very complex actually. But it’s – you’ll figure out the complexity quickly.” Max Bergmann of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies said Trump’s openness on this front was testament to Ukraine’s strength. “President Zelenskyy and Ukraine have a lot of cards now, and Trump has realised he can't bully the Ukrainians now because Ukraine has moved on and is interacting with Brussels,” Bergmann said.
Nico Lange, analyst with Rasmussen Global, said the Europeanisation of the alliance would not become a reality unless members “replace NATO's strategic enablers with European ones.” He said that included “satellite based time code, navigation, airborne electronic warfare and precision deep strike.” Lange also said Europe needed to take Trump’s renewed threats toward Greenland seriously and never forget his mercurial nature. Fiott said Europe would still need the US “at least for the short term as some weapons are only available from there,” but said, “the direction of travel is very clear for the longer term.” He added: “We're not going to be spending tax payers money in Europe without a return. And the return is jobs an European made capabilities and I think that is the longer term trajectory for Europe here.” Jobs, capabilities, return. The language of the market never really leaves the barracks.
Trump arrived at the summit in Ankara on Tuesday evening and said he was only present out of respect for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. He castigated European countries for not supporting Washington in its war in Iran, though Rutte later said refusals by some states to let the US use European airbases as waystations were “isolated” incidents. Rutte said 5,000 US aircraft had taken off from European bases at the peak of the conflict, showing that “Europe again is one big platform of power projection for the United States.” That’s the alliance stripped bare: bases, runways, logistics, and the steady conversion of European territory into a launchpad.
Trump also revived his claim that the US should “control” Greenland, saying it should be controlled by the United States, not Denmark, and later saying Greenland was “very important” for the United States but not for Denmark. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said: “The US position is, unfortunately, very clear on this topic. Our position is as clear as it has been throughout: Greenland is not for sale. I hope all allies will respect the Greenlandic people's right to self-determination.” She also said: “We are ready to defend every inch of NATO, including our own territory.” The language of self-determination sits there beside the language of defence, each one fenced in by the other.
The Electoral Circus, Same Script
Trump attacked Spain and said he would order his administration to cut all trade with Madrid. “Spain is a wasted cause,” he said. “We don't want to do any trade business with Spain anymore.” By the end of the summit, however, there was no sign of such a policy being enacted, and Trump said: “There's one word that comes out of the day: unification,” calling it a “great meeting.” The summit produced unity in the usual sense: agreement to spend more, build more, and prepare for more.
Ivo Daalder, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, wrote that the summit was a lost opportunity and that the alliance needs a roadmap for how and when Europe would take over core responsibilities for NATO’s defence. He said the summit’s declaration was a one-page, six-paragraph boilerplate statement and that there were no big decisions and no new agenda. He said the 2022 Madrid summit forced allies to confront Russia’s threat, the 2023 Vilnius summit approved new NATO plans for defending all alliance territory, and the 2025 Hague summit forced European allies to respond to Trump’s demand to spend 5 percent of GDP on defence. He said the Ankara summit had no such purpose. He also said the idea of a roadmap had first been proposed by German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius early last year, only to be dismissed for fear it would give Washington an excuse to withdraw its forces from Europe.
Daalder said: “The new reality is this: The U.S. is no longer a reliable ally. Even if a new president were to reaffirm America’s commitment to NATO and Article 5 (as Trump did in Ankara), Europe needs to take on far greater responsibility for its own defense.” That’s the whole project in one sentence: not demilitarisation, not peace, just a Europeanised version of the same machine.