Heads of state and governments of NATO convened on June 24-25, 2025, in The Hague, Netherlands. The Hague Summit Declaration was issued, declaring that the next NATO leaders' summit will be held in Türkiye in 2026. At this summit, NATO member states highlighted their priorities until next year.
The leaders reaffirmed their commitment to collective defense, as outlined in Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, to defend the alliance and safeguard freedom and democracy.
Russia is defined as a long-term threat to Euro-Atlantic security in this declaration. The persistent threat of terrorism is accepted as another profound security threat and challenge to the alliance. In the face of ongoing security threats, allies at the Hague summit agreed to invest 5% of their gross domestic product (GDP) annually on defense and security-related spending by 2035 to ensure their individual and collective obligations in accordance with Article 3 of the Washington Treaty.
For a long time, the U.S. administration had criticized NATO allies for not sharing the burden of defense and security in NATO. For that reason, the allies' endorsement of NATO’s new spending target of 5% is being accepted as a "historic achievement" by proponents of this target, like U.S. President Donald Trump. Rising geopolitical risks and an uncertain geopolitical environment prepared the ground for this decision, with the allies having already sped up their investment in the defense industry.
Besides this, NATO member states also condemned Russia’s war against Ukraine and highlighted their continuing support that will be provided to Ukraine to enable it to uphold its fundamental right to self-defense. NATO allies also reaffirmed their enduring commitments to provide support to Ukraine, including direct contributions toward Ukraine’s and their own defense industry when calculating their defense spending. The support of NATO allies is essential for Ukraine to overcome the ammunition shortage. It is predicted that the more Ukraine’s military ammunition shortage grows, the more Russia’s gains on the ground will increase.
After meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the sidelines of the summit, Trump said he was open to selling more weapons to Ukraine. Despite the commitments made by the NATO allies only a week ago, we have witnessed signs of retreat. Trump paused the delivery of some munitions to Ukraine, including interceptors for Patriot air defense systems and precision artillery missiles that the Ukrainian air force fires from F-16 fighter jets. This decision of Trump came after a Pentagon statement that American arms stockpiles were dwindling too low. Whatever the reason behind this decision of Trump, lack of critical weapons may put Ukraine more vulnerable position to Russian attacks and hinder NATO from keeping its commitments to enable Ukraine to uphold its fundamental right to self-defense.
In addition to this, among the allies, there is a concern with regard to increasing their defense spending to 5% of their GDP. The main reason for the ammunition problem is that the EU defense industry production is based on a peacetime economy, not a wartime economy. Shifting to a wartime economy means shifting a significant portion of the budget from other areas to defense. For instance, in 2025, the German Parliament had already amended its constitution to lift the debt brake in order to enable the country to increase in military expenditure.
Keeping production going and building industrial confidence through ambitious targets is important. This helps to make the NATO member states more secure and resilient and would also benefit key allies such as Ukraine. This also makes NATO "more lethal than ever." Here is the question: whether putting the NATO member states into a “war economy mode” is possible in the world in a trade war and suffering economic stagnation?
