NATO’s upcoming summit in The Hague, Netherlands, will be another critical meeting later this month among the heads of member states. The alliance has, unsurprisingly, a busy agenda consisting of several issues with varying importance. Among them are the declining prospect of Ukraine’s NATO membership, defense and deterrence measures, particularly in the eastern flank, defense expenditure pledges and overcoming superior Russian defense-industrial production. On the other hand, for the first time since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. will join the meeting with a different president whose ideas on peace and the war fundamentally differ from those of his predecessor. All things aside, this alone is a substantial defining factor for this summit.
The U.S.’ new administration is the most important parameter for NATO’s Hague summit because U.S. President Donald Trump embraces a much more isolationist foreign policy approach than his predecessor, Joe Biden. Biden was a keen internationalist and a supporter of multilateralism in his foreign policy. He and his team explored ways to institutionalize the support given to Ukraine. They established mechanisms and contact groups within NATO to support Ukraine and strengthen the alliance and its cohesion. He even gave Ukraine an indirect and ambiguous promise of membership in NATO.
Trump and his Cabinet have long held a deep-seated distrust of NATO’s European allies, primarily due to their insufficient military spending. They also harbor strong resentment toward Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, criticizing his wartime leadership as overly ambitious and rooted in unrealistic expectations. These two views – skepticism of NATO burden-sharing and frustration with Ukraine’s approach – have been central to Trump’s worldview even before his presidency, and little has changed since January. Moreover, Trump’s positions do not exist in a vacuum; they are backed by a growing constituency disillusioned with decades of costly and, in their view, unnecessary wars that have drained hundreds of billions of dollars from the American economy.
A Chicago Council on Global Affairs survey demonstrates that this phenomenon is becoming increasingly evident, and more importantly, how Trump’s discourse can shape the American public’s opinion on U.S. foreign policy.
According to the survey, 58% of Trump-supporting Republicans argued that the U.S. should not defend NATO allies unless they boost their defense spending, while 87% of liberal democrats and 66% of moderate democrats argued that the U.S. should use diplomacy to persuade allies to increase defense expenditures. Only 35% of Trump supporters thought that NATO membership makes the U.S. safer, compared with 48% of other Republicans, 78% of liberal Democrats and 43% of moderate Democrats. Similarly, 91% of liberal Democrats, 72% of moderate Democrats and 71% of Republicans think that NATO is still essential to U.S. security, and Trump-supporting Republicans’ approval rate remains at 51%. The survey results clearly manifest a gradual but strong dissatisfaction with a segment of American society that is multilateralized and has alliances.
In international relations, it’s always been controversial whether domestic or international structures/variables are the primary factors that account for the outcomes of foreign policy. Yet one thing is sure: Leaders can influence domestic structures in line with their foreign policy objectives, which further boost those objectives. Some leaders who value more personalized diplomacy, such as Trump, can exert this more forcefully.
Trump has no reason to back down from increasing his pressure on Europe and Ukraine on the relevant issues, and his constituency is likely to welcome this. Therefore, it is most likely that the agenda of this NATO summit will revolve around reassuring Trump and mitigating the risk of a pullback of the U.S. For most other members of NATO, there are logical reasons to appease Trump, as well as previous signals in the past months that manifest themselves as European weakness rather than strength.
First of all, the Trump administration has proposed a new defense spending target within NATO, raising the pledge to 5% of gross domestic product (GDP), as the latest move in its pressure campaign on European allies, even though some members have still not met the long-standing 2% target after more than a decade. In an effort to reassure the U.S. while recognizing that most European countries are unlikely to meet the 5% goal even in the medium term, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte expressed support for the proposal but offered a compromise.
Rutte’s "third-way" proposal suggests that NATO members allocate 3.5% of GDP to core military expenditures, such as equipment procurement, maintenance, training and personnel costs, and an additional 1.5% to defense-related infrastructure. This broader category may be called “civilian strategic enablers,” which may include transportation networks, digital infrastructure and cyber capabilities. His proposal aligns with several European defense plans already in motion, most notably Germany’s recently announced package emphasizing the modernization of civilian infrastructure to support military operations.
As a result, a key feature of this year’s NATO summit is likely to be the attempt to reconcile Trump’s demands with Europe’s realistic capabilities and political willingness. The nature and categorization of defense expenditures could emerge as a central point of negotiation and potential controversy.
European NATO members understand that they cannot compensate for a potential U.S. pullback from Europe overnight. While declining American military support to Ukraine may prompt Europe to increase its own aid to sustain Ukraine’s warfighting capability, genuine European defense autonomy, without U.S. backing, remains a long-term goal. Realistically, achieving this would likely require drastic shifts, including the possibility of several countries, such as Germany and Poland, acquiring nuclear weapons.
Despite bold rhetoric from the U.K. and France, such as forming a “coalition of the willing” or proposing the deployment of a “Reassurance Force” to Ukrainian territory to deter Russian aggression, their most significant defense investments remain focused on modernizing nuclear arsenals rather than enhancing conventional capabilities for a ground war with Russia. This reflects a deeper strategic calculation: In the event of the U.S. retrenchment from Europe, states will turn to nuclear deterrence as the ultimate security guarantee. In the meantime, much of the public discourse on conventional warfighting remains more symbolic than practical from a defense standpoint.
For this reason, the upcoming NATO summit in The Hague is likely to become a stage for European allies to reassure Trump that they are willing to do more – both financially and militarily – in order to maintain American military presence on the continent and mitigate the risk of pullback of the U.S.
