Leaders of NATO's 32 member states met in Ankara on Monday and Tuesday for a summit built around a single demand from Washington: that allies deliver on a defence-spending target most of them have not yet reached. US President Donald Trump told reporters on arrival he was "very disappointed" with the alliance.
The target itself was agreed at last year's summit. Members committed to spend 5 per cent of GDP on defence by 2035: 3.5 per cent on core military spending and 1.5 per cent on broader security, from infrastructure to cyber. Trump's purpose in Ankara was enforcement rather than negotiation, and European governments arrived expecting to announce new weapons contracts to demonstrate movement.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte set three priorities: higher allied defence investment, more transatlantic arms production, and continued support for Ukraine. NATO says European allies and Canada increased their core defence investment by about US$139 billion in 2025.
The spending pressure is not evenly felt. The 5 per cent figure lands hardest on European members closest to Russia and on smaller economies, while the United States, which already spends heavily and supplies much of the alliance's advanced weaponry, sets the terms of what counts and what must be bought. The arms deals announced to satisfy Washington largely flow back to US and European defence manufacturers.
Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky attended as a non-alliance head of state, renewed his call for membership, and pressed for more Patriot air-defence interceptors. His request is set against a supply squeeze: Patriot stocks were drawn down during the recent Iran-Israel war, and demand across NATO and its partners now runs ahead of production.
That shortage carries beyond Europe. South Korea's president, Lee Jae-myung, attended as one of NATO's Indo-Pacific partners, the grouping that also includes Japan, Australia and New Zealand, and the same interceptor lines that supply Ukraine supply air defence across the region.
The summit opened days after a deadly strike on the Ukrainian capital. At least 22 people were killed in an overnight Russian missile and drone attack on Kyiv into Monday, according to Ukrainian officials, who said air defences stopped most of the drones but not the ballistic missiles. Zelensky cited the attack in arguing that interceptor supply, not political statements, is what changes the outcome on the ground.
Trump and Zelensky were scheduled to meet in Ankara on Wednesday at 2:30pm local time. Whether the summit's spending commitments hold once leaders return home (the question that has followed every NATO pledge Trump has extracted) remains where it was before Ankara: unresolved, and dependent on budgets written in national capitals rather than at the summit table.
