Nato’s 32 heads of state and government convene in Ankara on 7–8 July for a summit that US officials have described as potentially the most important in the alliance’s history. The meeting is framed by an explicit demand from the Trump administration that allies move “immediately” to meet the 5%-of-GDP defence spending target agreed last year in The Hague, or face consequences. According to US officials cited by European and American media, President Donald Trump intends to deliver that message personally and to link future access to American weapons purchases and high-level meetings to each ally’s spending trajectory. The Pentagon has simultaneously launched a six-month review of its force posture in Europe, a step that European diplomats view as a lever to accelerate what the alliance is calling a “Europeanisation” of conventional defence.

Viewed from Washington, the summit is a test of whether allies are translating last year’s pledges into credible budget plans and industrial capacity. US ambassador to Nato Matthew Whitaker has singled out Poland, the Nordic states and the Baltic countries as frontrunners, while warning that many others are lagging. The UK, despite a £15 billion increase, is on course to reach only 2.7% of GDP by 2029. In Berlin, the government has committed to reaching 3.5% on core defence by 2029, a fiscal effort that European diplomats describe as the engine of the new burden-sharing model. Yet German and French officials have previously called the 5% figure unrealistic in the short term, and Spain remains below the older 2% benchmark. The summit’s draft communiqué, as reported by multiple news agencies, is expected to endorse the formula “a stronger Europe in a stronger Nato” and to enshrine the goal of a more balanced alliance in which European allies and Canada take the lead in conventional deterrence on the continent.

Beyond spending, the Ankara agenda is shaped by two wars. On Ukraine, allies are set to confirm a €140 billion military assistance package for 2026–27, with the EU’s €60 billion loan already factored in. The draft declaration describes Russia as a long-term threat to Euro-Atlantic security and commits to sustaining aid at a level that, according to Nato officials, signals to Moscow that a protracted war will not serve its interests. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, will attend and is expected to press for deeper integration of his country’s defence industry into European supply chains. The second conflict, the US-led air campaign against Iran, has injected fresh tension into the alliance. European capitals that restricted overflight or base access for American aircraft have drawn sharp criticism from Trump, who has accused them of disloyalty. A senior US official told British media that the president now wants “loyalty” as much as money, a demand that European diplomats fear could overshadow the formal agenda.

Analysts in Brussels and London note that the summit is taking place against a backdrop of structural change that predates the current US administration but has been dramatically accelerated by it. The alliance’s post-Cold War dependency on American enablers—logistics, long-range strike, intelligence—is being unwound under pressure, with European allies scrambling to fill capability gaps that will take years to close. The draft final statement is expected to reference freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz and to state that Iran must never acquire a nuclear weapon, linking Middle Eastern security directly to the alliance’s cohesion. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has called the gathering “decisive in the history of the alliance,” while US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said there are things that “must be clarified and corrected.” The outcome will be measured by whether the final declaration can paper over the transatlantic rift sufficiently to preserve the credibility of collective defence, and by the concrete industrial and financial commitments that emerge from the defence industry forum scheduled for the summit’s opening day.