North Korea’s foreign ministry issued a sweeping condemnation of the NATO summit held in Ankara on 7–8 July, accusing the alliance of intensifying military-bloc confrontation and accelerating an arms race. In a statement carried by state media, Pyongyang asserted that denuclearisation efforts should be redirected: rather than pressuring the North, the West should first address what it described as the nuclear ambitions of South Korea and Japan under US protection, as well as the nuclear-sharing arrangements of NATO members. The statement followed the summit’s announcement of more than $50 billion in military procurement and industrial agreements, as European allies faced sustained pressure from US President Donald Trump to shoulder a larger share of the alliance’s defence burden.

Viewed from Pyongyang, the summit confirmed that NATO is a body “geared toward war and confrontation,” pursuing exclusive geopolitical interests at the expense of peace in Europe and the Asia-Pacific. The North Korean ministry argued that the alliance’s increased arms spending and deeper military cooperation with Asia-Pacific partners demonstrated a stronger commitment to bloc-to-bloc confrontation. On the sidelines of the summit, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung expressed hope that Seoul would expand cooperation with NATO allies in research and development, including cutting-edge technologies and weapons production—a move Pyongyang cited as further evidence of encirclement. Moscow, through the director of its European affairs department, Vladislav Maslennikov, offered a parallel critique, stating that NATO members were using a false portrayal of a Russian threat to justify preparations for a major conflict and to drive up military budgets.

In the days surrounding the summit, North Korea signalled concrete steps to reinforce its own deterrent. State media reported on 10 July that the Central Military Committee of the Workers’ Party, chaired by Kim Jong Un, had decided to strengthen the country’s nuclear forces “quantitatively and qualitatively.” The foreign ministry statement added that Pyongyang would safeguard its sovereignty, security interests, and regional peace through the “responsible exercise of its sovereign rights.” These declarations align with a broader pattern in which North Korea frames its nuclear programme as a non-negotiable sovereign right, while insisting that the push by the West for it to abandon nuclear weapons has been “irreversibly terminated.”

European analysts note that the summit’s record procurement pledges mask persistent capability gaps. A report cited by the Daily Telegraph argued that despite a cumulative increase of $1.364 trillion in NATO defence spending between 2014 and 2025, the funds have not translated into a qualitative leap in combat readiness, with much of the investment absorbed by outdated infrastructure and Cold War-era doctrines. The same assessment suggested that no single NATO army, including that of the United States, is currently configured for a sustained conventional conflict against a peer adversary such as Russia. Against this backdrop, the alliance’s focus on the southern flank and on support for Ukraine—where a war of attrition continues to consume Western matériel—has, in the view of some Moscow-based commentators, placed NATO in a cycle of self-exhaustion. The dossier now moves forward with North Korea’s declared nuclear expansion and with NATO’s implementation of the Ankara procurement agreements, while the broader standoff between nuclear-armed states and military blocs shows no sign of de-escalation.