With the dust having settled on NATO’s June 24-25 summit in The Hague, it is a good time to reflect on what might be the broader impact of the meeting. The initial coverage of the summit essentially focused on the statements of US President Donald Trump, as well as the major pledge made by the Alliance, namely that member states agreed to raise defense spending to 5% of their GDP by 2035. Yet, the Hague gathering also stood out by what did not happen, and the many key security challenges that went unaddressed, at least in a public setting. In other words, the summit left observers with more questions than clear answers as to the future path of the transatlantic alliance.
Context of the Summit
There was understandably a high-level of trepidation before the NATO Hague summit, with some observers labeling it as potentially the most important meeting for the Alliance since the end of the Cold War. It marked the return of Trump to NATO headquarters, a long-standing critic of the Alliance with a record of disrupting summits during his first term in office. Moreover, the meeting in the Netherlands would take place amidst an extremely rocky context for transatlantic relations.
Since taking office in January 2025, the Trump administration has found itself frequently at odds with its allies, whether over the war in Ukraine or over the tariffs imposed by the US on Canada and its European allies. And the weeks preceding the meeting in the Hague only added to the elevated level of concern. The G7’s inability to agree on a common statement, Trump’s early departure, and the US bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities, without forewarning its allies, all pointed to the risks that the NATO summit might go off the rails.
In light of this very challenging context, NATO’s new Secretary General, former Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, intentionally organized the summit so as to please Trump and minimize the risks of a public dispute. The length of the summit was thus shortened from three to two days, the allies would aim for a short common statement, and the focus of discussions would be on defense spending as opposed to other more divisive topics.
What did happen
For all its brevity, the summit produced some important tangible outcomes. First, the minimal agenda approach worked, since Trump left the Hague singing the praises of NATO as opposed to disparaging the organization. On the route to the Netherlands, the US President had yet again raised doubts about his commitment to Article V, the Alliance’s key clause about collective security. But his tone was markedly different by the conclusion of the summit, assuring all that “It’s (NATO) not a rip-off, and we’re here to help them protect their country”.
Second, unlike at the G7 summit, Trump did stay until the end and NATO produced a joint communique. And although brief, the statement was not devoid of substance. Thus, all thirty-two NATO member states reaffirmed their commitment to collective security, defined Russia as a threat, and underlined their commitment to aid Ukraine. The alliance also agreed that by 2035, members would invest 5% of their GDP to defense, a significant leap from the previous pledge of 2%. The communique also explicitly connected this defense investment to both bolstering the core tasks of the Alliance and serving its agreed capability targets, with the latter based on estimates of what is needed to defend Europe and North America.
Third, Mark Rutte was appointed as the new Secretary General of NATO in 2024 in large part because of the reputation he acquired as a ‘Trump whisperer’. He had shown, during Trump’s first term, an ability to manage the US president and convince him that NATO mattered. And the Hague summit clearly showed that trait in action, with Rutte going out of his way to flatter the US president throughout the proceedings.
What did not happen
The laser focus on defense spending, and placating Trump, meant that the Hague summit marked a stark contrast, in words and deeds, with recent NATO meetings. The condensed Hague communique, unlike the expanded text at the 2023 Vilnius summit and the 2024 Washington DC gathering, is a study in absence. It omits any mention of the question of enlargement and Ukraine’s future in the alliance, which had played a key role in meetings since 2022. It includes a cursory reference to Russia, but there is no more reference of developing a new strategy toward Moscow, as had been promised last year. And there is no comment whatsoever on the challenge posed by China, even though the first Trump administration had played a driving role in pushing the Alliance to pay closer attention to Beijing.
Additionally, whereas recent summits had placed great emphasis on the participation of non-Alliance members, this was not the case at all in the Hague. The so-called IP4 countries – namely Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand – had become regular participants in NATO summits since 2022, as a sign of the interdependence between European and Indo-Pacific security. But they were not present in the Netherlands. And while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made it to the Hague, the NATO meeting did not put relations with Kyiv at the center of the proceedings, as it had done in recent years.
Questions Ahead
NATO sailed through the Hague summit without any major incident and came out with a renewed commitment to invest significantly in defense in the coming decade. But beyond that, we are still left with many more questions than answers as it pertains to the transatlantic alliance.
First, Rutte showed real skill in placating Trump, but NATO includes thirty-one other members besides the US. It will be difficult to maintain cohesion if from now on summits are solely built around the whims and preferences of the US President. Moreover, it remains to be seen whether the European and Canadian promise to commit to 5% will be sufficient to placate Trump, or will it simply become another tool for him to berate his allies for the near future.
Second, pledging 5% is the easy part of the task, whereas implementation will have to overcome several difficulties. Thus, the NATO communique breaks down the 5% into two categories, namely 3.5% of GDP “based on the agreed definition of NATO defence expenditure”, as well as 1.5% of GDP for broader security related items. Clearly defining the latter will not be easy, so to avoid the risk of misuse. Furthermore, considering NATO’s major leap from pledging 2% to 5% of GDP on defense, this will naturally trigger a very difficult guns vs butter debate for members of the Alliance, including Canada. Spain has already suggested it will not be able to attain that figure, and political pressure may also affect many more members in years to come.
Third, NATO has a new ambitious spending pledge, but it runs the risk of yet again papering over cracks, as opposed to addressing long-standing questions. More spending on defense is certainly necessary, considering the under-investment in security for many years after the end of the Cold War. The Alliance, however, is doing so without a clear parallel discussion on the goal of that investment. A new strategy toward Russia in particular is long overdue, but there are limited prospects of that happening any time soon, considering existing divisions between NATO members. Additionally, throwing money at defense will not solve in itself an enduring problem in NATO, namely that spending among European members is deeply wasteful and inefficient, and badly needing greater integration and coordination. The deep focus on input—how much is invested—will likely continue the bad tendency of not paying as much attention to output, i.e. capabilities.
Fourth, the Hague summit revealed precious little about longer-term plans for security in Europe and the Indo-Pacific. US commitment to Ukraine, notwithstanding the language of the communique, remains uncertain, as shown by the recent decision to halt the shipment of air defense missiles to Kyiv; nor is it clear how much Trump will pressure Russia to achieve a breakthrough in peace negotiations. Equally, allies expect that the US will reduce its troop presence in Europe, once it completes its force posture review in late summer or early fall, but are unsure how many of the 80,000 troops will leave. And what role NATO should play moving forward in tackling the challenge posed by China remains ill-defined.
Finally, NATO is but one component of the broader transatlantic partnership, which has experienced quite a rocky time since Trump came back to office in January. NATO showed that it could preserve cohesion at the Hague, but will allies be able to still compartmentalize if relations with the US deteriorate over tariffs, Ukraine, and the Middle East, to name a few, in the future? In other words, could NATO stay on course in defense spending if relations between the US, Europe and Canada took a dramatic nosedive?
Dr. Garret J. Martin is a Hurst Senior Professorial Lecturer, and the Co-Director of the Transatlantic Policy Center, in the School of International Service. He has written widely on transatlantic relations and Europe, both from a contemporary and historical perspective. His expertise covers EU-US relations, transatlantic security, US foreign policy, the European Union, NATO and the future of European security, European politics, with a focus on France and the UK. He is a frequent media commentator, providing analysis and interviews to national and international outlets, such as the BBC, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, Rai, French public radio, Radio Canada, or Nikkei.
