# ANALYSIS: The West Reasserts Its Centrality With $1.8 Trillion

> Combined defense spending across NATO's 32 members is projected to reach $1.81 trillion in 2026, according to the Alliance's latest defense spending estimates published in early July and relayed by Türkiye Today.

- Author: Maxime Marquette
- Publisher: MadMax (https://mad-max.co)
- Section: Analysis
- Published: 2026-07-20
- Canonical URL: https://mad-max.co/en/article/analysis-the-west-reasserts-its-centrality-with-1-8-trillion

## Key takeaways

- NATO's 32 members are projected to spend $1.81 trillion on defense in 2026, up about 11 percent from 2025, with the United States accounting for roughly 57 percent.
- The Hague commitment of June 2025 set a target of 5 percent of GDP by 2035, with 3.5 percent for hard power and 1.5 percent for broader security.
- The Ankara summit announced more than $50 billion in new arms purchases, over $40 billion for counter-drone capabilities, and 70 billion euros pledged to Ukraine for 2026.
- The article notes industrial bottlenecks, popular opposition in Europe, and continued dependence on American production as limits.
- Turkey regained access to the F-35 program, and Trump's pressure on Europe is described as a necessary evil that spurred rearmament.

## Introduction: a number that settles every debate about Western decline

### $1.81 trillion, an absolute record for the Alliance

Combined defense spending across **NATO**'s 32 members is projected to reach $1.81 trillion in 2026, according to the Alliance's latest defense spending estimates published in early July and relayed by **Türkiye Today**. That figure represents an increase of roughly 11 percent over the $1.63 trillion estimated for 2025 and the $1.48 trillion recorded in 2024. It is the most concrete demonstration possible that the **West**, far from fading before its authoritarian rivals, is instead choosing to invest massively in its own collective military power.

The **United States** remains by far the Alliance's largest military contributor, with defense spending estimated at $1.033 trillion, or roughly 57 percent of NATO's total. **Germany** ranks second with about $147 billion, followed by the **United Kingdom** with $110 billion, **France** with $80 billion, **Italy** with $57 billion, **Poland** with $53 billion, **Canada** with $52 billion, and **Turkey** with $48 billion.

### The Ankara summit, staging ground for this reassertion

It was at the **NATO** summit held in **Ankara** on July 7 and 8, 2026, that this budgetary reality was put on display before the entire world, bringing together heads of state, defense ministers, and policymakers from all 32 member countries, according to **Forbes**. **NATO** Secretary General **Mark Rutte** called the two-day gathering a "resounding success," while U.S. President **Donald Trump** spoke of "extraordinary unity" within the Alliance, despite the tensions that had preceded the summit.

This staging is not merely a communications exercise. It reflects a deep strategic reality: facing Russia's war in **Ukraine**, **China**'s rising military power, and the destabilizing ambitions of **Iran** and **North Korea**, the **West** is choosing to respond with an economic and industrial mobilization unmatched since the end of the Cold War.

*Those who have spent years announcing the West's inevitable decline should look at this $1.81 trillion figure before repeating that line. This is not the behavior of a civilization in decline. It is the behavior of a coalition that has decided to stay at the center of the global game, whatever the cost.*

## The path to 5% of GDP, a historic commitment

### The Hague summit and the doubling of ambition

It was at the **NATO** summit in **The Hague** in June 2025 that the Alliance's 32 members, with the notable exception of **Spain**, committed to raising defense and security spending to 5 percent of GDP by 2035, more than double the previous 2 percent target set at the **Wales** summit in 2014, according to **El País**. That commitment breaks down into 3.5 percent devoted to "hard power" — equipment, weapons, and munitions — and 1.5 percent to broader security spending such as cyber defense, according to **Forbes**.

For the first time since the 2 percent of GDP threshold was codified at the **Wales** summit, all 32 **NATO** member states met or exceeded that threshold in 2025, according to **Anadolu Agency**. This symbolic milestone, reached even as the bar had already been raised to 5 percent, illustrates the scale of the budgetary acceleration now underway across the entire Western Alliance.

### Unexpected champions in Eastern Europe

The highest levels of defense spending relative to GDP in 2026 belong to allies on the front line facing **Russia**: **Lithuania** at 5.33 percent, **Estonia** at 5.1 percent, **Latvia** at 4.92 percent, **Poland** at 4.68 percent, and **Greece** at 3.65 percent, according to **Reuters** data cited by **Forbes**. For the first time in **NATO**'s recorded history, a European ally, **Norway**, has even surpassed the **United States** in per capita defense spending, according to the **Atlantic Council**.

This surge among the Baltic states and Eastern **Europe** is no accident: it reveals exactly where the psychological front line of this new Western arms buildup actually sits. The nations most geographically exposed to **Russia** are, proportionally, investing the most in their own defense, a clear signal sent to **Moscow**.

*Lithuania and Estonia now outspending the United States on defense as a share of their economies is a humbling lesson for great powers that assumed size alone was enough. Small nations that lived through Soviet occupation have not forgotten the price of military weakness.*

## The concrete announcements coming out of the Ankara summit

### Fifty billion dollars in new arms contracts

The **Ankara** summit declaration announced "more than $50 billion in new purchases" of military equipment, along with "the expansion of collective manufacturing capacity and collaboration with industry to accelerate innovation," according to **Forbes**. **Reuters** reported that **NATO** leaders planned to unveil arms deals worth tens of billions of dollars in **Ankara**, with the explicit goal of showing they were answering American calls to spend more on Europe's defense.

Dutch Defense Minister **Dilan Yesilgoz** confirmed to **Reuters** that her country would announce deals and plans worth more than 3 billion euros, including partnerships with **Belgium** on air defense and with the **United Kingdom** on warships. These bilateral announcements, multiplied across the entire Alliance, are weaving a Western defense-industrial fabric now under accelerated reconstruction.

### Forty billion dollars to counter the drone threat

**NATO** also announced that "more than $40 billion will be invested in counter-drone capabilities over the next five years," acknowledging that drones have "fundamentally changed the character of modern warfare" and have become a "decisive factor on the battlefield," according to **Forbes**. This announcement responds directly to lessons drawn from the Ukrainian battlefield, where cheap drone swarms have redefined military tactics since 2022.

It is a striking illustration of how the war in **Ukraine** continues to shape, in real time, the investment priorities of the entire Western Alliance. **NATO** is not waiting for the conflict to end before absorbing its lessons: it is translating them immediately into billions of dollars in concrete industrial contracts.

*Investing $40 billion in counter-drone warfare is not a technological luxury. It is a vital necessity that the Ukrainian battlefield has made painfully obvious to every Western capital. NATO is finally learning, the hard way, what Kyiv has known for months under Russian Shahed swarms.*

## The strategic shift from hardware to production capacity

### From military charity to industrial co-production

The **Ankara** summit marks a major doctrinal shift in how the **West** supports **Ukraine**: rather than limiting themselves to donations of existing military hardware, Western allies are now moving toward a model of transferring production capacity itself. **Trump**'s promise to grant **Kyiv** a license to produce its own **Patriot** interceptors perfectly illustrates this strategic evolution, even though the companies involved, **Lockheed Martin** and **RTX**, had not yet been informed of the decision at the time of the announcement, according to **Forbes**.

This shift in paradigm, from material aid to industrial-capacity aid, reflects a lesson hard-learned since 2022: an allied country that receives only one-off deliveries remains dependent and vulnerable to supply disruptions, while a country that receives the means to produce its own weapons becomes an autonomous, durable industrial actor within the Western defense ecosystem.

### A Western defense industry under production strain

This strategic shift, however, collides with a constraining industrial reality: the entire Western defense-production apparatus, from American **Lockheed Martin** plants to European lines run by **Rheinmetall**, **BAE Systems**, **KNDS**, and **ThyssenKrupp**, now finds itself under strain facing unprecedented combined demand coming simultaneously from **Ukraine**, from NATO members' own national needs, and from other partners like **Israel**.

This industrial bottleneck is not a minor technical detail: it is the primary concrete limit on how quickly the announced billions can be translated into military capabilities actually delivered, a lag that directly affects the speed at which **Ukraine** can hope to close its own glaring air-defense gaps.

*Money alone does not build missiles, and that may be the most important lesson of this Ankara summit. The West has finally understood it must rebuild its defense-industrial base, not just sign checks — an awakening that arrived four years late relative to the start of this war.*

## What the paradox of European rearmament reveals

### Popular opposition despite strategic urgency

This massive rearmament is not unfolding without internal resistance. When the **European Commission** unveiled its €800 billion "Readiness 2030" plan, initially named "ReArm Europe" before being renamed under pressure from **Rome** and **Madrid**, 54.6 percent of **Italians** opposed it, according to **Foreign Policy**. This popular reluctance, documented in several European countries worn out by decades of relative peace, illustrates what some analysts call the "Atlanticist rearmament paradox": European defense spending is driven by populations who believe rearmament strengthens **NATO**, while simultaneously opposing the budgetary sacrifices that rearmament concretely requires.

This paradox is not a fatal weakness, but it is a reminder that Western centrality does not sustain itself automatically through government will alone: it requires a constant effort of democratic persuasion aimed at populations who must understand why their taxes are financing tanks rather than hospitals, in societies where the direct memory of war has largely faded.

### Germany, symbol of this painful transformation

Germany's chancellor now carries the heavy task of rearming **Germany**, with a commitment to spend hundreds of billions of euros to build what will become **Europe**'s most powerful conventional army, despite opposition from a war-weary segment of the German population and despite broader suspicion from other European countries watching the continent's largest economy become a military power once again, according to **Foreign Policy**.

This German transformation, however historically uncomfortable for a country marked by the memory of Nazism, shows just how much the Russian threat has reshuffled the strategic cards across the entire European continent. A militarily strong **Germany**, unimaginable just a decade ago, has now become a necessity even its most wary neighbors must accept.

*Watching Germany become a major military power again should, historically speaking, be unsettling. But it is precisely proof that Putin achieved the opposite of his goal: instead of weakening the West, he pushed it to rearm faster and harder than at any point since 1945.*

## Aid to Ukraine, pillar of this centrality doctrine

### Seventy billion euros pledged for 2026

The **Ankara** summit declaration confirms that **NATO** allies have "pledged 70 billion euros in military equipment, assistance, and training for **Ukraine**" for 2026, with commitments reaffirmed "at levels at least equivalent in 2027," according to **Forbes**. Several countries individually detailed their contributions at the summit: **Norway** will provide $306.2 million for Ukrainian air defense, **Canada** unveiled a new $900 million aid package, **Lithuania** committed to devoting at least 0.25 percent of its GDP to aid for **Ukraine**, and **Denmark** had already introduced a new $672 million military aid package on June 30.

This accumulation of individual, country-by-country commitments demonstrates that support for **Ukraine** no longer depends solely on American goodwill, but has spread across the entire Western coalition, an institutional resilience that makes this support harder for any single actor, even one as influential as **Washington**, to sabotage.

### Zelensky, the voice that keeps reminding the world of the urgency

**Volodymyr Zelensky** used his meeting with **Mark Rutte** at the **NATO**-Ukraine Council working dinner to press the urgent need for additional air-defense capabilities to protect Ukrainians from Russian missile and drone strikes, while once again pleading for **NATO** to authorize Ukraine's accession to the Alliance, according to **Forbes**. He stressed that the defense capabilities **Ukraine** has developed during this Russian invasion would be valuable to the Alliance's collective defense.

Despite this repeated plea, **NATO** formally extended no membership invitation to **Ukraine** at this summit, while reaffirming its support — an institutional caution that contrasts with the urgency expressed by **Kyiv** in the face of Russian attacks that show no sign of easing.

*Zelensky keeps pleading for Ukraine's accession at every summit, and he is right to. A country that has developed, under fire, an air-defense and drone-warfare expertise unmatched in Europe has long deserved a full seat in the Alliance it indirectly defends every single day.*

## China, the systemic rival that justifies this mobilization

### A threat that goes beyond the European theater alone

Western centrality is not measured against **Russia** alone: it is also being built in anticipation of a potential confrontation with **China**, whose growing military and economic power represents, for many Western strategists, the greatest long-term structural threat to the Western-led international order that has stood since 1945. This Chinese dimension, less visible in daily coverage focused on **Ukraine**, nonetheless deeply shapes the strategic calculations of American and European defense planners.

The acceleration of Western rearmament documented in **Ankara** is therefore not only a response to Ukraine's urgency, but is part of broader preparation for a world in which several authoritarian powers — **Russia**, **China**, **Iran**, and **North Korea** — increasingly coordinate their strategic interests against the established Western order.

### Taiwan's industrial lesson, echoing the Ukrainian case

This same dynamic of Western industrial mobilization finds a particular echo in **Taiwan**, whose leaders are closely watching how the **West** translates its financial commitments into real military deliveries for **Ukraine**, a precedent that could determine the credibility of any future Western commitment in the event of Chinese aggression against the island. This dimension of strategic exemplarity adds further weight to every promise kept, or broken, toward **Kyiv**.

It is this interconnection between the European and Indo-Pacific theaters that gives Western centrality its full doctrinal coherence: defending **Ukraine** today is also about sending a credible deterrent message to **Beijing** for tomorrow, a calculation the architects of Western rearmament increasingly acknowledge openly.

*Every dollar spent defending Ukraine is also, indirectly, a message sent to Beijing about the credibility of Western guarantees. If the West abandoned Kyiv, Taiwan would draw a terrible lesson about the real value of American and European promises.*

## Turkey's reintegration, symbol of a recomposing Alliance

### The end of the F-35 program exclusion

At the **Ankara** summit, **Trump** lifted sanctions targeting **Turkey** and restored its full access to the **F-35** fighter jet program, ending an exclusion that had lasted since 2019 over **Ankara**'s purchase of the Russian **S-400** air-defense system. This major diplomatic gesture, negotiated precisely on Turkish soil, illustrates the Western determination to consolidate Alliance unity in the face of shared challenges, even at the price of significant political concessions to a sometimes difficult partner.

This Turkish reintegration also strengthens the Western defense-industrial base as a whole, with **Turkey** already accounting for $48 billion in projected 2026 defense spending, according to **Türkiye Today**, and possessing a fast-growing defense industry that could meaningfully help close **NATO**'s current production bottlenecks.

### An Alliance that prioritizes cohesion over doctrinal purity

This choice to reintegrate **Turkey** rather than maintain a punitive sanction on principle illustrates Western strategic maturity: facing multiple existential threats, the Alliance's practical unity takes precedence over absolute doctrinal purity, a pragmatism that has allowed **NATO** to weather other internal crises without ever fully fracturing since its founding in 1949.

This capacity of the **West** to absorb its own internal tensions, between **Trump**'s **United States** and its European allies, between **Turkey** and the rest of the Alliance, is in itself a demonstration of institutional resilience that neither **Russia** nor **China** can claim for their own more rigid and hierarchical alliance systems.

*Reintegrating Turkey despite the S-400 affair is not weakness, it is proof of strategic maturity. The West has understood that a living alliance must absorb its internal tensions rather than fracture over rigid principles, unlike the authoritarian axis built around Moscow.*

## The Trump factor, a necessary tension within the Alliance

### Withdrawal threats that preceded the summit

**Trump** had, before the summit, threatened to leave **NATO** following disagreements over European members' reluctance to back American military operations in **Iran**, even raising the possibility of withdrawing U.S. troops stationed in **Europe**, according to **Forbes**. These very real, well-documented tensions could have seriously undermined the unity on display in **Ankara**.

Despite these threats, **Trump** traveled to **Turkey** for both days of the summit and met with heads of state and defense officials from every member country, a presence that was itself interpreted as a reassuring signal about the fundamental solidity of the American commitment to the Alliance, despite the American president's sometimes threatening rhetoric.

### A necessary evil that pushes Europe to take responsibility

This constant pressure **Trump** exerts on his European allies, however diplomatically uncomfortable, has paradoxically accelerated European recognition of the need to no longer depend exclusively on the American military umbrella. It is this pressure, more than any conventional speech about transatlantic unity, that largely explains the scale of the European rearmament documented in **Ankara**.

**Trump** remains, in this precise geopolitical context, a necessary evil for the **West**: his blunt methods and repeated threats of disengagement have forced a long-complacent **Europe** to finally invest seriously in its own security, a positive strategic outcome achieved through diplomatic means that can, separately, legitimately be judged blunt and destabilizing.

*I don't like the way Trump negotiates, through public threats and ultimatums, but I have to acknowledge the result: a Europe finally investing massively in its own defense instead of counting endlessly on American generosity. Sometimes the necessary evil produces a real good.*

## The internal criticism this mobilization cannot ignore

### The debate over real return on investment

This explosion in Western defense budgets is not universally embraced, even among analysts who favor rearmament. Some critical voices, notably relayed by outlets like **UnHerd**, describe part of this dynamic as a "grift," pointing out that money alone does not guarantee a proportional increase in real military capability if industrial bottlenecks are not resolved in parallel.

This criticism, however uncomfortable for rearmament's most enthusiastic supporters, deserves to be taken seriously rather than dismissed. A defense budget that swells without underlying industrial production keeping pace risks producing more profit for defense-industry shareholders than actual deployable military capability on the ground.

### The need for stronger democratic oversight

Facing this legitimate criticism, the best Western response is not to abandon the rearmament effort, but to strengthen democratic and parliamentary oversight mechanisms over how these colossal sums are actually spent, to ensure they truly translate into real deterrent capability rather than artificially inflated accounting lines.

It is this constant democratic vigilance, characteristic of open Western societies, that fundamentally distinguishes this rearmament from that conducted by authoritarian regimes like **Russia** or **China**, where budgetary opacity makes any independent assessment of the real effectiveness of announced military spending impossible.

*This criticism about the real returns on defense investment does not weaken my conviction about the necessity of Western rearmament, it strengthens it. A democracy that questions its own military spending remains structurally superior to regimes that spend without ever being accountable to anyone.*

## What this mobilization says about the world to come

### A world order being redrawn under pressure

This unprecedented Western mobilization, the largest since the end of the Cold War, does more than answer the immediate urgency of the war in **Ukraine**. It is redrawing, before our eyes, the contours of a world order in which the **West**, confronting **Russia**, **China**, **Iran**, and **North Korea** simultaneously, deliberately chooses to reassert its strategic centrality rather than resign itself to relative decline before these coordinated authoritarian powers.

This choice is not guaranteed to succeed. It will depend on the **West**'s real ability to resolve its industrial bottlenecks, to maintain democratic cohesion despite documented tensions between **Washington** and its allies, and to convince sometimes reluctant publics of the need for these budgetary sacrifices extended through 2035, the horizon set for reaching the ultimate 5 percent of GDP target.

### Ukraine, the decisive test of this reaffirmed doctrine

In this broader context, Ukraine's fate will continue to function as the most immediate and visible test of the credibility of this Western centrality doctrine. Every promise kept, every delivery actually made strengthens the credibility of the whole structure; every delay or broken promise weakens it, with repercussions that extend far beyond the Ukrainian theater alone to reach **Taiwan**, the Baltic states, and every partner closely watching the real reliability of Western commitments.

It is this dimension of global strategic exemplarity that gives the war in **Ukraine** a reach far beyond its geographic borders, turning every decision made in **Ankara** or any other Western capital into a signal sent simultaneously to **Moscow**, **Beijing**, **Tehran**, and **Pyongyang**.

*What is playing out in Ankara is not only about Ukraine. It concerns the very future of the international order the West has built since 1945. Every billion invested today in this reaffirmed centrality is a deterrent message sent to everyone who dreams of replacing it.*

## The structural limits of this show of power

### A budgetary burden that will weigh for decades

It would be naive to present this Western mobilization without also recognizing its real cost for the democratic societies involved. Raising defense spending to 5 percent of GDP by 2035 implies painful budgetary choices, potentially at the expense of other public priorities like health, education, or the energy transition, trade-offs Western governments will have to justify to their voters for nearly a decade.

This lasting budgetary constraint may be the greatest long-term risk to the durability of this centrality doctrine: a decade-long sustained military effort requires political stability and democratic consensus that Western electoral cycles, often unstable and polarized, do not necessarily guarantee over such a long period.

### Persistent dependence on American production

Despite the stated ambition of European strategic autonomy, a significant share of this rearmament effort will, in practice, continue to depend on American industrial capacity, particularly for the most sophisticated systems such as **Patriot** interceptors or **F-35** jets. This persistent dependence limits, in practice, the full strategic autonomy that some European leaders, notably French ones, have called for building for years.

Resolving this structural dependence will require even more sustained European industrial investment in the decades ahead, an effort barely beginning with the €800 billion "Readiness 2030" plan of the **European Union**, but whose complete fulfillment remains, at this stage, still largely hypothetical.

*I prefer a Western centrality that is honest about its own limits to blind triumphalism. This persistent dependence on American industry remains the Achilles' heel of any ambition for European strategic autonomy, and it will take decades, not summits, to truly resolve it.*

## Why this centrality must be defended without hesitation

### The alternative represented by authoritarian powers

Despite these real, well-documented limits, the alternative to this Western centrality remains, for anyone honestly observing the behavior of **Russia** in **Ukraine**, of **China** toward its own minorities and neighbors, of **Iran** toward its own population and regional proxies, or of **North Korea** toward its own citizens, infinitely darker. None of these authoritarian powers offers a model of governance, shared prosperity, or respect for fundamental rights comparable to that of, admittedly imperfect, Western democracies.

It is this fundamental comparison, between the values these different blocs actually embody in their documented practices, that must continue to justify, without excessive hesitation or false moral neutrality, the massive investment the **West** is now making to preserve its strategic centrality in the world order.

### A responsibility that goes beyond mere budgetary calculation

Defending this Western centrality is therefore not solely a matter of cold geopolitical self-interest, valid as that calculation may otherwise be. It is also a matter of moral responsibility toward peoples who, like **Ukraine** today or **Taiwan** potentially tomorrow, depend directly on the credibility and consistency of this Western commitment to preserve their own sovereignty against very real authoritarian aggressors.

It is this dual dimension, strategic and moral, that gives full meaning to this massive rearmament documented in **Ankara**, an investment measured not only in billions of dollars, but also in human lives potentially protected across several continents in the decades ahead.

*Defending Western centrality is not an outdated imperialist reflex, it is a moral responsibility toward everyone, from Kyiv to Taipei, who depends on the credibility of this commitment to remain free. I see no reason to apologize for that.*

## Canada's specific role in this architecture

### A North American partner that reaches beyond its own continent

**Canada**, whose defense spending is projected at $52 billion for 2026, unveiled a new $900 million aid package for **Ukraine** in **Ankara**, according to **Forbes**. This Canadian contribution, less frequently discussed than American or German announcements, shows just how broadly the Western centrality doctrine mobilizes the democracies of **North America** and **Europe** alike, not only the most visible continental powers.

This Canadian contribution also comes amid a domestic context where **Ottawa** seeks to demonstrate its reliability as a top-tier security partner, at a moment when relations between **Canada** and **Trump**'s **United States** are going through their own trade and diplomatic tensions, distinct from the Ukrainian file but weighing on North America's broader strategic calculations.

### A diversification of donors that strengthens collective resilience

This diversification of contributors, from **Norway** to **Canada**, through **Denmark** and **Lithuania**, structurally reduces the risk that support for **Ukraine** depends on a single government or political administration that could change course after an election. It is this collective institutional resilience, built summit after summit, that fundamentally distinguishes the Western coalition from a fragile bilateral arrangement.

This plurality of donors is, in itself, an additional form of deterrence toward **Moscow**: the **Kremlin** can no longer hope that a single political change in a single Western capital would be enough to collapse the entire structure of support for **Kyiv**, a calculation Russian diplomacy has nonetheless long tried to exploit.

*Canada doesn't have the diplomatic firepower of the United States or the industrial weight of Germany, but its steady contribution to Ukraine deserves to be recognized with the same sincerity. It's these less spectacular contributions, added up summit after summit, that build this coalition's real resilience.*

### What this diversity signals for the rest of the conflict

This diversified architecture of support suggests that even in the event of partial disengagement or new tensions within the American administration, the Western coalition would now have enough alternative contributors to maintain a minimum floor of support for **Ukraine**, an institutional safety net that did not exist with the same robustness at the start of the Russian invasion in 2022.

It is this gradual maturation of the coalition, from its initial near-total dependence on **Washington** toward a genuinely multipolar architecture of support within the Western camp itself, that may be the most reassuring development observed since this war began, regardless of the vagaries of any given American election cycle.

*This maturation of the Western coalition, from near-total dependence on Washington to an architecture shared among dozens of capitals, may be the most underrated transformation of this war. Putin bet on the fragility of a coalition centered on one man in the White House; instead he faces a collective resilience far harder to break.*

## Conclusion: a doctrine reaffirmed, not yet guaranteed

### What the Ankara summit demonstrated with certainty

At the end of this analysis, one solid conclusion stands: the **NATO** summit in **Ankara**, with its $1.81 trillion in projected 2026 defense spending, its 70 billion euros pledged to **Ukraine**, and its tens of billions in newly announced arms contracts, demonstrates that the **West** made, in 2026, the deliberate choice to reassert its strategic centrality rather than resign itself to decline before its authoritarian rivals. This choice, documented figure by figure, commitment by commitment, is the most concrete possible answer to defeatist talk of Western erasure.

But this reassertion remains a work in progress, not a finished achievement. Industrial bottlenecks, documented popular resistance in **Italy** and elsewhere, persistent dependence on American production, and internal tensions between **Washington** and its allies are all real challenges that could still partly undermine the ambition displayed in **Ankara**.

### Ukraine, mirror of this Western ambition

Ukraine's fate over the coming months will continue to function as the most visible test of this reaffirmed centrality doctrine. If the 70 billion euros pledged actually translate into strengthened air defense, delivered munitions, and sustained military support through 2027 and beyond, then the **Ankara** summit will stand in history as the moment the **West** chose, concretely, to remain at the center of the world.

If, instead, these promises get bogged down in the same industrial delays already afflicting the delivery of **Patriot** interceptors to **Kyiv**, this summit will remain just one declaration of intent among many, a risk the **West** can no longer afford to take against authoritarian rivals who show no strategic hesitation in pursuing their own ambitions.

**By Maxime Marquette, columnist**

## Columnist's transparency note

### Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a **columnist and analyst**. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

I do not claim the cold objectivity of traditional journalism, which stops at reporting facts. **I claim analytical clarity**, rigorous interpretation and a deep understanding of the complex issues that concern us all. My role is to give meaning to the facts, to place them in their historical and strategic context, and to offer a critical reading of events.

### Method and sources

This text keeps the basic distinction between **verified facts and interpretive analysis**. The rule never changes: a factual claim is published only when a verifiable source supports it, and the sources this article actually used are listed under **Sources**, never here.

**Primary source families** used by the publication, when the story has them: official statements from governments and international institutions, public statements by political leaders, reports from intergovernmental organisations, dispatches from recognised international news agencies.

**Secondary source families**: specialised publications, internationally recognised news media, analyses from established research institutions, reports from industry organisations.

When an article cites statistical, economic or geopolitical data, it comes from the institutions that produce it (intergovernmental organisations, central banks, national statistics offices), and the exact institution is named under **Sources**.

### Nature of the analysis

The analyses, interpretations and perspectives in the analytical sections of this article are a **critical, contextual synthesis** based on the information available, the trends observed and the expert comments cited in the sources consulted.

My role is to interpret these facts, to set them in the context of today's geopolitical and economic dynamics, and to give them a coherent meaning within the larger story of the changes shaping our time. These analyses reflect expertise built through continuous observation of international affairs and an understanding of the strategic mechanisms that drive global actors.

This article describes a documented state of affairs on its publication date, not a prediction: later developments may shift its outlook. No update is promised in advance; when an article is corrected or completed, the change is dated in the text.

## Sources

### Primary sources

- [What happened at the 2026 NATO summit — Forbes, July 9, 2026](https://www.forbes.com/sites/marktemnycky/2026/07/09/what-happened-at-the-2026-nato-summit/)

- [NATO to unveil big arms deals in Ankara as Trump feels left out — Reuters, July 7, 2026](https://www.reuters.com/world/nato-unveil-big-arms-deals-ankara-before-summit-with-trump-2026-07-07/)

### Secondary sources

- [NATO defense spending projected to top $1.8 trillion in 2026 — Türkiye Today, July 8, 2026](https://www.turkiyetoday.com/world/nato-defense-spending-projected-to-top-18t-in-2026-3223488)

- [Under pressure, Europe undertakes its biggest rearmament since the Cold War — El País, July 5, 2026](https://english.elpais.com/international/2026-07-05/with-nato-under-pressure-europe-undertakes-its-biggest-rearmament-since-the-cold-war.html)

- [Europe's rearmament paradox — Foreign Policy, January 28, 2026](https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/01/28/europe-nato-rearmament-paradox-france-italy-poland-baltics/)

- [Germany rushes to accelerate its rearmament — Foreign Policy, June 1, 2026](https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/06/01/germany-merz-military-trump-rearm-bundeswehr-nato-europe/)

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Source: Maxime Marquette, MadMax. When citing, name the author and link https://mad-max.co/en/article/analysis-the-west-reasserts-its-centrality-with-1-8-trillion