BRIEF: The NATO 5% GDP Deal — Who's Really Paying, and Who's Still Bluffing Before Ankara?

A meeting that will go down in alliance history

On June 18, 2026, NATO defense ministers convened in Brussels for what Secretary General Mark Rutte called the "last major meeting before the Ankara summit." The agenda was clear: demonstrate that the alliance is meeting its spending commitments and prepare concrete deliverables for the Turkish summit scheduled for July 7–8, 2026. What happened in the room that morning, however, exceeded every scenario of diplomatic routine.

US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth took the floor at 9:30 a.m. with a bluntness rare for this kind of forum. In twelve minutes, he called NATO a "paper tiger," a "one-way street," and said he found it "shameful" that European allies had refused to grant American forces access to their bases during operations against Iran. He announced a six-month review of US force posture in Europe — an audit he himself warned would see "some countries miss it, others pass with flying colors." Then he left.

A colossal figure, a brutal question

Rutte attempted to reframe the day around positive news. $139 billion in additional spending by European allies and Canada in 2025 compared to 2024 — a nearly 20% increase in a single budget cycle. A record since the alliance was founded. "I repeat: $139 billion in additional spending," he hammered at his press conference. On the surface, a triumphant balance sheet. In reality, the numbers conceal a gaping divide between the alliance's vanguard and its rear guard.

Because the target adopted at the Hague Summit in June 2025 does not demand 2% of GDP — the old threshold everyone was finally reaching. It now requires 5% of GDP by 2035, of which 3.5% for defense proper and 1.5% for critical infrastructure, cybersecurity, and industrial resilience. Measured against that raised bar, honesty is inescapable: the overwhelming majority of allies falls well short.

I reread Hegseth's speech three times. It is sharp, brutal, politically charged — and largely correct. NATO has run for too long on promises rather than checks. Ankara is approaching, and it is time for everyone to lay their cards on the table.

A framework designed at The Hague, tested in Brussels

The current framework emerged from the Hague Summit of June 2025. Allied leaders adopted a two-component formula: at least 3.5% of GDP devoted to core defense needs — armed forces, armaments, ammunition, command systems — and up to 1.5% of GDP additionally for what NATO calls "security-related investments": upgrading roads and bridges for heavy military convoys, protecting critical infrastructure, cyber defense, innovation, and strengthening the defense industrial base. The headline total is 5% of GDP by 2035, with the obligation to submit credible annual plans for progressive increases.

This structure is not neutral. The 3.5 + 1.5 breakdown was deliberately designed to allow President Trump to claim a catchy headline — "5%" — while giving European allies room on the 1.5% component, which can encompass spending they were already making under other budget lines. The political sleight of hand is real, but it does not mask the fact that even with these accommodations, virtually all of Europe today falls short of the 3.5% threshold for the core defense component alone.

What the figure 2.77% reveals about the alliance's true state

In 2025, the alliance average reached 2.77% of GDP according to Rutte's annual report published in March 2026. That is the highest level since the Cold War, and it is historically significant. But it also illustrates the scale of the challenge: to reach 3.5%, the alliance average would need to rise by more than 0.7 GDP points — which, across combined allied economies, represents hundreds of additional billions of dollars annually. The United States, which still absorbed approximately 60% of total NATO spending in 2025 despite its declining share, cannot indefinitely compensate for European underinvestment.

Oxford Economics, cited in Euronews's analysis of June 17, 2026, also highlights an important statistical bias: part of the increase in declared figures reflects accounting rules rather than real military capability. Multi-year advance payments can "inflate" figures for years before any equipment is actually delivered. The 1.5% component also lacks a strict definition, leaving room for governments tempted to reclassify hospital investments or civilian infrastructure projects as defense spending.

What Hegseth understood — and what many European capitals still refuse to admit — is that raw numbers are one thing, and combat capability is another. You cannot stop a missile with a well-presented accounting report. The gap between declared spending and real power is the decade's true scandal.

Poland at 4.48%: the alliance's absolute benchmark

Poland is, in 2025, the NATO country spending the most in proportion to its GDP: 4.48% — more than the United States itself, which stood at 3.22%. Warsaw has enshrined a military spending floor in national law, and the Polish government has already signaled its intention to raise this ratio to 4.8% in 2026. Poland's defense minister publicly argued in May 2026 for NATO to reach 5% as early as 2030 — five years ahead of the agreed deadline — on the grounds that the vulnerability window vis-à-vis Russia is too narrow to wait.

Behind Poland rises what analysts now call the alliance's "eastern wall": Lithuania at 4%, Latvia at 3.73%, and Estonia at 3.38%. These three countries are already above the 3.5% threshold for core defense. Estonia further announced in 2026 a jump to 5.4% of GDP this very year. These nations — whose peoples endured Soviet occupation and know the nature of the Russian neighbor — have made the painful but necessary choice to prioritize their survival over budgetary comfort.

Germany: the giant that finally decided to stand up

The decade's surprise is Germany. For decades the symbol of voluntary post-1945 disarmament, Berlin has executed a historic turn. Rutte highlighted it explicitly on June 18: "Germany has already reached 3.5% and is on track for 5% by 2029 — six years before 2035." Chancellor Friedrich Merz validated a €649 billion five-year defense spending plan, backed by a reform of the constitutional debt brake and a €500 billion special infrastructure fund. The German defense budget is set to rise from €86 billion in 2025 to €152 billion in 2029. This is Germany's most ambitious rearmament since reunification.

Scandinavia rounds out the front-runner picture. Denmark at 3.22% is already at the American level. Finland at 2.77% and Sweden at 2.51% — two countries that only joined the alliance recently after decades of neutrality — have already committed to trajectories well above these ratios. These nations know what a border with Russia means. They are not bluffing.

Poland fascinates me as much as it inspires me. This country paid the price of geopolitics more than anyone in the twentieth century, and it drew the lesson that others, comfortably settled behind protected borders, still refuse to learn. Warsaw did not wait until it was threatened. It chose to be strong before it became urgent.

Major economies stuck near 2%

While Poland and the Baltics charge toward 5%, a group of large European economies found themselves in 2025 sitting at exactly the old 2% threshold — as if the goal had been to do just enough not to be named in the communiqués. Italy closed at 2.01%, France at 2.05%. Spain, Belgium, Portugal, the Czech Republic, and Luxembourg all registered exactly 2%. Some analysts, including those at Oxford Economics, note that this suspicious precision sometimes reflects accounting reclassification rather than genuine military investment.

Spain represents the most politically thorny case. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez publicly refused to commit to 5%, calling 2% "sufficient and realistic." Spain is nonetheless the world's 14th-largest economy. Reaching 5% would mean approximately $50 billion in additional annual military spending. Trump personally targeted Sánchez at The Hague Summit, threatening to make Spain pay "twice as much" in trade negotiations. Spain's governing coalition — ranging from socialism to the radical left — has mathematically no political capacity to absorb such a budgetary shock. But this domestic reality does not cancel the objective inequity of the situation.

Belgium: NATO's host, the alliance's laggard

Belgium offers perhaps the most striking contradiction in the entire alliance. Brussels hosts NATO's headquarters, the central Integrated Command apparatus, and virtually all of the alliance's bureaucratic institutions. Belgium reaps enormous economic, diplomatic, and symbolic benefits from this institutional anchor. And yet the country took more than a decade to reach 2% — achieved only in 2025, under intense international pressure — with a spending ratio that chronically ranks among the alliance's lowest. Intereconomics analysis calculates that Belgium would need to increase its defense effort by 292% to reach 5% of GDP from its recent level — the highest proportional increase among major allied economies, except Luxembourg.

Belgium's structural problem is documented: public debt at 104.5% of GDP, a political system so fragmented it averages more than a year to form a government, and a political culture that has never made defense a national priority. Even so, continuing to host the alliance's common home while contributing at the minimum is not a tenable position in the long run facing a Trump who tracks the numbers line by line.

There is something intellectually honest in acknowledging that Spain, Belgium, and Italy are not bluffing either — they are simply caught in real constraints. But Poles also face real constraints. The difference is the assessment of existential risk. And that difference in assessment reveals who has truly looked Russia in the eye.

A speech designed to sting

Hegseth's June 18, 2026 speech, made public by the US Department of Defense, is a remarkable political document. It opens with a history lesson on Dwight Eisenhower — Supreme Allied Commander in 1951 and future 34th president — who had stated as early as 1951: "If in ten years all American troops stationed in Europe for national defense purposes have not been returned to the United States, then the entire process will have failed." Hegseth builds from this quote an ideological genealogy for "NATO 3.0": the idea that Europe should never have become an American dependency, and that restoring a NATO of balanced contributions would honor the founders' vision.

The tone escalates when he turns to Iran. "It is shameful," he says, that European allies refused American forces access to their bases to strike Iranian targets — targets that, he argues, threatened European interests even more directly than American ones. He condemns allies who "drowned the United States in archaic legal debates" or publicly criticized it for doing what those allies were neither ready nor capable of doing themselves. He announces the six-month posture review under the name "NATO 3.0 review." And he issues the most concrete ultimatum ever pronounced from Washington: US annual NATO contributions will henceforth be conditioned on allies meeting their defense spending commitments.

Rutte in the impossible moderator's position

Rutte's press conference after the meeting was an exercise in precarious balance. To the BBC journalist who asked whether Hegseth's speech — he left the room shortly after 11:15 a.m., well before the meeting with Zelensky — truly reflected American commitment, the secretary general responded diplomatically: "He was there for almost two hours listening to the debate." To the question about comments calling the alliance a "paper tiger," he simply said: "I am not going to comment on every word of every ally." This controlled restraint reveals the narrow space in which Rutte operates: he must keep the alliance together while managing an American ally who is shaking it more violently than ever.

On substance, Rutte defended the coherence of the American message. "The United States expressed very clearly their commitment to NATO today," he said. Announcing a force posture review does not mean disengagement, he insisted, but a logical rebalancing as Europeans invest massively. SACEUR himself reportedly said the review "makes plans more realistic and therefore more robust, because there was an over-reliance on the United States." This is a way of framing an American retreat as strategic progress. The rhetoric is skillful. The reality on the ground will be more complex.

Trump is a necessary ill for the West — and Hegseth's speech illustrates it well. Brutal pressure produces results that decades of gentle diplomacy failed to obtain. But the conditionality of NATO contributions is a dangerous line. You cannot make an alliance conditional without risking erasing its collective core.

A realignment already underway before the official announcement

Hegseth recalled that the Defense Department had already returned American troops in Europe to pre-2022 levels — including the redeployment of a combat brigade the previous year and the further reduction of 5,000 troops earlier in 2026, linked notably to Trump's anger toward Chancellor Merz over his criticism of the American operation against Iran. In May 2026, the Pentagon had also notified allies of a reduction in its contributions to the NATO Force Model — the planning framework defining which assets would be available in a simultaneous multi-theater conflict. Rutte confirmed this change was "immediate" for planning purposes.

What is at stake goes beyond troop numbers. As Brussels Signal reported on June 18, Washington intends to reassign a significant share of its Europe-based forces to other regions, notably the Indo-Pacific. Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, and several other countries are already working to fill the gap. The question posed by the Bloomberg journalist at the press conference was precise: can Europeans replace capabilities that Europe simply does not possess — such as strategic bombers? Rutte did not answer directly. The reason is obvious: no, they cannot, at least not in the short term.

Missing capabilities and technological dependence

Oxford Economics quantified the problem in a recent analysis: approximately 40% of European defense equipment spending goes to non-EU suppliers. The "leakage" concentrates on systems Europe does not yet produce at scale: long-range weapons, extended air defense, early warning, tactical airlift, fifth-generation stealth fighters, large drones — not to mention imported semiconductors and the risk of delays in military artificial intelligence. Rutte himself emphasized on June 17 the need to "turbocharge transatlantic defense industrial cooperation" and build an industrial base capable of turning cash into operational capabilities rapidly. "You cannot stop a missile or a tank with a dollar or a euro," he said without ambiguity.

Ukraine, ironically, is today according to Rutte "number one in the world" in certain drone and counter-drone technologies, ahead of Russia and ahead of many NATO members. The joint center in Poland captures lessons from the conflict. The alliance is learning from Kyiv in these domains — which says much about the gap between declared budgets and the real capabilities of countries that fund their armies less generously.

Forty percent of European military equipment purchased outside the EU — that figure haunts me. Europeans are being asked to double their budgets while continuing to enrich industries that are not theirs. Without a defense industrial revolution on the continent, the 5% of GDP will remain a wealth transfer to American suppliers rather than a genuine strengthening of European strategic autonomy.

The Ukraine Defense Contact Group as a pillar of the meeting

After Rutte's press conference, the Ukraine Defense Contact Group convened, co-chaired by Germany and the United Kingdom, with President Volodymyr Zelensky participating. Rutte had emphasized in his opening remarks that maintaining support for Ukraine remained an absolute priority. "Ukraine is changing the dynamic on the battlefield and inflicting huge losses on Russia," he said, adding a chilling figure: between 30,000 and 35,000 Russian soldiers killed every month. Zelensky could only maintain this pressure if allies "amplify their support, not just for immediate needs like air defense, but by assessing how to work together over the long term."

Hegseth's absence from this meeting with Zelensky was noticed. AFP had asked whether this signaled that the United States had not changed its position on Ukraine support since the G7. Rutte replied that Hegseth had previously scheduled engagements. The technical answer does not erase the symbol: the defense secretary of a superpower claiming to support peace in Ukraine left before meeting the Ukrainian head of state. Hegseth had cited progress under Trump's PURL initiative, under which allies have taken over financing Ukraine's defense support. "Ukrainians are holding their lines," he acknowledged, validating the American approach.

Russia weakened but still standing

Rutte produced an impressive figure about the state of the Russian economy: 48% of Russia's state budget is now devoted to defense. If one factors in tax revenues, approximately 75% of taxes collected in Moscow are being used to finance the war. "These are crazy numbers," Rutte said. He added perspective: Russia is not economically larger than Belgium and the Netherlands combined. It knows NATO is far stronger. The question therefore is not whether Russia can defeat the alliance — it cannot. The question is whether the alliance will remain united and strong enough to deter any Russian temptation to test Article 5 around 2029 — the risk horizon advanced by several European intelligence agencies.

The war of attrition Putin is imposing on Ukraine costs Russia tens of thousands of lives every month and growing proportions of its economy. But as long as the war continues, as long as Russian drones strike Ukrainian cities, and as long as Putin refuses to "play the game" of negotiations — in Rutte's own words — Ukraine must hold. And to hold, Ukraine needs NATO not to weaken in its material support, even amid Washington's pressure on allied budgets.

Zelensky on a video screen in this ministers' meeting, while Hegseth left before his turn — there is something in that image that weighs on me. Ukraine is fighting for an idea of Europe that some Europeans themselves no longer seem willing to fund. It is a moral contradiction no one wants to name out loud.

Operation "Epic Fury" and the European refusal

Behind the 5% GDP debate lies a far deeper fracture: the refusal of virtually all European allies to support the American-Israeli military operation against Iran — named Operation Epic Fury — launched in 2026. Hegseth said it explicitly: allies refused American forces access to their bases to strike Iranian targets; in some cases, Washington had to "transfer capabilities from one country to another, including outside NATO allied countries." He called this refusal "shameful," arguing that these Iranian targets threatened European interests even more than American ones.

The European position had its own foundations: the absence of prior consultation, questions of international legality, and the political complexity of a military operation against a sovereign state without a UN mandate. Rutte himself acknowledged that Trump had acted without informing allies in advance for operational security reasons: "The United States could not consult with allies beforehand because they wanted to keep the military action secret." But he defended the outcome: Iran's nuclear capability "severely degraded," ballistic capability damaged, and the prospect of the Strait of Hormuz reopening. He saluted "the deal done by President Trump with Iran" as beneficial to all.

Finland and nuclear weapons: a historic decision

On the sidelines of the main debate, Finland made an announcement Rutte called "historic": the Finnish parliament approved an amendment to the Nuclear Energy Act that is, in practice, a gateway toward a national nuclear deterrence doctrine, or at least deeper integration into NATO's nuclear planning mechanisms. "I am not totally without emotion about this," Rutte said with a smile, before restraining himself from further comment in the name of national sovereignty. This Finnish signal — from a country that only joined NATO in 2023 after decades of neutrality — illustrates how radically the security context has shifted in Northern Europe.

The Nuclear Planning Group also met on June 18 in Brussels. Its declaration, welcomed by Rutte, reaffirmed allies' commitment to alliance nuclear deterrence and the necessity of modernizing nuclear capabilities, improving planning, and adapting the arsenal to ensure it remains fit for purpose. In a context where Russia devotes 48% of its budget to war and maintains imperial ambitions, this reminder of the ultimate nuclear guarantee is not rhetorical formality.

Finland, Sweden, the Baltic states — nations that lived under Soviet occupation or share a border with Russia have a geopolitical operating system that Western Europe does not. They do not ask themselves whether they should defend themselves. They ask whether the West will support them fast enough if things go wrong. That anxiety is not paranoia. It is memory.

Three weeks to turn promises into credible plans

The Ankara Summit of July 7–8, 2026 is now the next moment of truth. Rutte had said on June 17: "This summit will be entirely about deliverables." Deliverables on spending, on industry, on Ukraine support. The Brussels meeting was the "last major milestone before Ankara," and the debates that took place there define the political framework in which leaders will arrive at the Turkish table. The pressure of the American six-month review — whose conclusions may be known before or during the summit — adds a layer of uncertainty to what Rutte wants to present as a moment of cohesion and progress.

Turkey itself plays an ambiguous role in this dynamic. Ankara is hosting the summit — a decision made at The Hague, welcomed by Erdogan as "recognition of our country's leadership and commitment." Turkey is one of NATO's most militarily capable members, but also the one that maintains the most complex relationship with Moscow, and whose commitment to certain alliance policies is selective. That allies gather at Erdogan's doorstep to discuss credibility and solidarity is not without irony.

Russia by 2029: the vulnerability window

The strategic context overhanging all these discussions is captured in a single figure: 2029. That is the horizon advanced by several European intelligence services as the date from which Russia could be "strong enough" — after post-Ukraine reconstruction — to consider testing a NATO country. Rutte confirmed this timeline at his press conference, adding that NATO needed to be "stronger today, stronger in 2027, stronger in 2029" so that Moscow understands any attempt would be a fatal mistake. The irony is that the American posture review — which reduces Washington's contribution to the NATO Force Model — falls precisely within this tense window. SACEUR said plans are becoming "more realistic and therefore more robust" through this rebalancing. The formulation is optimistic. It also reflects a less flattering reality: the alliance has relied too long on an American contribution that could not be sustained in a simultaneous multi-theater conflict.

2029 as the risk horizon — that is a data point governments dragging their feet on military budgets should display in large type in their boardrooms. This is not alarmist speculation. It is the formal estimate of several allied intelligence agencies. If the alliance is not credible by then, Putin's calculus will change. And it will be all of us who pay the price for a few nations' negligence.

From 1.37% to the promise of 3.5%: a steep climb

Canada is the alliance's most diplomatically uncomfortable case. America's immediate neighbor, principal trading partner, and second-oldest formal ally of Washington, Ottawa spent a decade posting one of NATO's lowest defense spending ratios — 1.37% of GDP in 2024 — under a Trudeau government that systematically prioritized social spending over military. The geographic paradox struck everyone in Washington: European free-riders are at least physically distant; Canada does it on the same continent, within the shared North American security space.

The government of Prime Minister Mark Carney, installed in early 2026, shifted course with notable urgency. At the June 18 Brussels meeting, Canada's defense minister announced that Canada had crossed the 2% threshold for the first time and was presenting a trajectory toward 3.5% and then 5% by 2035. Rutte personally welcomed this change. The question remains the pace: starting from such a low base implies defense budget increases unprecedented in recent Canadian history, in a tight fiscal context with the shadow of the American trade war in the background.

Hegseth and the notion of "strategic solidarity"

Hegseth's speech introduced a new dimension to the contributions debate: strategic solidarity. It is no longer enough to spend; one must also act. Refusing base access for an American military operation is, in his framework, equivalent to not paying dues. This expansion of the "good ally" criterion opens very slippery terrain. If meeting financial commitments is one thing, subordinating alliance relationships to approval of every American military operation — including wars not mandated by the UN — is a demand of a fundamentally different nature. It transforms NATO, a defensive alliance, into an expeditionary coalition in service of Washington's unilateral foreign policy.

Carney did what Trudeau never wanted to do. That is already something. But I remain wary of the new Hegseth condition: pay and obey. The Atlantic alliance is not an American franchise. It only has value if each member can retain its decision-making sovereignty, including the sovereignty to say no to a war it did not choose.

Cash in hand, tools not yet forged

Rutte insisted on a point often neglected in the percentages debate: money alone is not enough. "We must turn cash into operational capabilities, and fast," he said on June 18. Ministers approved at their meeting a "renewed push to turbocharge transatlantic defense industrial cooperation," with the goal of developing defense industries on both sides of the Atlantic while fostering innovation and production. The stakes are high: European military supply chains were dismantled over decades of disarmament, and rebuilding them takes time — more time than the political deadlines in some countries allow.

The Euronews report of June 17, 2026 on European defense spending highlights a structural paradox: approximately 40% of EU equipment spending funds non-European suppliers. Systems Europe depends on importing include precision long-range weapons, extended air defense, early warning, fifth-generation fighter jets, and large drones. Oxford Economics notes that Europe "delays risk in AI for military applications," and that low initial production capacity means large shares of defense equipment must be imported even as budgets increase.

Ukraine as a provider of technological lessons

Rutte offered an observation that should prompt reflection in every allied general staff: Ukraine is today "number one in the world" in drone and counter-drone technologies, ahead of Russia and ahead of many NATO countries. The conflict has forced accelerated innovation in autonomous capabilities, long-range drones, miniaturized electronic warfare, and countermeasures. NATO has established a joint center in Poland to capitalize on these lessons. This reversal — where a country at war teaches peacetime-wealthy nations — says something profound about the alliance's real state of readiness, and about what combat-forged resilience can produce when measured against poorly spent peacetime budgets.

Kyiv is teaching Brussels how to fight twenty-first-century war. There is no greater humility than that for an alliance that thought itself at the cutting edge. Ukraine is paying in blood for what we should have learned since 2014. I do not say this to induce guilt — I say it because the lesson must be integrated, now, without delay.

When statistics dress up reality

One of the most under-discussed aspects of the 5% debate is the reliability of declared data. NATO figures are self-reported by member states and recorded on a cash basis — meaning multi-year advance payments can "inflate" figures for years before any equipment is actually delivered. The Euronews report of June 17, 2026 signals indications that governments are attempting to pass political projects — including hospitals — as military spending to hit declared targets.

The 1.5% of GDP component of the new framework also suffers from a lack of strict definition. It is supposed to cover civilian preparedness, resilience, cybersecurity, infrastructure, and innovation. But its fuzzy contours allow creative interpretations. Oxford Economics notes that the most "solid" portion of the spending increase — the one that truly corresponds to increased military power — comes primarily from equipment: approximately 0.5 percentage points out of 0.9 points of progress since 2021. The remaining two-thirds of the increase are harder to translate directly into operational combat capabilities. This is what Rutte himself calls the "challenge" of the defense industrial base: turning budgetary declarations of intent into tanks, aircraft, ammunition, and trained soldiers.

Europe in 2026: between historic record and structural lag

In summary, military Europe in 2026 is in a paradoxical position. It has never spent more on its defense in absolute terms since the Cold War. It has never reached such a level of political consensus on the need to spend more. And yet it is structurally far from the levels that would allow it to defend itself without American support in a major conflict scenario. This gap — between real effort and required operational capability — is precisely what Hegseth named with brutality in Brussels, and what the most cautious allies do not dare to state as plainly.

One can celebrate historic records. One must also look at what they conceal. Spending more is not enough if you spend badly, if you double budgets without doubling capabilities, if you count bridges as firepower. The alliance needs transparency as much as it needs checks. And Ankara will be the moment to distinguish one from the other.

A summit under maximum tension

The Ankara Summit of July 7–8, 2026 promises to be the most fractured in NATO's recent history. The American six-month review is at midpoint; its early conclusions will be on everyone's minds. Countries that show no "credible trajectory" toward The Hague targets will face heightened American pressure — potentially public, by name, and linked to bilateral trade and military decisions. Hegseth said some countries will "miss" the review and others will "pass with flying colors." Ankara will be the setting in which this grading, tacitly or explicitly, is made public.

Erdogan's Turkey is not a neutral host. It maintains commercial relations with Moscow, has kept diplomatic bridges open with Putin while remaining a NATO member, and has used its alliance role as leverage in its own bilateral negotiations — over F-35s, Swedish accession, and relations with Washington. That this summit is held in Ankara rather than The Hague, Brussels, or Washington is not incidental: it is recognition of Turkey's growing influence in the alliance, and an implicit invitation to Erdogan to play a mediator's role between fractured allies.

What Ankara must produce for the alliance to remain credible

For the summit to be a measurable success, it will need at minimum: credible and verifiable national plans for increased defense spending from every ally not yet on track for 3.5% by 2035; an agreement on the NATO Force Model allocation mechanism following the American review, so as not to leave dangerous capability gaps during the transition period; and a strong signal of support for Ukraine, both on immediate military aid and on the long-term security framework. Without these three elements, Ankara risks being the summit that officially formalized the alliance's weakening rather than its reinforcement.

I do not know what will come out of Ankara. No one truly does. But I know this: the credibility of an alliance is measured less in its communiqués than in the willingness of its members to act when it is costly. And this test — really paying, really deploying, really holding — the Atlantic alliance has not yet passed in the post-2022 context. Ankara may be its last appointment with itself.

The brutal balance sheet of June 18, 2026

June 18, 2026 produced a double image of NATO. On one side, historic figures: $139 billion in additional spending, a 20% increase in European and Canadian outlays, Poland at 4.48%, Germany committed to 5% by 2029. On the other, an American defense secretary who called the alliance a "paper tiger," conditioned American contributions on met commitments, launched a six-month posture review, and left the room before meeting the Ukrainian president. These two realities coexist. Neither should erase the other.

The Atlantic alliance may be undergoing the most profound transformation in its history since its founding. This "NATO 3.0" that Rutte and Hegseth speak of — a rebalanced alliance with Europe assuming primary responsibility for its own conventional defense, backed by American nuclear power — is a coherent and necessary model. But it can only work if the countries that long benefited from American guarantees without paying the price stop bluffing on their budgets and capabilities. Before Ankara, every ally should ask itself a simple question: if Russia wakes up in 2029, has my country done what it needed to do?

The price of freedom is non-negotiable

The West is the world's center because it built, over centuries, a model of democracy, law, and prosperity that the rest of the world — despite all its faults and contradictions — has not yet managed to replicate. That model is the target of a convergence of threats: Putin's Russia, which prefers destruction to negotiation; Xi's China, massively investing in its capacity to reshape the international order to its advantage; Iran, whose nuclear ambitions recently threatened the stability of entire regions; North Korea, an uncontrollable nuclear arsenal. Faced with this coalescence of risks, the idea that Europe's wealthy democracies can continue to spend 2% of GDP — or less — on their defense and shelter behind the American umbrella is not only unjust. It is strategically suicidal.

The price of freedom is non-negotiable. It must be paid. The Poles, the Estonians, the Latvians, the Finns understood this before anyone else. The question that poses itself at Ankara — which every chancellor, every prime minister, every defense minister must face squarely — is simple: who is really paying? And who is still bluffing?

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

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.

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