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NATO leaders are meeting in Ankara, Turkey on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The meeting continues as US President Donald Trump increases pressure on its member states to use security measures. European countries are expected to respond with billions of dollars in new military contracts.
At the NATO summit last year, members agreed to increase their goal to 5 percent of GDP: 3.5 percent for military spending by 2035 and 1.5 percent for defense-related needs.
Who is there and what is at stake?
Leaders from all 32 NATO countries are meeting in Turkey this week.
Two non-aligned leaders will also be there: Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy and South Korea’s Lee Jae-myung.
Australia, Japan and New Zealand are sending defense or foreign ministers, as are the Gulf states affected by the US-Israel conflict in Iran: Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa is not expected to attend the meeting but has a bilateral meeting with Trump in Ankara.
What Trump wants from NATO allies
Trump has questioned the importance of NATO since his first presidential campaign. He said the US took an unfair share of the money. At the time, only five countries spent two percent of their GDP on defense.
His questions about shared security obligations have produced some results in recent years in the alliance as member states have pledged to increase their defense budgets.
Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, the regional director of the German Marshall Fund in Turkey, believes that NATO this year will focus on fulfilling its promises from last year. “NATO partners only agreed to increase their defense spending by 5 percent last year at The Hague and their European allies have taken steps to boost their defense industries,” he said. “This year in Ankara the discussion will be about how to open up how to use money to develop skills. So it is stronger than it was last year.”
But Mr. Paolo von Schirach, president of the Global Policy Institute, said that the benefits of spending more money will be limited, saying that more orders mean more weapons but in the end. “You can spend a lot and not get a lot,” he said.
What Ukraine wants from the conference
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will meet Trump in a bilateral meeting on Wednesday. Ukraine is not a member of NATO.
Zelenskyy will use the face-to-face meeting with the US president to request additional Patriot air defense equipment as Russia’s attacks on Ukrainian cities escalate. A drone attack in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv killed at least 11 people on Monday morning.
Jack Watling, a senior researcher at the Royal United Services Institute, said that Ukraine needs political and military technical assistance from the alliance members, indicating to Russia “that the assistance will continue”.
The idea, he said, was to “show Russia that there will be no reduction in its security in the next 12-24 months”.
“There is a direct correlation between the number of missiles supplied to Ukraine and the damage Russia can do with missiles,” Watling says.
What European countries are trying to deal with
Billions of contracts expected to be announced by European countries at the conference are seen by some experts as an attempt to please the Trump administration.
When European countries joined the war against Iran, Mr Trump said he did not want their money, but their “loyalty”. He added that he might not have attended the meeting if it had not been for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Turkey in recent years has not only increased its defense spending, but has also grown to become one of NATO’s largest exporters.
Meanwhile, the tone of the security economy remains sharp. On the evening of the meeting, Trump called Germany’s defense spending “ridiculous”. Chancellor Friedrich Merz defended his country’s budget, saying “this is the biggest effort we have ever made to strengthen our defense capabilities”.
Meanwhile, the US has gone through the motions of continuing to talk and announce the gradual withdrawal of warplanes, destroyers and submarines from NATO countries. “A few US military or military units in Europe are involved in texting but others,” Watling said. But, he added, “the withdrawal of US air power has tangible consequences”.
Whether the agreement could indicate a link between speech and withdrawal is an important question, experts said.
“The main advantage of this meeting is political, it shows that the allies are still talking, still meeting, trying to reach an agreement, although the conflicts and serious doubts have not ended,” said von Schirach of the Global Policy Institute. “Ankara is more about confirmation and signature than concrete, the latest updates on the ground.”
