NATO’s Ankara summit on July 7-8 is taking place at a time when the transatlantic alliance finds itself in paralysis. Key strategic and, arguably, central policies have been put in the deep freezer. This goes for the future Euro-Atlantic integration and NATO membership of Ukraine, the urgent need for a Russia containment strategy, and fundamentally for the shaping of Europe as a capable geostrategic actor.
As such, the summit’s overall aim will be damage limitation. It will be framed as a moment for NATO to demonstrate unity and progress on existing commitments, rather than a venue for addressing strategic issues. By focusing on improvements in deterrence and defense—notably defense spending and other related aspects like operational initiatives—and then practical support for Ukraine, the summit can be expected to showcase results as the lowest common denominator to maintain alliance cohesion, at least on the surface.
Under the deterrence and defense topic, the summit will assess and showcase progress on the 5 percent of GDP defense and security spending pledge (by 2035) agreed at The Hague summit last year, with a focus on accelerating defense production and strengthening the transatlantic defense industrial base.
However, Spain, Slovakia, and the United States itself have made it clear from the outset that they will not adhere to this pledge, while many other NATO nations, including France and Italy, have no credible plans in place how to reach the new benchmark. Meanwhile, some allies like the Czech Republic, Albania, and Slovenia are not even meeting the former 2 percent of GDP defense spending target—although they and NATO have claimed otherwise.
When it comes to the transatlantic defense industrial base, there is a wide gulf between the views of countries such as France, which is firmly committed to a European defense industry, and the US, which is primarily keen to retain access to the growing European market.
Shifting the Burden
The recently announced substantial cuts to US contributions to the NATO Force Model now present a further challenge for Europeans and Canadians.
The NATO Force Model is a framework for making national armed forces available to NATO in crisis or conflict situations. The US cuts affect, amongst other things, fighter aircraft, strategic bombers, warships, submarines, drones, and aerial refueling, as well as the troops required for these assets. The cuts are intended, in particular, to accelerate the transition from burden-sharing to burden-shifting. They are also meant to speed up the handover of responsibility for conventional deterrence and defense to Europe.
Moreover, the reduced US contributions to the NATO Force Model also mean that the alliance must adapt its regional defense plans to ensure they remain executable. The US expected the Europeans and Canadians to make appropriate proposals for replenishing the NATO Force Model in the run-up to the Ankara summit. The main objective is for Trump to be able to announce a corresponding success at the summit.
The summit is also expected to target investments in technologies that define modern warfare such as drones and systems enabled by artificial intelligence, and push for more joint procurement. With Turkish companies like Baykar and Skydagger ramping up production, Turkey clearly has a national interest in portraying itself as a key player in NATO’s drone policy, production, and deployment. (Indeed, defense companies have been invited to hold an industry day on the sidelines of the summit.)
As a way to diffuse further tensions around Greenland, NATO could also bolster the multi-domain activity Arctic Sentry launched in January 2026 after the first eruption of the Greenland crisis and intended to strengthen allied posture in the High North. The summit could be the moment to start putting flesh on the bones of this idea and announce concrete plans for Greenland-centered troop deployments, allied training exercises, and investments in Arctic capabilities, all under a NATO umbrella. This would show that Arctic Sentry is more than just a headline in response to the latest political crisis facing the alliance. So far, however, NATO seems to lack the ambition for such an initiative.
Helping Ukraine
When it comes to practical support for Ukraine, the summit is expected to reaffirm and potentially expand military, financial, and long-term resilience support for Ukraine, including mechanisms for sustained equipment deliveries. As part of a new initiative, NATO will seek to mobilize funds to support the procurement of PAC-3 interceptor missiles, the Czech ammunition initiative and defense production in Ukraine. There are also plans to continue the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) initiative. PURL is a funding mechanism established in mid-2025 to accelerate the delivery of US-manufactured weapons to Ukraine. Under this initiative, European allies, Canada, and some NATO partners provide the financing to purchase “ready-to-use” equipment—such as air defense systems and munitions—directly from US stockpiles.
While the initiative has gathered good momentum with so far, with 17 nations joining and close to €4 billion pledged for critical military equipment, in moving forward there are at least two key challenges.
The first is the funding gap: Ukraine’s defense needs under PURL for 2026 are estimated at €13.95–18.6 billion, but current pledges fall far short of this target. The initiative aims to add €930 million per month, but the total need so far remains unmet.
The second relates to delays, diversions, and US reliability: The war with Iran has depleted US munitions stockpiles, leading to warnings of delivery delays for weapons bound for Ukraine, particularly Patriot air defense missiles and HIMARS rocket launchers. The Pentagon has notified Congress of plans to divert €697.5 million in PURL-funded weapons to restock US inventories, rather than sending them to Ukraine. If that were to happen, this would probably qualify as theft. While NATO has reaffirmed that all weapons already paid for under PURL will be delivered to Ukraine, future shipments may face disruptions or prioritization for US needs.
No Solutions to Strategic Issues
What should not be expected from the summit is the solution of any broader strategic issues.
When it comes to Ukraine it seems unlikely that the allies will dare to stage a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council and give President Volodymyr Zelensky a more prominent role than in the 2025 summit, which largely marginalized him and the war in Ukraine as such—mainly to appease US President Donald Trump. With the expected focus on deterrence and defense, the 2026 summit will also most likely practice an ostrich approach when it comes Ukraine, its “irreversible path to NATO membership,” or a strategy on how to enable Ukraine’s victory in the ongoing war with Russia.
The same applies to dealing with Moscow. Unfortunately, NATO has lost precious time in defining a coherent Russia strategy with a focus on containment as least since 2022 with the adoption of NATO’s new Strategic Concept, identifying Russia as “the most significant and direct threat to allies’ security.” Now with Donald Trump’s rapprochement with Putin’s Russia in the balance, any such attempt would be futile.
Discussions on how to build up Europe as a capable geostrategic actor have certainly gained extra urgency with recent US decisions cut its contributions to the NATO Force Model, to withdraw some 5,000 troops from Germany, and to not deploy as envisaged a long-range fire battalion equipped with Tomahawks and hypersonic missiles. The latter perpetuates a key European deterrence gap vis-à-vis Russia and adds urgency to closing it.
Resurfacing tensions over Greenland, or ongoing tensions over a European role in ensuring free navigation in the Strait of Hormuz are throwing further spanners in the works of already strained US-Europe relations. But any related discussions among Europeans are happening outside of formal NATO structures, in various constellations of coalitions-of-the-willing.
Black Swans?
There are a number of possible “black swan events,” i.e., unpredictable, high-impact disruptions, which could significantly alter the summit’s dynamic and its outcome.
A major way to derail the summit from the outset would be for Trump to announce, at the last minute, that he would not join the other heads of state and governments in Ankara. Considering his erratic behavior this possibility cannot be excluded. So far, however, it appears that he is scheduled to come, not so much because of NATO, but rather to meet the fellow strongman from the Bosporus, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Also, the bombastic architecture of the Beştepe Presidential Complex as the summit’s main venue and the ensured display of Turkey’s exorbitant hospitality will likely whet his appetite.
A renewed flare-up of hostilities in the context of the US-Israeli war against Iran could potentially disrupt and overshadow the summit. The US has already criticized its allies for their reluctance to join the war against Iran, and Trump’s public NATO bashing as a “paper tiger” suggests that a renewed escalation could force the alliance to confront its role in the Middle East.
This could expose deep divisions among members, especially if the US demands NATO involvement or retaliates against allies who refuse to participate. US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s recent berating of allies for their “shameful” response to the US war against Iran, and linking this to a further review of the US force posture in Europe, indicate that tensions in the alliance remain high. Particularly given the criticism levelled by countries such as Spain, Germany, and France about the US war against Iran, an agreement on a NATO operation in the Strait of Hormuz—which would, after all, have to be decided by consensus—is not to be expected.
The fact that Turkey is the summit’s host nation also entails some unpredictability. Its proximity to the Black Sea, the eastern Mediterranean, Syria, and the Iran war, means that even a non-NATO crisis could quickly become a NATO summit crisis if it were to affect the host environment, national security or allied cohesion. Erdoğan’s growing authoritarianism, the manipulation of the judiciary, and the widespread repression of the opposition, the media, and civil society could cast a shadow over the summit should related incidents occur. Turkey could also aim to use the summit for its own geopolitical maneuvering, be that to push for more attention to its longstanding focus on terrorism, or more recognition as a regional power.
Altogether, the 2026 NATO summit is likely to show an alliance in survival mode, with a focus on the implementation of agreed commitments, but with no appetite or courage to tackle any of the other burning strategic issues.
Gerlinde Niehus is an independent international security expert and co-founder of the Brussels Freedom Hub. She served at NATO for 25 years, most recently as deputy director defense cooperation from 2019 to 2024.
