ANKARA, Turkey — European allies did their best to put Donald Trump in a good mood at the NATO summit. The effort was met with mixed success — but it’s no longer their top priority anyway.
European countries and Canada are increasingly pivoting from unfettered appeasement and fear of the U.S. president to a more measured approach as their experience with his repeated threats gives them more confidence in dealing with him, something reinforced by their own increased defense spending.
At the heart of that change is a shift in messaging: We’re spending more on defense for us, not you.
“I didn’t come here to please Trump … if I came here, it was quite simply to take responsibility for a security situation focused on deterrence,” Luxembourgish Foreign Minister Xavier Bettel told POLITICO. “We did what we had to do.”
“I’m sick and tired of panicking about Trump,” added one senior NATO diplomat, who, like others for this report, was granted anonymity to speak freely. “We have to do this for ourselves.”
After a year of unprecedented strain on the alliance, which saw Trump threaten to seize Greenland, announce plans to withdraw thousands of troops from Germany and put NATO’s mutual defense pact into question, countries came to Ankara keen to avoid another crisis.
On Wednesday, the alliance’s 32 leaders signed off on a statement pledging to invest in new military capabilities like drones, stating Iran must never acquire nuclear weapons and showcasing over $50 billion in new procurement deals — all measures largely intended to address Trump’s long-standing demands.
By the end of the summit, Trump sounded satisfied.
“There’s one word that comes out of the day — unification,” the U.S. president told reporters after the gathering, describing it as a “great meeting” and praising the “love” shown between countries at the talks.
Measured Trump
The start of the conference had looked a lot more fraught.
Trump unleashed his usual attacks on allies he felt weren’t spending enough on defense and those who hadn’t helped in the war against Iran, and returned to his old idea of the U.S. acquiring Greenland from Denmark.
“I’m not happy with NATO because of what they did with Greenland, and I’m not happy with NATO because of the fact that they didn’t want to help us with … Iran,” he said, also threatening to cut off trade with Spain over its low defense spending.
But allies weren’t moved. Leader after leader — including staunch Washington allies like Latvia — closed ranks behind Denmark.
“Greenland is an indispensable part of Denmark,” Latvian President Edgars Rinkēvičs said. “The lines in the sand are clear: Greenland belongs to the people of Greenland,” said Icelandic premier Kristrún Frostadóttir.
Belgian Prime Minister Bart de Wever also took a swipe at the U.S. war in Iran. While the campaign is “justified” to bar Tehran from obtaining nuclear bombs, he told reporters, “if the operation was planned and well-executed, that’s another matter — it doesn’t seem to go very smoothly.”
Behind closed doors, Trump struck a more measured tone with his fellow leaders, according to two people in the room. He praised Poland, Germany and the Baltics for hiking their defense spending. Although he complained again about some countries spending too little, he did not mention Spain and kept silent on Greenland.
Trump put his own spin on the dynamics. “If you could have seen the respect and the love in the room, and it’s love really for the country, for our country,” he said after the summit. “But they do, they like the job I’m doing. They said, ‘We love, sir, we love you.’ These are grown people saying that, isn’t that nice?”
But the key to the change in tone from the rest of the alliance was less a desire to please Trump and more a rising self-confidence in their own capabilities.
Europe stands up
While insisting on the importance of a transatlantic bond at the leaders’ meeting, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that higher defense spending was in Europe’s own interest, one of the people cited above said.
“Trump’s speeches … have made us understand that it would be good to also be able to count on ourselves,” said Luxembourg’s Bettel. “We want to give ourselves the means, but if this is just about posturing and bootlicking — no, that’s not why I’m here.”
Ed Arnold, a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute and a former NATO official, said higher allied spending gives the U.S. less leverage.
Last year, Europe and Canada hiked their expenditure by 20 percent, and are set to increase it by another 11 percent in 2026, according to provisional NATO data published Tuesday. In total, that means the 31 allies now account for 43 percent of the alliance’s total defense spending.
While Europeans “don’t want the U.S. to pull out [of NATO] immediately,” said Arnold, “there is a bit of a shift” compared with last year, when allies were far more careful not to antagonize Trump as he criticized them over low defense spending.
Allies are also more skeptical of Trump’s threats after repeated reversals on troop withdrawals and no follow-through on Greenland, Arnold said.
“No one was surprised” by the latest Trump criticism of the alliance, a second NATO diplomat agreed. “We still need to take it seriously — but people tend to take it less seriously,” they said. It’s becoming “the boy who cried wolf.”
As a result of the spending hikes, Belgian Defense Minister Theo Francken told POLITICO that Europe would be able to take charge of its own conventional defense in “five to ten years.”
He spelled out the change in attitude after the summit.
“Whereas at the previous NATO summit there was still fear of Trump’s wrath, this year there was far less of that to be seen. European armed forces are rapidly and powerfully strengthening themselves,” he posted on social media. “We’re no longer doing this to appease Trump, but from a regained European self-respect. This continent is our home.”
