The Trump administration is excluding several major allies from a gathering of NATO members next month — after threatening to deploy a “naughty and nice list” against governments that have run afoul of the president’s priorities.
The planned meeting in Poland, which Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby has spearheaded, is essentially a working group focused on NATO’s future, according to six diplomats familiar with the planning. But many of the countries who didn’t receive an invite — such as the United Kingdom, France and the Baltic countries — are big defense spenders and play key roles in the alliance, leaving their diplomats wondering why they’re being frozen out.
They question whether the administration is playing favorites in a way that could further splinter an alliance already struggling with increasing Russian aggression and depleted weapons stockpiles.
“We’re doing everything that is being asked of us,” said an official from an excluded ally nation. “We’re trying to understand what the criteria is and what the purpose of these meetings are. Not much has been passed on to us yet.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment, and the Pentagon declined to comment.
President Donald Trump and his top lieutenants have relentlessly criticized NATO since returning to power, on everything from members’ refusal to back the Iran war to the failure of some countries to spend 5% of their GDP on defense.
“I always considered NATO, where we spend Hundreds of Billions of Dollars per year protecting these same Countries, to be a one way street — We will protect them, but they will do nothing for us, in particular, in a time of need,” Trump railed in a Truth Social post this year. Last month, he snubbed another ally — South Korea — by abruptly scaling back a planned joint military exercise while complaining about Seoul’s refusal to join the war against Iran.
In April, as POLITICO first reported, the White House came up with something akin to a who’s-in-and-who’s-out list while it looked for ways to punish allies who didn’t adhere to Trump’s wishes.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has echoed that vision. He has encouraged “model allies” and warned that those that do not support U.S. interests will suffer consequences.
While details on the new NATO working group are still vague, it follows the threat of rewarding some at the expense of others.
Colby has held two similar meetings with invitees Norway, Sweden, Finland, Poland, Germany and the Netherlands. The countries involved in the meeting — known as the Bergen Group format — insist it’s not meant to rupture the alliance, said a diplomat from one of the invited nations, who like others, was granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Instead, the group intends to come up with ideas it can bring to the full alliance for more stress-testing.
“This can be an engine for transformation,” for the whole alliance, the diplomat said. The person acknowledged that some allies are frustrated by the exclusion, especially since many have hit or surpassed the spending targets demanded by the Trump administration.
The U.S. might add Denmark to the exclusive club next given the agreement reached between the two countries to expand the American military footprint in Greenland, according to another person familiar with the planning.
Colby, who has been the catalyst for the initiative, held a first meeting of its kind in Bergen, Norway, in June and invited the six favored allies. “NATO allies that are rapidly meeting their Hague spending commitments, have the scale to contribute, and are ready to get down to practical business,” he wrote on social media after the meeting.
He noted this month at a conference in Washington that “the idea is to pull the whole alliance along,” adding that it “will be a better and stronger NATO that is more durable” and give Europe more military capacity.
Colby has taken a longtime interest in smaller format talks between NATO nations. He has focused in previous years on reviving Germany as a military power to contain Russia and dedicating American troops to deal with China’s rise.
But even invited allies question why Colby and other defense officials have cherry-picked attendees and left out some of the continent’s largest defense powers, such as Britain.
“If they try splitting NATO into the good ones and the bad ones, it is dangerous for the U.S.,” said another of the six diplomats. “But for Europe, this is existential.”
