Why Europe should hijack Nato for its own purposes
Call it the five-for-five summit. When Nato leaders meet in The Hague next week, European allies will sign up to a phoney transatlantic bargain in which they pretend they will spend 5% of their economic output on defence and Donald Trump pretends in return that he is committed to Article 5 of the Nato treaty, the mutual defence clause that he has repeatedly undermined.
The Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, is deploying all his considerable political wiles and powers of persuasion to contrive a short, 'no surprises' summit at which fundamental differences over Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, trade, the Middle East and liberal democratic values are deliberately excluded.
With a US president who disregards the interests of his allies and casts doubt on the collective commitments of the alliance, Rutte has plotted a path through the minefield to keep Nato in business and working to support Ukraine despite the looming expiry of US arms supplies to Kyiv.
Diplomats say that instead of the usual comprehensive communique, the summit will issue only a short joint statement, centred on the defence investment pledge to devote 3.5% of GDP to core military expenditure by 2032, with another 1.5% earmarked for defence-related activities such as support for Ukraine, cybersecurity, infrastructure for military mobility and resilience.
While Nordic and Baltic states and Poland may meet the core target, the reality is that countries such as the UK, France, Italy and Spain are unlikely to reach that goal because of fiscal constraints and domestic politics.
While leaders will recall their past declarations, there will be no explicit mention of Nato's pledge that Ukraine and Georgia will one day be members, which Trump opposes. Just last year, the US under Joe Biden signed up to a statement that Ukraine's path to Nato membership was 'irreversible'. Trump has pulled the handbrake.
But at this hypocrites' ball, neither the European allies nor the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is due to make an appearance on the sidelines of the summit, have an interest in a showdown. Preventing a transatlantic train wreck is the best they can hope for.
Nato's first secretary general, Hastings Ismay, described the objectives of the alliance as 'to keep the Americans in, the Russians out and the Germans down'. Keeping the Americans in remains paramount for European security in order to keep the Russians out as Vladimir Putin pursues his war in Ukraine. Nowadays, the allies want the Germans up as major defence spenders. And some would add another aim to the list: keeping the Chinese down.
Hopes that Trump might sign up to tougher sanctions against Russia or renew US military assistance to Ukraine have faded. European arms and ammunition supplies are providing enough to keep Ukraine in the fight for now, but with stocks exhausted it will require a massive surge in European defence industrial production to keep sufficient supplies flowing to Kyiv.
Rutte's choreography is aimed at avoiding the kind of near disaster that marked the Nato summit in 2018, when Trump berated the then German chancellor Angela Merkel over Berlin's paltry military budget and dependency on Russian gas, and told the allies that if they did not spend more on defence, the US would 'go our own way'.
European leaders are seeking an understanding with Trump that, while they beef up their militaries and increase force deployments on the eastern flank, the US will not suddenly withdraw crucial capabilities until Europe is ready to take responsibility. That includes air and missile defences and enablers such as satellite intelligence, command and control systems, strategic airlift and air-to-air refuelling. This burden-shifting requires a managed transition over five to 10 years rather than sudden unilateral announcements from the Pentagon or the White House on Truth Social.
They also hope to convince Trump to call off his tariff war against Europe and Canada if he wants them to find extra resources for defence.
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Whether the Europeans can obtain that much in The Hague is far from certain. Trump is notoriously unpredictable and prone to unscripted outbursts when the cameras are rolling. Rutte will massage his ego and give him credit for jolting the Europeans into huge increases in defence spending. Trump has already allayed one of the allies' fears by nominating a new supreme allied commander Europe, after US media reports that the Pentagon was considering giving up the Nato command it has held ever since its creation in 1951.
But European leaders must realise that they are living on borrowed time, with the US security focus inexorably shifting towards countering China. They need to hijack Nato for their own purposes.
Diplomats call this building the European pillar of Nato. In practice it means European governments making maximum use of Nato's chain of command and decades of experience in collective defence planning and multinational force integration to prepare for the day when they may need to act without the US.
That day could come soon if there were a ceasefire in Ukraine and a European-led coalition of the willing were to provide security guarantees for Kyiv, either by deploying forces in-country or helping secure its air and sea space from Nato territory. But until the Europeans are ready to grab the Nato steering wheel, the best option is to extend and pretend.
Paul Taylor is a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre
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