What topic or issue dominated the discussions at the NATO summit in The Hague?

'Of the many issues screaming for attention at the NATO summit, one dominated the discussion: the issue of ‘burden sharing’, ultimately focused on the commitment of core and indirect defence spending of 5 per cent of GDP by 2035. Such burden-sharing commitments are among the most enduring issues in all NATO summits, but discussing and ultimately broadly agreeing to that 5% standard is quite a huge increase relative to the earlier NATO target (brokered in 2006) of 2 per cent, and well above most current NATO-member defence spending. Most of NATO’s defence ministers and heads of state committed to that target by the end of the summit, though Spain was a noticeable holdout – leaving the extent and implementation of commitments to another day, and requiring ambiguous language about how NATO ‘allies’ have committed to the 5% norm. However one looks at the issues, such a burden-sharing discussion and commitment is a big deal that the NATO context and summit fostered.

Of the big, urgent issues facing NATO, very noticeably not discussed at the summit were NATO’s substantive goals and commitments surrounding the Russia-Ukraine war. Zelensky was present; there were plenty of sidebar discussions on how to address Ukraine’s quite dire situation since the recent Russian offensives; and there was the last-minute hint by Trump about possibly committing more Patriot missiles to assist Ukraine’s defense. But, mainly, the summit was oddly, scarily silent on such issues in public statements: no condemnation of Russia’s continued assaults on Ukraine (not just the attacks but civilian targets); no discussion of how to confront Russia’s broader revanchism vitally threatening broader European security. The story is that such a focus was a no-go area, risking high-profile implosion given Trump’s soft-on-Russia stance.'

Ahead of the summit, President Trump had expressed ambiguity about the U.S. role in NATO. After the summit, how do you assess the current and future U.S. commitment to the alliance?

'The summit indeed took place amidst the mortal threat to NATO from Trump’s and MAGA-world’s security agenda of strategic retreat from any real commitments to NATO-related collective security. Everything at the summit is related to how to navigate that obviously fraught state of affairs. The summit ended with some rehearsing of continued, even stepped-up, commitment to NATO, expressed by all present, including the US delegation. This was steeped in lots of friendly cozying-up to, and plenty of (embarrassing) flattery of, Trump and the US. This patina of NATO solidarity underscores at least a willingness by all present to signal – and perhaps an actual reality of – continued US commitment to the alliance, at least in the short term.

The key is that, in the medium and longer term, nothing has shifted the key source of ambiguity about the US’s role in NATO: the mercurial nature of Trump and the depth of hostility to the liberal internationalism of most EU nation-states and the EU confederation pooling most of them. A cornerstone of Trumpism is that he is less riled up by traditional foreign threats or strategic enemies (including China) than by real or ostensible allies he sees as taking advantage of him and the US. And this is not just Trump talking; it’s important that the broader Make America Great Again (MAGA) Republicanism lines up behind this resentment-politics, and even the more thought-through doyens of Trump’s strategy (e.g., J.D. Vance) have made clear the depth of hatred toward the strategic positioning and orientation of European and EU nation-states. Such positioning is more than theatre: recall the recent Signalgate exchanges among the Trump 2.0 national security leadership, in a setting they thought was safe from external scrutiny, wherein Vance and others showed their real colours of pretty extreme and deep contempt for the US’s nominal European allies.

In such a context, all the unified discussion of NATO friendship and bridge-repairing with Team Trump is hard to read as something that will stand the test of time and future, inevitable tensions among the NATO member states – and with the US in particular. When push comes to shove, I suspect we’ll look back on the summit’s ‘playing nice’ moment, its apparent, modest shoring-up of US commitments to NATO, as mainly being about what the Dutch call zoethoudertjes, and what I would call ‘bubble blowing’.'

Were there any outcomes or developments at the summit that genuinely surprised you, either in tone, content, or alliances?

'It’s hard these days to be surprised, given how crazy NATO geopolitics have become in the Trump era – where we all can expect the unexpected. But there were both ‘good news’ and ‘bad news’ quasi-surprises. On the good side, it was noteworthy how readily Trump responds to flattery and royal treatment. Such treatment was manifested in the behaviour of the NATO summitteers, and of NATO-head Rutte and his embarrassing currying of favour with Trump (beyond the now-infamous ‘Sometimes Daddy’s got to use strong language’ quip). But it was also manifested in the Dutch monarchy’s red-carpet, palace-sleeping, royal treatment – all of which elicited gushing gratitude and recognition by Trump. That’s a good news surprise for me, in the sense of: if that’s all it takes to secure US NATO commitments, then this is an easy way to consolidate the NATO partnership. Time will tell (and as I said above, I’m skeptical). In any event, the bad news side of surprises were the extraordinary silences about Russia and Ukraine, while Kyiv burns, and about other world conflicts, while the bombs in Iran (not to mention Gaza) were still falling.'

Do you believe the agreements and pledges made during the summit are realistic? Can and will they be implemented in practice?

'This is a very important question, and not just because of NATO. Indeed, the commitment to 5% spending on defence by 2035 is not just or mainly about NATO standards and developments, but mainly – or at least also – about the geostrategic autonomy of European nation-states and the European bloc generally. Spending more on defence is less about doing what Trump wants and what NATO leaders have long lobbied for, and more about shoring up Europe’s own autonomous defence in the face of very real Russian revanchist aggression and very likely US strategic abandonment. So it really matters whether this 5% build-up can be made a reality and be meaningful.

In that light, whether the 5% commitments get pursued depends more on Europe’s broader ability to figure out how to ‘smell the coffee’ and pursue its strategic autonomy better – in some mix of arrangements involving NATO governance but also (perhaps more) nation-state governance, and EU governance in the pursuit of national security. This depends on lots of complicated politics that are hard to predict. For instance, it depends on getting Europe’s political leaders and their citizens behind the difficult and costly trade-offs that a 5% defence commitment inevitably entails. And I fear that any development in Trump’s demeanor or US-European relations that allows Europeans to breathe easier about US abandonment – and any development that makes Europeans less awake to the threats of Russian revanchism – is a potential risk. They foster false hope and free-riding, where the very surface ‘successes’ of this NATO summit can sow the seeds of inaction.'

How would you evaluate NATO’s unity coming out of this summit? Has the alliance shown greater cohesion or lingering divisions?

'Such cohesion or (lingering) divisions are hard to judge, and again I believe that the jury is out. To my mind, whether we see movement towards more or less European and transatlantic cohesion, more or less divisions on Western security generally, involves several lines of cohesion and division. First, there’s the issue of US versus European relations, about which I’ve already expressed my worry and sense that the MAGA-led US strategic turn dooms US-European security community (and hence NATO). Second, there’s also the issue of how NATO developments relate to the pursuit of strategic autonomy by European nation-states in the context of developing stronger, more cohesive and meaningful European Union defence arrangements. Third, there’s the issue of intra-EU discussions about burden sharing and pooling of sovereignty, where we’ve seen EU and NATO discussions revealing disunity (e.g. Spanish reluctance to accept German and French pushes for more defence investment) tied to broader issues of pooling of sovereignty and EU fiscal policymaking. Fourth and finally, there’s the issue of intra-national, domestic division about defence spending and security postures amidst other commitments (such as to preserving the welfare state) and differing views of how menacing Russia really is.

How cohesion and disunity play out depends on all four of these linked realms. For now, I’ll comment only on the last, least well-understood issue of division – how and whether national polities can be expected to unite enough to support such major fiscal shifts that the 5% commitment entails. We already are seeing lurking divisions emerging in all European national polities, basically between those parties, groupings, leaders emphasizing the dire necessity to pursue strategic defence autonomy that may necessitate paring down some social welfare programmes, and those emphasizing the need to pursue autonomy without touching such social welfare prerogatives. When security commitments are rhetorical and the sacrifices can be kicked down the road, this division is not very salient or debilitating. But it’s only a matter of time before the division explodes, and I fear shall constitute a particularly ugly new chapter of populist politics: where mainstream parties seek strategic autonomy and accept some fiscal sacrifices, while the populist parties confess or pretend that they don’t really see Russia as a threat after all (witness the bandwagoning with Russia in Orban’s Hungary), and that they insist on protecting welfare state social protections for their vulnerable citizens.

Whether such division can get resolved is hard to predict. It may depend on the broader successes of radical populist politics. But I believe it will depend importantly on whether European politics find a way to pursue strategic autonomy without dismantling the European accomplishments with respect to social protection (and for that matter, with respect to economic openness with democracy). Strategic autonomy isn’t just or even mainly about defense spending as % GDP – and about spending all such defence-spending increases on US defense materiel and simple national fragmented force postures and materiel. Instead, it is also, perhaps mainly, about coordination and development of strategic/security capacities in coordinated ways among European nation-states, likely through European Union governance for such coordination.'