With all the Hollywood drama and heart-pounding music of a Mission: Impossible trailer, NATO screened a short promotional film at its Ankara summit to showcase the military hardware it plans to buy to hit Donald Trump\u2019s defense spending target. One of the aircraft featured in the mini-movie was even an A400M \u2013 the heavy-lift plane that Tom Cruise clung to the side of in the fifth installment of his action film franchise.<\/p>\n
When the lights came back up, NATO\u2019s Secretary General, Mark Rutte, shook hands, slapped backs and made clear that NATO had not only chosen to accept Trump\u2019s mission to boost spending, it was now delivering. He went on to say \u201cPresident Trump [is] basically achieving what, since Eisenhower, American presidents tried to achieve, which is to equalize defense spending between the US and Europe.\u201d <\/p>\n
Going further the next day, Rutte wrote in the Washington Post<\/a> that NATO members had come up with \u201cconcrete and credible plans\u201d of how to invest 5 percent of GDP in defense and security, as Trump has demanded they must. He wrote that \u201cEuropean defense orders are already sustaining 195,000 American jobs \u2013 $54 billion in 2025, with $300 billion more in the pipeline. And in Ankara we\u2019ll take this further.\u201d<\/p>\n The message he wants Trump to hear loud and clear is that NATO, the recalcitrant child, has listened to \u201cDaddy,\u201d the term Rutte used to refer to Trump last year and, grateful and chastened, mended its miserly ways and is buying American.<\/p>\n But what Rutte, a walking charm offensive, failed to mention is that NATO is actually reducing its US defense spending and instead investing in the European defense establishment. Contradicting Rutte\u2019s numbers, the EU Institute for Security Studies found that European countries in fact accounted for $38.6 billion in US Foreign Military Sales in 2025, a sharp decline from 2024 when Europe spent $76.7 billion. <\/p>\n As much was clear in the action-packed promotional video Rutte screened. It showcased how NATO itself would buy ten SAAB airborne early warning jets to replace its aging fleet of Boeing E-3 Sentries \u2013 replacing American planes with European aircraft. And it would purchase a fleet of Airbus A400Ms and take delivery of its tenth Airbus A330. Airbus is a European firm with stakes owned by European governments. Rutte did add that NATO would also purchase five surveillance and reconnaissance Triton drones from US defense contractor Northrop Grumman.<\/p>\n Trump has also breathed new life into the European defense industry at a cost to America\u2019s own<\/p>\n This is not at all what Trump had in mind when he began demanding in his first term that NATO increase defense spending. He expected that as well as reducing the burden on America for the protection of Europe and beyond, the US would experience a defense industry jobs boom funded by euros and pounds. The Trump administration explicitly told NATO allies to buy American weapons and military equipment in order to maintain the alliance, according to European officials. <\/p>\n But it was fanciful of Trump to believe that after denigrating NATO, pulling US troops from European bases, demanding that Greenland becomes part of the US and cozying up to Putin that member countries would come running towards the US with open checkbooks. NATO has come to view the US as an unreliable ally, just as Trump views the alliance.<\/p>\n