{"id":138967,"date":"2026-07-03T20:56:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T20:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/138967\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T20:56:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T20:56:10","slug":"nato-ankara-summit-to-test-if-eu-can-rearm-fast-enough-as-us-demands-more-burden-shifting-euobserver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/138967\/","title":{"rendered":"Nato Ankara summit to test if EU can rearm fast enough as US demands more \u2018burden\u2011shifting\u2019 \u2013 EUobserver"},"content":{"rendered":"

This time last year US president Donald Trump harangued the EU\u2019s Nato members into promising a dramatic increase in defence-related spending.<\/p>\n

But EU leaders hoping that this might have bought them Trump\u2019s approval or, at least, a period of predictability, have been disappointed. <\/p>\n

Having threatened to quit Nato because of European freeriding on the back of US defence spending, and then threatened fellow Nato member Denmark over its refusal to cede Greenland<\/a>, Trump is now furious about the lack of support for his war against Iran.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were not there for us!!!\u201d Trump wrote on his Truth Social account ahead of next week\u2019s Nato summit in Ankara<\/a> (7 and 8 July).<\/p>\n

He added that Washington\u2019s relationship with the alliance \u201cis not reciprocal\u201d, and that it was ridiculous\u201d for the US to continue its \u201cone-sided\u201d relationship with Nato.<\/p>\n

Nato allies will be anxious that developments in the Middle East do not derail its agenda of higher industrial production coupled with bigger defence budgets.<\/p>\n

In The Hague last June, Nato chiefs agreed to raise core defence spending to 3.5 percent of GDP by 2035, in addition to allocating an extra 1.5 percent for security and defence-related investments, including cybersecurity and defence infrastructure.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

However, the Trump administration appears determined to significantly scale back its military presence in Europe, with US defence secretary Pete Hegseth last week announcing a six-month review. <\/p>\n

Burden-shifting, not burden-sharing<\/p>\n

Officials say that \u2018burden-shifting\u2019 rather than simply \u2018burden-sharing\u2019 will be one of the main themes in Ankara as the EU and others face pressure to ramp up their own production of defence and security equipment.<\/p>\n

The EU, for its part, is trying to quickly and radically increase defence production and procurement across the bloc via its \u20ac800bn SAFE programme <\/a>in a bid to reduce its reliance on US military kit.<\/p>\n

Industrial production is likely to be the main priority for Nato secretary general Mark Rutte who has briefed that a series of lucrative arms deals will be signed on the sidelines of the summit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This time last year US president Donald Trump harangued the EU\u2019s Nato members into promising a dramatic increase…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138968,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[135],"tags":[280,33284,7194,2400,389,33282,2398,7192,33283,2399,7193],"class_list":["post-138967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mark-rutte","tag-typedefinedterm","tag-identifier4044","tag-identifier4385","tag-identifier4391","tag-mark-rutte","tag-nameanalysis","tag-namedefence","tag-namenato","tag-termcodeanalysis","tag-termcodedefence","tag-termcodenato"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116858046686161255","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138967\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}