Author: Patryk Litwiński

Between The Hague and Ankara: from defining objectives to the dilemmas of implementation

The forthcoming summit of NATO heads of member states in Ankara is meant to mark a clear turning point, shifting the Alliance’s centre of gravity from the phase of political declarations adopted in The Hague to the stage of their implementation. Last year’s summit served as a catalyst for establishing new spending floors intended to preserve the intra-Alliance status quo at the outset of Donald Trump’s second term. In Mark Rutte’s view, the summit in Turkey is to set in motion a defence-industrial revolution and decisively break down the production barriers that have persisted in Europe [1]. For the Secretary General himself, it is at the same time an opportunity to prove to European allies that he is capable of undertaking the effort needed both to keep the United States within the Alliance’s structures and to advance the process of building its more European incarnation [2]. The mood, moreover, has shifted markedly compared with a year ago: European members today are less apprehensive about assuming responsibility for their own defence — and more preoccupied with the far harder challenge of altering the very DNA of the Alliance, moving from a US-dominated structure to a community with stronger European leadership [2].

The principal instrument of that translation is to be the defence industry, and the structure of the summit has been subordinated to this end. Its first day is to be devoted to a defence-industry forum, during which the formalisation of contracts worth tens of billions of dollars has been announced [1]. The diagnosis underlying this agenda is clear: transatlantic economic power must be consolidated and translated into real combat capability, which requires breaking down fragmented national markets, curbing bureaucracy, and keeping innovation at the centre of attention. The source of the problem does not lie in financial outlays as such, given that in 2025 NATO’s European members and Canada increased their combined defence budgets by 20% in real terms, reaching a total of 574 billion dollars — the largest single-year increase in the Alliance’s history — while for the first time since 2014 all 32 member states are allocating at least 2% of GDP to this purpose [3]. What remains a challenge is the capacity to convert expenditure into combat power.

The logic of this undertaking fits within the emerging concept of NATO 3.0 — an American vision of an Alliance model with a stronger European component, in which the states of the Old Continent assume the primary responsibility for conventional defence while remaining under the American nuclear umbrella. Behind this formula lies a qualitative shift in Washington’s strategic thinking: the administration is moving away from the previous logic of “burden-sharing” towards its full “burden-shifting” [2]. Although this process responds to a genuine need for the Europeanisation of defence structures, the fundamental difficulty lies in the question of agency and authorship of that vision.

Europe is not so much consciously following American leadership as it lacks a strategic culture of its own — that is, a shared level of agreement as to the nature and sources of threats, the mechanisms required to meet them, and the acceptable costs in political and conventional risk that its members are prepared to bear in pursuit of independently defined strategic objectives. At present, the absence of such a culture compels Europe to act in a largely reactive manner in response to impulses emanating from the United States. As a result, it is the United States that unilaterally sets the direction of the Alliance’s transformation, because Europe is unable to work it out on its own on the basis of an autonomous definition of its own interests.

From this asymmetry grows the fundamental paradox that organises contemporary transatlantic relations, resting on structurally divergent motivations on either side of the Atlantic. For the Americans, what is decisive is that Europe remain committed to the Alliance’s transformation — that it demonstrate operational agency, industrial capacity, and delivery on the spending floors it has undertaken, which would permit the reallocation of Pentagon resources to the Indo-Pacific theatre. For the European side, by contrast, the salient expectation is precisely the opposite: that the United States remain committed to the Alliance as a whole, regardless of its new incarnation — which now appears to be the very condition for sustaining US engagement in NATO’s structures.

The Ankara summit will deliver contracts, memoranda, and letters of intent, yet it will not clarify what Europe lacks most acutely — its own answer to the question of the long-term direction of the transformation being undertaken. At the root of the contemporary crisis of identity lies not a shortage of financial means but the absence of a common European strategic culture, which Ankara may render especially visible, demonstrating that material rearmament is outpacing the capacity to define directions for joint action. It is telling, moreover, that this pressure descended on Europe suddenly. The impulse for the entire transformation came only with Donald Trump’s return to power a year ago — and it was his successive moves, rather than a gradual evolution spread over a decade, that forced the present acceleration. Europe has thus been confronted with the task of defining its own strategic responsibility, whereas the shaping of a mature strategic culture takes years. The deficit that Ankara will lay bare is therefore as much a deficit of agreement as a deficit of time.

The limits of transatlantic trust

The image of an Alliance smoothly overcoming industrial fragmentation and mobilising resources for common defence loses its sharpness when set against a series of crises that, in the months preceding the summit, exposed a structural divergence of interests and perceptions on either side of the Atlantic. These tensions are not merely the backdrop to the deliberations in Ankara but define their proper context, striking directly at the bond that the summit’s transactional formula is incapable of generating — a shared understanding of which threats Europe is defending against, and alongside which partners. Trust in transatlantic relations is, moreover, undergoing visible erosion, corresponding to the evolution of American strategic thought towards a doctrine of engagement without entanglement. Among its priorities towards Europe, the latest US National Security Strategy lists an end to viewing NATO as a perpetually enlarging alliance — thus constituting a formal signal of the limitation, not the broadening, of American commitments [4].

The first and most symbolically far-reaching manifestation of this divergence was the dispute over Greenland, where Donald Trump’s threats regarding a possible takeover of the autonomous territory of the Danish crown — contemplated across a spectrum of options ranging from economic pressure to the use of force — placed the Alliance in an unprecedented situation. These threats provoked shock in Europe; Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen warned that an American strike on Danish territory would mean the effective end of NATO and of the postwar security order [5]. A profound paradox ordering the contemporary security architecture thereby came to light: whereas France and the United Kingdom, within the framework of the Coalition of the Willing, had declared their readiness to guarantee a future peace settlement with respect to Ukraine as an external state, in the case of a direct threat to the territorial integrity of a NATO member, hesitation prevailed — leaving the community unprepared for a scenario in which the source of instability becomes its own leader. It is telling that the dispatch by several European states of contingents to Greenland as part of joint exercises was read by Donald Trump as a provocation, to which he responded with the threat of tariffs [6]. Alliance solidarity within NATO thus became grounds for economic retaliation on the part of its largest contributor.

Still more starkly, the limits of transatlantic trust were exposed by the war in Iran, where American-Israeli military operations and the call for allies to participate in securing shipping through the Strait of Hormuz elicited in Europe a reaction founded on public distancing coupled with simultaneous operational acquiescence [7]. When Iran blockaded the strait — crucial to the world’s oil trade — Washington demanded that it be the European states that finance and organise the mission to patrol it [7]. Although the overwhelming majority of European allies ultimately made their infrastructure available to the Americans, and the Alliance’s official position held that Iran must not come into possession of nuclear weapons, a handful of capitals — with Spain foremost among them — firmly refused consent for the use of their bases for strikes [8]. The split between political refusal and technical permission vividly illustrates the transatlantic tensions: solidarity here amounts to operational dependence, devoid of any influence over objectives and procedures. Unconsulted by Washington as to the aims of the operation, Europe bore the economic consequences of the destabilisation of energy routes. In strategic terms, this erosion of mutual consultation among allies works to the benefit of Russia, China, and Iran — for the West’s rivals receive a clear signal of the absence of Western unity in the military sphere.

The situation is further complicated by uncertainty as to the continued conventional presence of US forces on the continent, which reveals with full sharpness Europe’s structural dependence on decisions taken in Washington. War Secretary Pete Hegseth has already announced not only a six-month review of the American contingent but has warned outright that, should the European states fail to reach the designated spending thresholds, the United States will begin to reduce its share of NATO’s common budget proportionately [9]. Set alongside the withdrawal of some five thousand troops from Germany and the suspension of the planned rotation of an armoured brigade to Poland, these measures amount to the deepest revision of the American posture on the continent since the Cold War — introduced at a moment when Russia continues its war against Ukraine, opposing by force of arms the Western order built under United States leadership. The linking of these decisions to the level of European support for Middle Eastern operations demonstrates that the disposition of US forces has ceased to be insulated from current political friction, forcing European planners into the reactive patching of holes in their defence plans.

The common denominator of these crises is not the unpredictability of Washington as such, but the fundamental fact that none of them elicited a single, coherent response on the European side. At the root of these fractures lies the absence of a common European doctrine that would define the vectors of threat, the structure of defence partnerships, and the desired means of response. The transatlantic tensions reveal that Europe — which for decades made its security dependent on its relationship with Washington — has, in the face of the destabilisation of that relationship, failed to develop a strategic framework of its own on which it might base autonomous objectives and respond in a united fashion.

Pluralism or paralysis — rearmament without doctrine

Reducing the transatlantic crises solely to the unpredictability of Washington masks Europe’s deeper internal problem. The Old Continent’s true difficulty stems from the unreconciled essence of strategic responsibility. This is most clearly visible along three axes: nuclear deterrence, the institutional architecture of collective defence, and the very perception of threat. While the development of a European defence industry is for the continent a necessity aimed at strengthening its independence from the United States, in the absence of a clear vision of the direction of the Alliance’s Europeanisation, the material acceleration in the sphere of production is outpacing agreement on the very objectives that this production is meant to serve. Europe possesses multiple strategic cultures and is unable to manage them under the pressure brought by Donald Trump’s return to power last year.

The most sensitive illustration of this thesis is Europe’s lack of an unequivocal position on the nuclear umbrella. The US administration consistently draws a dividing line between its conventional posture and nuclear deterrence: whereas it expects Europeans to assume primary responsibility for the former, it declares that it will maintain the latter. The American conventional presence in Europe has never served direct defence alone — it constituted the foundation of the credibility of extended deterrence, coupling the security interests of both shores of the Atlantic. It performed the function of a “tripwire” that rendered American engagement credible, up to and including the ultimate use of nuclear weapons. The withdrawal of the conventional presence from Europe weakens that credibility, and thereby the entire Alliance.

Europe is attempting to fill this competence gap, yet in doing so it exposes a profound stratification of security perceptions and a pluralism of contradictory doctrines that Europe is unable to harmonise. The most far-reaching proposal remains the French concept of forward deterrence (dissuasion avancée), announced by President Macron in March 2026 [9]. It envisages the inclusion of other European states in the exercises of French nuclear forces, as well as the possibility of temporarily deploying French strategic aviation on the territories of allies, for example in Poland or Germany [10]. Although it operationalises the European dimension of France’s vital interests, Paris categorically rejects any sharing of the decision to use nuclear weapons, as well as the incorporation of its own arsenal into the structures of NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group. The United Kingdom is positioned differently: its arsenal remains formally assigned to the Alliance, and London is maintaining the ceiling of 260 warheads raised in 2021 [11]. Yet by keeping their arsenals at the minimum level sufficient for credible deterrence, Paris and London will not replace the American umbrella.

Around this axis a broader divergence of strategic cultures comes to light, one that extends beyond any geographical dispute or division into rigid regional formats. The continent is grappling with a multiplicity of overlapping interpretations of defensive sovereignty. As a result, contradictory conceptions of a response to the crisis are proliferating — from pressure to expand NATO’s Nuclear Sharing programme to initiatives undertaken independently by individual states. In Poland, President Karol Nawrocki became the first official of such senior rank to openly support the commencement of preparatory work on a national nuclear programme, pointing to the threat posed by Russia, while Lithuania is in talks with Washington regarding the possible deployment of American nuclear weapons on its territory [12][13].

The second axis of internal challenges is institutional in character and concerns the question of whether the EU’s mutual defence clause can replace NATO’s Article 5. Textually, the clause is sometimes regarded as stronger — it speaks of an obligation of aid and assistance by all the means in the members’ power towards a state that is the victim of armed aggression, whereas Article 5 refers to an armed attack and a higher threshold. The particular difference, however, lies in the systems built around the two clauses, as was mercilessly exposed by the tabletop simulations conducted in early May 2026 with the participation of EU ambassadors [14]. These revealed fundamental operational shortcomings in the Union’s management of a military crisis. Unlike NATO, the Union possesses neither an integrated command architecture nor the common capability planning necessary to conduct large-scale operations [15]. Moreover, the clause rests on intergovernmental and bilateral assistance rather than an integrated one: when France, uniquely in history, activated it in 2015 following the Paris attacks, it had to negotiate support bilaterally with individual capitals, without any response at the level of the Union as a whole [16]. Furthermore, the unanimity principle and the propensity for excessive consultation, coupled with the absence of predefined action protocols, threaten decision-making paralysis in the face of a sudden attack [15]. Thus, in its current form, the EU clause is incapable of acting as a substitute for Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty.

It is also telling that the very understanding of what Article 42.7 is supposed to be divides Europeans. For some — for instance, French President Emmanuel Macron — it is a commitment stronger than NATO’s; for others, an instrument for action below Article 5, suited to responding to hybrid and grey-zone threats where NATO remains constrained; for still others, an element giving rise to the concern that foregrounding it would accelerate the American withdrawal [15]. This divergence of interpretation is a further testament to the fact that Europeans have agreed neither on what obligations they expect of one another, nor on which institutional framework should bear political responsibility.

The third axis touches the most deeply rooted layer of the problem — the perception of threat. The states of the eastern flank, such as Poland and the Baltic countries, perceive Russia as a direct, existential threat and focus on territorial defence and on preventing physical aggression and occupation, whereas the capitals of Western Europe fear to a far greater degree an uncontrolled escalation that might draw them into a catastrophic nuclear conflict [17][18]. This difference is, moreover, not neutral: Russia deliberately seeks to deepen it, treating the divergence of European fears as a tool for shattering the Alliance’s cohesion. It is precisely this rift — between the eastern fear of occupation and the western fear of escalation — that makes a common response so difficult to forge.

Europe today possesses growing resources, ever bolder initiatives, and a genuine readiness to bear costs; what it lacks is a shared understanding of what it is defending against, by what means, and under whose leadership. The absence of a common European strategic culture remains the true stake of the moment in which Europe, for the first time in decades, must consider what its own way of conducting defence amounts to under conditions of waning American leadership.

What Ankara will not resolve

There remains the question of the direction Europe will take after a summit that will yield contracts but resolve none of the fundamental disputes. The mood within the Alliance has visibly matured relative to last year’s Hague: the hope that the mere announcement of record spending would suffice to reassure Washington for good has dissipated. The whole of transatlantic relations is entering a phase of lasting recalibration.

The Europeanisation of NATO today proceeds above all in the material and operational dimension: budgets are rising, joint procurement programmes are being launched, Europeans are assuming successive posts within the Alliance’s command structures [19]. Yet the capacity for political leadership is failing to keep pace with this progress. Shouldering greater responsibility requires that allies converge in their assessment of what credible deterrence is, where the threshold of acceptable escalation lies, and what circumstances legitimise the use of force [19]. Until such convergence emerges, every new military initiative serves not so much to unify the continent as to entrench its fragmentation. At the same time, allies must bear in mind that money spent on defence capabilities does not automatically translate into a capacity for joint action [18]. Although a consensus on the need for territorial defence and real military potential has revived among European states, agreement is still lacking on the hardest question of all — when and how that potential is to be set in motion. Rearmament acquires political weight only at the moment when those who possess the arms are able to agree on the conditions of their use; without this, it remains an arsenal without a common doctrine. As American guarantees weaken, Europe faces a threat to which it has few answers and still fewer real means, drifting towards an uncertain space between ordered stability and chaos [18].

The Ankara summit will meet American demands and prove that Europe knows how to forge economic power into conventional capabilities. It will not, however, answer the question of where that transformation is heading, by what operational methods defence is to be conducted under conditions of deep division, and under whose leadership ultimately. The material Europeanisation of defence continues to outpace the Europeanisation of strategic thinking. The Alliance, once bound together by a community of values, functions today to the rhythm of incessant friction, cold calculation, and profound transactionalism — a challenge incomparably graver than the list of contracts that will be signed in Ankara. If the transformation under the banner of NATO 3.0 does not heal these relations but instead confines itself within the bounds of conventional force and industrial posture, the Alliance’s new incarnation may prove to be its last.

[1] NATO News, “NATO Secretary General at Atlantic Council Front Page Conversation, Washington, DC 🇺🇸, 25 JUN 2026,” YouTube video, 1:02:12, June 25, 2026, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLif3Rua_i0.

[2] Sophia Besch et al., “Ahead of the Ankara Summit, NATO’s Mood Has Changed,” Emissary (blog), Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, July 1, 2026, https://carnegieendowment.org/emissary/2026/07/nato-summit-ankara-united-states-europe-turkey-ukraine-alliance.

[3] Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer, “Trans-Atlanticism Isn’t Dead—It’s Being Renegotiated,” German Marshall Fund of the United States, July 1, 2026, https://www.gmfus.org/news/trans-atlanticism-isnt-dead-its-being-renegotiated

[4] The White House, National Security Strategy of the United States of America, Washington, DC, The White House, November 2025, https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf

[5] Miranda Bryant, Trump Must Give Up ‘Fantasies’ about Annexation, Says Greenland PM,” The Guardian, January 5 2026, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/05/trump-must-give-up-fantasies-about-annexation-says-greenland-pm.

[6] Alejandra Jaramillo, Nic Robertson, Sophie Tanno and Michael Rios, „Trump Threatens New Tariffs on European Allies over Greenland until Deal Reached, as Thousands Protest,” CNN, January2026, https://edition.cnn.com/2026/01/17/europe/protesters-denmark-greenland-trump-intl

[7]  Marcin Zaborowski, “Transatlantic Split Over Iran: The Alliance Under Strain,” GLOBSEC, March 25, 2026, https://www.globsec.org/commentaries/transatlantic-split-over-iran-nato-under-strain.

[8] James M. Lindsay, “Why Allies Aren’t Following on Iran,” featuring Kristi Govella and Constanze Stelzenmüller, March 24, 2026, in The President’s Inbox, podcast, audio, 33:48, Council on Foreign Relations, https://www.cfr.org/podcasts/presidents-inbox/why-allies-arent-following-on-iran.

[9] “Hegseth Announces Review of U.S. Forces in Europe, Threatens NATO Cuts,” The Wall Street Journal, June 19, 2026, https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/hegseth-announces-review-of-u-s-forces-in-europe-threatens-nato-cuts-d455bee3

[10] Darya Dolzikova and Héloïse Fayet, “Macron Offers a Promising Vision for Nuclear Deterrence in Europe,” Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), March 11, 2026, https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/macron-offers-promising-vision-nuclear-deterrence-europe.

[11] Munich Security Conference, Mind the Deterrence Gap: Nuclear Safety in the 21st Century, MSC Munich Security Report Special Edition, 2026, https://securityconference.org/en/publications/special-editions/mind-the-deterrence-gap/

[12] Jakub Bornio, “Poland Considers Developing Nuclear Program,” Eurasia Daily Monitor 23, no. 43, Jamestown Foundation, March 5, 2026, https://jamestown.org/poland-considers-developing-nuclear-program/.

[13] “Lithuania Signals Interest in American Nukes,” Politico Europe, June 3, 2026, https://www.politico.eu/article/lithuania-signals-interest-in-american-nukes/.

[14] Charles Cohen, “EU Test Its Mutual Assistance Clause in First Administrative Drill Since 2022,” Euractiv, May 5, 2026, https://www.euractiv.com/news/eu-test-its-mutual-defence-clause-in-first-administrative-drill-since-2022/

[15] James Batchik and Katherine Johnson, “Can the EU’s Mutual-Defense Clause Replace NATO’s Article 5?,” Issue Brief, Atlantic Council, May 29, 2026, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/issue-brief/can-the-eus-mutual-defense-clause-replace-natos-article-5/

[16] Daniela Melissa Escarria Parra, “Article 42.7: Are EU States Compelled to Collective Defense?,” Deutsche Welle, February 8, 2026, https://www.dw.com/en/article-427-are-eu-states-compelled-to-collective-defense/a-75848009

[17] Rafael Loss and Katrine Westgaard, “The Bear with the Bomb: Russian Nuclear Coercion and the Future of European Deterrence,” Policy Brief, European Council on Foreign Relations, June 17, 2026, https://ecfr.eu/publication/the-bear-with-the-bomb-russian-nuclear-coercion-and-the-future-of-european-deterrence/

[18] Niklas Helwig et al., Strategic Culture(s) in Europe: Taking Advantage of Diversity in Security and Defence, FIIA Report 438, Finnish Institute of International Affairs, June 2026, https://www.fiia.fi/en/publication/strategic-cultures-in-europe

[19] Alexander Graef, “A More European NATO, but Who Leads?,” European Leadership Network, June 22, 2026, https://europeanleadershipnetwork.org/commentary/a-more-european-nato-but-who-leads/.