The June 24-25 NATO summit in the The Hague could be the most consequential summit in the Alliance’s 76-year history. Its outcome could also be the most important determinant of President Donald Trump’s national security legacy.
With the requisite leadership on both sides of the Atlantic, The Hague could be the catalyst for a fundamental transformation of today’s U.S.-dominated Atlantic alliance into a balanced partnership in which Europe takes primary responsibility for its own defense.
Such an outcome could provide a soft landing for the Alliance, defying pundits’ predictions of a transatlantic crisis at The Hague.
The path to a transformed Alliance would begin with the adoption at the summit of a five- to seven-year transition plan leading to establishment of a new NATO defense model in which Europe supplies the principal conventional capabilities required for its own defense, ending today’s excessive dependence on the United States.
This would mean Europe providing not only a larger number of ready troops, ships, and fighter aircraft, but also the enablers needed to deter a Russia that will certainly reconstitute its forces as soon as the Ukraine war is over.
The transition end state would still have some American troops forward deployed in Europe to keep NATO’s nuclear deterrence credible and to give the United States forward operating bases for rapid reinforcement and other global contingencies. But it would allow Washington to shift the bulk of its military attention from Europe to the Indo-Pacific to deter an increasingly aggressive China.
This transition plan will take time, which will be needed for European defense industries to produce the high-end enablers – such as air and missile defenses, air-to-air refueling, strategic lift and long-distance targeting information – that are currently contributed primarily by America. NATO planners should sequence the priorities for European production of these enablers.
The transition plan will also take money, which is now coming from European coffers, albeit not yet fast enough. Europe as whole now spends more than 2% of its GDP on defense, with more pledged for the future.
The new EU ReArm Europe Plan contains multiple elements that could raise European defense spending by over €800 billion including: 1) a national fiscal escape clause allowing nations to spend an additional 1.5% of their GDP on defense that could raise €650 billion; 2) a new loan instrument (Security Action for Europe or SAFE) that could raise another €150 billion; and 3) new mechanisms to widen the scope of public and private investment in Europe’s defense industry.
In addition, German defense spending has already nearly doubled in the past decade, and further growth is expected under the new German government.
NATO’s leadership has called for setting a new European defense spending goal of 3.5% of GDP (roughly America’s current level of defense spending), while four vulnerable front-line states will soon be spending 5%, the goal suggested by Trump. Europe is also contributing to burden-sharing by considering a $90 billion aid pledge for Ukraine should President Trump’s peace plan fail, and a plan to deploy European reassurance forces to Ukraine should the plan succeed.
This long-term commitment to rebalance the Alliance could be presented as a victory for Trump diplomacy. By taking Europe’s “yes” for an answer, Trump would have achieved NATO burden-sharing goals that previous statesmen like Mike Mansfield, Sam Nunn, and Robert Gates attempted but failed to deliver. And he could execute his strategic pivot to Asia without endangering European or American security.
Without a bold, forward-looking initiative along these lines, The Hague summit could have a far less happy ending, one fraught with danger for both global security and Trump’s legacy.
Call it the ‘Zelensky Oval Office visit on steroids’ outcome.
Trump could decide that Europe had failed to deliver enough and threaten to withdraw America’s commitment to NATO and Article 5. Tariff wars and political tensions over values could also disrupt the discussion. If the summit collapsed in confusion and recriminations, it could become an existential crisis for the Alliance.
A failed Alliance would present the greatest threat to world peace since 1949 and a strategic debacle for Trump diplomacy. NATO without its American commitment would open Europe to nuclear blackmail and risk a grave Russian miscalculation that could lead to war with NATO.
It would give Russia every reason to continue the Ukraine War. It would encourage China to believe that the United States will not stand behind its defense commitments. It would dissuade Europe from pursuing what is now a significant effort to help the United States to deter China from pursuing aggressive policies in Asia. It would create deep divisions within Europe that the United States in the past has managed to broker. It would cause costly disruption not just in transatlantic defense trade but in all transatlantic trade relationships with America’s most important trading partners. It would encourage global nuclear proliferation as nations seek to compensate for lack of an American nuclear umbrella. And it would rob the United States of forward bases that allow Washington to help protect Israel and secure freedom of navigation.
Alliance leaders have little time to ensure that the summit follows the first path and not the second. It will require Europe to step up to fully manage its defense obligations and to manage Trump. It will also require that American leaders like Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, both of whom have traditionally supported the Alliance, steer Trump in the direction of NATO transformation, not collapse.
The stakes could not be higher.
Hans Binnendijk is a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council and former senior director for defense policy at the U.S. National Security Council, vice president of the National Defense University, and legislative director for the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Alexander Vershbow is a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council, senior advisor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House, and former U.S. ambassador to NATO and Russia, assistant defense secretary, and NATO deputy secretary-general.
