Washington, July 6 (IANS) US President Donald Trump will use this week’s North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) Summit in Ankara to press alliance members to accelerate defence spending and move faster towards the agreed target of spending five per cent of their GDP on defence, according to senior White House officials.
Trump will depart Washington on Monday (July 6) evening and arrive in Ankara on Tuesday (July 7) afternoon, where he will be welcomed by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan before holding bilateral talks.
On Wednesday (July 8), he will attend the NATO leaders’ social dinner, participate in the alliance’s working session and meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa. Trump will then hold a press conference before returning to Washington later that day.
Speaking during a White House preview call on Sunday, US Ambassador to NATO Matthew G. Whitaker said the Ankara summit would measure allies’ progress towards the defence spending commitments made at last year’s Hague summit.
“President Trump expects all allies to step up immediately, and not only get on a sustainable path to the 5 per cent but get to 5 per cent as soon as possible in a very dangerous world that needs capable allies,” Whitaker said.
Whitaker said allies had since committed nearly 139 billion US dollars in additional defence spending, with “roughly half of that being on American-made equipment and weapons and munitions.”
“That’s a good start, but some allies are doing more than others,” he said, adding that Poland, the Nordic countries and the Baltic states were leading the effort, while Germany was on track to reach the target by 2029. He said all allies should demonstrate “meaningful upward trajectories” in defence spending to ensure fairer burden sharing across the alliance.
The ambassador said increasing defence production on both sides of the Atlantic was critical to meeting NATO’s new spending goals. He said allies needed to invest not only in traditional military capabilities but also in innovative technologies.
“Our goal continues to be shifting the burden of the conventional defence of Europe to our European allies in Canada,” Whitaker said. “The United States remains a proud NATO member,” but “we have responsibilities elsewhere in the world, as the world’s only superpower.” He added that Washington needed allies that were capable, interoperable and able to strengthen the alliance’s collective military power.
White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly said the administration viewed the summit as another step in reshaping NATO.
“Under this President’s leadership, the United States has initiated a fundamental and historic shift in the structure of NATO, moving the alliance from a model of dependency on the United States to one of real burden sharing and self-reliance,” she said. Kelly added that the allies would also discuss procurement frameworks to expand defence capabilities and ways for American companies to accelerate and showcase their products across the alliance.
–IANS
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