Two Marks, Two Visions of NATO's Future

The recent NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, was hailed as a great success. For one thing, European leaders managed to avoid a clash with United States (US) President Donald Trump by courting him and presenting evidence of increased military spending. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, meanwhile, moved closer to lifting US sanctions that could finally allow Turkey to buy F-35 jets.

There was also the joint declaration, a document that has often been a problem during Trump’s tenure. The Ankara declaration was admittedly rather impersonal, but it contained all the appropriate phrases and buzzwords, from the allies’ “firm commitment to mutual defense in accordance with Article 5 of the Washington Treaty” to their commitment to “a 360-degree approach to deterrence and defense.”

The leaders even went home with a nice parting gift. Erdogan gave each of them a loaded revolver engraved with their name, whether a thoughtful gesture or a bureaucratic nightmare, depending on which country a particular leader came from. Even the sudden resumption of airstrikes on Iran during the summit did not disrupt the flow of events.

For now - everything is good.

Significantly, however, NATO leaders ended the declaration by committing to future meetings but did not set a date for next summer’s summit. This reflects a growing view that NATO summits in the Trump era are little more than an opportunity for conflict and presidential outbursts from the American camp, and an obstacle to stable, bureaucratic decision-making.

For all the positive messages and photo ops, the summit also showed that, while significant progress has been made in recent years in terms of burden-sharing, especially when it comes to allocations, other NATO members remain divided on a fundamental question: what do they actually want to achieve with all these new allocations?

The two Marks represent two sides of this disagreement: Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. While at first glance they appear to be divided mainly by rhetorical and stylistic choices, with Carney willing to openly confront Trump while Rutte’s flattery of the US president has become the subject of ridicule, they are in fact presenting fundamentally different views on the future of the transatlantic alliance, which the Wall Street Journal recently described as “opposite poles of a decades-long debate now raging in Europe.”

The first is Rutte. Since taking office as NATO Secretary General, he has become known as “the Trump whisperer,” a man so skilled at flattering the White House chief that he could eliminate the possibility of Trump’s withdrawal from NATO. His main weapon in that fight is military spending, and unlike previous secretaries general, he has a lot to show for it.

Canada and Europe have pledged to spend an additional $1,2 trillion since Rutte took office; Germany alone plans to spend about $125 billion on defense by 2027, while Poland aims to spend five percent of its GDP on defense. European countries are finally getting serious about developing their own specific capabilities, although they still bicker over procurement, budgets, and protecting their own national industries.

But Rutte also made it very clear that these allocations are not intended to replace American capabilities; on the contrary, they are a way to ensure the continuation of American engagement in Europe in the future. This includes advocating for “buying American” weapons instead of focusing on developing Europe’s own defense capabilities. European leaders have feared for years that greater defense spending could lead the United States to distance itself from Europe. Rutte, however, argued the opposite: that higher defense spending is a way to convince the US president not to reduce the number of American troops, or rather, a sign of goodwill from European states.

In contrast, Carney has emerged as one of Trump’s most vocal critics. That’s not surprising: Trump’s criticism of Canada and his repeated, unwarranted threats to impose tariffs and even attack its northern neighbor almost certainly contributed to Carney’s election victory. Yet, despite the political benefits he might gain from criticizing the American president, Carney’s statements were surprisingly strategic.

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, earlier this year, Carney surprised attendees by saying that middle powers like Canada and its European allies must find a way to assert themselves in an increasingly multipolar world if they are not to fall prey to the great powers. The speech drew attention in large part because it implied, albeit indirectly, that both the United States and China could be such predatory great powers. Carney traveled to Beijing after the speech, emphasizing his main message: even longtime American allies and neighbors like Canada must find a way to balance different powers.

In Ankara, Carney continued to urge NATO’s middle powers to unite in the face of a United States that is “reassessing its priorities.” Carney’s model, unlike Rutte’s, implies that NATO members other than the United States must develop independent defense capabilities, not only as a safeguard against possible reductions in American capabilities, but also as a way to reduce dependence on and vulnerability to an increasingly unpredictable United States.

Ankara has been a particularly interesting place to pitch this approach. If European states or Canada were to embrace this model, their policies could end up looking more like those of Turkey, long an important but questionably committed NATO member. During the war on terror, and even since the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war, Erdogan’s Turkey has been willing to support the alliance, but only to the extent that it aligned with Turkish needs and interests.

Yet the Ankara summit shows that, while European leaders increasingly agree on the need to increase military spending and develop military capabilities, they remain divided between these two opposing worldviews.

Leaders like French President Emmanuel Macron have long championed Carney’s position. In fact, France was “the Carney before the Carney,” pushing the idea of ​​European strategic autonomy from the United States at a time when such ideas were almost heretical in European politics. Rutte, on the other hand, had the support of others in Ankara, including British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Although Starmer is nearing the end of his term, his successor is likely to be just as supportive of Rutte’s view.

The consequences of this disagreement are profound; it strongly influences the decisions of states on what they should invest in during this transitional period. Is it enough to simply emphasize the increase in allocations? Or do European states need to rapidly develop specific military capabilities?

There is currently little room for either those who want a complete break with the United States, or for those who want a return to the pre-Trump state, such as the US Department of Defense's approach known as "NATO 3.0," which would maintain the transatlantic alliance but with a reduced American presence on the continent.

Still, regardless of which school of thought, Carney's or Rutte's, prevails, NATO leaders can breathe a sigh of relief as another summit has passed without another Trump outburst. If only all the alliance's problems could be solved so easily with flattery and photo ops.

Translation: S. STRUGAR