Donald Trump will arrive at next week’s Nato summit in Ankara to find an alliance that has spent the past year doing almost everything he asked of it.
European defence spending is rising at its fastest rate in decades. Arms factories are expanding. Governments are signing huge weapons contracts. European officers are taking over senior commands once held by Americans, while European governments are assuming greater responsibility for its defence and support of Ukraine.
The question is whether any of this will be enough to make the US President happy.
Europe spending more after Trump backlash
For all the meticulous summit choreography, Nato remains an alliance on edge, with much depending on Trump’s mood when he arrives in the Turkish capital. The gathering may not be the existential affair of last year’s summit in The Hague, when allies feared Trump might undermine Nato’s Article 5 mutual defence guarantee or even announce that America would pull out from the alliance, but the past year has hardly been reassuring.
