NATO Allies Meet in Turkey

NATO allies will convene this week in Turkey for a summit focused on defense capabilities and alliance commitments. The U.S. president stated he was disappointed that some members refused to join the Iran war launched alongside Israel. He added that the United States does not need their money or anything else from them.

Mark Rutte, who began serving as NATO secretary-general almost two years ago, presented a chart labeled "The Trump Trillion" at a White House meeting last month. The chart showed $1.2 trillion in defense spending by European allies and Canada since 2017.

Rutte stated the charts also documented tens of thousands of U.S. jobs created and a $300 billion backlog in European orders for military equipment. He noted that up to 5,000 U.S. planes took off from bases in Europe before the April ceasefire in the Iran conflict.

The Pentagon announced last month that it is scaling back the number of troops, warships, aircraft, and drones it would provide if a NATO ally came under attack. The U.S. president has sent conflicting messages about whether U.S. troop numbers in Europe would be lowered or increased.

A study released on Thursday documented Russia conducting drone flights near military bases across multiple European countries. U.S. allies committed to invest the same percentage of GDP on defense as the United States.

The last NATO summit was held in The Hague, where the Dutch royal family hosted dinner and the U.S. president stayed overnight at the king's palace. The upcoming summit will be hosted by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The U.S. president suggested he might have skipped the meeting if it were not hosted by Erdogan.

Jens Stoltenberg chaired a 2018 NATO summit that the U.S. president nearly upended. Stoltenberg wrote in his memoir that if an American president says he no longer wishes to defend the other allies and leaves a NATO summit in protest, then the NATO treaty and its security guarantee are not worth very much.