CDR Salamander - NATO's Upcoming Ankara Summit

I don’t know about you, but I really want to hear your garden-variety journalist read this from the teleprompter.

Türkiye will host a NATO Summit in Ankara on 7- 8 July 2026. The meeting will be chaired by the NATO Secretary General and will take place at the Beştepe Presidential Compound (T.C. Cumhurbaşkanlığı Külliyesi) in Ankara, Türkiye.

As we stand by for the summit, I am going to watch who writes “Turkey” like a proper English speaker, or “Türkiye” like a compromised low-T drone scared of its shadow.

OK, enough of me being unserious and petty. Let’s dive into the important things.

If you don’t have a NATO background, you might not be anticipating much, but that would be a mistake. Big changes can come out of these things.

NATO summit meetings are effectively meetings of the North Atlantic Council (NAC) – the Alliance’s principal political decision-making body – at its highest level, that of Heads of State and Government.

Due to the political significance of summit meetings, agenda items typically address issues of overarching political or strategic importance. Items can relate to the internal functioning of the Alliance as well as NATO’s relations with external partners.

Major decisions

Many of NATO’s summit meetings were milestones in the evolution of the Alliance. For instance, the first post-Cold War summit was held in London, in 1990, and outlined proposals for developing relations with Central and Eastern European countries. A year later, in Rome, NATO Heads of State and Government published a Strategic Concept that reflected the new security environment. This was the first time ever that a NATO Strategic Concept was issued as a public document. At the same summit, NATO established the North Atlantic Cooperation Council – a forum that officially brought together NATO and partner countries from Europe, Central Asia and the Caucasus.

If you want to know why all the NATO organs continue to not understand the below:

You have to understand that it came out of the 360 Degree Approach, a sloppy compromise from the 2016 Warsaw and 2022 Madrid summits as a sop to NATO’s southern-tier members.

Pay attention.

Most times, the agenda is set well ahead of the summit and the decisions are already set before everyone shows up…but these are exceptional times. There might be a surprise.

If you want to see if anything is leaking out ahead of time, you need to look at traditional Atlanticist institutions to see what they’re saying. Let’s pick a couple, starting with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), who, to their great credit, use “Turkey.”

Allies will gather in Ankara, Turkey, this July at a critical moment. NATO faces a war in Europe, renewed instability in the Middle East, and growing internal tension over priorities, burdens, and risk. NATO has endured disputes before, but a lack of unity—if left unmanaged—can weaken deterrence as effectively as military shortfalls. As Wallace Thies suggests, crisis begins when members become indifferent to sustaining the alliance. By that definition, NATO is under strain—but not yet in crisis—despite reporting that the United States will reassess the value of NATO after its war with Iran.

In a more contested international order, the benefits to the United States of remaining in NATO continue to outweigh the costs, particularly as Europe is stepping up to deliver what U.S. officials have termed “NATO 3.0”—a more European NATO in which allies assume greater responsibility for their own defense. The question, therefore, is not whether NATO should endure, but how it should adapt. A modern update to Ismay’s dictum would be for NATO to keep the Americans committed, the Europeans capable, and the Russians contained.

That, my friends, is an almost perfect pair of paragraphs.

From Washington’s perspective, the argument is familiar: Europe benefits from global stability underwritten by U.S. power and should shoulder more of the burden when that stability is threatened. President Trump has criticized Europe by suggesting the continent was absent when it mattered, and that it does not truly share the sacrifice. Europeans will push back: Tens of thousands of European troops served in Afghanistan over two decades, hundreds died, and the commitment was sustained long after public support had eroded at home. This complicates the free‑rider narrative and risks undermining cooperation.

From Europe, the picture looks different. The Iran campaign was launched without allied consultation, rests on contested legal and strategic grounds, and risks diverting attention and resources away from Ukraine. For European leaders already engaged in a difficult domestic debate over sustained defense spending, another major Middle Eastern war is a significant political complication—not a rallying point.

That is a fair enough description of the state of play between alliance friends. Over the last two years, all but a couple have made the push to significantly increase defense spending. BZ to them, and the end of the quote above is correct. Some nations will not push more, as their political system won’t make the effort. On the whole though you have to give a thumbs up, progress has been made.

This is a good time to jump ahead to a superior product by the Atlantic Council. They have a NATO Defense Spending Tracker that has a couple of new graphics describing allied spending different than the usual bar graph I’ve been referencing over the years.

I’ll show you what I mean.

Old Line members of the Front Porch have gotten used to the usual pushback we’ve received for the last couple of decades about why 2% of GDP was not “fair”, or that it wasn’t a “nuanced” understanding, small nations blah, blah, blah.

My first retort has always been that with friends and neighbors, when work needs to be done that benefits all, everyone is expected to do their fair share. No one expects the 5’2” single mother on public assistance to underwrite lunch for everyone, but if she brings a squash casserole, everyone will be thankful. The beefy guys would never expect her to help move logs, but they’ll be happy to get the other big fellows to help with that. What no one wants, is to deal with the trust fund baby sitting on a chair in the shade, having a smoke while everyone works. The below does a good job in showing who is contributing their fair share—from the stingy on the bottom right, to the best effort in the upper left-hand corner.

Our alliance has rich members and poor members. The next graphic isn’t fair in that regard, and I like it the least, but it tells a story.

Also, the U.S. defense budget is not too big. Nope. We need to up these numbers. We have more military obligations than many of these European nations. When looked at from that perspective, we are seriously underspending.

The UK and Canada underperform here. It also shows that as Poland becomes a richer nation, their relative contribution to collective defense just gets more worthy of notice. Still not sure how to fully absorb this graphic, but it is growing on me.

This next graphic can be tricky. It is really two, combined.

The two big circles are simply U.S. spending, and then non-U.S. NATO spending…then it is disaggregated. I have one nit to pick. Turkey is not a European nation. It has a little bit of European territory, but it is not an European nation. As such, they should not be included in the “NATO Europe & Canada” bubble…and TBQH, Canada should not be in there either.

Of note: European NATO has both a larger population and GDP than the USA. Yeah…that aggregation bubble is trying too hard.

Editorial Note: The Atlantic Council is using the correct spelling, “Turkey”, in the text, but is using the incorrect “Türkiye” in the graphic. There are no umlauts in English. Do better. Net one below.

There is a similar problem the following graphic. It is too much cope, and trying too hard to make an anti-American point.

The EU Institutions contributions should not even be factored in here. The EU is not interchangeable with European NATO, we might as well add the Organization of American States to the U.S. numbers. Disaggregate European NATO contributions to the EU effort and then add that into national totals, that’s fine…unless they are double counting here, which they might be. Net two below.

If we want to discuss relative Ukraine contributions, this is a much better graphic.

Italy and Spain…really? The UK gives less per person that the U.S.? Well, they are poorer on a per-capita GDP basis as the poorest U.S. state, so that may put them on par. Denmark deserves polite applause. If Germany did that…well…

Anyway, we drifted a bit from the summit, but I think this will all be floating in the ether next month at Ankara.

Let’s see what others are thinking.

I was going to use the Council on Foreign Relations as my next check, but alas…there is 0.0 mentions of NATO on their main page. The Usual Suspects™ think America is neglecting NATO…

So, instead, we’ll check back in with the highly civilized Atlantic Council’s article from Tuesday by Jason Davidson. It is the freshest of a series.

Recent years have seen a whipsaw of NATO engagement with its neighbors to the south. After pressure from Italy and other allies on the Alliance’s southern flank, NATO agreed to the Southern Neighborhood Action Plan (SNAP) at the 2024 Washington summit. At the 2025 Hague summit, however, NATO adopted no significant new measures in this area.

The upcoming Ankara summit is the perfect occasion for NATO to deepen engagement with its southern neighborhood in a more consistent way going forward. …

The communiqué after NATO’s 2023 Vilnius summit defined its southern neighborhood as the Middle East, North Africa, and the Sahel region. The allies agreed on the neighborhood’s “security, demographic, economic, and political challenges” and that those challenges provided a fertile environment for terrorism and an opportunity for interference by strategic competitors (Russia and China) and resulted in human trafficking and irregular migration. A NATO expert group report on the southern neighborhood the following year concluded that “threats, challenges and opportunities in NATO’s southern neighborhoods matter to Allied security and to NATO partners.”

Look no further than the Iran war this year to see a vivid illustration of the importance of the region to NATO allies’ security. In March, NATO-designated air defense systems intercepted several ballistic missiles in Turkish airspace that Turkish officials claimed originated in Iran. One of the missiles caused an explosion near Incirlik Air Base. The same month, drones from Lebanon—believed to have been launched by Hezbollah—attacked a British air base on the island of Cyprus.

At first, I squinted a bit at this take, but then it hit me spot on—the Iran and Strait of Hormuz issue may well dominate the summit.

…the Alliance should provide enhanced and integrated air-defense and counter-drone capabilities for allies on the southern flank. The previously discussed missile attacks on Turkey and the British base in Cyprus demonstrate the vulnerability of southern allies. The Alliance can use Operation Eastern Sentry, begun in response to Russian drone incursions along NATO’s eastern flank, as a model for how to bolster the deterrence and defense of vulnerable allies to drone and missile attacks. Moreover, as southern allies move toward meeting their commitment to spend 3.5 percent of their gross domestic product on defense, they can devote some of those resources toward air-defense and counter-drone measures, which will also help them justify that increased spending to their publics.

If, as it appears, the Islamic Republic of Iran isn’t going anywhere, the investment in air defense is a wise proposal.

As we’ve discussed here the last few months, the primary thing accomplished by the U.S. and Israeli strikes this year is to buy the international community time. Political will can change quickly in the U.S., and there is a good chance that in five to ten years’ time, those in power in Washington DC will not have the desire, inclination, or even capability to buy the international community more time after Iran rebuilds its ballistic missile and nuclear programs. The U.S. may not decide to “mow the lawn” again. Add to that the non-zero possibility that it might be engaged in a Great Pacific War with the People’s Republic of China…that would put European concerns on par with the priority given to the Burma Theater in WWII.

The 2026 National Defense Strategy states “we will be clear with our European allies that their efforts and resources are best focused on Europe.” The document argues that given increasing US focus on the Indo-Pacific and Western Hemisphere, European allies can make the greatest difference for transatlantic security in Europe.

1. There are reasons for optimism regarding the United States’ position on NATO’s engagement with its southern neighborhood, however. First, it would be fair to read the National Defense Strategy’s language as a reaction to European efforts to bolster security in the Indo-Pacific, which is a greater challenge for them geographically than engagement with the southern neighborhood. Second, the measures described above are relatively low-cost and mostly entail enhancements of activities NATO is already engaged in. Moreover, NATO’s efforts in the southern neighborhood could enhance allies’ security without taking away from European efforts to deter Russian aggression in the East.

Solid analysis.

That is enough for now. If you want more reading, especially on the view from Anatolia as the summit gets ready, I’d recommend giving this article by Ali Mammadov at the Modern War Institute a read.

And if you’re looking for a nice giggle, give a read Deutsche Welle’s take on Turkey’s crack-down on Islamists and commies prior to the summit…and along the same vein, the socialist bedwetting over the same thing.

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