NATO members are bending over backward to get in President Donald Trump‘s good graces ahead of a summit that will invite questions about how much they contribute to their own self-defense.

Member nations, anticipating Trump’s complaints about their defense spending, are poised to announce plans to commit 5% of their gross domestic product to defense as they meet in the Netherlands on Tuesday and Wednesday at The Hague.

Recommended Stories

• Photo confirms Gabbard was in Situation Room during Iran strikes
• Trump hints at 'regime change' in Iran after US strikes
• Meghan McCain predicts Hegseth, Vance, and Rubio top 2028 presidential contenders

But after Trump’s abrupt departure from last week’s G7 summit in Canada, new NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, the former Dutch prime minister, is not relying on defense targets alone to please the president.

Rutte, for example, has implemented Department of Government Efficiency-like spending cuts at NATO that echo the Pentagon‘s own efforts to streamline operations.

Although most NATO secretary generals try to introduce reforms, there is “definitely” a sense of urgency this year because of Trump, according to Kathleen McInnis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“It’s safe to say that the NATO headquarters is taking a hard look at efficiencies because they want to make sure, be able to make the case to not just President Trump, but other heads of state and government, that they are being wise and efficient with the allocation of resources for NATO common budgets, and the headquarters, and things like that,” McInnis told the Washington Examiner.

NATO also announced last week that the summit would be truncated to minimize the chances of Trump leaving The Hague early. The concluding communique, too, is expected to be similarly short at only five paragraphs and will emphasize defense spending and Russia as a “direct threat,” but not a pathway to membership for Ukraine.

NATO leaders, more broadly, have a strong sense of how the summit will go under Trump, given this will be his fifth as president.

“This will be the fifth time we have watched this movie,” said Rachel Rizzo, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center, so “there’s some understanding about what his priorities are.”

“Allies know that they show up, they remain focused on the things that keep the U.S. engaged rather than enraged, they shake hands, and they go home,” Rizzo told reporters during her think tank’s pre-summit press briefing.

“To me, that’s fine because, in my opinion, you know, joint communiques, they’re important, but they are largely symbolic,” she added. “The real work happens when you leave, and you go back to your various capitals and you go back to NATO headquarters, and you start to implement the actual agreements that were agreed upon.”

There will be practical consequences for Ukraine after Trump did not meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky last week during the G7. Zelensky’s presence at this year’s NATO summit will be purposefully understated as well because of Trump, with the leader attending a pre-meeting dinner with Dutch King Willem-Alexander but having no sitdown confirmed with Trump.

Just last year, then-President Joe Biden made a public show of support for Ukraine with the summit in Washington, D.C., resulting in a new Ukraine mission, the NATO Support for Training and Assistance in Ukraine command, and a directive to draft a Russia strategy. That directive has since been delayed because of disagreements over how to deal with the Kremlin.

On the conflict with Russia and Ukraine’s aspirations of joining NATO, Rizzo conceded: “Looking back at last year’s summit, where the statement was that Ukraine’s bridge to NATO is going to be short and well lit — well, it seems like that bridge is actually very long and dimly lit.”

Max Bergmann, the director for CSIS’s Europe, Russia, and Eurasia program, downplayed concerns about Trump’s commitment to NATO and multilateralism after his early departure last week from the G7, arguing “Europeans were already rattled” following statements from the administration on its desire to deprioritize Europe and NATO from the likes of Vice President JD Vance.

“Trump’s departure from the G7 was sort of seen as perhaps necessary, given the events in Iran, but also a sign of Trump not caring that much,” Bergmann told the Washington Examiner during a briefing call with his think tank.

“I think where Europeans tend to come down is they are merely hoping to get through these summits with a sort of commitment to have another summit next year or in the future,” he added. “And they’re just sort of hoping to kind of get through these events without sort of a broader rupture in the alliance.”

At the same time, there are hopes that Trump’s expressions of frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin will lead him to drive a harder line with the Kremlin, particularly as momentum builds in the Senate for sanctions on Moscow.

“The fact is, unless Putin can pull off a miracle and prove to Trump that he can give the Americans everything they want out of Iran without going to war, Trump will still be pulled back along with the American Senate and others into a confrontational relationship with Vladimir Putin,” said Benjamin Jensen, director of the CSIS Futures Lab.

“I know that Trump left the G7 early. I know his administration says disparaging things,” he added. “But I think it’s better to really look at those larger structural conditions and the fact that even a smaller U.S. presence with intelligence support, long-range fires, and logistics still will help — with the new defense plans that were developed — Europe defend itself against an emboldened Russia.”

The summit’s single, two-and-a-half-hour leaders meeting will underscore the 5% defense spending pledge, alongside discussions about the NATO Industrial Capacity Expansion framework.

Under that framework, NATO member states are working together to build their domestic industrial bases, encourage coproduction, and share best practices to spend 3.5% on hard defense capabilities, with the remaining 1.5% to be spent on other security-related needs and so-called “resilience” costs.

Examples related to infrastructure are constructing bridges that can withstand the weight of tanks, cybersecurity, and space.

While Estonia, Greece, Poland, Turkey, and the U.S. are already close to spending 3.5% of their GDP on hard defense capabilities, Spain has undermined the 3.5% proposal, with Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez advising his counterparts last week that his country “cannot commit to a specific spending target in terms of GDP.”

When asked about NATO’s 5% defense spending pledge, Trump told reporters that the U.S. should not have to make the same commitment because it has been “paying almost 100% of the cost” for most of the alliance’s history.

“NATO is going to have to deal with Spain,” he said Friday in New Jersey before a fundraiser. “Spain has been notorious for low pay. You know who else was a low payer? Just about the lowest. A place called Canada, because Canada said, ‘Why should we pay when the United States will protect us free?'”

Meanwhile, a senior U.S. official described the defense spending pledge as “historic” because it will “strengthen the alliance’s combined military capabilities and ensure greater stability in Europe and the world.”

“This effort builds on the hundreds of billions of dollars in spending increases already achieved across the alliance since 2017 thanks to President Trump’s diplomacy in his first term,” the administration official told reporters during a press call.

“The president will urge allies to revitalize their industrial capacities in order to create Western supply chains capable of producing the critical minerals, infrastructure, weapons, and other products necessary for the security of America and her allies,” the official added.