President Donald Trump spoke on behalf of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, vowed to end relations with NATO ally Spain, resurrected his wish to take territory from NATO ally Denmark, and announced he did not like NATO at all.
Trump's Complaints Against NATO
“I’m not happy with NATO because of what they did with Greenland, and I’m not happy with NATO because of the fact that they didn’t want to help us with the number one state sponsor of terror, that’s Iran. They were unwilling to help us,” Trump complained Wednesday to reporters just ahead of a meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. “But we didn’t need help, but I was really testing. I wanted to see whether or not they’d be there, and the answer is anyway. I spoke to Germany, I spoke to France, spoke to U.K., spoke to Italy.”
Yet, like a toddler who agrees to sit through a dinner party only if he can pout the whole time, Trump did manage to offer a rare bit of good news on Ukraine, which had become a main theme of this year’s NATO summit: an intent to let the nation build its own Patriot anti-ballistic missile interceptors.
Reactions from Former Officials
“Not surprised, but frustrated and disappointed that we have a president who cannot help himself but to destroy relations with some of our closest allies and undermine an alliance we have spent generations building,” said Jim Townsend, a former Defense Department official who also worked with NATO. “He and his people are incapable of comprehending the destruction he is wreaking.”
Others, though, emphasized the silver lining: It could have been worse. Trump did not announce that he would pull U.S. forces out of Europe entirely, as he had threatened.
“It was, all in all, a good day here in Ankara,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz told reporters after the morning’s closed-door gathering of the alliance’s 32 heads of state.
Summit Details and Damage Control
Reports of the meeting said that Trump reiterated his unhappiness that other NATO members had refused to join his and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war against Iran but did not, in that venue, revisit some of his other grievances, such as his demand that Denmark hand over Greenland or that trade relations with Spain be terminated.
“NATO limited the damage and emerged intact,” said Doug Lute, a retired Army general and a former U.S. ambassador to NATO. “For what it is worth, the joint declaration is quite solid.”
That statement expresses not only solidarity with Ukraine, which is now suffering through its fifth year of Putin’s full-scale invasion, but promised 70 million euros in military aid to Ukraine this year and at least as much next year.
Patriot Interceptors for Ukraine
Trump ended U.S. aid to Ukraine upon taking office in January 2025, although he has been willing to sell weapons to European allies so they can turn them over to Ukraine. His agreement to let Ukraine build Patriot interceptors was another step along those lines.
“We’re going to give a license to you to make Patriots. That’s pretty cool, right? This way he can’t complain that we’re not giving them enough. Make them yourself,” he told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during a photo opportunity with reporters.
Granting Ukraine a license to make Patriot interceptors, however, does not solve the country’s immediate problem, which is countering Russia’s near-daily attacks with short- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles. While Ukraine has built a domestic industry to protect against drones and slow-flying cruise missiles, it has not been able to develop a defense against ballistic missiles, which travel many times the speed of sound.
Putin stepped up his use of such missiles as Ukraine learned how to stop the other weapons and has, in the past week, hit Kyiv and other cities with barrages that have killed and wounded hundreds of civilians. Building and putting into operation a Patriot interceptor factory could take more than a year.
Moral Equivalence and Threats
America’s allies and partners have had difficulty obtaining Patriot interceptors because the U.S. military has burned through so many of them during Trump’s now four-and-a-half-month-old war against Iran, and Trump has never felt compelled to prioritize Ukraine.
Indeed, on Wednesday, he again drew a moral equivalence between Ukraine, which has pointedly targeted only military and oil production infrastructure, and Russia, which from the very start of its war hit residences, schools and mass transit all over Ukraine.
“You have two kids in a park, and they don’t like each other, and they start fighting. Sometimes you have to let them fight. Let them see that it’s tough. Fighting is tough,” Trump said.
Trump even solicited questions on Putin’s behalf because he said he would be speaking to him later in the day. He then suggested that Zelenskyy — whom Putin has targeted for assassination ― travel to Moscow to meet with Putin.
Zelenskyy, a professional comedian before entering politics, answered: “It’s difficult. There are a lot of Ukrainian drones there. It’s dangerous.”
In a tirade earlier in the day about the Spanish prime minister’s criticism of Trump’s Iran war, Trump vowed to end all trade and tourism with the country. “I don’t want anything to do with Spain. Cut off all trade with Spain, please, including visits, OK?” he said. “They’re hopeless. Bad people.”
It is unclear whether Trump understands that Spain is a member of the European Union trade bloc, and cutting off Spain would likely require cutting off all of Europe.
Broader Implications
Trump attended the G7 meeting of the world’s largest democratic economies in Évian, France, last month without such attacks, which some analysts attributed to French President Emmanuel Macron inviting Trump to a dinner at Versailles, the ornate palace outside Paris, at the summit’s conclusion. There was no such shiny object awaiting Trump at the end of Wednesday’s summit.
NATO alliance members and America’s traditional allies more broadly have been seeking to become less reliant on the United States in both trade and military security since Trump won reelection in 2024. While many believed they could ride out his first term without suffering long-term damage, Trump’s return to power despite having attempted a coup on Jan. 6, 2021, has led to a recognition that Americans do not value democracy or a rules-based order as much as previously assumed.
Perhaps as part of that strategy ― and following the advice of Trump critics like Lute, who see summits mainly as opportunities for Trump to act out — NATO closed its meeting Wednesday with no definitive plans for the next.
Last year’s joint statement ended with an announcement that the 2026 summit would be held in Turkey. This year’s statement ends: “We look forward to our next meeting.”
