ANKARA, Turkey — President Donald Trump concluded a tense NATO summit Thursday by declaring the alliance must fully fund its own defense, explicitly conditioning ongoing American backing on European nations meeting their financial obligations. The demand overshadowed the final hours of the two-day gathering, leaving allied leaders scrambling to interpret the administration's mixed signals on collective security.
Trump's remarks came after a day of public saber-rattling. He called Iran's leadership \"scum\" in remarks to reporters and renewed his proposal for U.S. control of Greenland, a Danish territory. The president also openly complained that European allies had refused to assist the United States in military operations against Iran, framing the lack of support as a breach of the mutual defense understanding.
\"We defend them, but they weren't there when we asked for help with Iran,\" Trump stated. \"That has to change. The American worker pays for this alliance. No more.\"
Despite the combative rhetoric, Trump ultimately issued a statement later in the day reaffirming U.S. commitment to the alliance's Article 5 collective defense provision. White House officials characterized the final declaration as a victory for burden-sharing, which has been a central tenet of the administration's economic nationalist foreign policy.
Defense spending gaps have long been a target for Trump, who views NATO primarily through the lens of the cost borne by American taxpayers. The president claimed he felt \"tremendous love\" from fellow leaders, even after the confrontational sessions. However, the diplomatic whiplash left career foreign service officers privately assessing the damage to the alliance's cohesion. The underlying tension remains unresolved: the administration insists the era of the U.S. underwriting European security with American industrial capacity and lives is over, a position that forces a fundamental recalculation of the post-Cold War order.