Trump Calls U.S. Support for NATO 'Ridiculous' Days Before Ankara Summit

Five days before NATO's heads of state gather in Ankara, President Trump used his Truth Social account late Thursday to call the United States' relationship with the alliance "ridiculous" and "not reciprocal," reviving a burden-sharing fight that has shadowed every summit of his presidency — this time on the eve of one.

"They were not there for us!!!" Trump wrote, according to CBS News, arguing that Washington's spending on collective defence is not matched by its European partners. A second post attached a chart listing U.S. defence spending at "US$999 Billion Dollars" and set it against lower figures for the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Poland, with a note that "others, including Germany, are MUCH LOWER." The president has said before that he may try to withdraw the United States from NATO, a step that would require the approval of Congress.

The timing is the story. The alliance's 32 members convene in the Turkish capital on Tuesday and Wednesday, and the agenda was supposed to showcase unity: at last year's summit, leaders committed to raising defence-related spending to 5% of GDP by 2035, up from the 2% benchmark set in 2014. Trump's post reframes that gathering as a scoreboard, with the United States on one side and everyone else on the other.

There is a caveat that the president's chart leaves out, and it matters. As Euronews noted, the graphic appears to compare what each nation spends on its own military with what it pays, rather than direct contributions to NATO — two different measures. Most allied defence budgets are national spending, not cheques written to Brussels. The comparison makes the gap look wider than the alliance's own accounting would.

Underneath the numbers sits a grievance about Iran. Trump has repeatedly criticised European governments over their response to the recent U.S.-Israeli strikes, after several allies restricted the use of their bases for American forces. In an earlier post cited by Outlook India, he wrote that most NATO "Allies" had told Washington "they don't want to have anything to do with" Iran, adding: "NATO wasn't there for us." The White House has already moved to scale back some commitments and wants Europe to take the lead role in its own defence.

Allied officials have spent the run-up to Ankara making the opposite case. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, who praised Germany's expanding role during a visit to Berlin, has pointed to a sharp rise in European and Canadian defence investment since 2014 and is expected to unveil tens of billions of dollars in new defence contracts at the summit itself.

None of this is new rhetoric. What is new is the calendar. The alliance, founded in 1949 and long the backbone of American power in Europe, now heads into a set-piece summit with its largest member publicly questioning the terms of membership. The 5%-by-2035 pledge was Europe's answer to exactly this pressure; the parcel of defence deals Rutte wants to announce is another. Whether either satisfies a president who measures the relationship in dollars — and who has tied it, this week, to a grievance over Iran — is the question Ankara will not be able to avoid.

It fits a pattern this administration has set with multilateral arrangements it considers lopsided, from its refusal to renew the USMCA trade pact on the old terms to its pressure on allies over defence budgets. The through-line is transactional: show the bill, and ask who is paying it.