Preparations are under way for what could be the most delicate NATO summit in years — and Mark Rutte’s first real test as secretary-general.
Fittingly for the longest-serving Dutch prime minister in history, it will take place in familiar surroundings – his hometown, The Hague, in late June.
According to NATO officials in contact with RFE/RL, Rutte will need all his diplomatic skills to ensure it is a successful summit.
And by a successful summit they mean keeping unpredictable US President Donald Trump happy.
Their nightmare scenario is the turbulent 2018 NATO summit in Brussels during Trump’s first term, when a video of a tense exchange with then-Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg set the tone of the entire meeting.
Later that same day, Trump threatened to pull the United States out of the military organization entirely if European allies didn’t spend more on defense.
'Trump Whisperer'
Rutte was reportedly key in convincing the US president that NATO was worth keeping, helping to establish his reputation as one of Europe’s “Trump whisperers” -- a label that ultimately paved the way for him to secure NATO’s top job six years later.
Despite the fact that a lot has happened in the world since then, Trump will come to the Netherlands with the very same message -- spend more on defense.
No one thinks he will threaten to pull out, as all US officials -- including senior cabinet members such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth -- have recently traveled to Brussels with the message that Washington remains committed to NATO.
But Trump wants to see clear results.
And the likely outcome will be a commitment by all 32 NATO allies to raise defense spending to 5 percent of GDP -- a significant increase from the current target of 2 percent. Of that, 3.5 percent would go toward “hard targets,” such as weapons and artillery, while the remaining 1.5 percent would be allocated to cyberdefense and investment in military mobility.
NATO officials are still debating the timeline for reaching the new spending goal, with proposals ranging from five to 10 years under discussion.
Shortened Summit
In order not to create too many openings for alliance members to fall out with each other, the summit has already been shortened from three days to just two.
The itinerary is not set in stone yet, but we might just see an official dinner on the first day, followed by two working sessions on the second -- one dealing with defense spending and the other on how to boost the defense industrial base.
With several European allies keen to buy more Japanese and South Korean defense products, it is likely that NATO’s four “Indo-Pacific partners” -- Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea -- will be present at the latter session.
The final communique of the summit is also being slimmed down considerably.
NATO officials say the goal is to keep the final communique to just three or four paragraphs -- a stark contrast to recent summits. The 2024 Washington declaration ran to 40 paragraphs, while the Vilnius communique the year before stretched to a sprawling 90, covering a wide range of issues.
NATO Membership For Ukraine?
This year’s text may omit any direct mention of Russia -- and possibly even Ukraine --making the Hague meeting very different from recent summits.
In both Washington and Vilnius, Ukraine dominated the agenda, with heated debates over whether to offer the country a membership invitation and how to define its future path toward joining the alliance.
With Trump seemingly ruling out Ukraine’s NATO membership anytime soon, one European official told me it might be better not to mention Ukraine in the declaration at all -- for now.
Any attempt to negotiate wording could result in a weaker statement than the one agreed in Washington in 2024, where NATO at least pledged to continue supporting Kyiv “on its irreversible path to full Euro-Atlantic integration, including NATO membership.”
This also poses the question whether Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will be invited to the Netherlands after being the star guest at previous gatherings. There is no confirmation of his invitation yet, but most NATO officials believe that he will come in the end.
Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna recently pointed out that it would be "a major stratcom mistake" if Zelenskyy didn't come as that would be all the media would write about from the gathering.
While the Ukrainian leader is still expected to come, he probably won’t get a dedicated NATO–Ukraine Council meeting as he did at the last two summits. For now, the alliance appears to be turning its focus inward once again.
