As NATO Summit Braces For Trump, Ambassador Warns Allies: 'We're Not Going Away, Just Doing Less'

Just on the eve of the annual NATO summit, and as President Trump is en route to attend the Ankara-hosted meeting, Washington has reaffirmed its vision of withdrawing from NATO leadership in order to allow other countries to shoulder the collective defense burden.

America's ambassador to the alliance told CNBC on Monday that pressuring allies to spend more - which has created tension among some European allies - reflects necessary "growing pains" rather than a crisis, 

"The target is that Europe takes over the conventional defense of the European continent," Ambassador Matthew Whitaker stated. That's when he emphasized: "We’re not going away, we’re just doing less."

"I see these as just the challenges that we've worked through before," he continued, while commenting that there are still "laggards" which still have to reach higher and higher commitments to catch up.

At last year's summit President Trump laid out before allies the bold new defense spending target of 5% of gross domestic product (GDP) for each member country, more than doubling the prior 2% benchmark.

Leading NATO members are reportedly ready to tout a success story when it comes to a higher defense spending bar:

European NATO allies are heading into this week’s summit in Ankara convinced they have a compelling case to present to Donald Trump on defense spending, industrial cooperation and aid for Ukraine, but diplomats privately acknowledge the president remains the biggest source of uncertainty.

Speaking in the run-up to the annual summit in the Turkish capital, diplomats said the two-day gathering should showcase allies’ increased defense spending and include a string of defense industry announcements, including new letters of intent, joint projects and more transatlantic co-production. 

“There is a good story to tell,” one NATO diplomat said, pointing to a sustained shift in the alliance’s burden-sharing. “The numbers don’t lie.” 

The same publication writes that "According to figures compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, military outlay by European countries that are also members of NATO rose more quickly than at any time since 1953 through last year, with Germany and Spain – two countries often singled out by Trump as laggards – seeing booms in defense spending."

Hudson Institute think tank senior fellow Can Kasapoğlu has described of the view from Washington and Brussels, "When the alliance is back to its Cold War default, the question of what you are bringing to the table is getting more important."

Rutte preps a positive narrative ahead of Trump's arrival...

NATO's Rutte in Ankara:

European allies and Canada are now on a trajectory to equalize their defense spending with the U.S. pic.twitter.com/cmtp3jR7nm

— Clash Report (@clashreport) July 6, 2026

He added in comments to Fox: "The nations bringing hard-power capability to NATO are going to get VIP treatment." They see Russia as a major looming threat to long-term European security, as the Ukraine war only shows signs of likely escalation, now it its fifth year.