NATO summit turns into an arms trade fair – Trump reacts

Trump is left out

The NATO summit becomes an arms fair

At the Ankara summit, the NATO states awarded billions in contracts for new armaments projects. The USA is largely left out. Trump reacts.

At the start of the summit, Mark Rutte described it as follows: “We will seal new contracts worth tens of billions that will deliver the crucial equipment we need for deterrence and defense,” said the NATO Secretary General Ankara.

Rutte did not primarily address the heads of state and government at the NATO meeting in the Türkiye. Rather, Rutte opened the alliance’s own “Defense Industry Forum” with representatives from politics, the military and the defense industry. The forum “will help strengthen our economies, spread innovation and secure hundreds of thousands of jobs on both sides of the Atlantic,” Rutte said. Rarely has a NATO summit been as much of an arms fair as it is now in Turkey.

The Russian war of aggression against the Ukraine has changed the security situation in Europe. Germany alone intervened Special assets of 100 billion euros for the Bundeswehr.

Added to this is the urging of the US President Donald Trumpwhich is urging European NATO members to increase their defense spending.

A number of arms deals arose around the NATO summit. An overview:

• Submarine order for Germany: The TKMS shipyards in Kiel and Wismar received an order from Canada to build at least twelve submarines. There is talk of a volume of up to 100 billion euros in the coming years. Canada was also involved in the development of the special submarines. Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius (SPD) personally campaigned for cooperation during a trip to Canada. On the sidelines of the NATO summit, Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) spoke of a “new era of cooperation with Canada and Norway”.
• Awacs successor from Sweden: With the GlobalEye, the Swedish company Saab supplies the successor to NATO’s Awacs aircraft for aerial reconnaissance. The Boeing Awacs (Airborne Warning and Control System) jets entered service in 1982. They are in Geilenkirchen stationed near Cologne. Her successor now comes from Sweden. The decision in favor of Saab is a signal. Sweden only joined NATO in 2024, but immediately became an important alliance state and now supplies a central defense component with the ten GlobalEye machines. A plane is said to cost up to $450 million.
• New drones for reconnaissance: Germany, DenmarkFinland and Norway announced in Ankara that they wanted to procure up to five MQ-4C Triton drones for NATO. The drones from US manufacturer Northrop Grumman – experts call them High Altitude Long Endurance (Hale) – can stay in the air for up to 24 hours. They will complement the alliance’s “Alliance Ground Surveillance” (AGS).
• Satellite projects in space: Germany, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Norway, the NetherlandsSweden and Turkey want to jointly develop a military satellite constellation in space that will improve communication, exchange of intelligence information and tracking of missiles.
• Faster Procurement Program: The NATO also wants to invest up to 40 billion dollars in new drones. Among other things, a program is to be launched to accelerate the training of drone pilots. In addition, the procurement of drones should be accelerated.
• New order for Airbus: The European aircraft manufacturer Airbus secured new orders in Ankara. Belgium, Croatia, France, Poland, Spain, Great Britain and Turkey are offering a joint project for strategic air transport. The Airbus A400M military aircraft can transport up to three hundred soldiers, but can also be used for aerial refueling.

When it comes to arms orders, it is striking that the European NATO states distribute the orders primarily among themselves and cooperate very closely Canada. The USA remain outside.

Experts call this strategy “ringfencing” – strategic demarcation. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney had already set the new direction with his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos: a new cooperation between the middle powers. Carney primarily had the EU states in mind.

The Jacques Delors Institute in Berlin analyzed: “The current situation requires urgent action from Europe if it is not affected by the pincer movement between Trump on the one hand and the alliance of China’s president Xi Jinping and Russia’s head of state Vladimir Putin wants to be crushed on the other side.”