NATO in Ankara: Is Europe ready for a Russian attack?

[upbeat music] Hello, and welcome back to Independent Thinking, the weekly podcast from Chatham House.

I'm Bronwen Maddox.

It's NATO week.

Leaders of all 32 member states, including President Donald Trump, gathered in Ankara for the organization's annual summit.

Russia's war in Ukraine was inevitably high on the agenda, but so was the question of America's commitment to the alliance after President Trump railed at other members for free riding on the US's military for the defense of Europe.

He pointedly this time praised host leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's strongman president since 2014, saying, "If not for his invitation, I don't think I would've gone to it." At The Hague last year, NATO members placated the US president by promising to spend 5% of GDP on defense by 2035.

This year they're nervously waiting for his judgment on their progress, on their spending, on what they have chosen to spend it on.

Outgoing British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has had such a difficulty in forcing through his defense investment plan that it cost him key ministers and arguably his job.

Doggedly non-US leaders filled the agenda and their press releases with announcements about more joint European spending on missiles and so on, but the summit was inevitably dominated by two remarks from Trump.

First, he repeated that he thought the US should own Greenland, saying, "Doesn't matter very much to Denmark." Not only is that clearly not true, his declared intention of taking over Greenland was the moment during last year when European countries and Canada decided in a sense to stop trying to mollify the US president and to make clear he had crossed a red line.

Second, he also declared that the Iran ceasefire was over, calling the regime scum and saying he didn't want to deal with them anymore.

Not a NATO matter, as other members have made clear, but that unresolved conflict inevitably also overshadows the gathering.

Here to discuss all this, we have three special guests.

General Sir Richard Barrons is the former commander, Joint Forces Command in the UK, now a senior consulting fellow with our International Security program.

He served in Bosnia, Kosovo, Northern Ireland, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and he's with us today.

Hello, Richard.

Hello.

Also from Chatham House we have Dr. Marion Mesmer, who is director of that self-same International Security program.

Hi, Marion.

Hello.

And we have Galip Dalay who runs our Turkey Initiative as well as being a senior research fellow within our Middle East and our European programs.

Welcome, Galip.

Pleasure to be with you.