There was a political summit; there was a productive summit.

The NATO Summit of heads of state and government in The Hague on 24-25 June was a success because it was not a failure: Donald Trump came and went without incident. That was all.

In reality, though, that was not all: around this political summit occurred a less visible and much more productive summit—a plethora of conferences and meetings that produced sound thinking and actionable proposals.

The ‘political summit’

For the political summit, everything possible was done to accommodate the epidermal sensitivity of the American president. At the 2018 NATO Summit in Brussels, he threatened to withdraw US support for NATO unless the other alliance members spent more on defence.

Even this year, on his flight to Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport aboard Air Force One, Trump cast doubt on his commitment to NATO, saying that there were ‘numerous definitions’ (he meant: numerous interpretations) of Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty which states that an attack on one is an attack on all.

Mark Rutte, the current Secretary-General of NATO, engineered the political summit to ensure that Trump would stand by NATO: shorten the official agenda to one brief meeting, send a sticky-sweet text message to Trump hailing his ‘BIG’ accomplishment in getting allies to pay more for their defence, secure an invitation to Trump for a sleepover at the royal palace of Huis ten Bosch as the guest of King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima of the Netherlands.

The official communiqué of the political summit was shortened to a mere five paragraphs and made only one point: the allies commit to spend 5 percent of their annual gross domestic product on defence by 2035, a decade from now, of which 3.5 percent ‘based on the agreed definition of NATO defence capabilities’ and the rest on other security-building measures. Spain considered itself as having sought an opt-out by changing ‘We’ to ‘Allies’ in the text of the communiqué (though the wording remained ‘Les Alliés’ in the equally official French version).

The communiqué reaffirmed the allies’ ‘ironclad commitment to collective defence as enshrined in Article 5 of the Washington Treaty’. Trump’s ‘numerous definitions’ concept is not entirely wrong; however, Article 5 states that in the face of an armed attack on an ally, each ally shall take ‘such action as it deems necessary’, with no obligation to take any action at all. America’s commitment to Article 5 is as ironclad as Donald Trump wants it to be.

The president of France, Emmanuel Macron, has repeatedly proclaimed the need for European sovereignty and strategic autonomy. But these are quite different things: European sovereignty is available to Europeans whenever they want it, provided they decide and implement policy together; strategic autonomy would require intelligence, technology, satellites, command-and-control systems and both tactical and strategic nuclear weapons capabilities that only the US can provide. This is why the recently published Strategic Defence Review of the United Kingdom (UK SDR) adopts a policy of ‘NATO First’. By themselves, Europeans are far, far away from obtaining US capabilities.

The ’productive summit’

The discussions in the ‘productive summit’ around the official proceedings concentrated on what Europe needs to do, both alone and with the Americans, to increase European deterrence, efficiency, and resilience.

The Clingendael Institute organised a conference together with the European Commission, where the opening addresses were given by Andrius Kubilius, EU Commissioner for Defence and Space, and General Onno Eichelsheim, Chief of Defence of the Netherlands. The discussions emphasised the need to speed up the negotiating process of defence procurement contracts, make those contracts more flexible to reflect changing technology and remove obstacles to creating a ‘Defence Schengen’.

The largest gathering, the NATO Public Forum, held on the same days as the political summit, was organised by NATO and the Government of the Netherlands with the Netherlands Atlantic Commission, Clingendael, and The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies. This covered topics such as NATO and the EU; impacts of higher defence investment; making our societies more robust, ready and resilient; and future-proofing the Alliance. The Public Forum assembled an array of officials, diplomats, think-tank experts, journalists and interested members of the public.

The Defence Industry Forum brought together ministers, experts, and industry executives from NATO allies to discuss ensuring a sustainable and flexible transatlantic defence industry, access to finance, rapid adoption of innovative solutions, hybrid threats, new technologies, and NATO and the commercial space sector. This forum issued a powerful and detailed ambition statement on behalf of the business communities of NATO allied countries.

The American Chamber of Commerce in the Netherlands organised an event under the Chatham House Rule that included CEOs, ministers, defence experts, and other business and policy leaders. It focused on removing obstacles to defence investment, speed in innovation, how to adapt regulations and practices regarding dual-use technologies and software, and the economic consequences of increased defence spending.

The Munich Security Conference and the Clingendael Institute created a central venue for strategic dialogue in The Hague, ‘NATO in the Huis’, to bring together key stakeholders and provide a platform for partner organisations to host their own sessions in alignment with the NATO summit’s themes.

The Dutch Defence Minister Ruben Brekelmans addressed a ‘Defence Captains of Industry Dinner’ hosted by the Confederation of Netherlands Industry and Employers and the US Chamber of Commerce, which focused on the requirement to reduce regulatory burdens, strengthen the research and innovation ecosystem, increase investments, improve access to skilled workers and deepen both public-private cooperation in the defence sector and transatlantic partnerships.

Anyone who imagined that the NATO political summit, with its limited ambition to make Donald Trump happy again, was all that transpired in The Hague should be relieved to know that there was a productive summit too, representing high-quality thinking from across all sectors of government, business, and society.

From ideas to action

How can this thinking be translated into action? Three broad policy propositions stand out: all involve increased collaboration.

1. NATO and the EU should make policy together, ab initio. The EU should implement the Defence Readiness Omnibus adopted on 17 June 2025; put in place the EU Military Mobility Package; and clarify that the EU Taxonomy, CSDR, and CSDDD do not inhibit defence investment. NATO Capability Targets should be coordinated with the EU.
2. NATO, the EU, national governments, and private sector companies and organisations should make a sustained, systematic effort to learn from each other and from others. In particular, from Ukraine, the single best fighting force in Europe today, and Switzerland, which has been rated the most competitive country in the world and participates with NATO in the Partnership for Peace and with the EU in Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO).
3. NATO, the EU and national governments should develop and implement a whole-of-society comprehensive security model, adapted as needed to each culture and country. This should be based largely on the models of Finland and Sweden, as recommended in the UK SDR. NATO, the EU, and national governments should develop a common, convincing narrative to underscore to national parliaments and peoples that the threat of 21^st-century war is real, that it will destroy our societies if it happens, and that adopting defence spending targets requires vision, courage and action: now.

The European Leadership Network itself as an institution holds no formal policy positions. The opinions articulated above represent the views of the authors rather than the European Leadership Network or its members. The ELN aims to encourage debates that will help develop Europe’s capacity to address the pressing foreign, defence, and security policy challenges of our time, to further its charitable purposes.

Image: Capital Pictures / Alamy Stock Photo