The Ankara Summit exposes an alliance increasingly forced to manage the temperament of the American presidency while struggling to manage the security of the Western world.

The very architecture of the Ankara Summit reveals NATO’s political discomfort. The alliance has already established the precedent of tailoring its highest-level meetings to President Donald Trump’s well-reported aversion to prolonged diplomatic sessions.

At The Hague, diplomats deliberately designed a single two-and-a-half-hour working session around his limited attention span and the fear of disruptive outbursts or an early departure. Ankara has retained the same philosophy of compression: although the summit formally stretches across July 7 and 8, the principal leaders’ working session is expected to last only about three hours.

This is extraordinary for an alliance confronting simultaneous crises in Ukraine, Iran, the Strait of Hormuz, Greenland, the American military drawdown from Europe and growing uncertainty over the future of Article 5. NATO is not short of issues to discuss; it is short of political confidence that its most powerful leader will tolerate a prolonged and potentially confrontational discussion.

The compressed format is therefore not an administrative convenience. It is a symptom of an alliance increasingly managing the temperament of the American presidency while struggling to manage the security of the Western world.

The official agenda sounds conventional: defence investment, increased military production and continued support for Ukraine. NATO’s own summit programme emphasises progress towards the historic 5 per cent defence investment plan and the conversion of increased spending into production, cooperation and joint procurement.

Leaders are expected to reaffirm collective defence while demonstrating that Europe is finally responding to Washington’s demand for greater burden-sharing.

But the real Ankara agenda is much larger than the official........

© The Express Tribune Blog