NATO is scaling back its high-level meetings and will not hold a leaders' summit in Albania next year as previously planned, as tensions inside the alliance over defense spending, the war in Ukraine and the conflict with Iran spill into the open.
Flags of NATO member countries wave at the entrance of NATO headquarters in Brussels. Photo: Senior Master Sgt. Adrian Cadiz, U.S. Department of Defense, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
No Common Position on a 2027 Summit
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama said on Thursday that "there is not yet a common position on when the summit will happen, for sure not in 2027." He said that "in 2028, if it will be a summit, it will be in Tirana," Albania's capital.
Albania was appointed host of next year's summit in 2025, but its name was removed from a declaration issued after a NATO meeting in July. Some allies believe Tirana is not spending enough on defense to be rewarded with the alliance's flagship event: the government is projected to spend 2.15% of its gross domestic product on defense this year, against NATO's target of 3.5% of GDP on core defense by 2035, plus 1.5% on defense-related infrastructure. Albania is not the alliance's worst offender — Spain, Belgium and Slovenia are projected to fall further short of the target.
Rutte Plays Down the Delay
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte played down the issue in an interview with The Associated Press. "We are flexible with NATO summits," he said. "We have summits when we need them," adding that the alliance will hold the next one "when a necessity is there."
The cutbacks go beyond the leaders' summit. NATO defense ministers usually meet in October, but no talks took place last month and none are planned for October 2027. Foreign ministers will have only one scheduled meeting next year instead of two, under what NATO describes as a "reorganization package."
It is not just about gatherings between President Donald Trump and his counterparts. U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have each skipped a NATO meeting or left before talks ended since taking office, and Hegseth has used defense ministerial gatherings to berate or cajole European allies and Canada over spending.
A Costly Spectacle With Political Risks
Hosting a summit carries heavy financial and political costs. The Netherlands needed a year of preparation and roughly $100 million for the 2025 meeting in The Hague. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who hosted this year's gathering in his sprawling palace complex in Ankara, refurbished a military airport for leaders to arrive at and mobilized tens of thousands of security personnel, virtually shutting down parts of the capital. Officials said NATO would have needed to decide on Albania by October for the country to have enough time to organize a summit next year.
The political risks were on display at this year's summit. Trump revived old talk about taking control of Greenland, a self-governing part of NATO ally Denmark, striking at the heart of the reason the organization was formed in 1949: mutual defense. He also demanded "loyalty" from allies, accusing NATO of failing to back his war on Iran.
Summits are usually a sober show of resolve and unity of purpose, meant to dissuade any adversary that might be tempted to test NATO. European allies suspect that Russia wants to do just that.
Experts Say a Summit May Not Be Needed
Some experts say the pause may be justified. New spending goals and military capability targets have already been set, and force planning was discussed in Ankara. "There's a strong argument to be made that if there aren't things that merit bringing 32 leaders together, well then maybe you don't have the meeting," said David Cattler, a senior fellow at the Centre for European Policy Analysis and a former top NATO intelligence official. "You could go two, maybe three years," he said.
Until about a decade ago, NATO held summits only every two years. And in an emergency, other options exist: NATO held its first-ever virtual summit in February 2022, after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Asked whether summits are worth the cost, Rutte told AP: "It is." But for now, the alliance's leaders will not be gathering in Tirana in 2027 — and with no date agreed for the next one, the calendar's next big test of NATO unity is, for the moment, blank.
Sources: The Associated Press, Reuters, TRT World.