HOW THE ATLANTIC ALLIANCE FAILED IN ANKARA. THE NATO SUMMIT ON JULY 7-8 WAS A WASTED OPPORTUNITY

Foreword

Having exhausted its driving force (the fight against the USSR), NATO endangers itself in Ukraine and fantasizes about war.

Europe could have used the meeting to show the United States how to take over leadership; instead, it simply agreed to buy a bunch of things.

As NATO leaders returned home from their annual summit in Ankara, it seemed as if the meetings weren't really worthwhile as long as Donald Trump was president of the United States. They even said so explicitly, concluding the summit with a vague: "We look forward to our next meeting," instead of reaffirming that they would meet in Albania next year, as planned. And they're right. Ankara, in many ways, was a missed opportunity.

Background
There could not have been a more petty and banal way than the one chosen by the Ankara Summit to seal the crisis of an alliance that claims to be historic, solid, capable of safeguarding peace and the primacy of Western values. In reality, NATO has never been either the place or the instrument to defend Western values.

The global war that the 1949 treaty sought to exorcise was avoided because the United States and the Soviet Union had imposed a regime of absolute subservience on their respective allies.
The cost of war would have been unbearable for the United States itself, which intended to distance its territory from the nuclear threat by relocating it to Europe, where atomic bombs were tactical for them and strategic and existential for us.

Europe was their battlefield, and Europeans were expendable. No one deluded themselves that the United States would risk a nuclear catastrophe in America to save any European country.

In the first fifty years, NATO and the Warsaw Pact had been instrumental to the security of the United States and the Soviet Union, and the internal cohesion of both blocs was guaranteed not by sovereignty, but by servitude. Over the last thirty years, NATO has survived thanks to the United States' power of seduction, conquest, and blackmail, maintaining unity with the same determined servitude.

The Loss of Konstantinovka

The loss of Konstantinovka in Donbas derailed NATO's summit agenda. The loss of Konstantinovka was a severe blow not only to the Kiev regime, but also to its Western allies.

Ukraine failed to regain control of Konstantinovka before the NATO summit. Its fall was a severe blow not only to Ukraine on the eve of the NATO summit, but also to the entire West and to Secretary General Rutte. They hoped to show up at the NATO summit boasting about Ukraine's victory and the change underway. More money, more guns, but now it was clear that it wouldn't work.

The Ankara Summit Declaration

The pompously named Ankara Summit Declaration is a standard one-page, six-paragraph statement that's barely worth the paper it's written on. And while inside reports of the three-hour meeting between the leaders suggested Trump was cordial and even praised his allies for increasing their defense spending, he unleashed a barrage of invective against those same countries as soon as the cameras rolled.

He chastised Great Britain, France, Germany, and Belgium for failing to help during the Iran war. He called the Spanish bad and hopeless people, ordering the immediate halt to all trade with the country. And he reiterated that Greenland should be part of the United States, arguing that it was very important to America, but not important to Denmark.

It's no surprise that many NATO leaders now believe that making these meetings an annual ritual was a mistake and that the alliance should return to convening its summits only occasionally.
Rutte did his utmost to ensure the Ankara summit went smoothly. He defended Trump's decision to go to war with Iran, against the advice of almost every other NATO country. He travelled to Washington twice to convince Trump of NATO's value. When Trump declared he was seriously considering leaving NATO, angered by Europe's refusal to intervene in the conflict with Iran, Rutte flew to Washington again, emphasizing the centrality of European bases and airspace to the war effort.

Just last month, Rutte travelled to Washington for a presentation in the Oval Office with gold-printed cardboard posters, praising Trump for everything he had done to encourage NATO countries to spend more on defense. Even in Ankara, Rutte urged the US president to seize the opportunity to strengthen NATO, convincing allies to contribute much more.

All these efforts succeeded in achieving the summit's primary goal: a meeting that, in the words of the Lithuanian Foreign Minister, would be as boring as possible.

But that's not the purpose of summits. And surely 32 world leaders - and their numerous entourages - have better things to do than gather for two days, at great expense, just to ensure their meeting is boring.

Summits are designed to serve a vital function for any organization. They are mechanisms for resolving differences, making decisions, and setting the agenda for what needs to be done. NATO is no exception.

The Ankara summit was not intended to do this. Sure, some necessary capability upgrades were agreed upon, and Rutte can celebrate the significant defense spending increases agreed since the previous summit. But no major decisions were made, and no new agenda was agreed upon.

Instead of wasting so much energy trying to placate Trump, Rutte and the other leaders could have spent the last year developing a roadmap for how and when Europe would assume core responsibilities for NATO's defense. Managing the transition from a US-led to a European-led alliance is the top priority. And NATO doesn't need its leaders to meet every year to achieve this goal.

A ritual of hypocrisy

A ritual of hypocrisy took place in Ankara. The first day was dedicated to weapons: promises, incredible commitments, nonexistent billions, and, above all, nonexistent production capacity. The Ukrainian president appeared more like an arms dealer than a head of state. He proposed producing all Western weapons under license, just as Russia was destroying what little remained of the country's defense industry.

The new-generation aircraft and the old Patriots will be produced in garages and basements, like the current drones that pacifists send him to assemble. By mail, without registered mail, without return receipt. A safe method until a few weeks ago, when the Russians began bombing even the warehouses of the supposedly private postal service. Meanwhile, the NATO Secretary General presented himself in his best guise as a salesman on behalf of the United States, all too happy to let Europe impoverish itself by rearming with American weapons.

The second day, reserved only for national leaders and authorized observers such as South Korea, but not Ukraine, ended with the nihil sub sole novum. Six months of talks, compromises, vain efforts to reach consensus, and then the identical statement: terse, unfounded, banal, and self-congratulatory, completely devoid of merit. Six paragraphs, two of them polite and one a tirade about the modernization of the alliance.

Three concepts were reiterated: 1. Russia represents a long-term threat. 2. Ukraine contributes to transatlantic security; 3. Iran cannot possess nuclear weapons or projects and must open the Strait of Hormuz. All this with a single approach - money - a single method: declaring what has already been declared, which is equivalent to declaring nothing, and a single incentive: understanding Trump's intentions while he is still in office.

On the first point, it became clear that what London interpreted as an opening toward Moscow was irrational and even senseless: if the threat was long-term, there was no point in talking about immediate rearmament. There was time to negotiate. But that wasn't the intention, and in Ankara, Trump, Rutte, and his NATO collaborators transformed the slip into a prerequisite justifying the lengthy preparation for war.

Long enough to raise funds, procure raw materials (including Chinese chips), modernize factories, prepare forces for a preemptive strike, maintain control of conquered territories (Ukraine and beyond), and contain the Russian response. Essentially, a twenty-year commitment on the condition that Russia remains inert. Those who allow themselves to be fooled by their own propaganda fail to grasp reality.

Russia has already declared the end of the special military operation and the beginning of the war. It has already identified the enemy and launched military operations to neutralize it: to Western attacks with Ukrainian stones and NATO support against its rear areas, it responds with attacks on their rear areas. That is, western Ukraine and, in the future, NATO and EU countries: that is, us.

Time is running out

Time is running out. The suspicion arises that NATO and Europe are not actually preparing to defend Ukraine, but to manage its capitulation. This suspicion is reinforced by the prevalence of talk of money (debt) rather than actual operational capabilities and the real situation on the ground.

But this is further confirmed by the second point of the declaration: "Ukraine contributes to transatlantic security." This is not true at all, but if it were, it would raise the perennial dilemma: can transatlantic security - that of 32 countries, 30 of which share the same coast and are in contact with Russia - depend on a war over Ukraine? What security is achieved by continuing the war in Europe with the more likely prospect of Russia wreaking havoc in Ukraine, or with the more fanciful prospect of no one capitulating to the point of no longer posing a threat to others?

According to Rutte, rearmament brings economic benefits for investment. This would be true if there were financial and human capital to invest and not debts to repay. This is certainly not an investment in security, but rather the exploitation of insecurity.

The third point on Iran is an exercise in pure submission to the arrogance of the United States and Israel. Fortunately, it is not shared by everyone and therefore unfounded for NATO, but not for the individual countries responsible for insecurity in the Middle East, which support the excesses and crimes of the two partners.

The icing on the cake of this summit was the host. Erdogan welcomed the representatives of allies and friends by giving them a revolver and ammunition. A gesture of courtesy. But a revolver donated by a cynical man like Erdogan evokes the outlaws of the Wild West, the last resort of the desperate man ready for suicide, the deadly gamble of Russian roulette. Are these symbols appropriate for NATO today?

Considerations

The alliance's July 7-8 gathering in Turkey's capital failed to live up to Secretary General Rutte's historic billing, while NATO's confrontational stance and massive military spending risk catastrophe for the world.

The alliance remains locked in an existential and systemic confrontation with Moscow. The July 7-8 gathering is a missed opportunity for diplomacy:  NATO has again designated Russia as a long-term threat to Euro-Atlantic security. NATO members pledged €70 billion ($82 billion) in military assistance to Ukraine this year and intend to maintain similar support levels through 2027.

The general line remains unchanged: the militarization of the European continent, concentration on building up defense potential, and preparation for armed conflict with Russia. Allies are ready to spend billions of dollars supporting the regime in Kiev while reducing spending on growing socio-economic problems and causing irreparable damage to the well-being of Europe's population.

European and US media

When a NATO summit is hosted by a leader who has imprisoned his most important political rival, journalists should seize every opportunity to raise the issue.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's main political rival, Ekrem İmamoğlu (presidential candidate of the main opposition Republican People's Party and elected mayor of Istanbul, a city of 16 million) has been in prison for over a year. For a country hosting the leaders of the world's major democracies, the situation should have been deeply embarrassing. The silence of these leaders should have been as well.

Journalists are routinely imprisoned, and the Erdoğan government denied accreditation to representatives of some of the few independent Turkish news outlets attempting to cover the summit. In such a context, the hundreds of journalists from Europe and the United States had an additional responsibility: to ask the questions their silenced Turkish colleagues were unable to ask.

Yet none of them asked Erdoğan or US President Donald Trump about İmamoğlu, let alone the thousands of other human rights violations in Turkey. This was the summit's greatest journalistic failure. Why did they remain silent? Because they didn't want to offend Erdoğan's government? Or because they have accepted Turkey as a dictatorship and no longer consider the imprisonment of political opponents newsworthy?

Whatever the reason, every journalist who attended the summit should reflect on their failure to address the most important issue: comforting the grieving and grieving the powerful. This summit could therefore be remembered as a funeral for Turkish democracy, attended with great pomp by the leaders of democratic nations.

Turkey vs. Israel

Turkey has nevertheless won a decisive battle in its confrontation with Israel. Trump promised to lift sanctions and unblock the delivery of F-35s to Turkey. This represents an unequivocal victory for Erdoğan over Netanyahu. This is especially true because the Israeli prime minister had publicly pledged to prevent the American president from definitively rehabilitating his rival. Netanyahu emerged from this situation somewhat defeated.

Erdoğan achieved a crucial symbolic victory: another lesson for Netanyahu. The United States would not choose Turkey over Israel, something Ankara has no interest in. But it would never sacrifice Turkey for Israel, which the Jewish state desperately needs.