The Loyalty Test and the Hollowing-Out Are the Same War

The Ankara summit, which opened today, was built around a demand Donald Trump reduced to a single word.

I just want loyalty. — Donald Trump

That loyalty demand was tied specifically to backing the US-led Iran war, Operation Epic Fury — not to defense capability, not to Article Five commitments, not to any shared strategic assessment ^[1]. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sharpened the frame, calling NATO a "paper tiger" and accusing allies of endangering American troops by restricting airspace access during the Iran campaign, while launching a six-month review of the US military footprint in Europe folded into the same loyalty logic ^[1]. Here is the contradiction the summit papered over. The Iran war that allies are being asked to endorse as a loyalty test is the same war that depleted American weapons stockpiles so badly that the US suspended arms deliveries to Estonia and other Baltic and Scandinavian allies — the ones already meeting or on a credible path to the 5% GDP spending benchmark Trump is demanding of everyone else ^[2][3]. A 40-day campaign burned through 45% of the US Precision Strike Missile inventory and half of its THAAD and Patriot interceptors ^[2]. The frontline allies who had done what Trump asked — spent heavily, bought American — had their orders frozen as a side effect of the very campaign they were being asked to applaud. Volodymyr Zelensky put the depletion in terms no communique could soften:

The United States produces about 60, maybe 65, Pac-3 missiles per month – anti-ballistic missiles. It's nothing. — Volodymyr Zelenskyy

He cited US production of only 60 to 65 PAC-3 anti-ballistic missiles per month as the reason Europe must build independent systems — the arsenal the 5% spending pledge was supposed to refill being consumed by US wars Europe is asked to back ^[4]. The spending demand and the retreat from the alliance are not separate impulses. They are the same event, running in opposite directions at once. On June 3, the US notified NATO it is cutting its Force Model contributions — a third of available fighter jets, half its Reaper and MQ-4 drones, fewer destroyers and submarines — explicitly to end what the Pentagon called "unhealthy co-dependence" on American forces ^[5]. That pullback aligns with NATO 3.0, the framework under which Europe assumes conventional defense while the US refocuses on China, and with the 2026 National Defense Strategy ^[5]. Simultaneously, Trump has publicly questioned Article Five commitment, threatened to withdraw the US from the alliance entirely, and ruled out Ukrainian NATO membership at Ankara even as the draft communique pledges $80 billion in military support for Ukraine in 2026 and equivalent in 2027 ^[1][6][7]. Ukraine is offered arms funding but explicitly denied the mutual-defense guarantee that would make the spending meaningful for its long-term security ^[6]. The spending demand assumes continued US engagement. The force-model cuts, Article Five doubts, troop review, and delivery suspensions assume the opposite. Both are live. And the US offers nothing transactional in return for the loyalty it demands: no guaranteed Article Five, no guaranteed weapons delivery, no membership for the country Europe is being asked to rearm against ^[7][6]. Anders Fogh Rasmussen's proposed European NATO defense force came with an explicit offer from the European side — support for US military operations in Iran in exchange for continued American commitment to European and Ukrainian security — but the Trump administration has not publicly reciprocated ^[7]. The punitive edge makes the contradiction sharper. A leaked Pentagon memo proposed suspending Spain from NATO after Madrid refused overflight rights during the Iran war and rejected the 5% spending demand, and the US is exploring relocating its Spanish bases to Morocco — turning the spending ask into a loyalty test rather than a capability target, though no formal NATO suspension mechanism even exists ^[8]. Meanwhile, five NATO members — the UK, France, Spain, Italy, and Canada — blocked Secretary General Mark Rutte's proposal that allies spend 0.25% of GDP on Ukraine military aid, leaving Ukraine with no guaranteed minimum funding as the war enters its fourth year and American aid has fallen under Trump ^[9]. The coherence case is not absent. The NATO Defence Industry Forum announced that US weapons — Abrams tanks, ATACMS missiles, AMRAAMs, Stingers — will be produced in European factories, which Rutte and Ursula von der Leyen framed as a shared transatlantic industrial base ^[10]. Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kęstutis Budrys argued that Trump is strengthening NATO by pushing allies toward self-reliance, reading the 5% pledge, the NATO 3.0 shift, and Ukraine support as four reinforcing priorities ^[11]. That reading describes what the arrangement would look like if the withdrawal impulse were not also live. But the same administration that licenses Abrams production in Europe is also calling the alliance a "paper tiger," weighing base relocations to punish "disloyal" members, and freezing weapons deliveries to the allies who most need them ^[1][8][2]. European capitals have already begun building around the contradiction. The UK, France, Poland, Canada, and the Nordic states are developing a "European NATO" contingency plan for continental security if the US withdraws, and the EU is operationalizing its own Article 42.7 mutual-assistance clause with a handbook ^[12][4]. These are parallel architectures created because the guarantor's retreat is already materially underway — force-model cut, Article Five questioned, troop review opened, withdrawal threatened — even as the US demands more spending inside the NATO framework those same moves are hollowing out. The spending and the retreat are not reinforcing each other. They are competing for the same European euros, and the euros are increasingly going toward the exit door. What the Ankara summit leaves unresolved is the question every ally will now weigh in private: how much to invest in an alliance whose leading member demands loyalty to a war that cost the allies the weapons they bought to defend themselves, while cutting the forces that made the guarantee credible. The 5% pledge will be debated in roadmaps and communiques for months. The stockpile math is already done.