It wasn’t always this way. In the 77 years since the transatlantic alliance was born, it has had 35 summits. It took almost eight years after the alliance’s founding, in 1949, for NATO to have its first full-fledged summit, in 1957. The next one was more than 16 years later, in 1974. Incredibly, there were only 10 NATO summits during the entirety of the Cold War, which was the whole reason the alliance was formed. The pace of the summits picked up after the U.S.S.R. collapsed and the alliance began to expand, but even then it was not an annual occurrence. Rather, the alliance convened every two to three years.

And that was fine. There was simply no need to convene summits so frequently, in part because the allies were largely in agreement—and because the real work got done behind the scenes. Nor was there any need for all the pomp and circumstance (and logistical nightmare) of bringing in the outsize egos of the heads of state. “You’re relying on defense ministerial meetings, meetings of foreign ministers to work out the important questions,” said a former defense official who has participated in several NATO summits. “There wasn’t a sense that you needed to bring together heads of state because it was all agreed beforehand. And that remains the case. The only time you see something exciting happening is because the staff really messed up, that it didn’t get worked out in advance.”

The summit only became an annual occurrence after 2022, when Russia unleashed the largest land war in Europe since World War II and reminded NATO yet again why it was formed. The point was to show unity in the face of Putin’s aggression, which the alliance succeeded at doing in Madrid in 2022. But as the war dragged on and Trump came back into the picture, the summit became a place where the alliance’s natural fissures—it runs on the unanimous decisions of 32 of its very different members—became the main attraction. And Trump, as is his style, has turned the headline-grabbing drama up to the max.

So why, people are increasingly wondering, keep doing something that has so much potential to go off the rails and signal disunity and weakness to Putin? “The idea is you need a forcing function to get agreement,” the former defense official explained. “It’s a normal diplomatic practice and often it gets results. But you’ve now had a series of summits in which it’s not working. Instead, you’re getting an airing of contentious issues in public. So wouldn’t it be better—if there isn’t agreement—to keep working it at the working level, between foreign ministers and defense ministers? Because given the recent track record, it’s not productive. It risks being destructive, and it incentivizes mischief-making.”

As a result, people involved in these summits say, NATO summits have become shorter and less ambitious, leaving less room for one member—or one American president—to cause the kind of chaos that would give the alliance’s adversaries a win. In Ankara, for example, there will be an official dinner, a session that’s essentially a report card of who’s spending how much on defense—and that’s it. “It’s hardly a summit, in all honesty,” said one former NATO official. “They try to make it such a light touch because they don’t want him to be on the ground too long.” A second former NATO ambassador agreed. “My sense is that they’ve painted themselves into a corner, and then they have to plan for very light communiqués so there’s less room for disagreements,” this person said. “They’re shifting to short meetings because that reduces opportunities for crisis.”

So then why keep doing this every single year? “I think it’s a bit on autopilot,” the former defense official said. “Why do we do it? Because we do it.” This year, the answer is even more mundane. Two years ago, as part of Turkey’s lifting its veto on Sweden’s accession to the alliance, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan secured the honor of hosting the 2026 NATO summit. It would be a chance to put on a good show for the allies—and to talk about the coveted F-35. It would also allow NATO to appease a member that, as recently as 2019, was buying Russian weapons systems and in 2022 threatened to block Sweden and Finland from joining the alliance.

So that’s one big reason there’s a NATO summit happening this year. Otherwise, however, Europe and the U.S. are largely divided over its purpose—and, indeed, the mission of the alliance at all. Is NATO, as U.S. Undersecretary of War Bridge Colby asked in Munich this year, for the conventional defense of the European continent? Or is it, as his boss said when he declared war on Iran just two weeks later, for helping the U.S. reopen the Strait of Hormuz in the Middle East? “The point [of these summits] now is to secure the U.S.’s commitment to Europe,” the second former NATO ambassador explained bluntly. “The more you’re in doubt, the more you pretend.” Lord Ismay, the founding secretary general, famously said that the purpose of NATO was to “keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” Now, according to this former ambassador, “NATO’s raison d’être is to keep the Americans in.”

But is this best done in public, where it can easily turn nasty—or, for the Europeans, humiliating? It’s why the conversation in D.C. and many corners of Europe has quietly become about returning to a time when NATO summits were less frequent but more productive. “It’s something that’s been raised in years past, but now leaders are even more exhausted,” said the first former NATO ambassador. “Many allies have questioned, ‘Is this necessary?’” Said the second former NATO ambassador, “I personally think that there’s no need. The Allies should give themselves more flexibility and not tie themselves to Trump’s tempers.”

That’s all from me this week, friends. Enjoy your holiday weekend, and I’ll see you back here next week. Until then, good night. Tomorrow will be worse.

Julia

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