What to expect from the next NATO summit

NATO is faced with the greatest crisis in its history. What seems to be its strength is increasingly accelerating its internal decline. Like mephistopheles in Goethe’s BewilderThe alliance often makes the opposite of what it understands. Nowhere is this contradiction more obvious only in the accounting of the NATO summit in The Hague, with its radical militarization program. President Donald Trump proposed to double NATO’s military spending – three dollars, or 5% of GDP. European allies seem ready to follow his example. For Germany, the implications are austere: almost half of its federal budget – more than 225 billion euros – would be directed to military spending. The result would probably be a self-inflicted economic and social crisis.

If it is adopted, these plans fundamentally transform European societies – transforming them into nations where social justice and economic stability are subject to military accumulation. The justification in Europe is also increasingly in contradiction with the evaluations of American intelligence. While German intelligence agencies, the Bundeswehr and the traditional media and the reflection groups warn against a possible Russian attack in 2029, the combined evaluations of threats of the 17 US intelligence agencies of the last two years suggest the opposite: Russia is neither planning nor the preparation of a conventional NATO attack. Given the overwhelming military superiority of NATO, such a Moscow decision would be suicidal.

Meanwhile, transatlantic tensions on NATO’s strategic objective is riding. The Trump administration was put pressure for an even stronger pivot towards China and, as indicated at the Washington summit in 2024, seeks to “Asianize” NATO through a network of bilateral military agreements. Trump seems interested in freezing war in Ukraine, leaving European states exhausting their resources in a long -term dead end with Russia. While Trump promotes negotiation and rejects a large -scale trade war with Moscow, European strategies are increasingly aiming to exhaust Russia economically and militarily. Recent EU sanctions targeting the Russian merchant fleet – referred to the cessation of oil exports via the Baltic Sea – which triggers a dangerous escalation.

NATO has never been a neutral alliance; It was founded to project American geopolitical power. In exchange for security, European nations have made considerable sovereignty. Today, the alliance is relaxing under the weight of its internal contradictions. In the field of commerce, the United States and its European allies are on the verge of a commercial conflict. The joint rearmament efforts can try to cover these cracks, but largely benefit the military -industrial complex, which – like a drug addict – judges the ever greater profits. In the end, the costs are borne by taxpayers, with the middle class in danger of being in danger. German weapons manufacturers like Rheinmetall, now in shared property by American investment funds such as Blackrock, Goldmann Sachs and Stanley Morgan, are about to enjoy a lot.

The increasingly assertive role of Germany in this dynamic is often underestimated. The government is now positioned as the military guarantor of Eastern Europe. For the first time since the Second World War, a brigade of German tanks was parked abroad – in Lithuania, near the Russian border. Given the historical heritage of Germany, this decision signals an alarming degree of historical amnesia. The policy of occupation of the First World War – and the war of annihilation against the Soviet Union accompanied by a genocide against the Slavic peoples – are insufficiently confronted. Today, a renewed conduct for “the extension of the East” animates German policy, as we can see in the commitment of Chancellor Friedrich Merz to make the “strongest army in Europe” in Bundeswehr “.

Historians warn that great wars often start with acts of sudden assault but with prolonged rearmament and the erosion of confidence. Faced with these developments, it is time to revive the call for relaxation and disarmament – even if, as during the Cold War, these voices are rejected as naive or denounced as a traitor.