At NATO last year Trump was 'Daddy'. How times have changed

Remember last year when NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte called Donald Trump 'Daddy'?

Everyone insisted it was a joke at the time. But the remark somehow encapsulated both the sweaty sucking up that world leaders were engaged in with Trump in the early months of his presidency, and also the air of only barely disguised panic among European countries that the US may walk away from the 80-year-old trans-Atlantic treaty.

What a difference 12 months makes.

In Türkiye this week, the aging, wandering, meandering US president was indulged, as he flailed around in renewed threats to Greenland, and Spain. And declared Japan an Islamic Republic. And got the Ukrainian and Russian presidents' names mixed up.

But you got the sense that he was no longer feared — except for his erraticism — as he was a year ago.

Trump demanded to be the centre of attention. But the more significant news out of NATO was really about everyone else: that the meeting highlighted not just how other members of NATO have strategically and mentally regrouped since the shock of Trump's bellowing last year, but also what a stunning reorganisation of the geopolitical landscape is under way.

The most obvious change of course is the change in fortunes in the war in Ukraine. It was only March last year when Trump berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, yelling, "You've done enough talking. You're not winning this."

"Without us, you don't have any cards", he said, and claimed Zelenskyy was "gambling with World War III" by resisting a fast-tracked peace deal with Russia.

Now, Trump thinks Ukraine is winning — there was a net loss of Russian-occupied territory in Ukraine last month — and is promising them a licence to manufacture Patriot Missile defence systems (a nice promise but likely to be so long in the development as to be only a piece of symbolic armour any time soon).

And it turns out that Ukraine has indeed had some cards to play, even without the US, in the form of its cutting-edge drone technology, support from Europe and wily diplomacy in new territory like the Gulf states.

Old habits die hard

But Ukraine is just a more conspicuous part in the shifting geopolitics of NATO.

An obsession with whether NATO states are spending the Trump-demanded proportion of GDP on defence is part of a general tendency to overlook the trends when only focusing on the end goals.

Similarly, asking whether it is realistic to think that Vladamir Putin may be toppled tends to overlook the grinding change that inevitably flows in a country where 1.4 million people have been killed, which is now eating its own economy to support its war effort, and is now confronted by a massive energy shortage, despite being one of the biggest resource economies in the world.

Old habits die hard. And too often assessments of what is happening in NATO focus on western Europe and the sclerotic state of the defence forces — and political inertia — of the UK, France and Germany.

That means not enough attention is paid to the east.

Türkiye hosted this week's NATO summit. Türkiye also hosts the largest army in NATO after the United States and, along with other countries in eastern Europe and the Baltics, has become a specialist weapons maker, making around 80 per cent of its own weapons, including drones, missiles and tanks, and special types of ammunition.

A race against time

Having once been somewhat frozen out because of a missile defence system with Russia and having been a cog in the wheel to Sweden joining NATO, Türkiye is now a key source of defence capabilities for western European nations — like Germany — racing against time to rebuild their armed forces.

It's been brought in from the cold on NATO hardware, with Trump suggesting this week that he may reverse a ban on Turkish purchases of advanced fighter plans and could get six F-35 jets from the US in an initial contract.

Part of the song and dance show for Trump put on by NATO and its secretary-general Rutte was a glitzy presentation of how it was making "billions, literally billions" of investment decisions across its member countries.

Notably, some of those deals might involve US companies, but the Turkish Aselsan is just one of the companies based in other NATO countries that are now major suppliers to the bloc, including Germany's Rheinmetall, France's Airbus, and Sweden's Saab.

Even the infrastructure of European groupings like NATO — and the EU — are being sort of side-swiped as the build-up in rearmaments progresses.

Finnish President Alexander Stubb told the Financial Times this week that, while a previously blocked debate on Ukraine's bid to join NATO has been deferred until after a possible Ukraine ceasefire, the possibility of integrating Ukraine's defence industry with NATO allies was the best and fastest way to ensure the country had a membership-like status and would be in the best position to potentially join in the future.

"If I had a choice, we would make Ukraine into a NATO member immediately. But I'm realistic that that's not on the political cards," he said. "But my main point is that NATO needs Ukraine as much as Ukraine needs NATO."

He added: "Their capabilities in drones and missiles are superior to those of most members in the alliance. And I actually think that the closer we bring Ukraine to the alliance, the stronger the defence and the deterrence of the alliance is."

A 'new, more European' NATO?

Poland is another story. Once sniggered about as one of Europe's poor cousins, its economic growth rate at almost 3 per cent in 2024 compared with 1.2 per cent in France, while the German economy contracted.

It's the fifth-largest economy in Europe and is also the largest in terms of defence spending as a share of GDP in NATO, though notably most of its spend remains on US arms imports.

Poland is the largest of several countries growing — and spending — like this in central and eastern Europe, in a trend which is also seen in the Baltic states.

Finally, there is Germany. Having spent proportionately less on defence than the UK and France for decades, Europe's biggest economy will match their combined spend by the end of the decade, and a third of the federal government's budget will be spent on defence.

Its neighbours are both pleased and anxious about this change. And let's face it, the idea of an aggressively rearming Germany would have been anathema to everyone even a decade ago.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz insists the spending is a response to the threat from Russia — and from United States disinterest — not from any renewed continental ambitions.

Partnership-based leadership: yes; hegemonic fantasies: no. "Never again will we Germans go it alone," he told the Munich Security Conference in February.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) reported in April that the 29 European NATO members spent a combined total of $US559 billion in 2025, with Germany the largest military spender in the group.

Its expenditure is growing by 24 per cent year-on-year to $US114 billion compared to a still extraordinary 20 per cent a year for the rest of NATO.

"In 2025 military spending by European NATO members rose faster than at any time since 1953," said Jade Guiberteau Ricard, researcher with the SIPRI Military Expenditure and Arms Production Programme.

Merz this week called it the "dawn of a new, more European" NATO.

Whatever Trump — and the US — do now, he and Vladamir Putin have kicked off profound changes in the strategic balance in Europe: the return of Germany; the rise of eastern Europe and the power of Türkiye.

From Putin's perspective, he appears to have achieved the exact opposite of what he wished when he invaded Ukraine four years ago: a revived NATO, with more members; and more complex relationships among his near neighbours, some of whom are showing signs of peeling away from him, as Belarus did this week when President Alexander Lukashenko reportedly told an audience of senior officers that it would not send troops to fight in Ukraine.

We shall just have to wait to see what games are afoot as a result.

Laura Tingle is the ABC's Global Affairs Editor.