NATO Summit to Open as Leader Warns of ‘Dangerous’ World

28 June 2022, Spain, Madrid: NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg speaks during the NATO Public Forum's High-Level Dialogue on Climate and Security, ahead of the start of the NATO Summit. (NATO/dpa)
28 June 2022, Spain, Madrid: NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg speaks during the NATO Public Forum's High-Level Dialogue on Climate and Security, ahead of the start of the NATO Summit. (NATO/dpa)
TT
20

NATO Summit to Open as Leader Warns of ‘Dangerous’ World

28 June 2022, Spain, Madrid: NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg speaks during the NATO Public Forum's High-Level Dialogue on Climate and Security, ahead of the start of the NATO Summit. (NATO/dpa)
28 June 2022, Spain, Madrid: NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg speaks during the NATO Public Forum's High-Level Dialogue on Climate and Security, ahead of the start of the NATO Summit. (NATO/dpa)

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has sparked a "fundamental shift" in NATO’s approach to defense, and member states will have to boost their military spending in an increasingly unstable world, the leader of the alliance said Tuesday.

Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg spoke as US President Joe Biden and other NATO leaders arrived in Madrid for a summit that will set the course of the alliance for the coming years. The summit was kicking off with a leaders' dinner hosted by Spain's King Felipe VI at the 18th-century Royal Palace of Madrid.

Stoltenberg said the meeting would chart a blueprint for the alliance "in a more dangerous and unpredictable world."

"To be able to defend in a more dangerous world we have to invest more in our defense," Stoltenberg said. Just nine of NATO's 30 members meet the organization’s target of spending 2% of gross domestic product on defense. Spain, which is hosting the summit, spends just half that.

Top of the agenda for leaders in meetings Wednesday and Thursday is strengthening defenses against Russia and supporting Ukraine.

Biden, who arrived with the aim of stiffening the resolve of any wavering allies, said NATO was "as united and galvanized as I think we have ever been."

Moscow's invasion on Feb. 24 shattered European security and brought shelling of cities and bloody ground battles back to the continent. NATO, which had begun to turn its focus to terrorism and other non-state threats, has had to confront an adversarial Russia once again.

"Ukraine now faces a brutality which we haven’t seen in Europe since the Second World War," Stoltenberg said.

Russia’s invasion has prompted Sweden and Finland to abandon their long-held nonaligned status and apply to join NATO. But they are being blocked by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has insisted that he will only allow the Nordic pair to enter if they change their stance on Kurdish rebel groups that Turkey considers terrorists.

Stoltenberg said "we hope to make progress" on the issue in Madrid - but that was far from certain.

Diplomats and leaders from the three countries have held a flurry of talks in an attempt to break the impasse. The three countries’ leaders met for more than two hours alongside Stoltenberg on Tuesday.

The Turkish leader showed no sign of backing down as he left Ankara for Madrid.

"We don’t want empty words. We want results," Erdogan said.

Erdogan is critical of what he considers the lax approach of Sweden and Finland toward groups that Ankara deems national security threats, including the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, and its Syrian extension. American support for Syrian Kurdish fighters in combating the ISIS group has also enraged Turkey for years.

Turkey has demanded that Finland and Sweden extradite wanted individuals and lift arms restrictions imposed after Turkey’s 2019 military incursion into northeast Syria.

Sinan Ulgen, director of the Center for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies in Istanbul, was pessimistic about a breakthrough in Madrid. He said the issue of the Kurdish groups was the main block, "but there are other demands, and the involvement of other actors like the US could facilitate a deal."

Biden is due to meet Erdogan Wednesday on the sidelines of the NATO summit.

Ankara has been upset with the US since the Americans kicked Turkey out of its F-35 stealth jet program after Turkey bought Russian-made S-400 missiles. Turkey is waiting to hear back on a request for upgraded F-16s from the US.

Jamie Shea, a former senior NATO official who is an associate at the Chatham House think tank, said the Madrid meeting, with national leaders present in the media glare, "is the moment of maximum pressure" for compromise.

"It’s either at Madrid or it’s likely to go on for a long while," he said.

Ending the deadlock would allow NATO leaders to focus on their key issue: an increasingly unpredictable and aggressive Russia.

A Russian missile strike Monday on a shopping mall in the central Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk was a grim reminder of the war’s horrors. Some saw the timing, as Group of Seven leaders met in Germany and just ahead of NATO, as a message from Moscow.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is due to address NATO leaders by video on Wednesday, called the strike on the mall a "terrorist" act.

Stoltenberg said Monday that NATO allies will agree at the summit to increase the strength of the alliance’s rapid reaction force nearly eightfold, from 40,000 to 300,000 troops. The troops will be based in their home nations, but dedicated to specific countries on NATO’s eastern flank, where the alliance plans to build up stocks of equipment and ammunition.

Beneath the surface, there are tensions within NATO over how the war will end and what, if any, concessions Ukraine should make to end the fighting.

There are also differences on how hard a line to take on China in NATO’s new Strategic Concept - its once-a-decade set of priorities and goals. The last document, published in 2010, didn't mention China at all.

The new concept is expected to set out NATO’s approach on issues from cybersecurity to climate change - and the growing economic and military reach of China, and the rising importance and power of the Indo-Pacific region. For the first time, the leaders of Japan, Australia, South Korea and New Zealand are attending the summit as guests.

Some European members are wary of the tough US line on Beijing and don’t want China cast as an opponent.

Stoltenberg said last week that "we don’t regard China as an adversary," but added that it "poses some challenges to our values, to our interests, to our security."

In the Strategic Concept, NATO is set to declare Russia its number one threat.

Russia’s state space agency, Roscosmos marked the summit’s opening by releasing satellite images and coordinates of the Madrid conference hall where it is being held, along with those of the White House, the Pentagon and the government headquarters in London, Paris and Berlin.

The agency said NATO was set to declare Russia an enemy at the summit, adding that it was publishing precise coordinates "just in case."



Trade on Agenda as Trump Heads to Scotland for Diplomacy and Golf

 President Donald Trump waves from the stairs of Air Force One as he boards upon his arrival at Joint Base Andrews, Md., Friday, July 25, 2025. (AP)
President Donald Trump waves from the stairs of Air Force One as he boards upon his arrival at Joint Base Andrews, Md., Friday, July 25, 2025. (AP)
TT
20

Trade on Agenda as Trump Heads to Scotland for Diplomacy and Golf

 President Donald Trump waves from the stairs of Air Force One as he boards upon his arrival at Joint Base Andrews, Md., Friday, July 25, 2025. (AP)
President Donald Trump waves from the stairs of Air Force One as he boards upon his arrival at Joint Base Andrews, Md., Friday, July 25, 2025. (AP)

US President Donald Trump departed for Scotland on Friday for a mix of diplomacy, business and leisure, as a huge UK security operation swung into place amid planned protests near his family-owned golf resorts.

The president, whose mother was born in Scotland, is expected to split his time between two seaside golf courses bearing his name, in Turnberry on the southwestern coast and Aberdeen in the northeast.

Air Force One was due to arrive around at 8:20 pm local time (1920 GMT) with the president and White House staff, and Trump has no public events scheduled for Saturday or Sunday, the White House said.

However, he is due to meet with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer during the trip.

"We're going to do a little celebrating together, because we got along very well," Trump told reporters as he left the White House Friday, calling Starmer "a good guy" doing "a very good job".

He said they would discuss "fine tuning" the bilateral trade deal struck in May, and would "maybe even improve it".

But the unpredictable American leader appeared unwilling to cede to a UK demand for flexibility over reduced steel and aluminium tariffs.

Trump has exempted London from blanket 50 percent tariffs on imports of both metals, but the fate of that carve-out remains unclear.

"If I do it for one, I have to do it for all," Trump told reporters, when asked if he had any "wiggle room" for the UK on the issue.

The international outcry over the conflict in Gaza may also be on the pair's agenda, as Starmer faces growing pressure to follow French President Emmanuel Macron and announce that Britain will also recognize a Palestinian state.

- Protests -

Trump is expected to return to the UK in September for a state visit -- his second -- at the invitation of King Charles III, which promises to be lavish.

During a 2023 visit, Trump said he felt at home in Scotland, where his mother Mary Anne MacLeod grew up on the remote Isle of Lewis before emigrating to the United States at age 18.

Residents, environmentalists and elected officials have voiced discontent over the Trump family's construction of a new golf course, which he is expected to open before he departs the UK on Tuesday.

Police Scotland, which is bracing for mass protests in Edinburgh and Aberdeen as well as close to Trump's golf courses, have said there will be a "significant operation across the country over many days".

Scottish First Minister John Swinney, who will also meet Trump during the visit, said the nation "shares a strong friendship with the United States that goes back centuries".

He added it would provide Scotland with a "platform to make its voice heard on the issues that matter, including war and peace, justice and democracy".

Trump has also stepped into the sensitive debate in the UK about green energy and reaching net zero, with Aberdeen being the heart of Scotland's oil industry.

In May, he wrote on his Truth Social platform that the UK should "stop with the costly and unsightly windmills" as he urged incentivizing drilling for oil in the North Sea.