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ANKARA, Turkey — After public bluster over Greenland and other grievances, President Donald Trump embraced the NATO alliance at a summit of its leaders on Wednesday, praising countries that have boosted their military spending and offering fresh support for Ukraine in its war with Russia.
The positive tone in a closed-door meeting surprised many other NATO leaders, who had been bracing for a verbal barrage after Trump's rebukes of the alliance. The president had complained for months about European criticism of the U.S. war against Iran. Ahead of Wednesday's meeting, he also declared that he still wanted to take Greenland from NATO ally Denmark.
Once the doors closed in the soaring presidential palace in the Turkish capital, however, Trump focused more on the positive, officials who were in the room with him said. He highlighted countries that were meeting new, higher NATO spending goals, but didn't mention laggards by name. And he did not mention Greenland once the meeting started, easing European fears that he was seeking to put the island territory back on the front burner.
Despite U.S. plans to pull assets from the continent, Trump also held back from announcing concrete steps to withdraw U.S. troops from Europe or otherwise slash U.S. commitments to the military alliance.
"They said, ‘We love, sir, we love you.' These are grown people saying that. Isn't that nice?" Trump told reporters after the day of meetings. "Maybe, I don't know, maybe they're trying to get to me, and in a way they did, because there was tremendous unity in that room."
"There was a love in that room. It was great. So this was a tremendously successful summit," Trump added.
Earlier, in a separate meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump praised the Ukrainian war effort, a notable shift in tone for him.
Top policymakers in the alliance meeting with Trump said other leaders took turns praising defense spending increases and efforts to strengthen NATO after comments from the host, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the U.S. president.
"The main message was about unity," Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur said in an interview after the meeting. "It was more optimistic than maybe many were afraid of."
Trump did press NATO countries to meet spending targets, "and sooner rather than later, which is also okay for us, because we've been saying that for the last four years," Pevkur said.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that Trump listened attentively to others and that the U.S. president ended his remarks by saying that "there is a feeling of love in the air."
Merz credited Trump with pushing Europe to spend more on the continent's defenses, which he said other U.S. presidents had requested well before Trump assumed office.
"This president is now doing it in a different way, but the result speaks for itself," the German leader said. "And perhaps, to put it somewhat bluntly, the Europeans' free riding is now over."
The narrative of harmony ended the day on a very different note than the one on which it started. Earlier Wednesday, Trump's repetition of his bid for Greenland threatened to revive a dispute that has sparked European fury and fear perhaps more than anything else during his time in office.
Just before the closed-door meeting, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen had declared that her country would defend its territory, as Trump returned to his demand for control of Greenland.
Tensions between Trump and U.S. allies had soared earlier this year as he seemed to push NATO to a breaking point with threats to seize the vast Arctic expanse that is an autonomous territory of Denmark.
After European leaders stood up to the president, Trump backed down in January, saying he had reached the outlines of a deal brokered by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.
But almost as soon as he arrived to meet NATO counterparts in Turkey, Trump told reporters that Greenland "should be controlled by the United States, not by Denmark."
The president said he planned to use the annual meeting, which gathers leaders of NATO's 32 nations, to "relay my problems."
"Greenland is a big problem for us," he added.
Laying out his complaints about fellow NATO member states, Trump also took aim at the hesitation of European allies to get embroiled in the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran.
"I'm not happy with NATO," Trump had said repeatedly, sitting alongside Rutte before the mood shifted at the closed-door meeting.
European leaders have sought to distance themselves from the war, which is unpopular across much of the continent, although some nations, including Germany and Britain, lent their bases and airspace to the U.S. bombing campaign.
Privately, Rutte has noted to Trump the significant European outlays on U.S. defense and technology, cautioning that if the U.S. scares Europe into worrying it could turn into an enemy, countries will pull back investments no matter how hard Trump pressures them, officials familiar with Rutte's strategy say.
In some cases, a rift has already started, as major European companies shift their platforms toward European software and some capitals push to limit spending on U.S. systems to curb reliance.
"If we are spending more money, it is not to spend it on non-European" systems, French President Emmanuel Macron told reporters Wednesday. Macron added that France and its European neighbors are "here to replace" military assets as Washington pulls back from NATO.
At the meeting on Wednesday, the tone was unusually positive, four senior officials who were inside the room said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to be candid.
Even Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who has tangled with Trump on defense spending and his opposition to the Iran war, took a turn to praise his leadership, they said.
Trump had started the day threatening to cease trade relations with Spain, which runs a trade deficit with the U.S. Spain is chief among the European nations that blocked U.S. access to their airspace for attacks on Tehran.
"Don't even talk to them," Trump said. "They're hopeless. They're bad people."
Yet Sánchez later told reporters that he had "an informal chat" with Trump, including about the soccer World Cup. "There was no tension; on the contrary, it was all kind words," he said.
Trump's silence about Greenland at the formal meeting sparked speculation about why he had brought it up in front of the press, one of the officials said, and whether it was an attempt to pressure Denmark in negotiations.
Many leaders were happy to accept Wednesday's version of Trump but resigned to the head-snapping nature of their relationship, the official said, adding that fresh fights were likely eventually.
NATO Diplomats had expected Trump to use the two-day gathering in the Turkish capital to lament Europe's criticism of his war with Iran war, or its long-standing reliance on U.S. protections. But his comments on Greenland caught some off guard.
Frederiksen has said in recent months that she didn't believe the ordeal is truly over, even after Rutte assuaged Trump with promises of increasing the NATO and U.S. military presence in the Arctic.
Arriving at the summit early Wednesday, Frederiksen said Denmark's "position is as clear as it has been all through: Greenland is, of course, not for sale."
"We are a sovereign state," she told reporters, "and we need everybody to respect our territorial integrity."
The Danish leader noted that NATO was meant to ensure allies help defend each other from outside threats.
European officials say Trump's public skepticism about defending U.S. allies has spurred a reckoning over Article 5, which states that an attack against one NATO ally should be considered an attack on all members.
Still, in a joint declaration after Wednesday's summit, which Trump signed, leaders reaffirmed commitment to their defense pact, also pledging that Europe would keep backing Ukraine and assume a bigger role at NATO.
European leaders say they are not simply appeasing Trump but rearming to prepare for a potential confrontation with Russia as trust in the U.S. wavers.
Still, NATO officials came to the summit flashing big numbers that could appeal to Trump, signing weapons deals and highlighting the hundreds of billions of dollars that European nations have recently diverted to defense and security.
One arms deal floated before the summit did not immediately materialize, however. Trump departed without announcing a final decision to allow Turkey to purchase American F-35 fighter jets.
Rutte, who has gone to great lengths with his flattery to keep Trump onside, heaped fresh praise on the U.S. president Wednesday for pressuring European nations to raise military spending as he sought to de-escalate once again. "Grab the win, it's there. You did this," Rutte told the president.
The NATO chief has maintained that there is a "good process" in negotiations on Greenland, home to about 56,000 mostly Inuit people. Technical talks between U.S., Danish and Greenlandic officials began after Rutte defused the crisis in January, but officials say they have yielded few concrete results.
Talks have previously broached increasing the presence of U.S. troops or bases in Greenland, offering the U.S. greater access to investment in mineral extraction and for a multilayered air defense system called Golden Dome.
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