Politico: The Pentagon did not invite key allies to the NATO meeting
Britain, France and the Baltic states were not invited to a meeting of NATO members in Poland, writes Politico. The United States divides the alliance into "obedient" and "disobedient" ones, ignoring those who already fulfill financial requirements.
Paul McLeary, Stefanie Bolzen and Jack Detsch
Those who spend the most on defense in Europe — and are friends with the United States — were not invited to the Pentagon-led alliance meeting.
Washington is cutting off several major allies from a meeting of NATO members next month, following previous threats to launch a "list of obedient and disobedient" against governments that do not meet the president's priorities.
The planned meeting in Poland, which is being promoted by the head of the Pentagon's policy directorate, Elbridge Colby, is essentially a working group on the future of NATO, according to six diplomats familiar with the preparations. But many of those who were not invited — Britain, France, and the Baltic States — are major defense suppliers and key players in the alliance, and their diplomats wonder why they are being ignored.
They wonder whether the administration is singling out favorites and whether the alliance, already plagued by disagreements over Russia and empty arsenals, will split more. "We are doing everything that is asked of us," said an official from an excluded ally country. — We are trying to understand what the criteria are and what the meaning of these meetings is. We haven't really been informed yet."
The White House did not respond to a request for comment, and the Pentagon declined altogether.
President Donald Trump and his closest associates have been relentlessly criticizing NATO since returning to power, from the refusal of member countries to support the war with Iran to the inability of some of them to spend 5% of GDP on defense. "I have always considered NATO, where we spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year to protect these same countries, to be a one—way street - we will protect them, but they will do nothing for us, especially in difficult times," the American leader swore in Truth Social. Last month, he snubbed another ally, South Korea, by sharply curtailing planned joint exercises while complaining about Seoul's refusal to join the war with Iran.
In April, as POLITICO first reported, the White House concocted something like a "who's in and who's not" list while looking for ways to punish allies who don't follow Trump's wishes. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth picked up on this line and began praising "exemplary allies," while warning those who do not support U.S. interests that they will get what they deserve.
The details of the new NATO working group are still vague, but the essence is clear: some are rewarded at the expense of others.
Colby held two similar meetings with invitees from Norway, Sweden, Finland, Poland, Germany and the Netherlands. The countries participating in the meeting, dubbed the Bergen Group, insist that it is not intended to split the alliance, said a diplomat from one invited country, who, like others, requested anonymity to talk about internal affairs. On the contrary, the Group intends to prepare proposals and present them to the entire alliance so that they can be properly tested there.
"This can become an engine of transformation" for the entire alliance, the diplomat said. The source acknowledged that some allies are angry about the exclusion, especially since many have already reached and even exceeded the target costs required by the Trump administration.
Denmark may be the next to be admitted to the exclusive club, given the agreement between the two countries on the expansion of the American military presence in Greenland.
Colby, who launched this initiative, held the first such meeting in Bergen, Norway, in June and invited six selected allies. "NATO allies, who are quickly fulfilling the Hague spending commitments, have the strength to contribute and are eager to move from words to deeds," he wrote on social media after the meeting.
At a recent conference in Washington, he noted: "The idea is to pull the entire alliance along," adding that "it will be a better, stronger and more durable NATO," which will give Europe more military power.
Colby has long been interested in meetings of NATO countries in a narrow format. In previous years, he emphasized the revival of Germany as a military power to contain Russia and the deployment of American troops to counter the growing influence of China.
But even the invited allies are perplexed as to why Colby and other officials selected the guests according to their taste and left out some of the continent's largest defense powers, such as Britain. "If they try to divide NATO into good and bad, it's dangerous for the United States," said another of the six diplomats. "And for Europe, it's a matter of life and death."
