OMITTED

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Trump NATO: sanctions, F-35 sales, and alliance politics

43 sources · updated 2026-07-08
Left 65% Center 16% Right 19%
28 left · 7 center · 8 right

What happened

On July 7–8, 2026, President Donald Trump attended the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, and held a bilateral meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Trump said the U.S. would move to lift sanctions on Turkey tied to Ankara’s purchase of Russia’s S-400 air defense system and said he would consider allowing Turkey to reenter the F-35 fighter program or purchase F-35s, despite U.S. law and a congressional restriction linked to the S-400. During the summit Trump again criticized NATO allies’ defense-spending levels and said he was disappointed that several European countries declined to provide support during the recent U.S.-Iran conflict; he also repeated his view that the U.S. should control Greenland, which is part of NATO member Denmark. Separately, while at the summit Trump said he believed the Iran ceasefire was “over” after new exchanges of strikes, alongside reports the U.S. hit Iranian targets and tightened oil-related measures.
Omitted — what each side leaves out

Unpacked

Trump’s NATO posture here isn’t “burden-sharing tough love”; it’s transactional coercion that trades alliance cohesion for short-term leverage and personal diplomacy—and it will backfire. The most materially exposed actors aren’t pundits, they’re institutions and supply chains: Congress (which legally boxed in F-35 transfers and CAATSA sanctions), the F-35 industrial base (Lockheed and the multi-country production ecosystem), Israel’s qualitative military edge doctrine, and frontline NATO states that depend on predictable U.S. commitments (Baltics, Poland, Romania). Turkey is the immediate beneficiary: sanctions relief and even the hint of F-35 access reprice Ankara’s risk, normalize its S-400 gamble, and signal that defiance can be “fixed” with leader-to-leader chemistry. That is poison for deterrence, because it tells every ally—and every hedging partner—that U.S. rules are negotiable if you have political value. Second-order effects are straightforward. If Trump tries to override statutory constraints, Congress becomes the veto point and the fight itself erodes credibility: allies watch Washington argue with itself in public and plan around U.S. unreliability. Third-order effects are worse: Europe accelerates the Bloomberg-described $50B deep-strike push precisely to reduce U.S. leverage, not to “pay up” for Trump. Meanwhile, Russia and China harvest the signal that NATO is conditional and purchasable; that lowers the perceived cost of probing gray zones, from the Arctic to the Black Sea. The Greenland threats aren’t a side-show—they’re an own-goal that reframes the U.S. from security guarantor to territorial claimant, making it politically easier for European governments to distance themselves, regardless of their defense spending. Historical precedent is the 2019 Turkey expulsion from the F-35 program: it was a line drawn to protect sensitive tech from Russian collection. Reversing it without S-400 removal doesn’t just “improve relations”; it degrades the integrity of Western export controls and sanctions regimes—tools the U.S. needs against Russia, Iran, and China. The dominant framing that Trump is merely forcing fair payments collapses because his asks aren’t only budgetary; they’re loyalty tests tied to unrelated wars (Iran) and bilateral pet projects. NATO is a collective-defense pact, not a protection racket, and treating it like one incentivizes everyone to build alternatives.
Bottom line

Trump is turning NATO from a rules-based security system into a personality-based marketplace, and that’s how alliances rot. Handing Turkey sanctions relief and flirting with F-35s while it keeps the S-400 rewards strategic insubordination and invites more of it. The real outcome won’t be a stronger NATO—it’ll be faster European decoupling and more adversary risk-taking.

The Left View
Left-leaning coverage emphasizes alliance strain and institutional guardrails: Trump’s public complaints about NATO, threats involving troop reductions or trade, and renewed Greenland claims are framed as destabilizing for collective defense and as a political pressure tactic on allies. On Turkey, these outlets foreground the reasons Ankara was removed from the F-35 program (the S-400 purchase and related security risks), and they highlight that Congress—not just the president—constrains sanctions relief and any F-35 transfer, making Trump’s promises difficult to execute without legal and political conflict. They also stress regional ramifications, including Israeli concerns about preserving its qualitative military edge, and portray the summit as allies “managing” Trump to keep the alliance functioning while Europe explores greater independent capability (e.g., deep-strike weapons initiatives) amid doubts about U.S. reliability.
The Right View
Right-leaning coverage frames Trump as enforcing fair burden-sharing and rewarding a cooperative ally: his criticism of NATO is presented as a justified response to unequal costs and to European refusals to back U.S. action against Iran. Erdoğan is depicted as a dependable partner whose neutrality in the Iran conflict and past cooperation merit improved ties, including lifting sanctions and reconsidering F-35 sales. These outlets treat the potential sanctions rollback and F-35 move as pragmatic, transactional diplomacy that advances U.S. interests and strengthens leverage over allies—while acknowledging the S-400 issue and Israel’s objections as factors to be managed rather than decisive vetoes. Greenland rhetoric is often presented as a hard-nosed security and resource argument rather than purely provocative posturing.
Our Take (balanced)
The left’s strongest point is that the Turkey/F-35 issue is not simply a presidential preference: the S-400 remains the core technical-security problem, and U.S. law and Congress can block or condition both sanctions relief and any transfer—so grand promises risk creating friction with allies, Israel, and lawmakers if the administration can’t deliver. The right’s strongest point is that NATO burden-sharing is a real, long-running imbalance and that presidents do use leverage to force capability investment; tying U.S. commitments to measurable contributions can change incentives, especially when European states have the capacity to spend more. The key synthesis is that Trump is pursuing maximum bargaining leverage (public pressure on NATO; concessions to Turkey) at the same time, but these tracks collide: bringing Turkey closer via sanctions relief and advanced aircraft may strengthen NATO’s southeastern flank yet raise countervailing risks (interoperability, technology exposure, regional balance, and congressional backlash). The practical outcome will likely hinge on whether Turkey can credibly neutralize the S-400 constraint (removal, third-party transfer, or verifiable nonoperation) and whether NATO allies respond with concrete spending and capability plans that reduce Trump’s appetite for disruptive threats.

43 sources

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