Trump keeps Nato allies on edge over pledge to increase defence spending

As summit looms and global tensions rise, podcast’s exposure of UK forces’ weakness is a prescient warning

- Deborah Haynes Sky News Defence Editor

The UK, Canada and their European allies have one goal for this week's major Nato summit in The Hague: to keep Donald Trump onside.

Keir Starmer and fellow leaders are expected to agree to a demand by the US president to significantly increase the amount of money they spend on defence and related areas, to 5% of GDP from the current 2% Nato target, provided Spain - the only outlier — is brought into line.

They are also keeping the main business of the gathering, which officially starts on Tuesday for two days, to a three-hour session on Wednesday, to limit the risk of Trump leaving early. He is already expected to arrive late. In a further softener, the summit's final communique will be a lot shorter than normal.

The need to shrink and condense the alliance’s most important meeting of the year to suit its most powerful member is evidence of a shifting tide in which the US can no longer be relied upon as the key guarantor of European security.

Of all the Pentagon’s competing priorities, the most pressing is the crisis between Israel and Iran, a close ally of Russia. There is a growing possibility that the US will join this fight.