Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney walked into the NATO summit in Ankara this week carrying a contradiction he couldn't quite paper over. For years, he's been one of Trump's sharpest critics—blasting tariffs, denouncing threats to Canadian sovereignty, vowing retaliation. But on Wednesday, standing before reporters at the alliance gathering, Carney offered something that looked a lot like capitulation on defense spending.
"It's not just that he's winning the argument — he's won the argument," Carney said, crediting Trump's years of pressure for pushing NATO members to commit more resources to military spending. The acknowledgment was striking: a fierce Trump opponent essentially conceding that the president had succeeded where decades of previous administrations had failed.
For nearly two decades, successive U.S. presidents have pushed NATO allies to increase defense spending, always running into the same wall of diplomatic resistance and bureaucratic inertia. Trump came in with threats to withdraw from the alliance entirely, explicitly attacking individual nations, and weaponizing trade policy to enforce compliance. By most measures, it worked. NATO leaders gathered in The Hague earlier this year and agreed to a new 5% GDP spending target by 2035—more than doubling the alliance's longstanding 2% benchmark.
The mechanism behind that achievement, however, deserves scrutiny.
Trump didn't rely on consensus-building or multilateral negotiation. Instead, he deployed economic coercion. When Spain's government declined to commit to the 5% target—arguing it could meet NATO's military capability requirements at 2.1% spending—Trump branded the country "a terrible partner in NATO" and called for cutting off trade and tourism. NATO Ambassador Matthew Whitaker subsequently announced that the Trump administration was considering "countermeasures" against countries falling short. The message was unmistakable: comply, or face economic consequences.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte publicly credited Trump with accomplishing what "since Eisenhower, American presidents tried to do." But accomplishment through coercion functions differently than accomplishment through consensus. One generates compliance; the other generates resentment that may surface later.
Canada's trajectory illustrates the point. When Carney's government took office, Canada was spending approximately 1.4% of GDP on defense. Under Trump's pressure—and facing implicit threats regarding trade relations—the government announced this week a series of major defense commitments: a submarine procurement program, an $800 million Joint Strike Missile contract, and new Arctic military communications infrastructure using Telesat's Lightspeed satellite constellation. Carney said Canada is on track to reach 4% defense spending before the end of the decade.
During his previous term, Carney hammered Trump relentlessly on tariffs and the president's repeated suggestions that Canada should become the 51st state. During his victory speech in March 2025, Carney accused Trump of imposing "unjustified tariffs" on Canadian goods and declared the president was "attacking Canadian families, workers and businesses." He promised retaliatory tariffs would hold until "the Americans show us respect."
Yet weeks later, Carney was essentially endorsing Trump's defense spending strategy while announcing major military commitments. When asked about his previous criticism, Carney seemed to separate the issues—acknowledging Trump's success on NATO spending while remaining at odds over trade policy.
"The president is here, and he's in a good mood," Carney told reporters after a phone call with Trump the Sunday before the summit. It was a curious detail to emphasize.
What's notable is what this reveals about how leverage functions in international relations. Trump's willingness to threaten withdrawal from NATO, to single out individual allies for public criticism, and to weaponize trade policy created conditions where even his strongest critics found themselves forced to acknowledge his tactical success. Whether that success translates into long-term alliance cohesion or generates festering resentment remains an open question.
Canada's announcements this week represent genuine commitments. But they also represent a government making significant military investments under pressure rather than through strategic consensus. In international relations, forced concessions often carry different weight than voluntary ones. The durability of that victory, and the cost of extracting it through economic coercion rather than consensus-building, will likely be debated for years to come.
