The growing salience of developments in the Middle East was already visible during the NATO Foreign Ministers meeting in Helsingborg on 21–22 May 2026, which served to finalise preparations and lay the groundwork for the Ankara Summit.[1] Alongside discussions centred on defence spending, military readiness, defence industrial production, and long-term support for Ukraine, Ministers also addressed instability in the Middle East, including the war in Iran and the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte warned that Iranian actions threatened both freedom of navigation and global commerce, using the crisis to underline how increasingly interconnected security challenges have become and the need for closer cooperation between Allies and partners from the region.[2]
Therefore, the broader political framing of the Ankara Summit remains centred on implementation and “delivery”[3] of commitments agreed at the 2025 Hague Summit. Speaking ahead of the Foreign Ministers meeting, Rutte emphasised defence spending, military readiness, defence industrial production, and long-term support for Ukraine as the Alliance’s core priorities. A similar message had already been delivered by Deputy Secretary General Radmila Shekerinska at the Antalya Diplomacy Forum, where she likewise framed Ankara primarily as the moment to demonstrate progress on the Hague commitments.[4]
Increased Political Attention to the South — Without Strategic Reprioritisation
Since the adoption of the Southern Neighbourhood Action Plan[5] (SNAP) at the 2024 Washington Summit, NATO has visibly increased political attention toward the South through expanded consultations, partnership activities, enhanced visibility and engagement with other international organizations. The appointment of a dedicated Secretary General’s Special Representative for the Southern Neighbourhood, Spanish diplomat Javier Colomina, has contributed to providing greater continuity and visibility to these efforts. Supported by a dedicated team, the office has helped establish a permanent workstream on the Southern Neighbourhood across the Alliance while also providing partners with a clear point of contact for engaging NATO and navigating its institutional structures. This increased visibility was reflected again in February 2026, when senior Allied officials met in Istanbul for consultations on the Southern Neighbourhood organised jointly with the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and attended by Türkiye’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Ambassador Z. Levent Gümrükçü. The level of participation and Türkiye’s active involvement highlighted the extent to which parts of the Alliance continue to push for greater political attention toward the region. The opening of the NATO Liaison Office (NLO) in Amman, Jordan, similarly reflects NATO’s efforts to further institutionalise its engagement in the Near East. While the office’s remit does not extend to the Southern Neighbourhood as a whole, it represents an important step in strengthening NATO’s regional presence and engagement with partners in that part of the region. At the same time, NATO increasingly links developments in the South to broader Alliance discussions surrounding resilience, strategic competition, critical infrastructure, defence industrial production, and maritime security. Colomina described the Southern Neighbourhood as a cornerstone of NATO’s 360-degree approach to security, while discussions in Istanbul focused on strengthening partner capabilities, addressing shared security challenges, and increasing collective security.[6]
Taken together, these initiatives create the impression of a NATO that is becoming more strategically engaged in the South. Yet expectations regarding the practical impact of the SNAP should remain measured. While NATO partners generally welcome the increased political attention dedicated to the Southern Neighbourhood and view the Action Plan as preferable to the absence of a structured framework altogether, several continue to question the extent to which the initiative has substantively transformed NATO’s engagement in practice. Such expectations should nevertheless be viewed with caution. The SNAP was not designed as a vehicle for large-scale resource transfers, a major expansion of NATO’s presence in the region, or a fundamental reorientation of the Alliance’s strategic priorities. Rather, it was intended to provide a more coherent framework for political dialogue, partnership engagement, and coordination across the Southern Neighbourhood. The expansion of consultations, political dialogue, and institutional activity has strengthened NATO’s engagement architecture and increased visibility for Southern Neighbourhood issues within the Alliance. However, these developments have not been accompanied by a broader shift in NATO’s overall strategic priorities, which remain centred on Russia’s war against Ukraine, defence spending, military readiness, defence industrial production, and preserving sustained U.S. engagement within the Alliance. As a result, the SNAP has so far contributed primarily to institutionalising attention toward the Southern Neighbourhood and creating new mechanisms for engagement. Whether this will ultimately translate into a more significant evolution of NATO’s role in the region remains difficult to assess and will likely depend on both future implementation and the wider strategic environment facing the Alliance.
The Main Obstacle is Intra-Allied Political Divergence
The emphasis placed on the SNAP reflects broader debates within the Alliance regarding the strategic importance of the Southern Neighbourhood and the role NATO should ultimately play in the region. While Allies increasingly recognise that developments across the Middle East, North Africa, and the Sahel carry direct implications for Allied security through terrorism, migration, maritime insecurity, energy security, and strategic competition, they also recognise the potential for practical cooperation with partners in addressing shared challenges. At the same time, Allies continue to differ regarding the level of priority these issues should receive relative to NATO’s core deterrence and defence tasks. Such differences are not unusual in an Alliance of 32 members with distinct strategic cultures, geographic realities, and security concerns, but they nevertheless shape the scope and ambition of NATO’s engagement in the South.
For southern European Allies in particular, developments across the Mediterranean are often viewed as immediate security concerns rather than secondary theatres. Italy has consistently been among the strongest advocates for maintaining attention on the Southern Neighbourhood within NATO, reflecting both its geographic exposure and domestic political concerns linked to migration and instability across the Mediterranean. Türkiye similarly continues to push for greater political attention toward the South, both through its role as host of the Ankara Summit and through active support for NATO’s southern engagement initiatives, including the February 2026 consultations in Istanbul. Spain has traditionally supported stronger recognition of the South within NATO, although Madrid’s political position inside Alliance debates has become more complicated amid wider tensions surrounding defence spending and transatlantic burden-sharing. Greece likewise faces direct exposure to instability across the Eastern Mediterranean, while simultaneously balancing longstanding tensions with Türkiye.
At the same time, eastern and northern Allies continue to view Russia and the war against Ukraine as the Alliance’s overriding strategic priority. For countries such as Poland and the Baltic states, Russia represents the principal existential threat facing NATO, reinforcing the view that Allied political attention, military planning, and resources should remain primarily focused on deterrence and defence on the eastern flank. Finland and Sweden joined the Alliance fundamentally because of the deteriorating security environment created by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, not because of instability in the Southern Neighbourhood. In this context, resources, political attention, and strategic bandwidth devoted to the South can at times be perceived as competing with more urgent priorities linked to Russia and European territorial defence.
Germany has often found itself attempting to balance these differing strategic perspectives while prioritising broader Alliance cohesion. Supporting eastern deterrence, preserving transatlantic unity, maintaining sustained support for Ukraine, and accommodating southern concerns have increasingly become simultaneous political imperatives for Berlin and other major Allies. Yet this balancing dynamic also helps explain why NATO’s southern engagement frequently defaults toward political signalling, consultations, and partnership management rather than major strategic transformation. This should not be understood as a lack of effort on the part of NATO officials working on the SNAP who have actively sought to expand and institutionalise NATO’s engagement with partners across the region. However, the scope of what can ultimately be pursued remains constrained by the level of political consensus Allies are prepared to support. The principal obstacle facing NATO in the Southern Neighbourhood is therefore not a lack of awareness regarding instability in the region or engagement with partners on the ground, but rather the political realities that shape cooperation on both sides of the partnership. Within the Alliance, these take the form of differing priorities, resources, and levels of strategic ambition. Among partners, they can include limited institutional capacity, competing political considerations, and varying levels of interest in deeper engagement with NATO.
Gaza and Israel Expose(d) the Political Limits of NATO Partnerships
NATO’s partnership frameworks in the Southern Neighbourhood do not operate in a political vacuum and remain affected by broader regional crises and geopolitical tensions that the Alliance itself cannot control. While NATO has sought to institutionalise dialogue and cooperation with partners across the region, recent developments have highlighted the extent to which these frameworks remain constrained by wider political realities, both within the region and among Allies themselves.
The 30th anniversary of NATO’s Mediterranean Dialogue[7] in 2025 illustrated both the value and the limits of NATO’s partnership diplomacy. Under normal circumstances, the anniversary would have provided an opportunity to showcase one of NATO’s longest-standing partnership frameworks. Instead, the war in Gaza made such political signalling difficult. Israel’s participation became increasingly sensitive for several other partners, many of whom faced limited domestic or regional appetite for visible engagement during the conflict. While NATO often presents its partnership frameworks as platforms that facilitate dialogue between actors with differing interests, diplomatic civility should not be mistaken for political alignment. The Mediterranean Dialogue remains a valuable mechanism for maintaining communication, but the Gaza war demonstrated how regional tensions can limit what multilateral partnership frameworks can realistically achieve politically, even as practical cooperation and bilateral programmes with individual partners continue.
The 2026 Iran war exposed a different, but related, set of challenges concerning consultation, political coherence, and regional perceptions of NATO. Although the Alliance was not operationally involved, the United States acted alongside Israel outside a NATO framework. While several Allies were likely aware of the growing risk of escalation, awareness did not necessarily translate into meaningful political consultation. For Gulf partners participating in the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative[8], the consequences were direct. Instability surrounding the Strait of Hormuz generated concerns regarding maritime security, supply-chain vulnerability, and energy exports, all of which affect economies heavily dependent on maritime trade.
The crisis also highlighted broader questions regarding Alliance cohesion. Regional actors closely observe political divergences within NATO, including President Donald Trump’s public criticism of Allies and differing Allied positions on whether developments involving Iran should be treated as a NATO issue. Germany’s statement that the conflict had “nothing to do with NATO”[9] stood in contrast to U.S. calls for stronger Allied support in protecting freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz. More broadly, uncertainty surrounding U.S. commitments within NATO carries implications for how partners assess Western security guarantees. If Washington openly questions support for Ukraine, a country central to NATO’s core strategic priorities, partners in regions considered less central to collective defence are likely to draw their own conclusions regarding the limits of Allied unity and strategic commitment.
Taken together, the Gaza war and the Iran crisis demonstrated that NATO’s partnerships in the Southern Neighbourhood remain vulnerable to wider regional and transatlantic political fractures. The challenge facing the Alliance is therefore not the absence of dialogue mechanisms, but the extent to which political divisions continue to shape what those mechanisms can realistically deliver.
Trump-Era Pressure and the Transformation of NATO Partnerships
The political uncertainty surrounding the Trump administration has significantly affected NATO's internal political environment and shaped the conditions under which the Alliance approaches its partnerships in the Southern Neighbourhood. Preserving transatlantic cohesion and maintaining sustained U.S. engagement have become overriding political priorities for both Allied governments and NATO leadership. In this context, Secretary General Mark Rutte has sought to maintain a constructive working relationship with President Donald Trump despite recurrent tensions surrounding defence spending, Ukraine, Greenland, and more recently the Strait of Hormuz. While this approach has drawn criticism, it reflects a broader reality confronting the Alliance: keeping the United States politically engaged in NATO remains central to Alliance cohesion at a moment of heightened geopolitical instability.
This environment has contributed to a more cautious political culture within NATO since President Trump assumed office. Many Allies remain reluctant to provoke additional disagreements with Washington, particularly given the central importance of continued U.S. support for Ukraine. As a result, initiatives perceived as politically secondary to NATO's core deterrence and defence tasks are increasingly scrutinised. This dynamic has reportedly also contributed to internal reprioritisation and restructuring within teams and divisions at NATO. This was reflected at the NATO Foreign Ministers meeting in Helsingborg in May 2026, where Rutte stressed that “the question is no longer whether we need to do more. The question is how quickly Allies can turn commitments into capabilities.”[10]
Yet the same pressures that have made NATO more cautious have also accelerated a broader shift in how the Alliance approaches partnerships. Historically, NATO partnerships largely followed a demand-driven logic, where cooperation activities were developed primarily in response to partner requests. Increasingly, however, partnerships are also becoming more interest driven, as demonstrated through the new generation of cooperation tools such as the Individually Tailored Partnership Programmes.[11] Rather than focusing primarily on what partners request, discussions increasingly centre on whether specific forms of cooperation directly contribute to Allied needs and interests. Partnerships are therefore becoming more closely linked to issues such as maritime security, critical infrastructure protection, defence capacity-building, resilience, and broader strategic competition.
This evolution is increasingly visible in NATO's institutional approach toward the Southern Neighbourhood. Since the introduction of the SNAP, implementation efforts have increasingly focused on delivering practical outcomes that align with immediate Allied priorities. At the same time, efforts to maintain support for partnership initiatives have had to account for differing priorities among Allies, particularly regarding the allocation of political attention and resources. In this context, partnerships are increasingly framed in terms of their contribution to deterrence, defence, resilience, and the protection of critical infrastructure, making them more readily aligned with the priorities of Allies focused on NATO's core security tasks.
However, this evolution should not be interpreted as reducing partnerships solely to hard-security instruments. While partnerships are increasingly evaluated through the lens of strategic utility, political engagement remains an important objective in its own right. The partnership with Mauritania illustrates this particularly well. As the only NATO partner country located in the Sahel through the Mediterranean Dialogue, Mauritania occupies a unique position at a time when instability, coups, and growing anti-Western sentiment have complicated engagement across much of the region. The partnership provides NATO with an important channel for political dialogue and engagement. Maintaining access, preserving relationships, and sustaining Allied visibility where alternative avenues for engagement are increasingly limited can themselves constitute strategic interests.
At the same time, this shift creates new political sensitivities. While partnerships continue to provide valuable channels for engagement, they are increasingly viewed through the lens of deterrence, resilience, and geopolitical competition. This may strengthen their value within the Alliance, but it also makes them more politically exposed. For some partners, maintaining a close relationship with NATO may increasingly be perceived (both domestically and externally) as carrying geopolitical implications that were previously easier to avoid or downplay. The more partnerships are associated with hard-security objectives, the more difficult it becomes to present them as politically neutral or exclusively partner-driven frameworks. Trump-era uncertainty has therefore not only encouraged NATO to demonstrate greater strategic utility through its partnerships but has also accelerated a broader shift in how those partnerships are understood and justified. In doing so, it has further exposed a reality that runs throughout NATO's engagement in the South: the principal constraints on the Alliance's ambitions stem less from geography than from political dynamics, both within NATO and across the region.
Conclusion
As NATO approaches the Ankara Summit, the Alliance is unlikely to deprioritise the Southern Neighbourhood. The growing instability across the Middle East, North Africa, and the wider Mediterranean has become too strategically interconnected with Allied security to ignore. Yet the developments surrounding the SNAP, the Gaza war, the Iran war, and the evolution of NATO partnerships over the past two years all point toward the same underlying reality: the principal constraint facing NATO in the South is not geography, capability, or even institutional mechanisms, but politics. Allies continue to differ on the level of strategic priority the region should receive, the role NATO should play there, and the extent to which southern engagement contributes to the Alliance’s core deterrence and defence tasks. As a result, NATO’s approach toward the Southern Neighbourhood is likely to remain characterised by growing institutionalisation, expanded political dialogue, and selectively intensified cooperation rather than major strategic transformation. Expectations surrounding Ankara should therefore remain measured. Despite renewed attention toward the South, the Summit's central political focus will remain defence spending, military readiness, industrial capacity, transatlantic cohesion, and sustaining support for Ukraine. The challenge facing NATO in the Southern Neighbourhood is therefore not one of awareness or institutional mechanisms, but of politics: aligning priorities among Allies, balancing competing strategic demands, and sustaining meaningful partnerships in a region where political realities often constrain cooperation on all sides. Ultimately, the principal constraint facing NATO in the Southern Neighbourhood is not geography, capability, or institutional mechanisms, but the political realities that continue to shape cooperation among Allies and partners alike.
[5] NATO’s Southern Neighbourhood Action Plan, adopted at the 2024 Washington Summit, provides the Alliance’s overarching framework for strengthening engagement with the Middle East, North Africa, and the Sahel through enhanced political dialogue, partnerships, capacity-building, and cooperation with regional organisations, building on existing partnership frameworks such as the Mediterranean Dialogue (1994) and the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative (2004).
[7] The Mediterranean Dialogue (MD), launched by NATO in 1994, is a partnership framework with Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia that promotes regional security, political dialogue, and practical cooperation between NATO and Mediterranean partners.
[8] The Istanbul Cooperation Initiative (ICI), launched by NATO in 2004, is a partnership framework with Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates that promotes regional security through political dialogue and practical cooperation, particularly in defence, counterterrorism, and non-proliferation.
[9] https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/suche/regierungspressekonferenz-vom-16-maerz-2026-2411716
[11] Individually Tailored Partnership Programmes are NATO’s principal framework for cooperation with individual partner countries. Introduced under the Alliance’s “One Partner, One Plan” concept in 2021, ITPPs consolidate NATO’s various partnership activities into a single strategic framework that defines shared objectives, cooperation priorities, and implementation mechanisms tailored to each partner.
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