Lavrov targets NATO as Europe readies for a reduced American role

ANTALYA, Turkey — 

Russia’s foreign minister delivered a prosecution of the American-led world order from Turkey’s annual diplomacy forum over the weekend. Sergey Lavrov called NATO an “aggressive bloc” and the rules-based international system a slogan that “never existed.” He said the war the U.S. and Israel launched against Iran was “a plan to control the oil through the Strait of Hormuz.”

Hours earlier, NATO’s deputy secretary-general told the same forum that Europeans and Canadians must now take primary responsibility for their own defense. Radmila Shekerinska said alliance credibility depends on action, not words.

The three-day Antalya Diplomacy Forum, with an estimated 6,400 participants from 150 countries around the world, underscored the NATO member’s growing role as a bridge connecting the West to a skeptical Middle East, Asia and Africa — and this year, the international conference came just two months before Ankara hosts its first NATO summit.

U.S. and European military and diplomatic leaders will hold their annual meeting in a NATO country that has been fending off Iranian ballistic missiles for six weeks. 

With roughly 355,000 active-duty personnel, Turkey brings the second-largest military to the alliance, and Ankara endorsed NATO’s 5% of GDP target at The Hague last June. It is spending 2.33% this year and climbing. 

It is the only NATO member whose territory has been struck by Iran during the current war, with four ballistic missiles intercepted over Turkish airspace since Feb. 28. A British sovereign base in Cyprus was hit the day after the war began by an Iranian-made drone launched by Hezbollah from Lebanon.

Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told the Anadolu Agency this week that Ukraine had become “the biggest rupture in trans-Atlantic relations.” He said European allies must plan for a security architecture “without the U.S.” and prepare “a clear transition plan so no member is left exposed.” 

His remarks came days after President Trump threatened to pull the U.S. out of NATO over European refusals to send ships to unblock the Strait of Hormuz.

What Mr. Fidan is planning for is not a legal U.S. withdrawal from NATO but a practical one. 

European capitals are now drafting contingency plans for “NATO without America,” with Germany, long opposed, shifting to support the work. 

Mostafa Ahmed, senior researcher at the Al Habtoor Research Centre in Dubai, told The Washington Times that Mr. Trump cannot formally pull the U.S. out of NATO without a two-thirds Senate vote, a restriction Congress wrote into the 2024 defense authorization bill.

But Mr. Trump does not need to exit formally to gut the alliance. 

As commander-in-chief, he can pull troops out of European bases, stop sharing intelligence and walk away from collective defense in all but name. 

“He would be notifying himself before he ever got around to telling the allies,” Mr. Ahmed said. 

That is the scenario Europe is now planning for, sources at the forum told The Times.

Rebuilding a defense architecture without Washington would cost Europeans roughly $1 trillion over 25 years, Mr. Ahmed said, with NATO struggling to replace the U.S. contributions to space intelligence, command-and-control networks, strategic airlifts and the nuclear umbrella.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told the forum Friday that “European security cannot be envisioned without Turkey.” 

Turkey, he said, was “ready to continue taking responsibility.” 

Like many of its fellow NATO members, Turkey has been reluctant to back the joint U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, refusing to give the U.S. permission to use Incirlik Air Base or the Kurecik radar station in its operations against Tehran.

Kęstutis Budrys, Lithuania’s foreign minister and a former intelligence chief, said his country spends 5.4% of gross domestic product on defense. “We have to be ready to defend ourselves territorially,” he said. “Are we ready for that now? Not really.” He called the 10-year trajectory to 5% by 2035 too slow. He argued that the European countries talking the loudest about sovereignty invest the least in the drones the continent’s defense now requires.

Spain is the sharp example. It spent 1.28% of GDP on defense last year, the lowest in the alliance. It formally opted out of the 5% commitment. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called the target “unreasonable” and “counterproductive.”

Zeki Levent Gumrukcu, Turkey’s deputy foreign minister and former permanent representative to NATO, said Ankara needed to return to “this concept of being self-sufficient.”

Armenia’s deputy foreign minister and Azerbaijan’s presidential foreign policy adviser came to the forum to describe a normalization the Trump administration brokered at the White House in August. Vahan Kostanyan said the region had a window to capitalize on the disruption of global shipping lanes. 

“The destruction of the supply chains is not going to last forever,” he said. “We need to be smart enough working now to materialize the competitive advantages we have.” 

The Red Sea routes through Houthi missile range. Hormuz is down to a trickle from the Iran war. The opening for Armenia and Azerbaijan is the Middle Corridor, the route Turkey, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan have pushed since Russia invaded Ukraine, now layered with the Trump-brokered Armenia-Azerbaijan passage through Syunik.

“Even one or two years ago, we couldn’t have been presented on the same podium,” said Hikmet Hacıyev, President Ilham Aliyev’s senior foreign policy adviser. 

He called South Caucasus stability “the biggest competitive advantage we have.” 

On the forum’s sidelines, Mr. Kostanyan told reporters Yerevan was “politically and technically ready to open the border at any moment” with Turkey. 

“However,” he added, “I think this question should be directed to the Turkish side.” 

Turkey closed its border with Armenia in 1993 in solidarity with Azerbaijan during the first Nagorno-Karabakh war and has kept it shut for 33 years.

Moscow has been pushing back on the framework since the start of the year. President Vladimir Putin summoned Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to the Kremlin on April 1 and told him publicly that Armenia could not pursue European Union membership and remain in the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union. 

The following day, Moscow imposed stricter import requirements on Armenian goods. 

Russian-linked disinformation networks are pushing coordinated narratives against Mr. Pashinyan ahead of June parliamentary elections. 

A U.S. delegation’s planned visit to Armenia this month to launch the transit corridor, the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, was postponed after the Iran war reordered regional priorities.

The top Russian official at the forum saved his most withering remarks for NATO and for Mr. Trump.

“NATO is not in the best state,” Mr. Lavrov said. He framed the alliance’s trouble as self-inflicted and its divisions as the cost of Washington’s habit of reaching for other people’s oil.

He drew his line through the Trump administration’s year of force. 

Iran, he said, was about Hormuz oil. The January capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was about Venezuelan oil, the drug-trafficking charges a cover. 

He extended the charge to Greenland, to Washington’s recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, to its recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. 

He said Western invocations of territorial integrity for Ukraine could not be reconciled with what Mr. Trump had proposed elsewhere.

He took aim at the trade corridors Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan have pushed across the South Caucasus and Central Asia. Globalization, he said, had been designed by Washington and was now being dismantled by Washington, with the trade wars and new routes serving as tools “to strengthen its own positions.”