June 20, 2025
NATO Summit Preview with Julianne Smith and Camille Grand
Next week, on June 24th and 25th, NATO will hold its annual summit in the Hague. In the run-up to the event, expectations are low among allies. The ultimate goal is to navigate the Summit without major incident and walk away with unity still intact. At the top of the agenda is the historic new pledge to spend 5% of GDP on defense. However, not everything is in agreement going into Tuesday, with varying perspectives on Russia, and Allies anxiously awaiting the outcome of the U.S. posture review to see how a downsized U.S. presence in Europe takes shape.
To discuss expectations and potential outcomes for the NATO Summit, we’re pleased to welcome Julianne Smith and Camille Grand to the podcast.
Julianne Smith is the president of Clarion Strategies and the former U.S. Permanent Representative to NATO
Camille Grand is a Distinguished Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and the former Assistant Secretary General for Defense Investment at NATO
More from CNAS
-
From Subversion to Resistance: Lessons from Russia’s War in Ukraine
Podcast
This episode examines how Russian operatives and local militants in 2014 transformed political unrest in eastern Ukraine into an armed insurgency—and what it teaches us about ...
By Celeste Wallander
-
Aug 07, ’26 Washington Roundtable
Podcast
On this week’s Defense & Aerospace Report Washington Roundtable, former DoD Europe chief Jim Townsend of the Center for a New American Security joins Defense & Aerospa...
By Jim Townsend
-
Gulf States Distance Themselves from Trump as Iran Tensions Escalate
Video
“Not only are they hardening their stance against Iran, but they also seem to be distancing themselves somewhat from the United States." Despite Saudi Arabia joining the strik...
By Jim Townsend
-
Ukraine's Command Shake-Up: Fedorov Out, Drapatyi In
Podcast
On July 15th, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy dismissed now–former Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, one of the architects of Ukraine’s technological transformation o...
By Andrea Kendall-Taylor & Jim Townsend
