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President Lee Jae Myung of South Korea shakes hands with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte ahead of talks in Ankara, Turkey, on July 7, 2026. (Yonhap)

Last week’s NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, was an important turning point signaling the advent of “NATO 3.0.”
 
The alliance’s European members both secured a reaffirmation of the collective security commitment from US President Donald Trump, who had previously threatened to withdraw from the treaty organization, and pledged to shoulder a greater share of the alliance’s defense burden.
 
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, who attended the NATO summit, would have witnessed this significant shift unfold firsthand at the gathering. Korea, too, must think about what a modernized alliance with the US should look like and develop proposals that Washington will find acceptable. 
 
The NATO heads of state reaffirmed Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which states that “an armed attack against one or more [alliance members] in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all” in the Ankara Summit Declaration, which was released on Wednesday.

They also emphasized how European nations and Canada were delivering on the Hague defense commitment in which NATO allies pledged to allocate 5% of GDP annually to defense-and security-related spending, noting how investments were increased in “core defense requirements by more than US$139 billion.”
 
“European allies and Canada are assuming greater responsibility for our shared security,” said NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte during a press conference on Wednesday. “We are rebalancing our security for the better; that is what NATO 3.0 is all about.”
 
The term “NATO 3.0” was coined by none other than Elbridge Colby, the US undersecretary of defense for strategy and force development, the architect of the second Trump administration’s defense policy. 
 
In a speech made in February, Colby referred to NATO during the Cold War as “NATO 1.0,” the period following the end of the Cold War and as Europe began to rely more on the US as “NATO 2.0,” and “NATO 3.0” as the period following the outbreak of the Ukraine war in 2022 to the present day.
 
In essence, he called on Europe to shoulder greater responsibility in this new strategic environment shaped by the growing threat posed by Russia.

According to a Wall Street Journal article published July 5, European leaders who had convened in Brussels in January commiserated over how, in the words of the Belgian prime minister, Europe risked becoming “a miserable slave” to the US.
 
Europe is in a position where it must secure a high degree of strategic autonomy from the US, whose sole concern is putting “America first,” but it cannot build defense self-sufficiency overnight. The conclusion it reached at the summit — to keep the alliance intact while expanding its own role — would have been the outcome of intense deliberation.
 
Korea faces a similar challenge while grappling with other issues such as regaining wartime operational control (OPCON) of its armed forces from the US. Much like Europe, it has no choice but to retain its alliance with the US while also expanding its strategic independence. However, we must take innovative steps to enhance our role and assume greater responsibilities in response to the evolving strategic environment. 

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