NATO's Washington Summit: Russia's War on Ukraine Tests Alliance

This week, leaders from across the Euro-Atlantic region met in Washington, D.C., for the annual NATO Summit. The security pact turned 75 this year, and its 32 members are facing challenges on multiple fronts, from Russia’s continuing bombardment of Ukraine, now in its third year, to the growing relationship between Russia and China and NATO member Hungary’s outreach to both. And that’s not to mention issues such as the impacts of technology, especially artificial intelligence, and questions of how many allies are reaching the intended threshold for their own defense spending of at least 2% of GDP.

And all of this comes amid the uncertainty of a looming U.S. election in which former President Donald Trump has signaled he would distance Washington’s support for the alliance, and amid President Joe Biden’s struggles to persuade supporters that he still has the physical and mental stamina – at age 81 – to serve another term. 

What are the key takeaways from the Summit and how might it influence security concerns on both sides of the Atlantic? 

Co-hosting today is Just Security’s Washington Senior Editor, Viola Gienger, and joining the show to discuss this year’s NATO summit and unpack its implications is Ambassador Daniel Fried. 

During his 40 years in the Foreign Service, Ambassador Fried played a central role in implementing U.S. policy in Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union. In several senior roles, including as Assistant Secretary of State for Europe, Ambassador Fried helped craft the policy of NATO enlargement to Central European countries and NATO-Russia relations. Earlier, he served as the U.S. Ambassador to Poland. He is currently the Weiser Family Distinguished Fellow at the Atlantic Council, which co-hosted the annual NATO Public Forum with other think tanks on the sidelines of the summit.  

Show Notes: 

• Ambassador Daniel Fried (@AmbDanFried) 
• Viola Gienger (@ViolaGienger)
• Paras Shah (@pshah518)
• Ambassador Fried’s Just Security article “At the NATO Summit, Strategy and Politics in Play”  
• Just Security’s NATO coverage
• Just Security’s Russia-Ukraine war coverage
• Music: “Broken” by David Bullard from Uppbeat: https://uppbeat.io/t/david-bullard/broken (License code: OSC7K3LCPSGXISVI)

Transcript

Paras Shah: This week, leaders from across the Euro-Atlantic region met in Washington, D.C., for the annual NATO Summit. The security pact turned 75 this year, and its 32 members are facing challenges on multiple fronts, from Russia’s continuing bombardment of Ukraine, now in its third year, to the growing relationship between Russia and China and NATO member Hungary’s outreach to both. And that’s not to mention issues such as the impacts of technology, especially artificial intelligence, and questions of how many allies are reaching the intended threshold for their own defense spending of at least 2% of GDP.

And all of this comes amid the uncertainty of a looming U.S. election in which former President Donald Trump has signaled he would distance Washington’s support for the alliance, and amid President Joe Biden’s struggles to persuade supporters that he still has the physical and mental stamina – at age 81 – to serve another term. 

What are the key takeaways from the Summit and how might it influence security concerns on both sides of the Atlantic?  

This is the Just Security Podcast. I’m your host, Paras Shah. Co-hosting with me today is Just Security’s Washington Senior Editor, Viola Gienger.  

Viola Gienger: Joining the show to discuss this year’s NATO summit and unpack its implications is Ambassador Daniel Fried.  

During his 40 years in the Foreign Service, Ambassador Fried played a central role in implementing U.S. policy in Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union. In several senior roles, including as Assistant Secretary of State for Europe, Ambassador Fried helped craft the policy of NATO enlargement to Central European countries and NATO-Russia relations. Earlier, he served as the U.S. Ambassador to Poland. He is currently the Weiser Family Distinguished Fellow at the Atlantic Council, which co-hosted the annual NATO Public Forum with other think tanks on the sidelines of the summit.  

Paras: Dan, welcome back to the show. Thanks so much for being here. NATO turned 75 this year, and the alliance is facing many challenges. For starters, just to give us the top line issues, what were they heading into the summit? 

Dan Fried: It's a cliche that before every NATO Summit, someone mentions the alliance faces challenges. But this is different. Because there's a war in Europe, a war started by an aggressive dictator, who wants to rebuild his empire. That's sort of the thing that NATO was created to stop, to stop tyrants running amok in Europe, causing wars. So, NATO is dealing with a big challenge. And the summit stands or falls by what it was able to do for Ukraine. And I think it has passed that test, though, quite frankly, my expectations were not all that high. Still, NATO has stood up and helped Ukraine defend itself, and NATO has stood up to defend its own nations that are also under threat from Putin.

Viola: Dan, the biggest issue again this year, of course, is Ukraine, and Russia's continued and even intensifying bombardment, including a heinous attack on a children's hospital in Kyiv, just as the summit was about to get underway. Was that timing a coincidence? Do you think?

Dan: I don't know. But my initial reaction without having evidence is that it was a signal from the Kremlin of contempt, contempt for Ukraine, that contempt for NATO, and a kind of sneer from Putin. “I can do what I want, what are you going to do about it?” Now, I don't know this to be the case. It's possible that the Russians were after some other target. But it makes sense within their warped, and frankly evil, frame of reference, that they would do something like this. And they are responsible for the loss of life, because attacking civilian targets has been a hallmark of Russia's conduct of its war of aggression.

Viola: One of the big questions for the alliance since Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and even long before that, as you know, since the Bucharest summit in 2008, is whether and how to bring Ukraine into NATO as a member. The alliance this year didn't get much beyond the wording of last year's summit in Vilnius, on that promising only to extend an invitation to membership only when, “When allies agree, and conditions are met.” This year, they added a little sweetener describe Ukraine's path to membership as “irreversible”. But realistically, it's all reversible based on shifting politics, right?

Dan: Well, I need to answer on two levels. One, of course you're right, nothing is irreversible. There was not an irreversible commitment to bring Ukraine into the alliance. But, and this is the second level, a year ago in the run up to the Vilnius summit, the Biden administration did not want to talk about Ukrainian accession to NATO at all. They, when you raised it, they reacted defensively, and wanted to brush it off the table and get rid of it before the discussion got started. The Vilnius language was adopted, but you could feel the unhappiness of the Biden administration in the run up to the discussion. 

This year was different. The Biden administration has been talking about a bridge to NATO. Now, you can dismiss that language as not meaning very much it's not a commitment. But in my experience, and I do have some, when a US administration is settles on a slogan, like a bridge to NATO, it is often the chapeau under which a lot of many serious policies and initiatives can be stuffed in. It's covered for doing a lot. I have the sense that in this case, the bridge to NATO is a way for the US to say we are serious this time. The circumstances of Ukraine joining the alliance are difficult, and they are difficult. I had a lot to do with the development of policy for Baltic accession and Polish, Czech and Hungarian accession to NATO in the early 2000s and even in the 90s. And the circumstances, Ukraine faces now are a lot tougher than the circumstances the Poles and the Baltics faced. The war that Baltic leaders and Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel warned Bill Clinton and George Bush could be coming if they did not act, is the very war that we see in Ukraine, the war of Russia's attempt to restore its empire. Now, that means that bringing Ukrainian didn't NATO is no light matter. So, I don't tend to get impatient and want to snap my fingers at the administration for behaving in a deliberate way. It seems to me they've moved forward. And it seems to me that the language in this NATO communiqué covers a much higher degree of consensus and commitment to act than was the case in Vilnius. I can't prove this. But I have the sense that people in the administration who have been thinking about this seriously — and I suspect the Tony Blinken, Secretary of State Blinken, is one of them — have wrestled with the challenge of long-term European security with Ukraine outside of NATO in that gray zone. Right. And they've my sense is that they're realizing that this is no good. 

Now, that doesn't mean bringing Ukraine into NATO in a time of war is easy. It isn't. But I think the administration is going to prepare itself to grapple with this issue if President Biden or another Democrat is elected in November. Now if it's Trump, it's a different issue. So yeah, I'm going to end by agreeing with where you started. That is, there's no such thing as irreversibility. But there is such a thing as a more credible commitment. I was at the Bucharest Summit. So, I know what that was. And this doesn't feel like the Bucharest Summit. It feels like something more serious. I can't prove that. But that's my sense of it.

Paras : So along with that commitment, NATO leaders also did put together an impressive package of military aid to Ukraine, and President Zelensky was on hand to discuss that with them that includes new commitments like F-16 fighter jets from Denmark and the Netherlands and other commitments from the United States to follow this summer, and a NATO command in Germany with 700 personnel to coordinate military training and assistance for Ukraine, along with a Ukraine compact — which basically groups together a series of security agreements that Ukraine has signed with more than 20 NATO allies. How should we think about these new commitments, and is that enough?

Dan: Well, is that enough? There is a good argument to be made that anything short of full NATO membership for Ukraine is not, “enough”, because Ukraine is still having to fight on its own. But I think that this, the decisions of the NATO Summit that you mentioned, mean that this bridge to NATO, this irreversible path to NATO is not an empty phrase. This is a lot. Now, it's common for discussions in Washington about NATO's relations with Ukraine or US support for Ukraine, to get hung up on issues of how long it took the Biden administration to decide to send this or that weapon system. And I'm in sympathy with those criticism, I think that there was too much deliberation, but look back at how far we've come. The Obama administration didn't send any weapons at all to Ukraine. That was a bad decision. The Trump administration sent very few, they made a lot of noise about it, but they didn't send very much that was not a serious effort. The Biden people thought in the run up to the invasion, that Ukraine would be overrun by the Russians, and that they couldn't really stop that and sending weapons wouldn't make a difference. That was a wrong call. But they quickly realized that Ukraine could defend itself, and they started sending significant amount of weapons, and lead Western countries, mainly NATO, but not exclusively NATO members, to send lots of weapons. That's a big deal. That is a big deal. 

If you think back 20 years, that we would be helping Ukraine fight off the Russian army with a considerable degree of success and at huge casualty rates for the Russians. That would have been seen as quite a radical and dangerous step. And yet we have done it. We have done it, and it is the right thing to do. Because letting Putin conquer Ukraine and reestablish the Russian Empire would be bad for Europe, bad for the United States, bad for the free world. So, I want to give credit to NATO as a whole, to the United States in particular, Despite all of the criticisms which can be made and which I've made. I would have loved to have seen US caveats on Ukrainian use of American weapons systems lifted. I think the proper caveat is the law or the laws of war. That's the caveat. We are all bound by the laws of war. And that should be sufficient. Additional caveats seem excessive. And let's see what the United States, Ukraine ,and Ukraine's friends can do to help Ukraine defend itself in light of the attacks on civilians, on Ukraine's electrical grid, and on the Children's Hospital. 

Viola: Great, that's very helpful perspective there, Dan, thank you. To follow up on those various configurations and combinations and attempts to coordinate aid, we have the new NATO command in Germany of 700 plus personnel to coordinate training and assistance. At one point, there was a plan for that to replace the 50-plus nation coalition for Ukraine that the US has been leading, but now I'm hearing that that will continue to operate. So, how difficult, having managed bureaucracy throughout your career, how difficult is that going to make it to actually coordinate, especially on Ukraine to end do they have the bandwidth to deal with all of these different mechanisms? And how will that work?

Dan: Oh, there's no organizational situation that skilled bureaucrats, and I use the word as a compliment, can't handle this, these are not bad problems to have, right? Yes, it is possible that coordination will be difficult, but my sense is that this is going to be ramping up, not spinning wheels. I think that as allies have become used to working together in support, in a major way, of a non-NATO country under assault. They're developing the culture of doing so at scale. Now, that's my hope. But it seems to me a reasonable hope. We're going to have to get better at this, and we're going to have to get better fast. But the Ukrainians are also getting better at this. This is all new, we're on new ground. We have never helped a country defend itself against Russian attack like this. Because Russia hasn't attacked a country where we've stepped in. 

The Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia, it crushed the Hungarians, it crushed the East Germans, it pressed the Polish communists to invoke martial law, and Russia invaded Georgia. And we didn't do anything, we didn't do anything in a military sense about any of that. And now we are. 30 years ago, the US and Western European foreign policy establishments barely could appreciate that Ukraine existed at all as a nation. And there was a whole school of American diplomats who had studied Ukraine through the prism of Moscow and largely internalized some of the Russian Imperial and Soviet views of Ukraine. 

But this wasn't all the US foreign policy establishment, there were others who understood the Ukraine was a separate country with a separate culture and a separate history. And over time, this appreciation of Ukraine has grown, and this is something welcome. And you can see this in the way that NATO has turned to support Ukraine. Now of course, NATO has also been influenced by the rise in influence of the Eastern tier members, particularly the Poles, but also the Balts, the Romanians, the Czechs, who brought to NATO a clarity about Russia. When many in the West of the Old Iron Curtain line, were not clear. Let's put it this way. The Balts, the Poles, the Romanians were accused at various times for very many years of being prisoners of history are paranoid about the Russians or Russophobes and are exaggerating the potential threats. It turns out that they were right. And it is now known that they were right. 

There are divisions in the West about how to deal with Russia, there are right wing parties that seem inclined to be sympathetic to Putin. But you didn't see that at NATO. 32 countries, including Hungary, have agreed on statements that are pretty clear in their language about where the right and wrongs of this war stand. Sorry to go on, but you're raising interesting issues, and it's important to back up and get perspective even as we go through and parse the language in the NATO communiqués.

Viola: That's great. Thank you very much.

Paras: Right. And speaking of language, President Biden aside from one gaffe at the end of the summit, where he accidentally referred to President Zelensky as President Putin and quickly corrected himself, seemed strong in many of his public statements. He said multiple times that Ukraine will prevail, and that Russia won't. Is there anything to make of him using the word prevail instead of win? And is the administration coming around to the idea of supporting Ukraine to win? 

Dan: Interesting, if you compare the Washington Summit statement with the Vilnius Summit statement, you'll see that the language is a lot stronger in Washington about Ukraine prevailing. Prevail, it's it officialese word that means win. I'd like them to use win, but of course, as Zelensky pointed out just a few minutes ago, it's hard to talk about winning when you've lost so many of your children. Still, the language is stronger. It's no longer evasive or language like as long as it takes, which always beg the question as long as what takes. But this is stronger language. There's been a lot of criticism leveled at NATO for using softer language and at the Biden administration, and I understand that, but remember what we're talking about. We're talking about helping a country that regained its independence a little over 30 years ago, basically, a generation and helping them defend themselves against Russia, a great power and a nuclear power. That's a fairly big deal. 

And although I've been one of the ones pushing, publicly and in meetings with people in the administration, for them to do more and do it faster, let's remember how far we have come and how difficult this has been. Again, the Biden administration has done with the Obama administration rejected, no weapons under the Obama administration. And as for President Biden, you know, happily, that's a whole that that issue was on many people's minds during the NATO Summit. Obviously, it's a huge topic. But the summit succeeded. And whatever, President Biden's political fate, this has been a capstone of his leadership so far. And he should take pride in it. 

Viola: Thank you. Thank you very much. Those are really, really important points of history and perspective to have on this. I want to shift just a little bit to the topic of China. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg referred several times in his public remarks to China as a “decisive enabler” of Russia's war on Ukraine, and that language is in the communiqué as well. That was based as Secretary General Stoltenberg explained based on the evidence showing China's supplying dual use equipment, microelectronics and other things that Russia needs to build the missiles, bombs, aircraft and so forth that it is using to bombard Ukraine. So how do you read the significance of that language? And how much concern? What's the nature of the concern about China, because at one point China was actually somewhat helpful and trying to dissuade Putin from his nuclear rhetoric last year. So, what's happening there?

Dan: The NATO language is notably tougher on China. And there's the subtext seems to be that NATO recognizes that the China challenge to Transatlantic security and the Russian challenge to Transatlantic security cannot be completely disaggregated. They are, if not indivisible, intertwined. And there were a number of cautions to China, that they cannot have a two ways, they cannot help Russia, and be a mainstay of Russia's threat to European security and Transatlantic insecurity and expect no consequence. A year ago, certainly two years ago, many Europeans regarded Russia and China as separate challenges. And many Europeans didn't believe that China was a challenge to Europe, in the same way at all as Russia is and of course it isn't, it is not attacking European country. But by recognizing the Chinese enabling Russia's attacks and threats against Ukraine and against Europe, that is a much tougher position. 

And by the way, it suggests that Europe is moving closer to the US view; the Biden administration view, I should say, that China and Russia are part of a kind of condominium of potentially aggressive or actually aggressive authoritarians. There's a school of thought in the United States that Russia is a lesser challenge, that Europe ought to handle it on its own and we ought to pull back from Europe, pull out have any support for Ukraine and concentrate on China. Well, the Europeans themselves are discovering that the two challenges are not easily separable, and Americans who fancy themselves strategists ought to think about that. Certainly, the Taiwanese, the South Koreans and the Japanese regard the defense of Ukraine as in their interest, I think they're right. 

Viola: There was one thing I wanted to ask you about related to Russia and the Russia strategy. One of the elements of the final communiqué from the summit is that the alliance will begin to work on a Russia policy or Russia strategy. 

Dan: I noticed that. 

Viola: Why has it taken so long to do that? And what do you think that should look like? 

Dan: That's actually overdue, don't you think? But it also takes NATO a while to get its collective mind around such a big problem. And it was only after Putin launched the big war, that Germany realized that a generation, really two generations, of German strategic thinking about Russia was just wrong. That the notion of mutual economic dependency being balanced, that is that Russia was dependent on Germany as Germany was dependent on Russia. They felt that it was balanced, which wasn't. But they also thought it was stabilizing, which turned out not to be. That was a shock, I think, for Germans. And I think a lot of Western Europeans who had previously simply assumed that Russia would be a difficult country to work with but ultimately, one you could work with, has been blown up by Putin's war. And I think that that shock has sunk in. It's not easy for West European governments and strategists to realize that the Poles were right all along. 

The Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Romanians, and the leaders of the current Czech government I should say, were right all along. And I think now is the time to try to lock in that consensus and draw conclusions for the alliance about a long term problem, basically a long term containment strategy with an aggressive Russia. And I say that without pleasure, because I'm one of the Americans who hope that after 1991 and the collapse of the Soviet Union, that Russia would have a chance to reenter the world as a normal country. There were various reasons why this didn't work out, but it was worth a try. It was worth going for. And it failed. That doesn't mean we'll never get that chance again. But the way to a better Russia lies through defeating the Imperial Russia that we've got right now.

Paras: And Dan, this summit took place in Washington in the shadow of a looming US election and all the uncertainty that surrounds it both around President Biden's candidacy and President Trump, who has a much more isolationist US stance, who has a stance that could move away from or weaken the Alliance. How are the leaders of NATO thinking about that uncertainty? And are they doing anything to respond to it preventively or respond to it in policy?  

Dan: Well, you know the answer, which is that NATO member state governments are all focused on the US election, and many of them are worried or concerned or panicked about it. They don't like the idea of Trump, who is not simply transactional, though he's certainly that, but also represents or seems to represent the American tradition of isolationism and the original America First movement — which was indifferent to European security, hostile to the French and British to the point of wanting to pull out of any support for Britain during the Battle of Britain against the Nazis in 1940 and have a sympathy toward Hitler. That's the original America First movement. The most, that's the dark side of American strategic thinking. Now, Donald Trump echoes many of these themes. But at the same time, it is not locked in, it is not written fate that a second Trump term would necessarily live down to all those terrible precedents. 

You've seen in recent weeks, and certain even days, a kind of push back from the outer reaches of Trump World and Trump allies in a Reagan-esque direction — and I have in mind specifically speaker Mike Johnson's speech at the Hudson Institute earlier this week or Mark Thiessen’s op-ed in The Washington Post long piece about what a kind of Reagan-esque Trump second term would look like. So, I would say that there is a pushback from some in the Republican Party, some near Trump world, I'm getting that sense you can you can see it. Europeans, and especially European leaders with some preexisting good relationship with Donald Trump, are also doing a lot to work with them. Polish President Duda had a good preexisting relationship with President Trump. And President Duda visited Donald Trump before the congressional vote to resume aid, including military aid to Ukraine. 

He may have had an impact. I think European governments are using whatever channels they have to Trump world and the Republicans, especially those Europeans that are doing what Donald Trump says Europeans need to do, which is spend enough on defense. So, this summit was certainly overshadowed by the questions about American politics. You're absolutely right. But there's more going on than just hand wringing, or panic. There is an effort to reach out to the Trump people and see what can be done. And in their place, that is what I would do. 

Paras: A good reminder that nothing is certain or written in stone. 

Dan: That's right.

Viola: Thank you very much, Dan. That was so enlightening as always, so great to have your perspective on all of this. But I do want to give you one more opportunity to talk about is there anything else anything we should have asked or any other point that you would really like to make as a takeaway from this momentous Summit?

Dan: Much depends on the battle, and the course of war is unpredictable. I listened to Jake Sullivan speaking, and I think the best line was that we don't know, it isn't written. And therefore, if that future is still open, we need to do everything we can to move the needle in the right direction. We have the opportunity and therefore the responsibility, but we are also peering into the fog. Now, that's always true. But now we're doing so in a time of war. And I think the NATO summit was a success. But success doesn't mean that that war will be won. And we have to steel ourselves for difficult days and difficult decisions ahead. But at least we have something, we have a basis to proceed with some reasonable hope of a decent outcome if we do our job.

Viola: Thank you again, Dan. Really appreciate your thoughts.

Dan: Alright, my pleasure.

Paras: This episode was co-hosted and produced by me, Paras Shah, and Viola Gienger with help from Harrison Blank.  

Special thanks to Ambassador Daniel Fried. You can read all of Just Security’s coverage of NATO, Russia’s war against Ukraine, and international diplomacy, including Dan’s analysis, on our website. If you enjoyed this episode, please give us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen.