Inside Biden’s NATO Diplomacy
SUBSCRIBER EXCLUSIVE | JULY 15, 2023
Inside Biden’s NATO Diplomacy
By Emel Akan
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President Joe Biden traveled to the NATO summit with a primary goal of sending a message to Russia that the military alliance stood “more united” than ever before. To do so, he had to navigate a diplomatic tightrope, leaving no room for division within the alliance.
As I followed the president to Vilnius, Lithuania’s capital, earlier this week, I knew that Mr. Biden’s diplomatic team had labored to prevent two NATO allies—Hungary and Turkey—from becoming spoilers of this year’s summit.
Aboard Air Force One en route to Europe, Mr. Biden spoke with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for 45 minutes, working to convince him to drop Turkey’s opposition to Sweden joining NATO.
A day after that phone call, Mr. Biden claimed a victory. Turkey and Sweden reached a last-minute deal in Vilnius and Mr. Erdogan committed to pushing for Sweden’s ratification “as soon as possible.”
Ankara’s green light ended months of drama over an issue that had long strained the trans-Atlantic alliance. Some observers, however, say the deal is not yet done.
Mr. Erdogan told reporters at the summit that the Turkish parliament will consider ratification after legislators return from summer recess in early October. Until then, the Turkish government could exert pressure on the United States to approve the sale of F-16 fighter jets to Turkey.
I witnessed a telling exchange between Mr. Biden and Mr. Erdogan on the first day of the summit. In a meeting on the sidelines of the summit, the Turkish leader referred to Mr. Biden as “my dear friend” and extended his wishes for Mr. Biden’s re-election. Mr. Biden chuckled and said, “We look forward to meeting with you in the next five years.”
The warm exchange was a major shift, as the U.S. president had previously avoided meeting with Mr. Erdogan. During the 2020 presidential campaign, Mr. Biden referred to Turkey’s president as an “autocrat.”
Another telling interaction involved Mr. Biden choosing to shake hands with just one leader during a”family photo” event: Viktor Orban, Hungary’s prime minister. Orban has been another holdout in approving Sweden’s membership bid.
In 2020, during a town hall, Mr. Biden referred to the Hungarian leader as one of the “thugs in the world.”
Mr. Biden’s gesture came after Hungary recently announced that it would support Sweden’s accession to NATO and that ratification was merely a “technical matter.”
“I’m feeling good about the trip,” Mr. Biden told my colleagues and me after the summit. “We accomplished every goal we set out to accomplish.”
The potential admission of Sweden as the 32nd member follows the accession of Finland to NATO in April, a key development because the Nordic country shares a border of over 800 miles with Russia.
Following the NATO summit, Mr. Biden spent a day in Helsinki to hold meetings with Nordic leaders to mark Finland’s accession to the alliance.
Putin has “already lost the war,” said Mr. Biden at a press conference in Helsinki alongside Finland’s President Sauli Niinisto. Given its resources and capacity, Russia, according to the president, could not sustain the war indefinitely.
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EMMI KORHONEN/Lehtikuva/AFP via Getty Images
Zelenskyy Rips NATO
NATO members expressed their support for Ukraine’s membership in the alliance. However, the communiqué issued at the summit did not provide a specific timeline for the accession.
The member nations stated, “We will be in a position to extend an invitation to Ukraine to join the Alliance when Allies agree and conditions are met.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who also attended this year’s summit, voiced his frustration over the absence of a clear timeline.
His remarks, calling NATO’s plan “unprecedented and absurd,” made the biggest headlines during the summit. The following day, the United States and Group of Seven (G7) leaders issued a joint declaration, agreeing to provide Ukraine with security guarantees instead.
According to the joint declaration, each country will individually negotiate long-term security arrangements with Ukraine to offer military aid, training, intelligence sharing, and cyber support so that the country can defend itself and deter future attacks.
However, Mr. Zelenskyy remained firm in his desire for a clear path to NATO membership rather than security guarantees.
In Helsinki, Mr. Biden said that Ukraine would be admitted to the alliance but that the timing had yet to be determined.
“No one can join NATO while a war is going on where a NATO nation has been attacked because that guarantees that we’re in a war—and we’re in a Third World War,” he said.
Spending Target
In another development touted as a win by the Biden administration, NATO members committed to raising the defense spending target.
NATO countries made a pledge nearly a decade ago to allocate 2 percent of their GDP to defense spending, but only seven countries met this target last year. President Donald Trump pushed hard during his term to get the other members to spend more and succeeded to an extent.
This year’s summit communiqué suggested that the 2 percent goal should be considered a minimum requirement rather than an upper limit, in line with Washington’s long-standing request.
Although the White House swiftly claimed victory over the agreement, the language used in the communiqué lacks precision by not specifying a definitive deadline for countries to meet this target.
Sources familiar with the negotiations told The Epoch Times that the initial draft of the communiqué included a provision that mandated members to “immediately” increase their defense spending beyond 2 percent. However, at the request of Western European countries like Italy, this wording was ultimately removed in the final version of the statement.
During this year’s NATO summit, a bipartisan congressional delegation urged President Biden to put more pressure on allies on this matter. In a letter addressed to Mr. Biden, the senators expressed the concerns of American citizens who question why the burden of Europe’s defense has disproportionately fallen on the United States for decades.
“I think it’s realistic for everybody to [boost spending] if they have the will. And the broader issue is that we want NATO to be sustainable—to be here—for another 75 years,” U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), who was part of the delegation, told me in Vilnius.
The China Threat
The communiqué this year took a strong stance against China, condemning Beijing’s growing global ambitions.
According to Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Nebraska), who attended the summit as part of the congressional delegation, NATO has an interest in deterring China, especially after the “no limits” partnership declared by Moscow and Beijing last year.
However, it is unclear whether all members are on the same page when it comes to addressing security threats from China.
“There are 31 different members, and so there are probably 31 different perspectives on this,” Mr. Ricketts told me in Vilnius.
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