The steamy and suffocating humidity of Washington, which was taking over ECU diplomats through their industry, was not the only cloud to assail the NATO summit of this occasion. It had been sunny for several weeks that the event to be held in DC to commemorate the beginning of the alliance here 75 years ago would be overshadowed by questions after the US presidential election. And this happened before President Joe Biden’s fateful June 27 debate, making it more likely that NATO leaders will soon be dealing with Donald Trump in the White Area, not Biden.
“The debate between Biden and Trump is like an elephant in the room,” Rachel Rizzo, a senior fellow and expert on NATO at the Atlantic Council, told Vox. “And I think if you’re a European ally, and you watched that debate, you’re probably concerned about Biden’s ability to win the election.”
Speaking to reporters on Thursday, national security adviser Jake Sullivan denied that any aide had expressed concerns about Biden’s performance at the administration center. On the contrary, he noted, he has “heard praise from the United States, as well as from President Biden personally, for what he has done to strengthen NATO.” Reporting from some news outlets suggests another approach, although whatever misgivings those associates may have had, there’s little incentive to pursue them further into the family.
“No European leader will come out and condemn the American president,” Rizzo said. “It won’t help to come to Washington and tell everyone you’re nervous about this.”
Any hopes Joe Biden would be able to peak at convincing his critics about his fitness to campaign were dashed on Thursday afternoon when he mistakenly referred to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky as “President Putin.” Introduced – the person who was recently trying to blast Zelensky.
Whether he stays on the price tag or not, it’s looking more likely that Biden, an established supporter of the established order of US foreign policy and the transatlantic alliance, may have only a few months left in office. Left in the administrative centre.
As Zelensky said in a slightly oblique speech in Washington on Tuesday, “Let’s be frank and forthright. Now everyone is waiting for November.”
Trump’s skepticism about the cost of long-term alliances, which he largely sees as an opportunity for countries to free-ride on US security promises and defense spending, is perhaps most evident through the layout of his foreign policy as president. Was consistent. , The possibility of his return has raised concerns about the alliance era. The Eastern press has even created a pun for this concern: “Moshitora,” or “What if Trump?”
A different source of Trump’s anger has long been for NATO, which he has called “obsolete” and “as bad as NAFTA.” (NAFTA, in Trump’s protectionist view, used to be just as malign as world trade.) Trump has threatened to pull out of the alliance on several occasions as president, and advisers say he would if he were re-elected. Probably would have done so. 2020.
Trump’s main complaint was that a large group of NATO members had failed to meet the alliance’s goal of spending 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense. That complaint was not any old complaint – former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush expressed similar complaints – although Trump’s comments misleadingly suggested that these countries owed money to NATO and even the United States. (They did not and did not – the objective, which is non-binding, refers to the expenditure of international locations on their Personal Security.)
Recently, Trump claimed that he would let Russia “do whatever it wants” to countries that “don’t pay.” On this occasion, Trump underlined NATO leaders’ concerns by meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, the alliance’s chief traitor and Putin’s protector.
The “moschitora” of this incident in Washington has created a lack of trust for a coalition, which may have some other reason for Swagger on his 75th birthday, albeit a very serious one. During the war on terror, NATO struggled to frame its post-Cold War enterprise amid a long-term, long-range deployment like Afghanistan, for which it increasingly felt unsuited. Just five years ago, French President Emmanuel Macron, an often Trumpian isolationist, described the alliance as “brain-dead.”
This all changed with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which brought the alliance back to its original core enterprise: defending Europe from Russia. As Senator James Risch (R-ID), a member of the Senate Overseas Family Members Committee, said on Wednesday, before 2022, “NATO had languished. We had forgotten why it was formed. “NATO was created for precisely the situation in which we find ourselves today.”
The most notable post-war change to the alliance is the addition of two ancient flags outside its headquarters in Brussels: Sweden and Finland, which joined after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in the following years of neutrality. Aides have also gone to great lengths to address Trump’s main complaint. In 2024, 23 of the 32 participants are expected to spend more than 2 percent of their GDP on defense, up from just 3 in 2014. Trump’s allies have taken some credit for this, as have Biden leadership officials. Although in reality, most of the credit for reminding NATO member-states probably goes to Vladimir Putin why it exists.
In recent months, Trump has softened his rhetoric on NATO slightly, declaring that he would remain in the alliance “100 percent” as long as European countries “play fair.” However he is nevertheless eager to undermine what has become NATO’s top priority: assisting Ukraine in its war with Russia. Trump is reportedly planning to draw Ukraine into negotiations with Russia by threatening to cut off US military aid. Without it, the fighting will not end, but Ukraine’s security will likely not be able to be defended.
At the climax of the event in Washington, which was held after a tragic missile attack on a children’s clinic in Kiev, Ukraine, some rudimentary aid pledges were taken, including dozens of ancient wind protection batteries and a long-awaited announcement Was. American-made F-16 fighter planes are moving towards the country from Denmark and the Netherlands. Ukraine is no longer presented as a full NATO club, but the climactic verbal exchange confirmed its “irreversible path” to the club, in more powerful language than before.
NATO policy makers were working to “Trump-proof” some aspects of aid to Ukraine, such as setting up an antiquated command center in Germany to coordinate military assistance and the education of Ukrainian troops. However, on this occasion the lines created over Ukraine’s security by Congress’s months-long delay in approving primary aid made it clear how much the world backup effort would still depend on American aid.
As I reported at the peak of the event, it was clear that the controversy was less about “Trump-proofing” the — possibly impossible — coalition and more about its venture into creating a tone that could be seen as MAGA. Could. -friendly. If not a little acceptance, it seemed like officials had at least reached a bargaining chip when it came to Trump’s return.
At a reception hosted by the ECU union Tuesday night, Ukraine’s Strategic Industries Minister Oleksandr Kamyshin suggested that what is good for Ukraine could also be good for American industry, no matter who occupies the White Area. “I heard that the Republicans are standing up for the defense industry. We are bringing value to America’s defense industry,” he said.
At the same match, Lithuania’s Defense Minister Laurinas Kasiunas said, “There are many directions where we can work with a potential Trump administration in the future, if that happens.” An even worse technique, he said, could be “if we try to build a moral bulwark against Trump in Europe. We need to stay calm and find ways to communicate with him. He also said that Trump’s hostility toward the Euro-Atlantic project has always been more about words than behavior. First, it was under Trump, that US troops were first deployed to Lithuania, on the border with Russia.
Speaking on the occasion in Washington, a senior NATO official suggested that new increases in defense spending by NATO countries would most likely reduce tensions.
“It was important to call on European allies and Canada to spend more on defence,” said Hon. “Raising the issue of defense spending was not just for the Trump administration. (Now) we are in a different place. “We’ve turned a corner and I think we have a lot of examples to show it.”
Zelensky spoke specifically on the Ronald Reagan presidential substructure and was introduced by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, although it sounded like an appeal to an internationalist Republican Party that no longer exists.
No matter what your view of the former president, it’s hard to blame ECU leaders for their Trump-friendly appeals on this occasion. There is some alternative possibility.
As Danish Top Minister Mette Frederiksen put it on a panel at NATO’s Family Discussion Board on Wednesday regarding US action regarding the EU’s dependence on US military energy: “We have to accept from a European perspective that we rested on. We still depend on you. Never leave us.”