BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT — This week’s NATO summit in Washington is both a 75th anniversary celebration and a moment of truth for the alliance — in particular when it comes to the twin challenges of resisting Russian aggression and deciding how to bring Ukraine “closer to NATO,” as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken put it last week. Also hanging over the summit, though not on any formal agenda: the future U.S. commitment to Ukraine and to NATO itself, should Donald Trump recapture the White House.
THE CONTEXT
As the NATO leaders gather, the alliance faces threats that were unimaginable at its creation: Cyberterrorism, AI-driven misinformation, and an increasingly powerful and aggressive China. But two huge issues – Russia’s war against Ukraine, and the U.S. role in NATO‘s future – would have been well understood by NATO's founding fathers, who created the alliance in 1949 as a bulwark against Soviet aggression.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 restored relevance and unity to an alliance that has foundered in the years that followed the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. While Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that his “special operation“ in Ukraine was intended in part as a forceful message to NATO, the invasion jolted the alliance into action, and led to the addition of two new members, Sweden and Finland – the latter putting NATO on Russian's northwestern border.
The Cipher Brief spoke to a trio of top experts – former NATO Secretary General Lord George Robertson, former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Kurt Volker, and former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor – to address core questions surrounding the NATO summit: Will the alliance offer a path to membership for Ukraine? How concerned are NATO’s European members about a second Trump Administration? And what messages do they believe the alliance should deliver to Ukraine and to Russia?
- NATO leaders will meet in Washington D.C. from July 9-11 to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Washington Treaty, the alliance’s founding document.
- Outgoing Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte will become NATO’s next Secretary General. He will succeed Jens Stoltenberg, who has led NATO for nearly a decade.
- NATO allies have agreed to provide 40 billion euros ($43 billion) of military aid to Ukraine next year, according to diplomats. They have yet to agree to a multiyear aid commitment for Kyiv. Stoltenberg has proposed a 100-billion-euro ($107 billion) five-year fund for Ukraine.
- The U.S. has provided around $53.6 billion in military aid to Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022. Other NATO allies and partners have provided over $100 billion.
- U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Washington summit will "help build a bridge towards Ukraine becoming a member of NATO. NATO allies affirmed at the 2023 Vilnius Summit that Ukraine will join the alliance, without offering a detailed plan.
- President Joe Biden has said that NATO is “larger, stronger, and more united than it’s ever been” and highlighted the fact that “a record number of allies” are meeting NATO’s defense spending commitment of at least 2 percent GDP.
- Former President Donald Trump has pledged to remain in NATO but also hinted at punishing members that do not meet the 2 % threshold. He said he would let Russia do “whatever the hell they want” to NATO member countries that don’t meet their commitments.
THE EXPERTS
Excerpts from these interviews have been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
Will NATO welcome Ukraine?
Volker: For 16 years, we've been saying to Ukraine, You will be a member of NATO someday, but we're not taking any steps to get you there. And that is likely to be the upshot of what the membership conversation is.
There will be a few other things for Ukraine. Until now, there has been no NATO role in helping Ukraine whatsoever. Everything has been done by individual allies, even the assistance coordination that has been done to coordinate military aid to Ukraine has been done outside of NATO, in this so-called “Ramstein process” that the U.S. has led. So this will be the first time that NATO is being given a role in helping Ukraine.
Also, looking a bit longer term, helping Ukraine develop its defense industrial production, defense procurement assistance, building the future Ukrainian force. How is Ukraine's military going to look five, ten years from now? That sort of thing will be done for Ukraine as well.
But what's really striking is that we are in the midst of the biggest war in Europe since World War II. NATO's job is peace and security in Europe. And here we are, in my view, minimizing what we do for Ukraine and minimizing the way we talk about this war as a NATO issue, and instead taking these marginal steps that don't really address the elephant in the room.
Robertson: Ukraine has already been given, along with Georgia, a commitment to eventually be a member of NATO. That was decided at the 2008 Bucharest Summit. Perhaps given the circumstances of Ukraine, they'll be looking for something slightly more than that and yet short of actual membership, which I don't think is going to be on offer. Nor should it be on offer at this summit meeting. At this summit, it's really to do with the defense of Ukraine and making sure that it can defeat Vladimir Putin and what he is doing at the moment.
Taylor: Ukraine needs to be in NATO. It has been promised to be in NATO. I was in Kyiv in 2008 when President Bush visited, before going on to Bucharest for the NATO summit there, where the promise was made that Ukraine – and Georgia, by the way – will be members of NATO. So I have been of that view since then, since before then. And I hope that at the 75th-anniversary summit, they will make even more concrete this promise to Ukraine that it will become a member. And by more concrete, I mean taking some actual steps that will begin the process of Ukraine joining NATO.
The White House, together with a lot of other people, are anxious about Ukraine actually becoming a member of NATO now, during this war. Yes, that's a source of anxiety, it’s probably not going to happen while there is active fighting going on in Ukraine. But there are things short of that that can demonstrate to the Ukrainians in the first instance, but to the Russians in the second instance, that Ukraine is on an irreversible track toward NATO membership. The administration and broader NATO have talked about a bridge to NATO membership. And so the world will be looking, the alliance will be looking, and the Ukrainians will be looking for evidence that this bridge is solid and it's not reversible. That they're on the track to membership.
Robertson: During my time (as NATO Secretary General), Ukraine wasn't ready for NATO membership. It had (just) come out of communism. It still had an economy that was dysfunctional. It still had a level of corruption that was unacceptable. And when the promise was given in 2008, it was absurd, because they simply were not in a position to either have their armed forces under NATO command or the procedures in place for sustainable democratic institutions.
But what Vladimir Putin has done is to create a sense of identity in Ukraine that is quite remarkable. And under President (Volodymyr) Zelensky's leadership, Ukraine is now fighting fit. It has eliminated to a great extent the corruption that used to be endemic in the system. They've now got functioning armed forces which are among the best in the Western world. They've had to be.
And gradually they're getting to the point where they will actually not only be beneficiaries of the security of NATO but contributors to the general safety as well. When they have defeated the enemy and they've recovered, then Ukraine will be a formidable part of the NATO alliance.
A NATO message for Putin
Volker: What is the message that we want the NATO summit to convey to Vladimir Putin? Do we want Putin to understand that his war in Europe, his ideology of fascism, genocide, imperialism is a relic of the past? And that we will never allow this to succeed in Europe? And the more he tries, the more he will only hurt Russia?
Ukraine will be a successful European democracy, a member of the EU, a member of NATO, and his efforts to disrupt that will never succeed. That is the message we want him to get. To convey that message, we should be joining what the EU is doing. The EU has recently opened accession negotiations with Ukraine, and they are sending this long-term message to Putin. NATO should be doing the same thing. NATO should be opening accession talks with Ukraine.
True, we've never done this before. We've always just said, you're in or you're out. But we can create a process if we want to. We can say, we're starting the talks now. We're going to move you in as quickly as we can. We're going to start talking about how to go about your defense in the NATO-Ukraine Council. Or you can join us at the North Atlantic Council, you can be with us there. But we should be sending signals to Putin that this train is moving and he will never win. Instead, by ducking the issue, yet again, we're sending a signal that we lack the resolve. And that is just an invitation to Putin to continue the war.
Taylor: There are other things that the NATO summit can do. If they build up the support, they could actually offer the Ukrainians an invitation to begin negotiations. This would not be an invitation to membership yet, but it could be an invitation to begin the negotiations toward membership. This could certainly happen and that would be a concrete step. This is of course what the Ukrainians are now doing with the European Union.
It's political will. And it's a recognition that Ukraine as a member would make NATO stronger, would make Europe more secure. It would remove one of the problems, one of the gray areas. If Ukraine is not in NATO, it's not covered by Article 5, (and) the Russians are tempted, as they have been, to invade. They invaded in 2014 and then again in 2022. If Ukraine stays in this gray zone, the Russians will be tempted again. If it's clear that Ukrainians will be in NATO, the Russians would not. One thing the Russians have not done is attack a NATO member. Not so far. Deterrence has worked and I think it will continue to work.
Robertson: I think what's more important is that this summit meeting actually adopts a political strategy for how to defeat Putin. They've got a military strategy, we've got a sanctions strategy. But we don't seem to have an overall political strategy, by which I mean that the kind of political actions that would perhaps persuade the guys in the Kremlin to do what the guys in the Kremlin did in 1989 in coming out of Afghanistan, recognizing that they weren't winning, recognizing that they were losing money, recognizing that they were losing personnel, and simply then deciding that they were going to come out.
And that political strategy involves taking on the Russians at every level. We have to counter their disinformation. We have to counter the sabotage operations that they're involved in. We have to take them on, on the cyber criminality that they're involved in at the present moment. We have to take them on in terms of the contracting out that they are now doing to organize crime, to undermine our free democratic societies. We need to do much more in trying to penetrate through the media walls that Putin has put up to get to the Russian people so that they know the damage that this man is doing to them and to their future.
The main thing is that Vladimir Putin needs to get the message that the alliance is absolutely united, tightly organized, and absolutely committed to defending the Ukrainians and making sure that Putin is defeated.
NATO and the U.S. Elections
Robertson: I think the Europeans are looking with genuine worry at the developments that are leading up to the American election. President Biden has always been a robust supporter of NATO and of the alliance as a whole. The Congress has passed a resolution that says that only the Congress can decide whether America is in or out of the alliance. And that is all deeply reassuring. But if it looks as though (Donald Trump) is going to win, then I think that that will produce worries in the rest of the alliance that will have to do with his commitment to Article 5 and to the whole concept of collective defense.
If the American people choose Donald Trump again, then we will have to live with that. But at that point, the Europeans will have to recognize that they will have to carry a bigger burden than in the past, because America was willing to pick up the tab. There is a strain of isolationism now in a part of the American Republican Party that takes America back to the situation before it came into the First World War and the Second World War. Isolationism doesn't work for the United States of America or its people. Because as they found out in the First World War and the Second World War, wars don't remain isolated and they involve and can affect great powers like America as well. And I think that lesson has not yet sufficiently penetrated elements within the Republican Party, but it needs to, and it needs to do it pretty quickly.
Taylor: Of course they have reason to worry. Americans are worried, it's not just Europeans. There are concerns that the strong support for Ukraine and the strong support for NATO and therefore the strong support for European security could be challenged.
However, it is also true that when you ask the American people, you get big majorities in support of supporting European security through NATO and supporting Ukraine through weapons deliveries and other kinds of assistance. So the American people are very strongly supportive and that's reflected in the Congress. It's bipartisan support.
There's clearly debate – you can't miss the debate in this country about this. And generally, debates are healthy, in particular when you come out stronger and more united on this thing. I'm confident that whatever the outcome of elections, whether they're European elections or American elections, I am confident that there will continue to be support for Ukraine and for NATO.
Volker: Everybody is concerned, but not all in the same way.
The West Europeans freak out about Donald Trump. They don't like him as a person. They don't like his vulgarity. They don't like the threats that he makes about not supporting NATO allies. They didn't like his tariffs. They didn't like his threats against the automobile industry in Germany. You name it, they have anxieties about Donald Trump and they express them constantly.
And my advice to my West European friends is always, Don't make any assumptions. You don't know what the policies are going to be. Do your own homework. Spend 2 % of GDP on defense. Prepare your forces. Build your defense industry. And then be proactive. Suggest to the U.S. and to NATO what we should be doing together. Don't wait for something to happen and then complain about it.
Ukrainians are very different. The Ukrainians look at the last two years and say that this was incredibly frustrating. Never enough support, always too little, always too late, always too much lecturing, even now still facing restrictions on the use of U.S. weapons that we provide as we tell them, don't hit deep inside Russia, even though Russia's hitting you. This is something Ukrainians are incredibly frustrated with.
So they also look at the prospect of a new Biden administration with a great deal of trepidation because they say it's going to be four more years of slow death in that case, never enough, never full support. And they remember that it was Trump who wanted to shut down Nord Stream II (The Russian gas pipeline to Europe), who provided the first security assistance to Ukraine back in 2017. And so they're happy to roll the dice with Trump because they imagine the U.S. wants to be in a stronger position, and they see a weak position right now and Putin just taking advantage of that.
Central and East Europeans, they're worried on both ends. They're worried about, What if we have four more years of weakness? What if that then also engenders weakness from France and Germany? So they worry about weakness all around. But then they also worry about Trump, because what they read into Trump's statements about ending the war in 24 hours is just pulling the rug out from under Ukraine, telling them to give up territory, telling them that we're not going to support them anymore. And they would be very afraid of that, because that would give Putin just the kind of encouragement that they don't want him to feel because it could lead to attacks against their own states.
Robertson: A combination of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin has awakened the Europeans up from the holiday from history that they had at the end of the Cold War. But we're all learning lessons as well.
Between 1990 and 1997, the United States reduced its defense budget by almost a third because there was a belief at the end of the Cold War that we didn't need to be spending the amounts that we were spending during that confrontation with the Soviet Union. But we were to recognize pretty quickly that the dangers in the world had not gone away.
In a new world of great power competition, the reality is that Western countries will have to do much more than they have been doing up to now to keep their people safe. We have not yet sufficiently told the American people that being the lead nation in NATO is a huge bonus for America. It multiplies the influence that America has in the world. It makes sure that it is leading an alliance of another 31 countries, therefore 31 automatic allies.
I think the American people need to know that the European allies are spending something like $480 billion a year on defense, and that multiplies the effort that is made by the United States. And the 60,000 American troops who are based in Europe are often seen as being a contribution to European security, but they're also very much a contribution to American security as well. They are in fact the front line in the defense of the United States of America. I think a lot of the American people need to recognize that NATO membership is a bargain for them, in a world that is now going to be dominated by big-power politics.
What would make the summit a success?
Volker: Clearly the issue and the word that everybody is looking for is unity. We need to show that the NATO allies, despite everything, despite our differences, despite our political upheavals, the elections in the U.S., France, UK, next year in Germany, we are committed to a core principle of collective defense. And that is unshakable, even with all the challenges, so that a potential aggressor will know that if they dare to attack NATO, they're going to meet the full force of the alliance. That's the most important thing to convey, and I think that will be conveyed.
Taylor: Best-case scenario for me would be the strong invitation from NATO summit leaders to Ukraine to begin these negotiations (on membership). There's also another part of that best-case scenario – and I'm pretty confident this will happen: strong commitments of support for new military capabilities and new military assistance. The Ukrainians need air defense badly – Patriot missile systems, in particular the interceptors that are fired from these Patriot batteries. I'm confident there are going to be strong commitments from the NATO summit to providing this kind of assistance to Ukraine. So those two things – the weapons as well as the commitment to NATO membership, would be the best case. Worst case is they're not able to come to agreement on the two things and others that the NATO leaders will address. That would send a bad signal not just to the Ukrainians, but it would be a bad signal to send to the Russians that NATO can't get its act together, can't unite, can't be seen to be a strong supporter of both Ukraine and European security.
Robertson: (Putin) wanted to make sure that the Europeans fought each other, and actually they're more united than they've ever been. He wanted to break the Europeans from the United States, and that relationship is now as strong as it has ever been. He wanted to take over Ukraine in three days, and here we are two and a half years later, and he's not even recovered all the territory they took in the first three days of the war. So he's been a miserable failure, destroying hundreds of thousands of young Russians in the process, killing the prospects for the Russian economy into the future.
And the Washington summit is the best place for the 32 countries in the alliance to give a very, very clear signal to the guys in the Kremlin, that it's all over (in Ukraine) and they need to move back.
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