SUBSCRIBER+ EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW — At this week’s 75th-anniversary summit of NATO in Washington, the alliance faces tests of unity – particularly in its posture towards Ukraine and Russia’s continued war against that country.
In the lead up to the summit, The Cipher Brief spoke to several people with high-level NATO experience, including Lord George Robertson, who led the alliance as its secretary general from 1999-2003. Lord Robertson said the summit’s immediate challenge will involve the provision of military aid to Ukraine that in his view has typically come “too late and beyond the time when it’s actually necessary.” But beyond the aid for Ukraine, he said that profound questions about NATO unity will hang over the summit, especially in a new era when generous U.S. support for the alliance may no longer be a given.
“Vladimir Putin and…the isolationism of Donald Trump has certainly told the Europeans that the holiday from history is over,” Lord Robertson said, “and they're going to have to do something about it if they're going to make sure that their people continue to be as safe as they have been.”
Lord Robertson spoke to Ia Meurmishvili, The Cipher Brief’s Chief International Correspondent.
THE INTERVIEW
The following excerpt of this interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. Watch the full discussion on The Cipher Brief's Digital Channel.
The Cipher Brief: What are your expectations for the summit?
Robertson: Top of the agenda for the 75th anniversary summit is going to be Ukraine. Oddly enough, the top of the agenda for the 50th anniversary was the war on Kosovo. And I was in Pristina last week marking the 25th anniversary of the end of that particular conflict. This time, it'll be undoubtedly dominated by Ukraine, both the prospect of Ukrainian membership eventually, but also what in the short term is needed to (bring) the prospect of Ukrainian victory and the defeat of Vladimir Putin.
First and foremost, it'll be about giving the Ukrainians the equipment, the ammunition that they require at this time. Up to now, they've got a lot of help and a lot of assistance from Europe and from the United States, but usually, it's too late and beyond the time when it's actually necessary. So it's going to be very important to make sure that they get the means of defending themselves and throwing out the invaders.
The second thing is that they will be preoccupied inevitably by the unity of the alliance.
It appears that Mr. (Mark) Rutte, the new (NATO) secretary general, only obtained the agreement of Hungary, which had been blocking his appointment, by in some way allowing them to opt out of what is being done for Ukraine. If that's the case, then that's going to be a matter of some real concern. The other allies will be very bothered by that. Because 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. So there has to be inevitably and rightly a display of unity at this summit that will tell the Kremlin precisely what they're up against.
The Cipher Brief: What does Hungary’s position mean for Article 5 (which compels all members to respond to an attack on another)? Is it a precedent that could endanger Article 5 in any way?
Robertson: There is going to have to be a discussion about the consensus rule, the rule in NATO that says that all decisions have to be taken by all of the members and that a consensus position has to be established, because that has profound implications for Article 5. The assumption has always been that if one ally was attacked then all the other allies would consider it to be an attack on them as well.
But if it is going to be a matter of establishing consensus, with the likes of Hungary or Slovakia or North Macedonia, who all have governments that are skeptical about helping Ukraine, then that creates a completely new dynamic in the situation. And the leaders of the Alliance are going to have to look very carefully at how it is they're going to give that Article 5 guarantee if there are members inside a 32-nation alliance who may actually be able or willing to break the consensus.
The Cipher Brief: What do you think about NATO-Ukraine relations? Should Ukraine get the invitation or a clear path to membership at the summit?
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.
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, which is to help the Ukrainians fight against the Russians and give them the equipment, the ammunition that they require. We've got a sanctions strategy, which says tighten and tighten the economy of Russia. But we don't seem to have an overall political strategy, by which I mean 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 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 Cipher Brief: Where do you see America's role in everything that you just talked about?
Robertson: I think America is absolutely pivotal because not only is it the major country inside the alliance, it's also in America's best interests that it is part of this 32-nation alliance. Frankly, I'm not entirely sure that the argument is properly being made in Washington. And I'm probably to blame as well, because we focused on the fact that the European allies don't spend the 2 % that is the target, that they don't have the readiness, the troops that should be available at the present time. But 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.
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 of America. 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. I think a lot of the American people need to recognize that actually, NATO membership is a bargain for them, in a world that is now going to be dominated by big-power politics.
The Cipher Brief: How are the upcoming American elections perceived in Europe and NATO?
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 I think 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 before it came into 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.
The Cipher Brief: Some do credit Donald Trump, that when he was president, he awakened the European security conscience and led or forced some of the allies to start spending more on their defense.
Robertson: Well, a combination of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin has awakened the Europeans from the holiday from history that they had at the end of the Cold War. But we're all learning lessons as well. You know, between 1990 and 1997, the United States of America 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.
And therefore, the Europeans have recognized, as indeed America has, that they will have to spend more if they're going to keep their people safe. We talk sometimes about security policy, which sounds a bit abstract. But it's actually about the safety of our people. And a billion people are able to sleep easily in their beds tonight because NATO exists, and because of Article 5 and the commitment that is there. In a new world of great power competition, the reality is that the West, and Western countries, will have to do much more than they have been doing in order to keep their people safe. That applies in America and it applies in Europe as a whole.
But Vladimir Putin and indeed the isolationism of Donald Trump has certainly told the Europeans that the holiday from history is over, and they're going to have to do something about it if they're going to make sure that their people continue to be as safe as they have been for the last 30 years.
The Cipher Brief: How do you see Ukraine joining NATO, from the Ukrainian readiness perspective?
Robertson: During my time, Ukraine wasn't ready for NATO membership. It had only come out of communism. It still had an economy that was dysfunctional. It still had a level of corruption that was unacceptable. It was, in fact, a bit of a mess. But we and NATO were helping them along the route that they wanted to go on, of NATO membership and EU membership at the same time. So they certainly weren't ready before. 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 having the procedures in place for sustainable democratic institutions and the rest of the things that go along with NATO membership.
But what Vladimir Putin has done is to create a sense of identity in Ukraine that is quite remarkable. And under President Zelensky's leadership, Ukraine is now fighting fit. It has eliminated to a great extent all of 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 I think 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. That may not be the case at the precise minute. They're after all at war, and NATO can't accommodate a country that is actually at war with its neighboring country. But when they have defeated the enemy and they've recovered their nation, then Ukraine will be a formidable part of the NATO alliance.
The Cipher Brief: Do you think alliance is ready for any possibility of the conflict in Ukraine spilling over into something even larger?
Robertson: That's the big question. I am absolutely convinced that if Putin prevails in Ukraine, then the rest of the world is changed out of all recognition because the autocrats in the world will be writing the new rules of order in the world. And he won't stop at Ukraine. He will embolden China, Russia, North Korea and their challenge to Western interests and Western values as well.
If he succeeds, I don't think he's going to cross over the Article 5 line. I think that it's embedded now in the Russian psyche that they don't go across that line because that involves threatening Armageddon on them as well. But there are other ways in which he will be emboldened to undermine our democratic systems, whether it's interfering in elections, cyberattacks, attacks on critical national infrastructure, disinformation, through the encouragement of corruption and organized crime. All of these ways are going to embolden him to take us on. Maybe not by sending tanks across the Polish border or the borders of Estonia and Latvia, but by undermining our societies from the inside.
Up to now, he's failed. He wanted to stop the onward march of countries joining NATO and two new countries have joined NATO. He wanted to make sure that the Europeans all broke up and fought each other, and actually they're more united than they've ever been before. 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 that they took in those 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. And that's the message that we need to get through to the Russian people so that that failure is represented by him deciding he's going to have to stop.
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, you know, that it's all over and they need to move back.
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