Biden is walking a diplomatic tightrope at the NATO summit

Biden departs on Sunday for a trip centered on a NATO summit in Lithuania, a gathering now timed to a turning point in Russia’s invasion of its neighbor. The alliance meeting took place in Vilnius, a few hundred miles from the fighting, as Ukraine slowly began its counteroffensive. Then Biden will visit Finland for the Nordic Summit, where he will personally plant the symbolic flag of the West on the land of the new NATO member.

Biden, his aides, will use a keynote address Wednesday before NATO to forcefully urge a doubling of Western support for Ukraine. He will declare that it is necessary for Kiev to be sufficiently armed to make real progress before the fighting season slows to mud and then snow. He will also refer to NATO’s response over the past 16 months, and the expansion of the alliance, to say it has made good on its promise to repair US alliances – and to use the recent turmoil in Russia as further evidence of the success of the allied efforts.

“The president has been clear that we will support Ukraine for as long as it takes and provide them with an extraordinary amount of weapons and capabilities,” National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Friday. We believe that we have been able to mount a strong, coordinated and dynamic response to Russia’s aggression.

Alarm has been growing among many of these allies about how long, and at what cost, Kiev can continue to gain support. And some of those cautious voices have been louder in Washington, as more Republicans in Congress – and leading GOP presidential candidates – voice their objection to funding the resistance to Vladimir Putin. This, in turn, has raised fears across Europe that a GOP victory in the White House next year could lead to the wrecking of the alliance. Many points of tension will emerge in Vilnius, including sharp divisions over putting Ukraine on the path to joining NATO.

Evidence of Putin’s potential new vulnerability lies just across the border from the NATO summit.

Vilnius is close to Lithuania’s border with Belarus, a former Soviet country that has taken a very different path. While Lithuania has attached itself to Europe, Belarus remains a satellite of Russia, and its leader, Alexander Lukashenko, helped broker a deal to end an attempted Wagner Group insurgency two weeks ago.

Lukashenko offered Wagner’s leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, asylum in the capital of Minsk after the failure of the rebellion, though his whereabouts remain unknown. But the reasons for the mercenary leader’s aborted rebellion remain: Prigozhin had countless complaints about the faltering Russian invasion, revealing huge cracks in Russia’s military equipment and strategy that cost thousands of men their lives.

Biden aides will say those Russian missteps were triggered by Ukraine’s fierce resistance, fueled in part by a treasure trove of weapons and cash sent by the West. Bremer, among others, believes that the failed rebellion gives “a boost to Ukraine’s pressure to join NATO and gives the West far less reason to worry about any of Putin’s red lines.”

But the long-awaited counteroffensive in Kiev is off to an undeniably slow start, with many of Ukraine’s top soldiers tired or incapacitated after nearly 18 months of fighting. With those conflicts in the background, next week Ukraine will push again for NATO membership, which is sure to be a flashpoint in Vilnius.

President Volodymyr Zelensky is seeking a clear signal from the leaders on their stance on the issue, which appears to divide two key members of the coalition. French President Emmanuel Macron, who is struggling to quell the riots spreading across his country, canceled a state visit to Berlin last week. This added to the growing tension between Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz over Ukraine’s possible NATO membership.

During a trilateral meeting in Paris last month, also attended by Polish President Andrzej Duda, Macron shifted his stance on the issue to be more in line with Poland and other eastern wing countries that want Ukraine eventually to join the alliance. This in turn alienated Schultz, who was politically constrained by the apprehensive German public from getting further involved in the conflict.

Biden has also made clear that Kiev should not be given a shortcut to acceptance, a position shared by many allies, given persistent concerns about its defense capabilities and the need for more democratic reforms. On Friday, Sullivan said Ukraine would not be granted admission to Vilnius.

A decision on Sweden’s membership seems closer. That country applied for membership at the same time as Finland, but was blocked due to objections from Turkey and, to a lesser extent, Hungary. Earlier this week, Biden aggressively added his vote to a late push to get the deal done in Vilnius.

One issue has already been settled: the retention of Jens Stoltenberg as Secretary General of NATO. Two White House officials said the president had privately urged the former Norwegian prime minister, whose term was due to end in October, to consider another extension. The officials said the push reflected Biden’s desire to preserve the status quo and general cohesion within a complex alliance that still faces a war on its doorstep.

Rachel Rizzo, a fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center, said she doubted the leaders would acquiesce in Ukraine’s request for clarification on its membership aspirations next week. NATO must present a cohesive front at this summit. So the easiest approach here is to just answer the short term questions. And the bigger questions that require consensus from allies get asked a little bit down the road.”

After Biden leaves on Sunday, London will be his first stop on his first visit with King Charles III since the monarch took the throne. That visit will be part ceremonial and part thematic, with a focus mostly on climate change. Biden will also meet British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak before heading to Lithuania.

Team Biden believes that prioritizing leadership on the world stage will benefit him at home, providing a sharp and effective contrast to the vocal Republican core arena. And Biden’s final stop of the week will implicitly drive this home.

Upon leaving Vilnius, Biden will head to Helsinki for the Baltic Summit and to welcome Finland to NATO. He is expected to hold a news conference Thursday in the Finnish capital – five years a week since his predecessor, Donald Trump, did the same thing at a very different political moment.

In Helsinki, Trump met Putin in 2018, with the two men hanging out alone for hours at their only full summit. In the ensuing press conference, Trump made it clear that he believed Putin’s denials of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election depended on his intelligence agencies’ conclusions. And national security analysts believe that despite his military setbacks, Putin may try to continue his war during the upcoming US presidential elections.

“Given that Trump is again running for president, and given the growing chorus of Republican candidates who question or oppose US support for Ukraine,” said Hagar Schmale, a former National Security Council and Treasury official under President Barack Obama, “I would expect President Zelensky to He is pushing harder for additional military support this year to avoid getting caught up in the domestic politics of the United States as November 2024 approaches.”