Embroiled in a crucial election year, the United States couldn't stem the flood of questions and uncertainty swirling around NATO's summit and 75th anniversary which focused on its "unwavering" support for Ukraine.
NATO members' worries about U.S. President Joe Biden's clouded political future and the thought of NATO antagonist Donald Trump returning to the White House ran head-on with the three-day summit held in Washington at a perilous time for Ukraine and Western relations with Russia and China.
By the time outgoing NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg wrapped up the summit on Thursday, the military alliance's 32 members had agreed that Ukraine will someday join NATO and committed to provide Kyiv with €40 billion ($43.3 billion) in military and security aid within the next year.
A U.S.-led Ukraine Defense Contact Group, working out of the U.S. Army base in Wiesbaden, Germany, has already provided Ukraine with US$100 billion in weapons, equipment and training, about half of it from the U.S. and the other half from other NATO members and international partners.
"We stand in unity and solidarity in the face of a brutal war of aggression on the European continent and at a critical time for our security," NATO's summit declaration said. "Ukraine’s future is in NATO. Ukraine has become increasingly interoperable and politically integrated with the alliance."
It also mentioned Russia's "hybrid actions against allies," which include sabotage and what Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas calls a "shadow" war against the West. Attacks included, for example, a shopping mall in Poland, a museum in Latvia, and an IKEA store in Lithuania. U.S. and German security services thwarted a Russian plot to assassinate German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall's CEO Armin Papperger, part of a series of plans to kill European executives at defense companies supplying Ukraine, CNN reported on Thursday.
The declaration pledged the recently expanded alliance's "unwavering commitment to Ukraine as a sovereign, democratic, independent state." NATO leaders also met with their counterparts from Australia, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea and the European Union to "address shared security challenges and further deepen cooperation" in the face of a growing security alignment between Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.
NATO's rejection of these autocracies contrasted, however, with the ambivalent behavior exhibited at the summit by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, whose populist, authoritarian regimes appear to be preparing for a Trump presidency.
Hungary's rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union for the next six months also grants Orban, a frequent critic of the E.U., key agenda-setting powers and a significant bullhorn for his far-right platform. Orban arrived at the NATO summit a day after paying a surprise visit to China's President Xi Jinping in Beijing. Nordic and Baltic nations, along with Poland, plan to boycott Hungary's presidency.
The summit days were not blessed with peace, either. A day before, Russia unleashed a wave of missile attacks on cities across Ukraine, including in Kyiv, where a wing of Okhmatdyt children’s hospital, the largest such facility in Ukraine, suffered a direct hit by a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile, according to U.N. human rights monitors.
The attack, which drew international condemnation as a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, killed a doctor and one other person, wounded 32 others, and left eight children hospitalized. The U.N. Security Council convened an emergency meeting on Tuesday, where the heated debate was presided over by Russian U.N. Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy, whose nation holds the 15-nation council's monthly rotating presidency.
A day after the attack, Russia celebrated Russia's council presidency with a luncheon that provocatively offered "Chicken Kiev served with Potato Paille." In Moscow, Russia's President Vladimir Putin welcomed India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi just as Biden launched the NATO summit.
From Europe to the Indo-Pacific region, growing security concerns
Aside from the war in Ukraine, China's growing attempts to assert power globally and the future direction of NATO in light of an expected Biden-Trump rematch in November cast a pall over the summit.
NATO's summit declaration called China "a decisive enabler of Russia’s war against Ukraine through its so-called 'no limits' partnership and its large-scale support for Russia’s defence industrial base. This increases the threat Russia poses to its neighbours and to Euro-Atlantic security."
Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea issued a joint statement to “strongly condemn the illicit military cooperation” between Russia and North Korea, out of concern over the security alignment that also involves China and Iran in their region.
“We must work even more closely together to preserve peace and protect the rules-based international order,” Stoltenberg said. “Our security is not regional. It is global.”
Biden, facing growing calls from supporters to withdraw from the presidential race, hoped to use his appearance at the summit to reassert his leadership ability in the wake of a fumbling debate appearance against Trump two weeks earlier. Biden, at 81, is dogged by questions about his age, but Trump, at 78, is only three and a half years younger. Polls show the majority of U.S. voters doubt the mental capabilities of both men.
Biden surprised the summit when he mistakenly introduced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as "President Putin," then quickly corrected himself. At Biden's concluding press conference, he mistakenly referred to Vice President Kamala Harris as Vice President Trump.
NATO leaders, however, praised Biden and his leadership against Russia and expressed unity as a military alliance, which added Finland and Sweden as members. French President Emmanuel Macron told reporters that Biden was clearly in command of the issues during a dinner they shared. "I saw as always a president who is in charge, clear on the issues he knows well," Macron said. "We all slip up sometimes. It's happened to me and it could happen again tomorrow. I would ask for your indulgence."
The possibility of another Trump presidency has raised concerns around Europe because of his skepticism toward NATO and suggestions he might withdraw from the military alliance. During Trump's presidency, the U.S. House impeached him for withholding US$400 million in military aid to Ukraine while pressuring Zelenskyy to announce an investigation into Biden and his son, Hunter. The U.S. Senate aquitted Trump.
“Foreign policy has never been his strong point and he seems to have an affinity to people who are authoritarian,” Biden said. “That worries Europe, that worries Poland, and nobody, including the people of Poland, think if (Putin) wins in Ukraine, he’s going to stop in Ukraine.”
Zelenskyy welcomed NATO's show of support for his country – the path for Ukraine's NATO accession took a step forward with the wording that "Ukraine’s future is in NATO." But caveats remain. NATO members held out the prospect of Ukraine joining only after they "agree and conditions are met," meaning there still is no clear outline or path for its membership.
Ukraine's president also appealed for the help to come significantly faster, and for the U.S. to lift restrictions against using its weapons to attack targets inside Russian borders. “If we want to win, if we want to prevail, if we want to save our country and to defend it," he said, "we need to lift all the limitations."
