Assessing the NATO Summit, With Ivo H. Daalder

LINDSAY:
Welcome to The President's Inbox, a CFR podcast about the foreign policy challenges facing the United States. I'm Jim Lindsay, director of Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. This week's topic is assessing the NATO summit. With me to discuss the decisions reached at last week's two-day meeting of NATO countries in Vilnius, Lithuania, is Ambassador Ivo Daalder. Ivo is the chief executive of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. From 2013 to earlier this year, he was the Chicago Council's president. From 2009 to 2013, he served as U.S. Ambassador to NATO. Ivo has written widely and well not just on NATO, but on U.S. foreign policy, European security, transatlantic relations, and national security affairs generally. His most recent article, written for Politico is, "How to Ensure a Strong Independent Ukraine." And also in the interest of full disclosure, I will note that Ivo and I have been friends for three decades and we have often written together. With that introduction, Ivo, thank you for joining me.

DAALDER:
Jim, it's always a pleasure to be on the show.

LINDSAY:
So Ivo, let's begin with the big picture, the NATO summit wrapped up last Wednesday. Was it a success, a failure or something in between?

DAALDER:
It was a success. It's very hard to see that it was anything but that. Think about the three audiences that really were the main purpose for this summit. First, of course the members of NATO themselves. With that regard, they came together united, demonstrating that whatever differences they may have, both domestically and among them are overwhelmed by the need to be united when it comes to confronting the threats that they face. We saw that Turkey's President Erdogan came to the summit a day early to lift one of the sticking points, Sweden's entry into NATO, and say, "You know what? I'm no longer going to block that." And that was one of the indicators that everybody understood that being united was important. Similarly, they came together and agreed on a resource investment in defense spending and a whole variety of specific programs that all demonstrated that they all understand they're much better off by standing together rather than disagreeing and the differences they might have. So from that perspective, it was a success. 

From the perspective of Ukraine, although a lot of attention was being paid to the fact that Ukraine did not get an invitation or even a timeline for when it might join NATO. If you are the Ukrainian president and you arrive at the summit and you find first all these countries saying, "You know what? We'll give you even more weapons than we have already done." The French provided long range missiles. The Germans provided tanks and infantry fighting vehicles. The United States provided crucially artillery shells with cluster munitions, which are the only ones really readily available, and the Dutch and the Danes and nine other countries agreed to do pilot training for F-16s. Zelensky also got a very important commitment from the G7 nations, signed on by a host of others, to provide long-term military assistance to Ukraine, not only during the war but after, so that it has sufficient capability to defend itself and after a conflict that may have ended to deter its resumption. That is an important signal. And then finally it got while, not an invitation, it got a consensus among the thirty-one, soon, thirty-two NATO countries that Ukraine is going to be the thirty-third alliance member. It will happen sooner rather than later. President Biden talked in terms of months to have that discussion, and that's a big deal. 

And then finally, I think the thing that is perhaps not paid enough attention to, if you're sitting in the Kremlin and you saw what happened, none of it was good news. First of all, Sweden has become a member of NATO. Finland already became a member of NATO, doubling the amount of border that NATO has with Russia. A significant increase in terms of military capability for Ukraine, a commitment to do everything possible for Ukraine to be able to defend itself. And finally, most importantly, perhaps, a recommitment to defense and deterrence within the NATO alliance. Three regional defense plans, one for the northern region, one for the eastern region, one for the southern region, all agreed, with real commitments that nations will have to meet in terms of the tanks, the capabilities, the reinforcements, the ammunition, the training, et cetera that they need in order to implement those plans. So if you're in the Kremlin and you look at this and say, "Was this a success for NATO or a failure?" It's hard to see how it was anything but a success.

LINDSAY:
Okay, you put a lot on the table there, Ivo. Let's drill down on some of it. Let's begin with the question of the relationship between Ukraine and NATO. I will note that just before the summit began, President Zelensky arrived in Vilnius and gave a speech that, how can I put this, tore into NATO leaders including Joe Biden for not extending NATO membership to Ukraine. He used words like "weakness" and "absurd" to describe what NATO was about to agree to. A couple days later he meets with President Biden and President Zelensky is singing a somewhat different tune. He said that Ukraine had achieved a "significant security victory." So can you help us understand how we went from what appeared to be Zelensky's great anger to Zelensky's great happiness with the results of the summit?

DAALDER:
Yeah, so the most unhappy he was in a tweet that he issued while he was on the road to Vilnius, apparently soon after the communiqué that had the language on what NATO would agree with had been leaked, presumably also to him. And we've all been in a position where we sometimes have written a tweet or an email and hit post or send a little too early. My sense is this is what happens. I think we all learn over time that there is such a thing as a folder with all the emails that you've written and never sent.

LINDSAY:
A very good piece of advice.

DAALDER:
And the same is true for Twitter or whatever other social media you would have. So I think he was disappointed. He didn't like the work conditions. He wanted a timeframe, but frankly it was never on the cards. He was never going to get an invitation. The idea that he was going to get one, made no sense.

LINDSAY:
Why is that?

DAALDER:
Well, the most important reason is for Ukraine to become a member of NATO today or tomorrow, would make NATO a party to this conflict, because the core of NATO is to defend the territory of its members. And you wouldn't want to bring in a country into the alliance if you weren't, at that point, also be willing to defend the territory of that member. One thing has united NATO on the issue of Ukraine since the day of the Russian full scale invasion, it was that no one wanted to get involved. No one is prevented from doing so under Article 51 of the UN charter. Ukraine has a right, not only to self-defense but collective self-defense. So if Poland or Estonia or the United States wanted to join Ukraine in a direct defense, it could do so without NATO approval, but nobody wants to. So that's why an invitation now wasn't going to be happening.

If you tie an invitation to the end of hostilities or the end of the war, as many, many advocates of a timeframe, and including many advocates in the United States and other places argue, you're giving the Russians an excuse to continue the war forever. That actually isn't a good idea, to tie an invitation to membership to the end of fighting or the end of hostilities. In fact, I have a piece that's just come out in Semafor with former NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and Stefano Stefanini, my Italian colleague when I was at NATO, arguing exactly that, that you need to think about an invitation that provides an incentive for Russia not to escalate the war, rather than to think about an invitation as a way to escalate the war.

And so this is a complicated issue. It isn't a question of whether, it's always been a question about when and how. How do you bring a country that is at war, whose borders are being contested, that has foreign forces occupying part of its territory, in the alliance? And rather than saying, why don't we promise things that you can't necessarily deliver on, I've always thought, and I thought this before, and I think now, it is important that we think about how and when you bring Ukraine in, sooner rather than later, and that I think is now the next task to NATO, for NATO and leaders, and the next task for Ukraine.

LINDSAY:
Let's talk about that, Ivo. You've discussed the summit meeting as a time of unity, the NATO members coming together and agreeing on a number of important provisions, but I think on this issue of when Ukraine should become a member is something that still divides or separates some of the countries. I've heard talk about Bucharest Nine, which is eager to bring Ukraine into NATO sooner rather than later, but other countries, far less eager to change the current status quo in terms of membership. Can you just sort of lay out for us which countries are seen as being eager versus less eager?

DAALDER:
Yeah, I think you can have unity and still have disagreement. One of the real beauties of an alliance like NATO is that they have mechanisms to agree to disagree in a fundamental way.

LINDSAY:
And you've seen that firsthand.

DAALDER:
I've seen that firsthand, and that's what you negotiate in these communiques. And the language you come up with reflects the reality that not everyone agrees, which is what an organization of democracies frankly is all about. But so there are differences. There are clear differences. I think the best way to think about it is there's three groups of people, three groups of countries. First you mentioned the Bucharest Nine, the east and central European countries, that have been quite united in the view that we need to move as quickly and expeditiously as possible to bring Ukraine into the alliance. And they have argued in their statement that an invitation should be issued to allow Ukraine to enter the alliance "as soon as conditions allow". Of course, they don't spell out what those conditions are, which makes it hard to say that you have a timeline, but that just underscores the difficulty of this issue.

On the other side are openly two countries, the United States and Germany, that are more skeptical about an invitation and moving forward with Ukrainian membership. I think in the German case, skeptical, because I don't think the German government as a whole, a coalition government, has a singular point of view on this issue. There are differences within the government. There are some, particularly in the Social Democratic Party who are still quite hesitant about the idea of bringing Ukraine into NATO. I think in the U.S. where there are also differences, including in the administration on this issue. The president himself has been very cautious about bringing Ukraine in. He has made clear that from day one that he has two goals when it comes to Ukraine, which is to do everything possible to support Ukraine and help it defend itself, and to do so in a way that does not lead to World War III.

And the issue of when and how to bring Ukraine into NATO is one that needs to be balanced against, how do you make sure that you don't send the wrong signal and escalate the conflict? And in conversation that I've had with administration folks, it's quite clear that unless we figure out how and when we bring a country in, and have really decided that, sending an invitation is premature. I think there are actually quite a number of other countries within NATO that are very happy that there is disposition, so they don't have to go out on a limb to make it. And the idea that somehow the United States, or even Germany are the only two countries who are cautious on this, I reject. I think there are many other countries that are in this situation as well.

LINDSAY:
My sense is the further you get away from the borders with Russia, the less enthusiastic you are about moving Ukraine into NATO quickly.

DAALDER:
Yeah, you do. Although there's some Nordic countries that are pretty darn close to Russia and are also cautious. But yes, in general the West Europeans are more likely to be cautious on these issues than the East Europeans. And that reflects the reality of the situation that they see it. The French have been playing an interesting role. They used to be in the middle, they used to be on the side of the German argument, but President Macron went to Bratislava in late May and gave a speech which was generally seen as his mea culpa speech in which he said, "I actually do like central and eastern Europe and I really take your interest seriously," and came up with the idea that we needed substantial and tangible security guarantees actually for Ukraine and that Ukraine needed to be seen as being on the "path" to membership. However, the agreement that was reached in the end. One, Ukraine's position and its future is in NATO. And second, that an invitation will be forthcoming once everybody agreed. Well they just spelled it out and they will agree when the circumstances are decided about when and how to do that.

LINDSAY:
Okay, so we've talked about Ukraine, but the other big issue that you mentioned at the top in terms of membership was having Sweden come into NATO. Coming into the meeting, President Erdogan of Turkey had opposed moving ahead with Swedish membership. He dropped that objection, which presumably clears the way for Sweden to join NATO. Is that going to happen or is this a deal that might still fall apart?

DAALDER:
Well, it's a deal that can still fall apart because it's not actually up to President Erdogan to make that decision. You need parliamentary ratification, and Erdogan made it clear in his post-summit press conference that he didn't think the parliament would be recalled prior to its next setting, which is in October. A lot can happen between now and October. That said, his party does have a majority in parliament, and that would suggest that if he sticks with the agreement that he reached in Vilnius, this will happen. Hungary also still needs to ratify Swedish accession. Hungary has indicated that they would do so upon the completion of the Turkish parliamentary procedures. 

By all accounts, it's likely the question is why? Why did he change his mind? It's not as if Sweden did something in the day leading up to the meeting that may have changed his mind on part of the substance. You recall that Turkey was wary of inviting Sweden in the last summit in Madrid, in part because it wanted Sweden to do more in countering Kurdish terrorism, and there were disagreements about those kinds of issues. The Swedes did lots, they changed the constitution, they changed some of the counter-terrorism laws in order to come closer to what the Turks wanted. 

I think the real reason why this happens is, one, summits put pressure on leaders to agree. Two, Erdogan, who spent an incredible amount of money in the run-up to the election, his election, now has a team of economists running his government, who have made him to understand that some very serious economic challenges lie ahead, and he is better off not having bad relations with countries that have a large economy, i.e. the United States and the European Union. And so he probably has an incentive to be on the right side.

And finally, there's little doubt that the U.S. government is prepared to provide Turkey with F-16s that he has long wanted. You may recall that Turkey had bought and contracted for F-35s, a fifth generation aircraft. That sale was halted because Congress had said that if Turkey were to acquire an air defense system from the Russians, as it did, then we would not be able to provide them with advanced technologies. And that problem still persists, but then F-16s are older technology, and it looks like there was a deal that was implicit that though not explicitly linked to Turkey's accession on the issue of Sweden.

LINDSAY:
So Congress would sign off on the F-16s to Turkey. I think in part, I've heard rumors, as long as F-35s go to Greece. Obvious rivalry between Greece and Turkey, that is one of the divisions within NATO. Do you think it's likely this will go ahead or are we likely to see a hiccup or two on Capitol Hill?

DAALDER:
No, I think the deal that the administration worked out with Capitol Hill, and in particularly with Senator Menendez, the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who is leading the opposition to providing F-16s to Turkey is, as you said, one, to go ahead with actually I think slightly expand the sale of F-35s and other military capabilities, naval, in particular, to the Greeks, which is not tied to the Turkish sale, it's independent, but to go ahead with that. And secondly to exact from the Turks, a promise that it will not use or employ F-16s in NATO territory, i.e. against Greece, and in understanding that if it ever were to do so, then the cooperation will immediately be halted. I think the trick is, everybody thought that this deal would go through in the next weeks or so. Since Turkey's not likely to approve the accession of Sweden until October. I don't think the sale's going to happen until October, and I don't have to tell you, who know more about Congress and foreign policy, that between now and October, a lot of things can happen.

LINDSAY:
It is a lifetime.

DAALDER:
And they may not even get a defense budget by that time.

LINDSAY:
Yes, there are many problems on Capitol Hill right now, and I don't envy the Senate or House leadership in trying to thread a needle. We can do that on a different episode of the President's Inbox. I want to pick up the point you made, Ivo, about the changes that NATO adopted in its defense plans in terms of how NATO countries are going to defend themselves against Russian attacks. Again, these have been in development, my understanding is for at least a year under the leadership of General Christopher Cavoli who's the supreme allied commander Europe. Now the specifics aren't public, understandably, but can you just give us some sense of what the general thrust of these changes add up to?

DAALDER:
Yeah, so we haven't had plans like this since the end of the Cold War. And one way to look at what NATO has been going through since February 23rd, 2022, is to relearn and regain its muscle memory. This is an organization that was first and foremost a military alliance designed to deter and defend its members against the Soviet Union. And it had put in place a whole variety of ways to do that, including an integrated command structure, and importantly, these kind of regional defense plans that allowed you to defend certain parts of the alliance in an integrated way. This is the first time that SACEUR since the end of the Cold War has done this. NATO had contingency plans, but that's a very different thing than having defense plans. 

The way to think about this is that in some ways it's a giant Excel sheet with the NATO nations representing the columns, and the requirements of military capabilities from tanks to ammunition to missiles to aircraft to naval ships, to going further, reinforcement, having enough trains and tracks to deliver equipment forward, all representing rows. And that giant sheet is starting to be filled in and it will say, Denmark, ten tanks for the eastern flank and fifteen tanks for the Nordic program, and Germany, 250 tanks for the Eastern flank, et cetera. And so it defines, in some ways, the defense requirements for each nation. Those get debated individually, et cetera, but this becomes SACEUR's requirements, and it sets into stone a notional capability that you need, and a plan for defending a particular set of areas, but also the individual responsibilities that NATO nations have. 

They have to buy this nationally. It's nationally owned, it's nationally equipped. It only goes under NATO command if there is a political agreement to do so, usually only in time of conflict or war. But it does set real strictures on what it is that each individual nation does for the common defense. And like I said, we haven't done that in NATO since the late 1980s, early 1990s. We're now relearning how to do that. And interestingly enough, of course, there are very few people in the NATO apparatus or in the defense and foreign ministries and militaries of NATO countries who actually remember or participated in this. Even General Cavoli probably, but he was a young lieutenant, might have been thinking about those things, but he hadn't been thinking about it since he'd been the four star, but now he has to think about it and he's the right, by the way, he's the right guy to do it. He's really a remarkable soldier and thinks about these issues in a fundamentally different way than his predecessors have.

LINDSAY:
And most importantly, he's going to have more resources going forward. We're seeing countries in Europe, members of NATO, who had long struggled to hit the 2 percent mark in terms of defense spending as a share of GDP, starting to get closer to doing that. And obviously for General Cavoli he is going to have more in the way of resources. What we have seen since the Russian invasion of Ukraine is NATO member countries taking seriously, finally, the pledges made back in 2014 at the Wales Summit to bring defense spending up to at least 2 percent of GDP. Now, I know when you were ambassador to NATO, you probably were banging your head against a table or against the wall trying to get NATO members to actually take NATO seriously. But certainly events have a way of concentrating the mind wonderfully. One thing we haven't talked about, Ivo, is China. And I will note that at this meeting for the second year in a row, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea attended the NATO summit. What's the significance?

DAALDER:
It's important that these countries attend. I should note that these countries have been attending NATO meetings for a very long time, including at the leader level. All of them, in one form or another, were participants in the Afghanistan operation. Even in a broader context, in 2012 at the Chicago Summit, where I still was the U.S. ambassador, we brought in the leaders of thirteen countries, including these four as partners across the globe. I think the importance of the Indo-Pacific is a growing understanding by the nations in Asia as well as in Europe, and of course naturally in North America, that our fates in the security realm, just as they are in the economic realm, are increasingly interlinked. And that what happens in Asia is not something that can be geographically separated from what happens in Europe and what happens in Europe cannot be geographically separated from what happens in Asia. There's a natural confluence of interest among these countries, and this is one more way in which the United States and its allies in North America and in Asia can come together to focus on common concerns. 

I note, for example, that the declaration on Ukraine and the guarantees for long-term security assistance that were provided were negotiated by the G7 and Ukraine, not by NATO because NATO countries don't want NATO to be a party to the conflict. And of course the G7 includes Japan. Australia and New Zealand are heavily involved in helping Ukraine. So that is one aspect. The other aspect is I think there's a growing understanding in European countries and in the UK, as it has long been in Canada and the United States, that what happens in China and what China does has not only an impact on the security situation in the Indo-Pacific, but increasingly in Europe as well. And that therefore coordinating across that is a good idea. 

What I would stress, however, is that the prospect of NATO as NATO getting involved in the Indo-Pacific as opposed to individual NATO countries, I think, is slim and frankly is something that I think is better left for another day. NATO has its hands full with what's happening in Europe, and its hands full with increasing Chinese presence and military challenges, security challenge, in Europe, to start thinking about how NATO can become an active player as an organization in the Indo-Pacific.

LINDSAY:
Ivo, I want to close by returning to a point you began with, which is the remarkable unity and consensus we saw at the NATO summit in Vilnius. And I want to contrast that against the fact that we are now in campaign season here in the United States. People are already beginning to look forward to the 2024 election. We've just had this summit in which the NATO members said they were strongly beside Ukraine, providing more in the way of weapons. But here at home in the United States, there are troubling signs that support for Ukraine is being challenged. I will note that Mike Pence was in Iowa over the weekend, spoke at a campaign event, and he was booed for making the case for strong U.S. support for Ukraine. President Trump did a television interview in which he said that he would settle the war in a day, and as best I could tell from his explanation, he would do so by withdrawing support from Ukraine. So how are NATO countries thinking about the future when they must be worried that U.S. policy could turn in a dime come January 2025?

DAALDER:
I mean, let me separate two things. I still think that there is remarkable support within the U.S. body politic and the U.S. public for Ukraine, and certainly for NATO.

LINDSAY:
As we have written.

DAALDER:
As we have written, and it continues to be the case. And the Chicago Council on Global Affairs public opinion polling last year. And we are about to go in the field for this year's poll, had the highest support for NATO since 1974, since we started polling. And so I think there is reason to be optimistic in that regard. The debate in the United States is a debate within one party, and that party is deeply divided. And I think not only Pence, but also Nikki Haley and Tim Scott and others were very supportive of Ukraine. And there were others in the party, as you mentioned, who are not. And I think this is a major battlefield in the party itself. 

The Europeans, the world, is looking at 2024 with anxiety. They have seen, they know what it means to have an America under a Trump presidency, and to coin a phrase, a Trump two presidency would be Trump unbound. He would be no longer constrained by what was the institutional constraints that might have in some ways bound him in his first time in the Oval Office. Just the other day, the New York Times ran a front page story about his plans to unshackle the U.S. government to make sure that it is responsive to the whims and wishes of a president as opposed to of a constitution. And I think people understand that that is a disquieting perspective. 

Interestingly enough, when the issue which comes up, no matter where you are in Europe, there are some who think that they can actually figure out a way to deal with this in a positive way. I myself are highly skeptical that there is a way to salvage the institutional infrastructure, including NATO for that matter, with the United States that is no longer to be trusted. Alliances like international institutions of these times are based on trust. That's the foundation of how they operate. The fundamental belief that countries will do things that are not natural, like come to the defense of another country, is an act of faith, an act of trust, that becomes more difficult when the political situation changes as it might in 2025.

LINDSAY:
And with that thought, I'm going to close up The President's Inbox for this week. My guest has been Ivo Daalder. He is the chief executive of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. As always, Ivo, a delight to chat with you.

DAALDER:
Same here, Jim.

LINDSAY:
Please subscribe to The President's Inbox on Apple podcast, Google podcast, Spotify, wherever you listen and leave us a review. We love the feedback. The publications mentioned in this episode and a transcript of our conversation are available on the podcast page for The President's Inbox on CFR.org. As always, opinions expressed in The President's Inbox are solely those of the host or our guests, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. 

Today's episode was produced by Ester Fang, the Director of Podcasting  Gabrielle Sierra. Special thanks go out to Michelle Kurilla for her research assistance. This is Jim Lindsay. Thanks for listening.