After the NATO summit concluded in Washington last week, President Biden said there was a “consensus that it was a great success.” But that was only because the summit’s goals were so limited.
The first objective was to retain the alliance’s long-term commitment to send arms to Ukraine. In furtherance of that aim, the members issued a declaration in support of Ukraine and promised additional aid.
Beyond increasing the volume of the aid, members also addressed widening its source. The U.S., which has been Ukraine’s main arms supplier, encouraged other members to develop their own capacities to build weapons systems for Ukraine’s immediate use and to provide for their own defenses against future threats.
As an indication of how Vladimir Putin’s invasion has awakened European nations to the dangers presented by an expansionist, revanchist Russia, Biden noted in his welcoming remarks, “[T]oday, all NATO members are making the pledge to expand our industrial base and our industrial capacity, like our defense-spending commitment. This is a critical step to maintaining our security.”
The development reflects Europe’s belated recognition that the threat Ukraine is now confronting is not limited in time or geography but is long-term and widespread — and includes much of Europe. Following the summit, the alliance’s members also pledged to back Ukraine’s “irreversible path” to NATO membership.
Both statements of intent fell far short of what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wanted from the NATO summit, however, and especially from the United States. “Ukraine can significantly limit Russian actions in south Ukraine and push the occupiers out,” he said in his address, “if the American leadership assists us with the necessary deep strike capabilities against Russian military and logistics in our Ukrainian Crimea.”
Zelensky’s specific naming of the U.S. role in determining Ukraine’s fate was realistic, given Washington’s leadership of the alliance. It reflected Biden’s reluctance to take on the most direct and kinetic manifestation of Putin’s attack on the international order, aided and abetted by China, his “no limits” strategic partner.
Biden has consistently declined or delayed U.S. delivery of vital U.S. weapons, such as tanks, aircraft and air defense systems, at great cost to Ukraine in military and civilian lives lost and critical infrastructure destroyed. As Ukraine’s failed counter-offensive showed, a war of attrition works to Russia’s advantage.
Several NATO members, especially those closer to Russia, find the hesitation and fear of escalation on the part of the United States and Germany, with the two of the most powerful militaries in the Alliance, frustratingly self-defeating.
Without naming the target of its criticisms, Poland has been the most adamant in opposing the posture of the Biden administration and others who are implicitly pressing Zelensky to make territorial concessions to Russia and to accept indefinite exclusion from NATO membership.
While in Washington for last week’s summit, Polish President Andrzej Duda said Ukraine should be “admitted as soon as possible.” NATO instead offers Ukraine a “bridge” to membership at some undefined future date when the war in Ukraine is ended. This provides an incentive for Putin to keep the fighting going until he gains permanent territorial concessions.
Duda registered his strong dissent from the Biden strategy, which is supported in part by China and by Hungary’s pro-Putin prime minister, Viktor Orban. “It is easy to give away a piece of somebody else’s land,” Duda said. The war “must not end in the victory of Russia because…we will have another war soon…Russia will attack again.”
Duda clearly sees the fate of Ukraine as a watershed moment for the West. “Russian imperialism has to be reprimanded. It has to be punished in Ukraine.”
The NATO meeting failed to achieve another of its goals, to “Trump-proof” its Ukraine strategy against the former president’s intention to end Ukraine’s resistance “in 24 hours” — a prospect made more likely by last week’s tragic events.
However, both Trump and Biden, among the country’s most polarizing political figures, could decide to use the opportunity to defuse the dangerous American divisions. They could agree to a mutual withdrawal from the presidential race, since each has said his main reason for running was to block the other. It would be an act of reciprocal statesmanship that the country would welcome and that history would applaud — far better than any of the “successes” NATO has claimed.
Joseph Bosco served as China country director for the secretary of Defense from 2005 to 2006 and as Asia-Pacific director of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief from 2009 to 2010. He is a nonresident fellow at the Institute for Corean-American Studies and a member of the advisory board of the Global Taiwan Institute.