The leaders of 32 NATO member countries were greeted in Washington, Tuesday by blazing hot sunshine, sweltering temperatures and the turmoil of U.S. political uncertainty, as they kicked off the 75th anniversary and summit of the alliance.
The leaders of 32 NATO member countries were greeted in Washington on Tuesday by blazing hot sunshine, sweltering temperatures and the turmoil of political uncertainty as they kicked off the 75th anniversary and summit of the alliance.
By the time they prepared to depart, the U.S. political troubles, which directly impacts NATO’s future, had deepened; and separate internal concerns lingered.
The summit was laced together with a mix of celebrations to commemorate NATO’s history and anxiety about its future.
At the opening of the three-day gathering, President Joe Biden, the host of the historic event, was battling growing demands from his own party to bow out of the upcoming presidential election.
European political and intelligence sources told WTOP that those calls rattled many of the dignitaries, who were already worried after Mr. Biden’s performance in a presidential debate on June 24 with Donald Trump.
The newly-elected Biden guaranteed in 2020 that the U.S. was firmly back at NATO’s side and would remain there after a tumultuous four years during Trump’s presidency. But, looking at the current political landscape, he’s no longer able to back that guarantee.
‘It’s necessary for our own interest to defend Ukraine’
In addition to American political dysfunction, NATO grappled during the summit with its own internal problems.
Topping that list are businesses in NATO member countries that may be helping Moscow pursue its war against Ukraine.
The day before the summit began, Russia’s military attacked a children’s hospital in Ukraine, reportedly using weapons built with Western components — something a broad Russia sanctions package was designed to prevent.
Estonia’s Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, during the “Strengthening the trans-Atlantic Bond” panel discussion, criticized Western companies that, allegedly, knowingly provide weapons components to Moscow.
“When I go to different European countries that are further away from the war and don’t see Russia — maybe the way that we do — I see this will still profit from it,” she said.
She suggested that leaders in these companies believe the war is not their problem and have dealt with the conflict in a disingenuous way. Kallas said they tell themselves and others, “It doesn’t really concern me. I just want to do my trade.”
“We see the circumvention of sanctions, but these are the same companies that are complaining that ‘our businesses are hurt, our economies are hurt because of it (the sanctions),’” she said.
One potential reason for the look-the-other-way mentality, according to Western intelligence sources, is animosity toward Ukraine.
The President of the Czech Republic Petr Pavel addressed it briefly during the same panel discussion Kallas participated in.
“It doesn’t matter if we take it as a matter of liking or disliking Ukraine. It’s about if we like to live in a world where rules matter or not, and this is what is it all about,” said Pavel.
He said nations should support Ukraine because they would want the same if they were in a similar situation: “We want to live in a world where smaller countries are also protected; where they have the guarantees to live up to their aspirations, and that’s why we believe it’s necessary for our own interest to defend Ukraine.”
He also chided NATO member countries for being too slow to help Ukraine.
“From the beginning, there were some delays and gaps that cost Ukraine a lot of lives and some territory, and also some self-confidence when it comes to achieving their own goals,” Pavel said.
Despite the prominent airing of internal shortcomings, the central focus of the summit was, as expected, Ukraine; and making sure the embattled country gets all it needs to fight Russia.
‘We have changed when the world is changing’
WTOP’s JJ Green speaks with transatlantic relations expert Eeva Eek-Pajuste on the Russia-Ukraine war
Even so, trans-Atlantic relations expert Eeva Eek-Pajuste, who has served in several diplomatic positions around the world for Estonia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, noted that while the summit was an extremely important moment for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, he didn’t get everything he wanted.
“He pleaded for and explained the importance of lifting the restrictions of using Western-allied arms for strikes in not only border areas around Russia, but on the whole territory of Russia. And also, his staff explained at the summit, how critical this permission was, but this allowance was not given to them,” Eek-Pajuste said.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg sought to soothe the anxiety about the alliance’s problems and Ukraine’s challenges by reminding summit attendees that the organization’s longevity is proof that it can overcome tests like those it faces today.
“The only way to truly celebrate that achievement — the 75th anniversary — is, of course, to demonstrate that NATO is adapting, that we are changing when the world is changing. We are the most successful alliance in history because we have changed when the world is changing. And now, we live in a more dangerous, more challenging security environment. And therefore, NATO is changing again,” Stoltenberg said.
But even as NATO rises to meet those changes and challenges, one of the most concerning developments is the resurgence of far-right politics in Europe. Their views are often reminiscent of the ideologies that underpinned Nazi Germany’s efforts to absorb all of Europe during World War II.
According to Steven Erlanger, chief diplomatic correspondent for the New York Times, diversity of thought among the far right in Europe is a complicating matter.
“The far right is different in every country. I mean, the German far right isn’t the French far right. It’s not the Swedish far right. And, Europe operates with coalition government, so it’s very difficult for one party to swing weight in quite the same way,” Erlanger said.
Erlanger said in an interview with WTOP that the power resides with control of the budgets in these countries. And considering there is significant support for Russia in some of these countries, it could impact how, or if, they support Ukraine.
“Everyone talks about being with Ukraine as long as it takes, but they really don’t define what it is, or what victory is,” he said.
“The Germans, for example, say it’s important Russia doesn’t win; and Ukraine doesn’t lose, which, in a way, is a formula for stalemate. I mean, they’re looking for a negotiation,” he added.
Despite the public proclamations at the summit of unified support for Ukraine, there is still a lively debate behind the scenes about how far to go. Some say, “No matter how long it takes.” Others say, “whatever it takes.”
But Denmark’s President Mette Frederiksen, who participated in the “Strengthening the trans-Atlantic Bond” panel discussion as well, suggested that regardless of how one describes their support for Ukraine, the most important thing is: to just do it.
“It’s not a difficult decision. You have to do what is the right thing to do, and doing the right thing is never difficult,” said Frederiksen.
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Business owners near the Washington Convention Center, which will host the NATO Summit this week, talked about the impact of the event.
It’s hard to run a business if you’re not certain whether employees or customers will be able to get to the shop — that’s the reality for some business owners near the Washington Convention Center, which will host the NATO Summit from Tuesday through Thursday.
At Central Safe & Locksmith, on 7th Street Northwest, across from the convention center, Larry has had a sign taped to the glass window with advice to customers while NATO is in town.
“Call first, before you come down here because you never know,” he said. “You might not be able to get here at all. We might be closed, we might not be able to get in here, either.”
While that kind of uncertainty might cause other businesses to close, “We’re fortunate enough we’ve got a job we can do this week outside of the shop here,” referring to customer calls for emergency locksmith service.
“If no one’s here, the phone’s gonna be rolled over to one of our guys, so we get to try to work something out to get to you,” Larry said. “We’re not gonna close.”
A few doors down 7th Street, Adam Benjamin at Pearl’s Bagels said many of his regular breakfast and lunch customers have told him, “They’re making plans to either work from home, or come into the office sporadically throughout the time NATO’s here because it’s gonna be a logistical challenge getting to and from work.”
With tall anti-scale fencing in front of the shop, running along the sidewalk but not currently blocking access, Benjamin said: “We’ve been told that we will not be in a pedestrian-restricted zone, but I know, based on previous experience with events here, people think of this chunk of the city as ‘Oh, that’s like where the chaos is.’”
“I don’t blame them for thinking that,” he added. “It’s like, ‘Oh, I don’t want to deal with that on my morning commute, or when I’m heading out to lunch.’”
Benjamin hopes some participants in the summit will be in the mood for a bagel.
“Obviously, there’s kind of a captive audience across the street. That’s one of the things about this area — there are some food options, but it’s not the most food-dense part of the city,” he said.
He hopes regular customers who live nearby will have access to the shop, even as security tightens, “because our regulars really support us, and are like the foundation of what we do.”
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In preparation for the NATO Summit in D.C., crews installed tall, latticed steel fences on the sidewalk along the Ellipse near the White House on Monday.
Crews installed anti-scale fencing Monday morning around the Ellipse near the White House. (WTOP/Neal Augenstein)
Crews installed anti-scale fencing Monday morning around the Ellipse near the White House. (WTOP/Neal Augenstein)
In preparation for Tuesday’s NATO Summit in D.C., crews from a contractor installed tall, latticed steel fences on the sidewalk along the Ellipse near the White House.
A small forklift unloaded pallets of the fencing onto the sidewalk on Monday morning while crews dragged and then assembled the fencing.
Most of the security fencing along the sidewalk isn’t blocking access to the sidewalk. It’s running parallel to the sidewalk to prevent someone from climbing over it. So pedestrians still have access to the sidewalk.
Fencing was already in place around the Mellon Auditorium and Washington Convention Center, where the summit will take place from July 9-11.
A number of roadway closures come into effect on Monday near Mellon Auditorium and White House and the Washington Convention Center.
Roadway, parking closures beginning Monday
CLICK MAP TO ENLARGE: Closures nearby Mellon Auditorium amid the 2024 NATO Summit in D.C. Red zones designed areas where pedestrians are restricted. Blue zones designate areas where vehicles must be screened before passing through. (Courtesy D.C. Mayor’s Office)
Parking isn’t allowed on these streets from Monday, July 8 at noon until Thursday, July 11 at 11:59 p.m.
H Street from 15th Street to 17th Street, NW
Connecticut Avenue from H Street to I Street, NW
16th Street from H Street to I Street, NW
Vehicles can’t drive on these streets from Monday, July 8 at noon through Thursday, July 11 at 11:59 p.m.
H Street from Vermont Avenue to 17th Street, NW
Connecticut Avenue from H Street to I Street, NW
16th Street from H Street to I Street, NW
No parking is allowed on these streets from Monday, July 8 at 6:30 p.m. through Tuesday, July 9 at 11:59 p.m.
Constitution Avenue from 15th Street to 17th Street, NW
11th Street from E Street to Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
10th Street from Pennsylvania Avenue to Constitution Avenue, NW
New York Avenue from 14th Street to 15th Street, NW
From 14th Street to 15th Street, NW
From 14th Street to 15th Street, NW
These streets will be designated as emergency no parking from Monday, July 8 at 9:30 a.m. through Friday, July 12 at 6 p.m.:
I Street from 6th Street to 10th Street, NW
New York Avenue from 10th Street to 13th Street, NW
Massachusetts Avenue from 10th Street to 13th Street, NW
This street will be closed to all vehicles on Monday, July 8 at 9 a.m. through Friday, July 12 at noon:
Pedestrian access will also be restricted nearby the event spaces; you won’t be able to walk into those areas without a pass. The bottom line: leave extra time to get around downtown between Monday and Thursday.
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PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron missed the boat on Ukraine.
Faced with Russia’s military build-up and subsequent invasion of its neighbor, Macron dove down a rabbit hole of fruitless talks with Vladimir Putin. At a moment when he could have taken the helm as the leader of Europe, he miscalculated and failed to seize the political initiative.
Instead, in Europe, it was the likes of the Euroskeptic British premier Boris Johnson who took the lead on rallying support for President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and providing arms. While Johnson was a hero in Kyiv, Macron infuriated the Ukrainians by insisting that Putin should not be humiliated and suggesting that Moscow deserved “security guarantees.” Ukraine, the French president said, was “in all likelihood decades” from joining the EU.
But a sea change has taken place in Paris since. The French president has now picked up the mantle as one of Ukraine’s strongest allies, pledging support “until victory,” seeking to lead on issues such as NATO membership and military support, just as Europeans fret that U.S. support is flagging, with increasing concerns that a potential Donald Trump presidency could deprive Ukraine of its most important ally.
“Macron was fixated by the idea of playing a mediation role between Putin and Zelenskyy. And this meant he was extremely prudent when it came to arms deliveries,” François Heisbourg, senior adviser to the International Institute for Strategic Studies said. But early this year “Macron finally understood that Putin was taking him for a ride, and wasn’t interested in negotiating,” he added.
French diplomats, however, won’t go further than to say the president “has clarified” his position on Ukraine.
Where the French have broken most significantly from their long-standing position is on the issue of EU enlargement. Beyond the war in Ukraine, France is now seeking new allies, wants to lead on enlargement and is war-gaming how an enlarged EU would work. There is frenetic diplomatic activity behind closed doors in Paris and beyond. The French government is leading consultations and testing red lines ahead of a big speech Macron is set to give early next year, setting out his ambitions for enlargement that has already been dubbed “Sorbonne bis,” according to several French officials, in a reference to a policy-setting Europe speech Macron gave at the Sorbonne University in 2017.
Change of heart
For months following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year, the French president appeared to zig-zag on how to deal with Russia. Putin was a personality he had struggled to read. In a 2019 interview with the Economist, Macron mapped out a picture of how he reckoned a logical Putin would ultimately come to the realization that he would need to form “a partnership project with Europe.” It was a generous vision of Putin’s mindset that underestimated the gnawing historical primacy of the Ukraine question.
In December last year, Macron’s U-turn started to become more evident. He gave a forceful speech saying he would support Ukraine “until victory.” Only a couple of weeks earlier he had stated that the West should give Russia “security guarantees.”
In May this year, Macron hinted at a new awareness, telling Central and Eastern Europeans in Bratislava that he believed France “had sometimes wasted opportunities,” and failed to listen to their memories of Soviet brutality.
That same month, France gave the U.K. permission to export Franco-British Storm Shadow cruise missiles to Ukraine, which was followed by deliveries of French long-range SCALP-EG cruise missiles. According to Heisbourg, it was a decisive signal, because France was doing what the U.S. has so far refused to do.
But Macron’s previous diplomatic serenades toward Putin have left their mark. According to a French diplomat, Macron “shot himself in the foot” in making too many overtures to Moscow, telling reporters that “Russia should not be humiliated.” In the early months of the war, “it overshadowed what we did do, the military support, the European unity,” said the diplomat who like others quoted here was granted anonymity to talk candidly about a sensitive matter. Another French diplomat put it more bluntly: “Macron missed his Churchillian moment.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on May 14, 2023 | Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images
Macron’s government is now firing on multiple fronts in favor of Ukraine: EU enlargement, military support and NATO. This month, the French presidency announced they were opening talks with Ukraine to sign a bilateral security agreement following the NATO summit in Vilnius.
“We are not naïve, we took a big step … but we are not kidding ourselves that people will think France has changed overnight,” said a third French diplomat.
Speeding up on enlargement
As recently as 2019, Macron was opposed to opening membership talks with North Macedonia and Albania.
“France has never been anti-enlargement, but it has always been prudent about it,” said Georgina Wright, Europe director at the Paris-based Institut Montaigne. “France has always said the EU must deepen before it can widen, because there was a fear by enlarging the EU would become more dysfunctional,” she said.
But in a recent speech, Macron called for “boldness” in embracing enlargement, floating the idea of a “multispeed Europe” to keep up the drive toward greater integration.
For France, the change is also set against the realization that the Balkans and Moldova — not just Ukraine — are on the front lines of a hybrid war against Russia.
“There’s a real awakening that we are on the eve of a historic moment, similar to the Fall of the Berlin Wall, with a new wave of EU enlargement …which will help stabilize the Continent,” said Benjamin Haddad, an MP for Macron’s Renaissance party.
But the change of heart may also boil down to some hard-nosed political calculus. France’s initial diplomatic initiatives with Putin alienated Central and Eastern Europeans. With talk of the center of gravity shifting eastward, France needs support beyond its traditional allies such as Germany, Italy and Spain, if it wants to influence the change it now sees as inevitable.
Getting political
With the European election looming next year, France is gearing up for a battle of opposing visions, between Europhiles arguing the EU protects citizens and populists shining a spotlight on the Union’s failings.
In France, where the far-right National Rally is riding high in the polls, and most recently the former French President Nicolas Sarkozy slammed ambitions to bring Ukraine into the Union — an anti-enlargement position held by several French political heavyweights before him, the fight is expected to be bloody.
Haddad says his camp will argue that the EU, even enlarged, will protect citizens against the upheavals of the world: the war in Ukraine, “a predatory China,” and a possible Trump presidency. “If the far right had been in power … Russia would be occupying all of Ukraine,” he said.
But what may also undermine Macron’s new drive is what Heisbourg calls “the temptation towards mediation,” adding that the French president failed to recall France’s policy on Taiwan during a visit to Beijing, in a bid to get China to play a mediation role with Russia.
“This temptation makes our partners skeptical despite the real and profound change [in France], the fear is that we might return to our old ways,” he added.
The German government on Wednesday stepped back at the last minute from making a legal commitment to meeting NATO’s target of spending 2 percent of GDP on defense on an annual basis, according to Reuters and German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.
A government official told the news agency that a clause pledging to meet the target was deleted at short notice from Finance Minister Christian Lindner’s draft of a new budget financing law, just before the Cabinet passed it to the parliament.
Instead, the government pledges to meet the 2 percent target on average over a five-year period, as already set out in the recently published National Security Strategy.
Annalena Baerbock’s Foreign Office had opposed setting the 2 percent target in law, as desired by the Defense Ministry, Süddeutsche Zeitung reported.
A spokesperson for the government declined to comment to Reuters on the details of the bill.
Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced the Zeitenwende, a new dawn in Germany’s security policy.
“From now on, we will invest more than 2 percent of the GDP into our defense year after year,” Scholz said in February 2022. He renewed this promise after last month’s NATO summit in Vilnius.
For many years, Germany was criticized by NATO partners, especially the United States, for not sticking to NATO’s requirement on defense spending.
When Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni walks into the Oval Office on Thursday, her transformation will be complete.
Gone is the ghoulish caricature of an extremist monster, sympathetic to Moscow, whose party was descended from fascists, and in her place stands a pragmatic conservative willing to do business with a grateful international mainstream.
For U.S. President Joe Biden and Ukraine’s backers in the West, securing Meloni’s long-term commitment to the war effort is vital: Italy will assume the leadership of the G7 next year, at what’s likely to be a critical time in the conflict.
Initially, the signs weren’t good. Before she was elected last September, Meloni alarmed officials in Western capitals with her blunt brand of far-right populism. She banged the drum for nationalist causes, vowing to slam the brakes on immigration, stand up to the European Union’s leadership in Brussels and even opposed sanctioning Russia over Ukraine.
Yet 10 months since Meloni won power, the picture has changed dramatically. She will receive VIP treatment at the White House Thursday, with a welcome from Biden that will be as sincere as for any other G7 ally. While the Democrat and the far-right populist share almost nothing in their political outlooks, their handshake is likely to be one of mutual relief.
Meloni’s Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, leader of the center-right Forza Italia party, told POLITICO that the Ukraine war had bolstered Italy’s relationship with the U.S. The Meloni government’s “three polar stars” are now the EU, the U.N. and NATO, he said.
“Italy is part of the Western alliance and wants to be a protagonist in the Western alliance and in particular in its alliance with the U.S.A.,” Tajani said. “Since the crisis in Ukraine, our relationship on issues of security and shared policy with the U.S.A. has been getting stronger.”
Putin’s pals
It is a far cry from the sort of rhetoric that had, until recently, emanated from Rome.
As leader of the hard right Brothers of Italy, she supported Putin’s strongman politics while in opposition, congratulating him after his re-election by saying “the will of the people appears unequivocal.”
After Moscow’s 2014 invasion of Crimea she repeatedly opposed sanctions against Russia, citing the need to protect Italian exports. During the pandemic Meloni endorsed Russia’s Sputnik vaccines. In a TV interview in 2022 before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, she highlighted how essential it was to remain on good terms with Putin and accused Biden of “using foreign policy to cover up the problems he has at home.”
If Meloni seemed like a problem to Western leaders, her coalition partners were an even worse prospect. Matteo Salvini, leader of the right wing League, who once wore a T-shirt printed with Putin’s face to the EU Parliament, attempted to arrange a peace mission to Moscow with flights paid by the Russian embassy.
And Meloni’s coalition partner Silvio Berlusconi, who led the center-right Forza Italia party until his death in June, blamed Ukraine for the war and had a personal friendship with Vladimir Putin, continuing to exchange gifts with the Russian leader even after the invasion.
When she took power, there were deep, if private, fears within the White House, according to several Biden administration officials who were granted anonymity to speak candidly, that Meloni might shatter the G7 support for Ukraine.
But Meloni surprised U.S. officials at the G7 summit in Hiroshima in May with just how eager she seemed to build a strong relationship with Biden, according to two government officials who witnessed their interactions.
At the NATO summit earlier this month in Vilnius, Meloni stood just a few feet from both Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy when the G7 nations announced additional security guarantees for Kyiv that were meant as something of a make-good after NATO declined to fast-track Ukraine’s membership.
At the NATO summit earlier this month in Vilnius, Meloni stood just a few feet from both Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy | Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images
With Italy set to take over the presidency of the G7 in January, Meloni’s support for the cause has prompted sighs of relief from both sides of the Atlantic.
“The President and the Prime Minister have built a good, productive relationship as they have worked together closely on a variety of issues such as our support for Ukraine and our approach to China, and President Biden is looking forward to continuing that conversation,” said Adrienne Watson, a spokesperson for Biden’s national security council.
Pleasantly surprised
Biden has told those around him he has been pleasantly surprised by Meloni’s leadership in the war effort but is eager to get to know the Italian leader better, according to multiple administration officials.
For Alessandro Politi, Director of the NATO Defense College Foundation in Rome, Meloni “understood very quickly that when you get into government you have responsibilities and the U.S.A. is a primary ally.”
Her visit to Kyiv in February was a clear sign she was following “an orthodox path” and a moment when “she convinced the wider international community that she was in charge of the coalition and that her allies had to follow her political line.”
Meloni’s support for the Western stance does not mean the whole of Italy feels the same way.
Some populists on both the left and right of Italian politics still hold pro-Russian views, and the question of whether it’s right to send arms to Ukraine elicits fierce debate in the media. Italy’s longstanding position on Russia has always been to try to act as a bridge, facilitating good relations between East and West.
But although a majority of Italians are opposed to it, Meloni has continued to back Ukraine with military aid. Ukrainians are “defending freedom and democracy on which our civilization is based,” she told the Italian Senate in March.
While Biden and Meloni are likely to agree on Ukraine, it is not certain that they will be in harmony on all issues.
In 2019 Italy became the only G7 country to join China’s Belt and Road global infrastructure initiative. Later this year it is up for renewal, but in the new cold war climate the U.S. expects the deal to be scrapped.
While Meloni has indicated that she might not extend the agreement with Beijing, calling it “a big mistake,” this position is not yet confirmed. If she does return to the more traditional Italian line of walking a middle ground, the cracks in the Biden-Meloni relationship will open up again.
KYIV – Volodymyr Zelenskyy has fired Vadym Prystaiko as Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, after the envoy criticized the Ukrainian president in public.
Speaking to reporters at the NATO summit in Vilnius earlier this month, Wallace said that the U.S. is heading for a presidential election next year, and lawmakers from countries making big military donations to Kyiv could face a political problem if they are met with Ukrainian anger. There is concern across much of Europe that NATO-skeptic Donald Trump could return as U.S. president.
Zelenskyy responded with an ironic remark during the press briefing in Vilnius, saying he does not understand how much more he should express his thanks, in response to Wallace’s comment. “He can write to me about how he wants to be thanked, so we can fully express our gratitude. We can make a point to wake up (every) morning and thank him,” Zelenskyy said.
During the interview with Sky News Prystaiko was asked if that remark had a hint of sarcasm. He agreed. “I don’t believe that this sarcasm is healthy. We don’t have to show Russians that we have something between us. They have to know we are working together,” Prystaiko said.
Ben Cohen wasn’t talking about ice cream. He was talking about American militarism.
At 72, the co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream is bald and bespectacled. He looks fit, cherubic even, but when he got going on what it was like to grow up during the Cold War, his tone became less playful and more assertive — almost defiant.
“I had this image of these two countries facing each other, and each one had this huge pile of shiny, state-of-the-art weapons in front of them,” he said, his arms waving above his head. “And behind them are the people in their countries that are suffering from lack of health care, not enough to eat, not enough housing.”
“It’s just crazy,” he added. “Approaching relationships with other countries based on threats of annihilating them, it’s just a pretty stupid way to go.”
It wasn’t a new subject for the famously socially conscious ice cream mogul; Cohen has been leading a crusade against what he sees as Washington’s bellicosity for decades. It’s just that with the war in Ukraine, his position has taken on a new — morally questionable — relevance.
Cohen, who no longer sits on the board of Ben & Jerry’s, isn’t just one of the most successful marketers of the last century. He’s a leading figure in a small but vocal part of the American left that has stood steadfast in opposition to the United States’ involvement in the war in Ukraine.
When Russian President Vladimir Putin sent tanks rolling on Kyiv, Cohen didn’t focus his ire on the Kremlin; a group he funds published a full-page ad in the New York Times blaming the act of aggression on “deliberate provocations” by the U.S. and NATO.
Following months of Russian missile strikes on residential apartment blocks, and after evidence of street executions by Russian troops in the Ukrainian city of Bucha, he funded a 2022 journalism prize that praised its winner for reporting on “Washington’s true objectives in the Ukraine war, such as urging regime change in Russia.”
In May, Cohen tweeted approvingly of an op-ed by the academic Jeffrey Sachs that argued “the war in Ukraine was provoked” and called for “negotiations based on Ukraine’s neutrality and NATO non-enlargement.”
Ben Cohen outside the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington this month, before getting arrested | Win McNamee/Getty Images
I set up a video call with Cohen not because I can’t sympathize with his mistrust of U.S. adventurism, nor because I couldn’t follow the argument that U.S. foreign policy spurred Russia to attack. I called to try to understand how he has maintained his stance even as the Kremlin abducts children, tortures and kills Ukrainians and sends thousands of Russian troops to their deaths in human wave attacks.
It’s one thing to warn of NATO expansion in peacetime, or to call for a negotiated settlement that leaves Ukrainian citizens safe from further aggression. It’s another to ignore one party’s atrocities and agitate for an outcome that would almost certainly leave millions of people at the mercy of a regime that has demonstrated callousness and cruelty.
Given the scale of Russia’s brutality in Ukraine, I wanted to understand: How does one justify focusing one’s energies on stopping the efforts to bring it to a halt?
Masters of war
Cohen’s political awakening took place against the background of the Cold War and the political upheaval caused by Washington’s involvement in Vietnam.
He was 11 during the Cuban missile crisis that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. Part of the reason he enrolled in college was to avoid being drafted and sent to the jungle to fight the Viet Cong.
When I asked how he first became interested in politics, he cited Bob Dylan’s 1963 protest song “Masters of War,” which takes aim at the political leaders and weapons makers who benefit from conflicts and culminates with the singer standing over their graves until he’s sure they’re dead.
“That was kind of a revelation to me,” Cohen said. Behind him, the sun filtered past a cardboard Ben & Jerry’s sign propped against a window. “I hadn’t understood that, you know, there were these masters of war — essentially I guess what we would now call the military-industrial-congressional complex — that profit from war.”
Cohen saw people from his high school get drafted and never come back from a war that “wasn’t justified.” As he graduated in the summer of 1969, around half a million U.S. troops were stationed in ‘Nam. Later that year, hundreds of thousands of protesters marched on Washington, D.C. to demand peace.
It was only much later, while doing “a lot of research” into the “tradeoffs between military spending and spending for human needs,” that Cohen came across a 1953 speech by Dwight D. Eisenhower, which foreshadowed the U.S. president’s 1961 farewell address in which he coined the phrase “military-industrial complex.”
A Republican president who had served as the supreme allied commander in Europe during World War II, Eisenhower warned against tumbling into an arms race. “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed,” he said.
“That is a foundational thing for me, very inspiring for me, and captures the essence of what I believe,” Cohen said.
“If we weren’t wasting all of our money on preparing to kill people, we would actually be able to save and help a lot of people,” he added with a chuckle. “That goes for how we approach the world internationally as well,” he added — including the war in Ukraine.
Pierre Ferrari, a former Ben & Jerry’s board member who was with the company from 1997 to 2020, said Cohen’s view of the world was shaped by the events of his youth.
“We were brought up at a time when the military, the government was just completely out of control,” he said. “We’re both children of the sixties, the Vietnam War and the new futility of war and the way war is used by the military-industrial complex and politics,” Ferrari added, pointing to the peace symbol he wore around his neck.
Jeff Furman, who has known Cohen for nearly 50 years and once served as Ben & Jerry’s in-house legal counsel, acknowledged that his generation’s views on Ukraine were informed by America’s misadventures in Vietnam.
“There’s a history of why this war is happening that’s a little bit more complex than who Putin is,” he said. “When you’ve been misled so many times in the past, you have to take this into consideration when you think about it, and really, really try to know what’s happening.”
Ice-cold activism
Politics has been a part of the Ben & Jerry’s brand since Cohen and his partner Jerry Greenfield started selling ice cream out of an abandoned gas station in 1978.
The company’s look and ethos were pure 1960s; they named one of their early flavors, Cherry Garcia, after the lead guitarist of the Grateful Dead, Jerry Garcia, whose psychedelic riffs formed the soundtrack of the hippy counterculture.
Social justice was one of the duo’s secret ingredients. For the first-year anniversary of the gas station shop’s opening, they gave away free ice cream for a day. On the flyers printed to promote the event was a quote from Cohen: “Business has a responsibility to give back to the community from which it draws its support.”
In 1985, after the company went public, they used some of the shares to endow a foundation working for progressive social change and committed Ben & Jerry’s to spend 7.5 percent of its pretax profits on philanthropy.
In the early years, the company instituted a five-to-one cap on the ratio between the salary of the highest-earning executive and its lowest-paid worker, dropping it only when Cohen was about to step down as CEO in the mid-1990sand they were struggling to find a successor willing to work for what they were offering.
Most companies try to separate politics and business. Cohen and Greenfield cheerfully mixed them up and served them in a tub of creamy deliciousness (the company’s rich, fatty flavors were in part driven by Cohen’s sinus problems, which dulls his taste).
In 1988, Cohen founded 1% for Peace, a nonprofit organization seeking to “redirect one percent of the national defense budget to fund peace-promoting activities and projects.” The project was funded in part through sales of a vanilla and dark-chocolate popsicle they called the Peace Pop.
It was around this time that Cohen opened Ben & Jerry’s in Russia, as “an effort to build a bridge between Communism and capitalism with locally produced Cherry Garcia,” according to a write-up in the New York Times. After years of planning, the outlet opened in the northwestern city of Petrozavodsk in 1992. (The company shut the shop down five years later to prioritize growth in the U.S., and also because of the involvement of local mobsters, said Furman, who was involved in the project.)
Cohen, with co-founder Jerry Greenfield, actress Jane Fonda and other climate activists, in front of the Capitol in 2019 | Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images
Even after Ben & Jerry’s was bought by Unilever in 2000, there were few progressive causes the company wasn’t eager to wade into with a campaign or a fancy new flavor.
The ice cream maker has marketed “Rainforest Crunch” in defense of the Amazon forest, sold “Empower Mint” to combat voter suppression, promoted “Pecan Resist” in opposition to then-U.S. President Donald Trump and launched “Change the Whirled” in partnership with Colin Kaepernick, the American football quarterback whose sports career ended after he started taking a knee during the national anthem in protest of police brutality.
More recently, however, the relationship between Cohen, Greenfield and Unilever has been rockier. In 2021, Ben & Jerry’s announced it would stop doing business in the Palestinian territories. Cohen and Greenfield, who are Jewish, defended the company’s decision in an op-ed in the New York Times.
After the move sparked political backlash, Unilever transferred its license to a local producer, only to be sued by Ben & Jerry’s. In December 2022, Unilever announced in a one-sentence statement that its litigation with its subsidiary “has been resolved.”Ben & Jerry’s ice cream continues to be sold throughout Israel and the West Bank, according to a Unilever spokesperson.
Cohen himself is no stranger to activism: Earlier this month, he was arrested and detained for a few hours for taking part in a sit-in in front of the U.S. Department of Justice, where he was protesting the prosecution of the activist and WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange.
Unilever declined to comment on Cohen’s views. “Ben Cohen no longer has an operational role in Ben & Jerry’s, and his comments are made in a personal capacity,” a spokesperson said.
Ben & Jerry’s did not respond to a request for comment.
The world according to Ben
For Cohen, the war in Ukraine wasn’t just a tragedy. It was, in a sense, a vindication. In 1998, a group he created called Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities published a full-page ad in the New York Times titled “Hey, let’s scare the Russians.”
The target of the ad was a proposal to expand NATO “toward Russia’s very borders,” with the inclusion of Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic. Doing so, the ad asserted, would provide Russians with “the same feeling of peace and security Americans would have if Russia were in a military alliance with Canada and Mexico, armed to the teeth.”
Cohen is by no means alone in this view of recent history. The American scholar John Mearsheimer, a prominent expert in international relations, has argued that the “trouble over Ukraine” started after the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest when the alliance opened the door to membership for Ukraine and Georgia.
In the U.S., this point has been echoed by progressive outlets and thinkers, such as Jeffrey Sachs, the linguist Noam Chomsky, or most recently by the American philosopher, activist and longest-of-long-shots, third-party presidential candidate Cornel West.
“We told them after they disbanded the Warsaw Pact that we could not expand NATO, not one inch. And we did that, we lied,” said Dennis Fritz, a retired U.S. Air Force official and the head of the Eisenhower Media Network — which describes itself as a group of “National Security Veteran experts, who’ve been there, done that and have an independent, alternative story to tell.”
It was Fritz’s organization that argued in a May 2023 ad in the New York Times that although the “immediate cause” of the “disastrous” war in Ukraine was Russia’s invasion, “the plans and actions to expand NATO to Russia’s borders served to provoke Russian fears.”
The ad noted that American foreign policy heavyweights, including Robert Gates and Henry Kissinger, had warned of the dangers of NATO expansion. “Why did the U.S. persist in expanding NATO despite such warnings?” it asked. “Profit from weapons sales was a major factor.”
Cohen andGreenfield announce a new flavor, Justice Remix’d, in 2019 | Win McNamee/Getty Images
When I spoke to Cohen, the group’s primary donor, according to Fritz, he echoed the ad’s key points, saying U.S. arms manufacturers saw NATO’s expansion as a “financial bonanza.”
“In the end, money won,” he said with a resigned tone. “And today, not only are they providing weapons to all the new NATO countries, but they’re providing weapons to Ukraine.”
I told Cohen I could understand his opposition to the war and follow his critique of U.S. foreign policy, but I couldn’t grasp how he could take a position that put him in the same corner as a government that is bombing civilians. He refused to be drawn in.
“I’m not supporting Russia, I’m not supporting Ukraine,” he said. “I’m supporting negotiations to end the war instead of providing more weapons to continue the war.”
The Grayzone
I tried to get a better answer when I spoke to Aaron Maté, the Canadian-born journalist who won the award for “defense reporting and analysis” that Cohen was instrumental in funding.
Named after the late Pierre Sprey, a defense analyst who campaigned against the development of F-35 fighter jets as overly complex and expensive, the award recognized Maté’s “continued work dissecting establishment propaganda on issues such as Russian interference in U.S. politics, or the war in Syria.”
Maté, who was photographed with Cohen’s arm around his shoulders at the awards ceremony in March, writes for the Grayzone, a far-left website that has acquired a reputation for publishing stories backing the narratives of authoritarian regimes like Putin’s Russia or Bashar al-Assad’s Syria. His reports deny the use of chemical weapons against civilians in Syria, and he has briefed the U.N. Security Council at Moscow’s invitation.
When I spoke to Maté, he was friendly but guarded. (The Pierre Sprey award noted that “his empiricist reporting give the lie to the charge of ‘disinformation’ routinely leveled by those whose nostrums he challenges.”)
He was happy however to walk me through his claims that, based on statements by U.S. officials since the start of the war, Washington is using Kyiv to wage a “proxy war” against Moscow. Much of his information, he said, came from Western journalism. “I point out examples where, buried at the bottom of articles, sometimes the truth is admitted,” he explained.
He declined to be described as pro-Putin. “That kind of ‘guilt-by-association’ reasoning is not serious thinking,” he said. “It’s not how adults think about things.” When I asked if he believed that Russia had committed war crimes in Ukraine, he answered: “I’m sure they have. I’ve never heard of a war where war crimes are not committed.”
Still, he said, the U.S. was responsible for “prolonging” the war and “sabotaging the diplomacy that could have ended it.”
‘Come to Ukraine’
The best answer I got to my question came not from Cohen or others in his circle but from a fellow traveler who hasn’t chosen to follow critics of NATO on their latest journey.
A self-described “radical anti-imperialist,” Gilbert Achcar is a professor of development studies and international relations at SOAS University of London. He has described the expansion of NATO in the 1990s as a decision that “laid the ground for a new cold war” pitting the West against Russia and China.
But while he sees the war in Ukraine as the latest chapter in this showdown, he has warned against calls for a rush to the negotiating table. Instead, he has advocated for the complete withdrawal of Russia from Ukraine and “the delivery of defensive weapons to the victims of aggression with no strings attached.”
“To give those who are fighting a just war the means to fight against a much more powerful aggressor is an elementary internationalist duty,” he wrote three days after Russia launched its attack on Kyiv, comparing the invasion to the U.S.’s intervention in Vietnam.
Achcar said he understood the conclusions being drawn by people like Cohen about Washington’s interventions in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. But, he said, “it leads a lot of people on the left into … [a] knee-jerk opposition to anything the United States does.”
What they fail to account for, however, is the Ukrainian people.
“In a way, part of the Western left is ethnocentric,” said Achcar, who was born in Senegal and grew up in Lebanon. “They look at the whole world just by their opposition to their own government and therefore forget about other people’s rights.”
Cohen, with late-night TV host Jimmy Fallon in 2011 | Mike Coppola/Getty Images for Ben & Jerry’s
His point was echoed in the last conversation I had when researching this article, with Tymofiy Mylovanov, president of the Kyiv School of Economics and a former economy minister.
“It doesn’t really matter who promised what to whom in the 1990s,” Mylovanov said. “What matters is that there was Mariupol and Bucha, where tens of thousands of people were killed.”
Mylovanov taught economics at the University of Pittsburgh until he returned to Ukraine four days before Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“Things like war are difficult to understand unless you experience them,” he said. “This is very easy to get confused when you are sitting, you know, somewhere far from the facts and you have surrounded yourself by an echo chamber of people and sources that you agree with.”
“In that sense,” he added. “I invite these people to come to Ukraine and judge for themselves what the truth is.”
VILNIUS — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday denounced NATO negotiators for balking at offering Kyiv a concrete path to joining NATO in a draft communiqué being hammered out at an alliance summit.
The alliance’s leaders are gathering in the Lithuanian capital for a two-day summit, and Ukraine’s bid to join NATO is the most sensitive item on the agenda.
In the latest draft summit communiqué, allies are now considering stating that “we will be in a position to extend an invitation to Ukraine when allies agree and conditions are met,” according to a senior NATO diplomat and a person familiar with the talks, who like others were granted anonymity to discuss internal negotiations.
The language is not yet finalized, but the draft seen by Kyiv on Tuesday enraged Ukraine’s leader.
“We value our allies,” Zelenskyy tweeted. “But Ukraine also deserves respect.”
“It’s unprecedented and absurd when [a] time frame is not set neither for the invitation nor for Ukraine’s membership. While at the same time vague wording about ‘conditions’ is added even for inviting Ukraine,” he added.
NATO allies are seeking a compromise that would both send Ukraine a public signal that it is moving closer to the alliance and placate allies — in particular Washington and Berlin — who are hesitant about making promises right now that would make post-war membership automatic.
But the Ukrainian leader, who is expected to attend the summit in Vilnius, is pushing for more.
“It seems there is no readiness neither to invite Ukraine to NATO nor to make it a member of the Alliance,” he wrote. “This means that a window of opportunity is being left to bargain Ukraine’s membership in NATO in negotiations with Russia. And for Russia, this means motivation to continue its terror.”
U.S. President Joe Biden told NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Tuesday that he agrees “with the language you proposed relative to the future of Ukraine joining NATO.”
The Ukrainian leader’s tweet did raise eyebrows in Vilnius.
“I am critical of many aspects and particularly of some allies’ attitude, but I think that this is not a thoughtful and fair approach,” said one senior diplomat from Central Europe, adding that Zelenskyy “is going too far.”
Some diplomats said they understand the Ukrainian leader’s feelings.
“His frustration is understandable given Russia’s war of aggression,” said the first senior NATO diplomat. “It is always for allies to agree the communiqué. The summit will show steadfast and unwavering support for Ukraine.”
A second senior NATO diplomat added: “We respect everything he says. Because they are in the middle of a war and it is only understandable that they have the highest expectations.”
But, the diplomat stressed, “whatever the wording in our communiqué, all allies are agreed that Ukraine’s future rightful place is in NATO and only us and them can decide on this. So the membership perspective is unquestionably clear and strong.”
However, the person familiar with the current draft text said allies were sending a strong signal to Kyiv that this language is near final and that Ukraine should accept it.
While eastern flank NATO countries want to send a clear signal to Kyiv about a path to membership during the summit, Washington and Berlin have been more cautious, preferring to focus on helping Ukraine fend off Russia now.
“Look, we’ve already said that Ukraine’s place in the future is going to be in the alliance at some point,” John Kirby, the U.S. National Security Council spokesperson, said in Washington. “They’ve got reforms they have to work out. Rule of law, good governance, political reforms that need to be done, and they’re at war right now … Eventually, yes, NATO will be in the forefront for them, but now is not the time for that.”
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in Vilnius: “Now it’s about us actively supporting Ukraine in defending its sovereignty and integrity — including with the arms supplies that all the countries are mobilizing,” adding: “The U.S. and Germany have participated very closely in the discussion to make it possible that we are doing exactly the right thing here.”
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius was also cautious about the terms being offered to Ukraine.
“Everybody already said and emphasized over the last one-and-a-half years that the future of Ukraine is in NATO,” he told a forum at the NATO meeting. “There is no doubt about it. It’s only an issue of the way to go there. There are certain preconditions to be fulfilled. There are certain circumstances we need to make that step.”
Russia said on Sunday that NATO leaders should discuss conditions at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant at their summit this week, as an accident at the facility could affect the territories of alliance members.
Ukraine warned last week that Moscow could be preparing to blow up the nuclear power station, which could lead to a radioactive disaster, after Russian workers were told to leave the facility.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Sunday accused Kyiv of “systematic infliction of damage” to the Zaporizhzhia plant and warned of the possible fallout from a catastrophe there.
“Key attention should be devoted” to the Zaporizhzhia facility at the NATO meeting starting Tuesday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a Telegram post. “After all, the vast majority of the alliance members will be in the direct impact zone” of any potential accident, she said.
Leaders of the NATO alliance will meet on July 11-12 in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, about 1,200 kilometers away from the Zaporizhzhia plant. The summit will discuss crucial issues including the supply of weapons to Kyiv and the accession of Sweden and Ukraine.
According to International Atomic Energy Agency experts, there are not “any visible indications of mines or explosives” at the Zakharova plant, IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said on July 7.
A small group of Western allies are engaged in “advanced” and “frantic, last-minute” negotiations to finalize a security assurance declaration for Ukraine ahead of this week’s NATO summit in Lithuania, according to four officials familiar with the talks.
For weeks, the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany have been discussing the issue with Kyiv, and have also reached out to other allies in NATO, the EU and the G7. The idea is to create an “umbrella” for all countries willing to provide Ukraine with ongoing military aid, even if the details vary from country to country.
The effort is part of broader negotiations at NATO and among several groups of nations over how Western allies should display long-term support for Ukraine.
Kyiv wants to join NATO as soon as possible, giving it access to the alliance’s vaunted Article 5 clause — an attack on one is an attack on all. But many allies within the alliance broadly agree Ukraine can only join after the war ends, at the earliest.
So the alliance’s biggest powers have been working to see what stop-gap security commitments they can each give Ukraine in the meantime. That view is not universal, however, with countries along NATO’s eastern flank pushing for Ukraine to get a quicker path to ascension, even as the fighting rages on.
The Western powers’ goal is to unveil their umbrella framework around NATO’s annual summit, according to officials in Berlin, Paris, London and Brussels, all of whom spoke under the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the discussions. The two-day event starts Tuesday in Vilnius.
“A discussion is under way; it’s quite advanced, in fact it’s very advanced, and we’re very hopeful that it can be concluded by the end of the summit,” a French official told reporters at a briefing.
A senior NATO diplomat agreed, telling reporters in a separate briefing there are “frantic last-minute negotiations” occurring at the moment “on what this should look like.”
Last-minute details
U.S. President Joe Biden is slated to meet with U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Monday in London, where their two staffs will huddle to try and iron out last-minute details, according to a second NATO diplomat with knowledge of the plans. On the U.S. side, Pentagon policy chief Colin Kahl is tasked with getting the agreement to the finish line.
The initiative may ultimately amount to promises to continue much of the aid allies are already providing: arms, equipment, training, financing and intelligence. But the intent is to offer a more-permanent signal of unity for Ukraine, especially as Kyiv is unlikely to get the firm pledge on NATO membership it wants at this week’s summit.
“It is basically a guarantee towards Ukraine that we will, for a very long time to come, we will equip their armed forces, we will finance them, we will advise them, we will train them in order for them to have a deterrent force against any future aggression,” the senior NATO diplomat said.
Many specifics of this support would be left for later, however. The diplomat said it would be up to each interested country to bilaterally determine with Ukraine “what your commitment will be. And it could be anything, from air defense to tanks to whatever.”
Last week, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz issued an “appeal to all countries that want to support Ukraine,” saying they should “make decisions for themselves that enable them to continue to keep up that support for one, two, three, and, if need be, more years, because we do not know how long the military conflict will last.”
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz | Pool photo by Kai Pfaffenbach/AFP via Getty Images
Separate from the security assurance declaration that Western powers are finalizing, NATO is also drawing up new ways to aid Ukraine’s military for years to come.
At the summit, NATO will agree on plans to help modernize Ukraine’s defenses, alliance chief Jens Stoltenberg told reporters on Friday. The plan, he said, will involve “a multi-year program of assistance to ensure full interoperability between the Ukrainian armed forces and NATO.”
That multi-year effort will also focus on Ukrainian military modernization programs, and like the “umbrella” initiative, will depend on individual countries contributing what they see fit.
NATO aspirations
NATO leaders will also create a new NATO-Ukraine forum, giving the two sides a space to work on “practical joint activities,” Stoltenberg added.
The broader security assurance conversation has inevitably become intertwined with the debate around Ukraine’s NATO aspirations, which will be high on the agenda when leaders gather in Vilnius.
In the formal communiqué that will be issued during the summit, “we will be addressing Ukraine’s membership aspirations and that is something that NATO allies continue to work on,” U.S. Ambassador to NATO Julianne Smith told reporters on Friday.
Specifically, leaders are aiming to update the alliance’s vague 2008 promise that Ukraine “will become” a NATO member at some point. But they aren’t expected to offer Kyiv the “clear invitation” that Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy is seeking.
Scholz conceded as much last week.
“Certainly, we will also discuss the question of how to continue to deal with the perspective of the countries that look to NATO and want to join it,” Scholz said. Yet, he added, “it is also clear that no one can become a member of a defense alliance during a war.”
Stoltenberg nonetheless struck an upbeat tone on Friday.
“I’m confident that we’ll have a message which is clear,” he said. “We have to remember that Allies also agree already on a lot of important principles when it comes to Ukraine and membership.”
Jacopo Barigazzi contributed reporting.
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Hans von der Burchard, Paul McLeary and Laura Kayali
Ankara hasn’t seen sufficient progress from Sweden to support its application to join NATO, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan warned U.S. President Joe Biden in a phone call Sunday ahead of a summit of NATO leaders this week.
“Erdoğan stated that Sweden has taken some steps in the right direction by making changes in the anti-terrorism legislation,” Turkey’s communications directorate said in a statement following the bilateral call.
But the supporters of “terrorist organizations” — pro-Kurdish groups including the PKK and YPG, which are banned in Turkey — continue to hold demonstrations in Sweden, the statement said. “This nullifies the steps taken,” it said.
The call comes ahead of a two-day summit of NATO leaders in Lithuania that starts on Tuesday. Biden has thrown his support behind a push to get a deal done on Sweden at the meeting in Vilnius.
Erdoğan’s administration has been blocking Sweden’s hopes of joining the defense alliance, accusing Stockholm of backing Kurdish separatism. While it had initially accused Finland of doing the same, Erdoğan later gave the green light on Helsinki’s application and the country became a NATO member in April.
Biden and Erdoğan also discussed the sale of U.S. F-16 fighter jets to Turkey in the call, with the Turkish president “noting that it is not correct to associate” Ankara’s request for F-16 aircraft with Sweden’s NATO membership bid, according to the statement.
On the call, Erdoğan also brought up Turkey’s “desire to revive the EU membership process,” according to the statement. The Turkish president said he would like to see EU member states send a “clear and strong message” in support of its EU bid at the NATO summit in Lithuania.
While Turkey became a candidate for full membership of the EU in 1999, talks have effectively stalled over the past decade. The country has not committed to making the reforms required to meet the criteria set out by Brussels.
Erdoğan and Biden agreed to meet face-to-face in Vilnius and discuss Turkey-U.S. bilateral relations and regional issues in detail, according to the Turkish statement.
VILNIUS — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Monday agreed to drop his resistance to Sweden joining the NATO alliance and to submit the ratification to the Turkish parliament “as soon as possible,” the alliance’s Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters.
“Sweden will become a full member of the alliance,” Stoltenberg said ahead of a summit of NATO leaders starting Tuesday.
He said Erdoğan had given a “clear commitment” to move on Sweden’s accession.
The Turkish’s leader’s change of position came after a meeting with Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson and Stoltenberg.
In a joint statement following the talks, Turkey, Sweden and NATO underlined that Stockholm had changed laws, expanded counter-terrorism cooperation against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and restarted arms exports to Turkey.
Ankara and Stockholm also agreed to create a “new bilateral Security Compact” and that Sweden will present a “roadmap as the basis of its continued fight against terrorism in all its forms,” the statement said.
As part of the deal, Stoltenberg has also agreed to create a new post of “Special Coordinator for Counter-Terrorism” at NATO.
The announcement comes after over a year of wrangling to get Turkey and Hungary to sign off on admitting Sweden and Finland into the alliance, with NATO leaders publicly and privately lobbying the Turkish leader to expand the alliance roster.
Sweden and Finland both ditched their traditional neutrality in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and asked to join the alliance in May 2022.
The accession of the two countries — which have long been close partners of the Western alliance — was easily approved by most NATO members, with Turkey holding out. Finland joined in April following approval by Turkey’s parliament in March.
But Sweden proved to be a thornier problem, with Erdoğan denouncing the presence of Kurdish groups in Sweden. Relations were also inflamed when protesters in Sweden burned copies of the Quran.
Earlier on Monday, Erdoğan linked a change of position on Sweden to a revival of his country’s moribund effort to join the European Union. The recently re-elected Turkish president also met with European Council President Charles Michel on Monday evening.
The Council leader described the session as a “good meeting,” tweeting that the two “explored opportunities ahead to bring” the EU’s cooperation with Turkey “back to the forefront & re-energise our relations.”
Sweden promised to “actively support efforts to reinvigorate” Turkey’s EU membership bid in a seven-point agreement with Ankara. Stockholm also agreed it will not support other Kurdish militant groups and to boost economic cooperation with Turkey.
The next step, according to the agreement, is that Turkey “will transmit the Accession Protocol for Sweden to the Grand National Assembly, and work closely with the Assembly to ensure ratification.”
In a statement after the announcement, U.S. PresidentJoe Biden welcomed the agreement and said: “I stand ready to work with President Erdoğan and Turkey on enhancing defense and deterrence in the Euro-Atlantic area.”
Although Hungary has also refused to back Sweden’s NATO bid, Stoltenberg noted that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán had promised that his country would not be the last holdout against Sweden’s membership.
Sweden has one of the most capable militaries in Europe and its entry into NATO together with Finland will solidify the alliance’s control of the Baltic Sea.
The agreement on the night before the summit’s official program starts removes a major headache for Stoltenberg and the alliance’s leaders, who are also dealing with Ukrainian demands that Kyiv be given a clear path to membership.
Opinions across NATO differ on how fast Ukraine could become a member. Those disagreements will likely be front and center on Wednesday when Biden holds one-on-one talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Jacopo Barigazzi, Jonathan Lemire, Paul McLeary and Alexander Ward contributed reporting.
VILNIUS — It’s one problem down and one to go for the NATO alliance as leaders prepare to meet for a summit in the Lithuanian capital.
Sweden’s troubled membership bid was accepted by Turkey’s president late Monday but the tricky issue of formulating acceptable language on Ukraine’s membership aspirations still hasn’t been agreed.
After intensive talks on the summit communiqué, there was still no final deal on what will be offered to Ukraine, although a senior NATO diplomat said: “We have made very good progress and I am 100 percent optimistic.”
Officials negotiating the language on Ukraine are now expected to reconvene on Tuesday, the same day leaders will begin their two-day meeting.
“I believe it is coming together — it is very close,” said a second senior NATO diplomat, who like others was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy upped the pressure on the alliance on Monday, demanding that NATO send a clear signal his country will join once the war with Russia is over.
“Even if different positions are voiced, it is still clear that Ukraine deserves to be in the Alliance. Not now — there is a war, but we need a clear signal. And we need this signal right now,” Zelenskyy said.
Kyiv’s bid to join NATO after hostilities are over has widespread backing among alliance members, but has run into resistance from Germany and the United States. While all allies formally agree Ukraine will become a member one day, Berlin and Washington are hesitant about offering Ukraine a concrete path to membership, preferring to focus on Kyiv’s immediate needs to battle the Russian invasion.
“I don’t think there is unanimity in NATO about whether or not to bring Ukraine into the NATO family now, at this moment, in the middle of a war,” U.S President Joe Biden told CNN in an interview that aired Sunday. He added that if Ukraine were a NATO member, “We’re at war with Russia, if that were the case.”
A senior German official said earlier on Monday: “The time is not right at this summit for an invitation to Ukraine, for concrete steps toward membership. There is no consensus on this among the allies either.”
Biden, who arrived in Vilnius on Monday, plans to meet with Zelenskyy on Wednesday.
Alliance leaders will be able to give their full attention to Ukraine on Tuesday after another big problem — Sweden’s stalled bid for NATO membership — was resolved after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan promised to put the issue to Turkey’s parliament.
Paul Ronzheimer is the deputy editor-in-chief of BILD and a senior journalist reporting for Axel Springer, the parent company of POLITICO.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba warned European allies that it would be “suicidal” not to accept Ukraine into NATO after the war with Russia is over.
Kuleba’s comments come ahead of a NATO summit in mid-July when Kyiv’s membership bid is set to be the most politically sensitive point of discussion. Ukraine is looking to get a commitment from the defense alliance on its NATO aspirations, but a number of allies say a serious discussion on Ukraine in NATO can happen only after Russian forces are no longer on its territory.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on June 22 that the NATO summit in Vilnius on July 11-12 should focus on strengthening Ukraine’s military power instead of opening a process for Kyiv to join the transatlantic alliance.
“After the war ends, it will be suicidal for Europe not to accept Ukraine into NATO because it will mean that the option of … war will remain open,” Kuleba told Axel Springer, POLITICO’s parent company, in an interview on Friday in Kyiv.
“The only way to shut the door for the Russian aggression against Europe and Euro Atlantic space as a whole is to take Ukraine in NATO, because Russia will not dare to repeat this experience again,” Kuleba said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has a vision for Ukraine to join NATO, as well as the EU, once Kyiv has repelled Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion. Ukrainian Ambassador to NATO Natalia Galibarenko told POLITICO in late June that Kyiv is seeking “some kind of invitation — or at least commitment … to look at the timeframe and modalities of our membership” at the Vilnius summit.
Kuleba in the interview pushed back on Germany and others advocating against such a commitment, warning against an outcome similar to the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest, when Berlin and Paris rejected NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia.
“Do not repeat the mistake Chancellor Merkel made in Bucharest in 2008 when she fiercely opposed any progress towards Ukraine’s NATO membership,” he said.
“This decision opened the door for Putin to invade Georgia and then to continue his destabilizing efforts in the region, and then eventually illegally annexing Crimea,” Kuleba said. “Because if Ukraine was accepted in NATO by 2014, there would not [have been] the illegal annexation of Crimea. It would not be war in Donbas, there would not be this large-scale invasion,” he said.
Kuleba rejected statements by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán that it will be “impossible” for Ukraine to win against Russia, saying he is “tired of countering all these meaningless arguments.”
BRUSSELS — NATO is crafting its new military plans assuming Moscow will make a comeback.
Speaking to reporters on Monday, Admiral Rob Bauer, chair of the NATO military committee, said that although the bulk of Russia’s land forces are fighting in Ukraine, he believes the Kremlin’s forces are still a threat.
“We are convinced that the Russians are going to reconstitute,” he said. “And therefore, the plans are built on not the actual status of the Russian army, but on the status of the Russian army before they attacked Ukraine.”
Russia, Bauer said, “will learn lessons from that war” and NATO “will continue to look at them as a serious threat.” That includes in the seas, in the air and in space, where Russian forces “are still very, very capable,” in addition to nuclear capabilities.
“We should never underestimate the Russians and their ability to bounce back, as they have shown in history a couple of times,” he added.
Next Tuesday and Wednesday, the Western alliance’s leaders will gather in Vilnius, where they will sign off on historic new regional military plans and discuss how to boost investment in defense as Russia continues its war in Ukraine.
Speaking about NATO’s new military plans, Bauer underscored how the summit will mark the beginning of a long implementation process.
“We have to go and do our work — to reach the higher number of forces with a higher readiness, we need to exercise against the plans, we need to buy the capabilities that we require,” he said, “and that will take time.”
Executing the plans ranges from more recruitment to ensuring sufficient weapons and ammunition are being produced — along with more resources dedicated to defense.
“We need more money, collectively, to pay for that,” Bauer said. Plus, NATO’s new model for high-readiness forces will require “making sure that the nations have a mechanism in place to increase the numbers of people that are available for the armed forces.”
Asked about the status of Ukraine’s counteroffensive, the admiral pushed back against a narrative of disappointment with Ukrainian forces.
“It is extremely difficult, this type of operation,” the chair stressed. “I think the way they do it is commendable,” he said, “and I think they are — for good reasons — in some places cautious.”
At NATO summit after NATO summit, European leaders get a clear public message from Washington — increase spending on defense.
In private, there’s another message that’s just as clear — make sure a lot of that extra spending goes on U.S. weapons.
European leaders are resisting.
“We must develop a genuinely European defense technological and industrial base in all interested countries, and deploy fully sovereign equipment at European level,” French President Emmanuel Macron said at the GLOBSEC conference in Bratislava last month.
The decades of cajoling from Washington are paying off. Although most EU countries aren’t yet meeting NATO’s target of spending 2 percent of GDP on defense, the alliance has seen eight years of steady spending increases. In 2022, spending by European countries was up by 13 percent to $345 billion — almost a third higher than a decade ago — much of it a reaction to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Now the question is how that money will be spent.
The U.S. wants to ensure that European countries — which already spend about half of their defense purchasing on American kit — don’t make a radical switch to spending more of that money at home.
Some European leaders are hoping that’s exactly what happens, but it’s an open question whether the Continent’s defense industry can make that happen.
“Traditionally, there was a suspicion about a change in Europe’s defense capabilities which dates back more than 25 years,” said Max Bergmann, director of the Europe, Russia, Eurasia Program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. “What direction would the EU go, would it mean the EU would decouple from NATO, what would the impact be on U.S. defense industrial policy?”
Buying at home
The current tensions in Brussels are over whether new EU-wide defense policy should be limited to EU companies — a position driven by Macron and Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton, a Frenchman. That confirms suspicions stateside about European protectionism when it comes to allowing U.S. companies to compete for EU contracts.
“Our plan is to directly support, with EU money, the effort to ramp up our defense industry, and this for Ukraine and for our own security,” Breton said last month.
Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton wants new EU-wide defense policy to be limited to EU companies | Olivier Hoslet/AFP via Getty Images
But there’s an uncomfortable fact for the backers of European strategic autonomy: When it comes to arms, Europe still depends on the U.S.
While European companies have deep expertise in defense — building everything from France’s Rafale fighter to Germany’s Leopard tank and Poland’s man-portable Piorun air-defense system — the scale of the U.S. arms industry, as well as its technological innovation, makes it attractive for European weapons buyers.
The most common big-ticket item is Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, at a cost of $80 million a pop. There is also an immediate surge in demand for off-the-shelf items like shoulder-fired missiles and artillery shells.
“Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, European states want to import more arms, faster,” said a report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
Buying abroad
The war in Ukraine has underscored the dominance of the U.S. defense industry.
A host of European countries are buying Javelin anti-tank missiles produced by Raytheon and Lockheed Martin; Poland this year signed a $1.4 billion deal to buy 116 M1A1 Abrams tanks, as well as another $10 billion agreement to buy High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems produced by Lockheed Martin; Slovakia is buying F-16 fighters, while Romania is in talks to buy F-35s.
Those deals are raising fears in Europe over whether they can wean themselves off of U.S. defense suppliers. In one example, France and Germany worry about Spain’s intentions as it kicks the tires on F-35s while also being a partner in developing the European Future Combat Air System jet fighter.
But the need to restock weapons depots and continue shipping materiel to Ukraine is urgent, and after decades of contraction, the Continent’s defense industry is having a difficult time adjusting.
“Our European allies and partners, they’ve never experienced anything like this,” said a senior U.S. Defense Department official, referring to the spasm of spending brought on by Russia’s invasion. The official was granted anonymity to discuss the situation. “They don’t yet have the defense production authorities they need [to move quickly] and they’ve really been looking to us to try to get a handle on how they can increase production, and I think they’re learning a lot from us.”
To help Europe get there, the United States has expanded the number of bilateral security supply arrangements it has with foreign partners since the Russian invasion, signing new agreements with Latvia, Denmark, Japan and Israel since October. These allow countries to more quickly and easily sell and trade defense-related goods and services.
The Biden administration also signed an administrative arrangement with the European Union in late April to establish working groups on supply-chain issues, while giving both sides a seat at the table in internal meetings at the European Defence Agency and the Pentagon.
But there are limits to how far and how fast both sides are able and willing to go.
In the near term, capacity issues and political will means the rhetorical sea change in EU military spending is unlikely to make a huge dent in U.S. military industrial policy.
While the past 18 months have seen a huge spike in defense budgets — Germany announced a special debt-financed fund worth €100 billion after the Russian invasion of Ukraine; Poland’s defense expenditure is set to reach 4 percent of GDP this year — EU-wide projects are facing significant headwinds. European companies say they need longer lead times and long-term contracts to make needed investments.
“You need that visibility and certainty to make those investments. We’re in a chicken game between governments and industry — who are the first ones that are putting the money on the table,” said Lucie Béraud-Sudreau, director of the military expenditure and arms production program at SIPRI.
Ultimately, the global defense boom means that there should be plenty of military spending to go around, at least in the short term as countries rush to prove their worth to their NATO and EU allies and the Russian threat remains acute.
Paul McLeary reported from Washington and Suzanne Lynch from Brussels.
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BULBOACA, Moldova — European leaders mounted a powerful show of defiance — and support for Ukraine — as they gathered Thursday for a historic summit in the ex-Soviet country of Moldova just kilometers from the Ukrainian border.
But even as over 40 leaders pledged their solidarity with Ukraine at the second gathering of the so-called European Political Community, the difficulty in maintaining that unity was on display. Before and during the summit, leaders hedged and staked out competing positions on an increasingly contentious issue — what security guarantees the Western alliance can give Kyiv to ensure that if Russia is ever pushed out, it won’t return.
French President Emmanuel Macron set the tone on Wednesday, imploring allies to offer Kyiv “tangible and credible” security guarantees — a shift in the French position. His German counterpart, Olaf Scholz, was more hesitant on Thursday, declining to provide any details and indicating it might be a question for after the war.
Against this backdrop, Ukraine’s own leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, joined the leaders in a surprise appearance. Under a crisp blue sky, Zelenskyy made two explicit demands: One, a “clear invitation” to join NATO — another subject that divides allies — and “security guarantees on the way to NATO membership.”
Both, he said, “are needed.”
The divergent positions illustrate the fraught questions that lie ahead as the West strives to hold together against Russia and the war grinds on. Yet, for now, unity is still the predominant rhetorical theme when European leaders gather.
“Today’s summit showed us how valuable the European Political Community is,” Moldovan President Maia Sandu said as the summit drew to a close. “We have shown that we are a family, a strong and united family of European nations acting together to make the continent stronger — more united and more peaceful.”
Zelenskyy’s plea
The summit at Castle Mimi, a vineyard only 20 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, kicked off on an emotional note with Zelenskyy’s arrival.
Sandu welcomed the Ukrainian president ahead of the other leaders, thanking him profusely for “keeping Moldova safe.” The side-by-side image of the two leaders, whose countries have both been battling Russian aggression to various degrees, was a powerful symbol.
But with Kyiv under an intensifying hail of Russia’s bombs, Zelenskyy moved swiftly to his plea, asking allies to give Ukraine firm security guarantees and a commitment to NATO membership at an upcoming NATO summit in Lithuania. NATO agreed in 2008 that Ukraine would eventually become a member, but it has never offered a firm promise or timeline.
While Zelenskyy is unlikely to get everything he wants at the July gathering, both issues are being hotly debated at the moment.
Macron set the stage on Wednesday when he turned heads with his most forthcoming remarks yet about security guarantees.
“I’m in favor — and it will be the topic of collective discussions in the coming weeks — of giving tangible and credible security guarantees for two reasons: Ukraine protects Europe today and she gives Europe security guarantees,” he said.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy joined the leaders in a surprise appearance | Daniel Mihailescu/AFP via Getty Images
But on Thursday, Scholz, the German chancellor, was more guarded.
“One thing is very clear: We are now making our contribution to supporting Ukraine,” he said. “We have always said that there must also be guarantees for a peace order after the war. Germany will make a contribution to this.”
Scholz then refused to be drawn into the details of the discussion, even as it moved to center stage.
Still, both Scholz and Macron confirmed that allies are actively discussing the subject, and working to coordinate their approaches ahead of the NATO summit.
Speaking in Oslo on Thursday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg was similarly careful when addressing the touchy subject.
“When the war ends, we need to ensure that history doesn’t repeat itself, that this pattern of Russian aggression against Ukraine really stops and therefore, we need to have in place frameworks to provide guarantees for Ukrainian security after the end of the war, so history doesn’t repeat itself,” he said.
Leaders pose for the family photo at the European Political Community summit | Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images
The lack of clarity reflects the complexity of offering — or even defining — “security guarantees” for another country. Europe may also be waiting to take its cue from the U.S. One option on the table may reflect the security model binding the U.S. and Israel, which prioritizes arms transfers and long-term support commitments.
Nonetheless, Scholz, speaking at the conclusion of the summit, was keen to stress that helping Ukraine defend itself was “the task at hand.” And he ruled out NATO membership for Ukraine at this juncture.
“There are clear criteria for membership. You can’t have border conflicts for instance,” he said — an obvious reference to Ukraine.
Scholz’s remarks reflect the broad understanding that Ukraine cannot join NATO so long as it’s actively at war with Russia. But Ukrainian officials want NATO leaders to offer a concrete political gesture that Kyiv is at least on the membership path.
Some NATO allies are willing to be far blunter than Scholz on the subject, most notably those representing the Baltic countries, highlighting yet another fissure that separates allies.
“The only security guarantee that works … is NATO membership,” Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas said Thursday, echoing Zelenskyy’s message.
BRATISLAVA — French President Emmanuel Macron sought to mend fences with Eastern Europeans at a conference in Slovakia, telling an audience largely from the region that he wants a more collaborative relationship with ex-Soviet states.
“We didn’t listen enough to you, and your calls for your history and painful memories to be acknowledged,” he told an audience at the GLOBSEC security forum in the Slovak capital.
“Some said you missed opportunities to stay silent; I say we sometimes missed opportunities to listen to you. That time is over,” he said, referring to a swipe by former French President Jacques Chirac in 2003 that offended Eastern Europeans.
“I don’t think there is a western and an eastern Europe, an old Europe and a new one; there is only one Europe … with a will to build unity,” he said.
Policy notes that played well with Eastern Europeans included saluting the strength of NATO, acknowledging the experience of many countries formerly under Soviet rule, and supporting a pathway for Ukraine toward NATO membership.
The French president also said that although France had been criticized as being “arrogant,” “faraway” and “not interested” in the region, he has tried to engage more. His comments appeared to hit a chord among the delegates, who applauded him heartily during opening remarks.
The speech represents a shift in tone for the French president, who previously distanced himself from a more hard-line approach against Russia taken by ex-Soviet states. In the past, Macron had warned against aligning with more hawkish countries, thus risking extending the conflict in Ukraine.
And in the east, there is little love lost for the French president. Since the start of the war, Macron came under fire from Eastern European leaders for pursuing dialogue with Russia and clocking hours of calls with Vladimir Putin.
“It was logical to me that with a strong U.S.-German relation nowadays, Russia out of the picture, France should look for improving its relations with” Central and Eastern Europe, said a senior Central European diplomat who complimented the speech.
Previously, Macron’s statements that Russia should not be humiliated or that it should be given security guarantees have contributed to the perception that he has an ambiguous attitude toward Russia’s aggression.
But in Bratislava, the French president hammered home his commitment to supporting Ukraine “in the long-term.”
“We need to help Ukraine lead an efficient counter-offensive. What is at stake is lasting peace. We must be clear: A ceasefire is not enough, we will recreate a frozen conflict that will be another war for tomorrow,” he said.
Support for Ukraine
At GLOBSEC, Macron also called for “strong and tangible” security guarantees for Ukraine ahead of a key NATO summit in Vilnius in July. In recent weeks, Ukrainians have renewed their lobbying push for a concrete path toward membership, working hard to sway wary members of the alliance.
The French president said Ukraine should be given security guarantees — not only because it is “protecting Europe,” but also because it is “so well-equipped.”
“If we want a sustainable peace and want to be credible toward Ukraine, we must include it in an architecture of security,” he told delegates at the forum.
While there is a broad understanding Ukraine will not be able to join the alliance while it is still at war with Russia, NATO members are divided on how they should respond to Ukraine’s current push for membership.
Macron’s comments are likely to be read as a gesture toward many Eastern Europeans that think Ukraine’s allies should send positive signals on its NATO membership bid.
In Bratislava, while Macron said it was unlikely there would be consensus on full membership for Ukraine, he did give a sense of what option he might back for Ukraine.
“We have to build something between Israel-style security guarantees and fully-fledged membership,” he said.
It’s the rumor inflating the Brussels bubble: The EU’s top executive, Ursula von der Leyen, could be crossing town to run NATO.
The rationale makes sense. She has a good working relationship with Washington. She is a former defense minister. And as European Commission president, she has experience working with most NATO heads of government. Plus, if chosen, she would become the alliance’s first-ever female leader.
The conversation has crested in recent weeks, as people eye current NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg’s pending exit at the end of September.
Yet according to those inside NATO and at the Commission, the murmurings are more wish-casting than hints of a pending job switch. There is no evidence von der Leyen is interested in the role, and those in Brussels don’t expect her to quit before her first presidential term ends in 2024.
The chatter is similar to the rumblings around Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, a long-serving leader who checks every box but insists he doesn’t want the job.
The speculation illustrates how much Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has changed NATO — and who can lead it. The war has put a new spotlight on the alliance, making the job more politically sensitive and high-profile than in the past. And allies are suddenly much more cautious about who they want on the podium speaking for them.
In short, the chatter seems to be people manifesting their ideal candidates and testing ideas rather than engaging in a real negotiation.
“The more names, the clearer there is no candidate,” said one senior European diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal alliance dynamics.
A second senior European diplomat agreed: “There is a lot of backroom gossip,” this person said, “but no clear field at this stage.”
The (very) short list
The next NATO chief, officials say, needs to be a European who can work closely with whoever is in the White House.
But that’s not all. The next NATO chief needs to be someone who backs Ukraine but is not so hawkish that it spooks countries worried about provoking Russia. And the person has to have stature — likely a former head of state or government — who can get unanimous support from 31 capitals and, most importantly, the U.S.
There are several obstacles to Usula von der Leyen’s candidacy | Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images
That’s not a long list.
Von der Leyen is on it, but there are several obstacles to her candidacy.
The first is simply timing. If Stoltenberg leaves office in the fall as scheduled, his replacement would come into the office a year before von der Leyen’s term at the Commission ends in late 2024. She may even seek another five-year term.
“I don’t think she will move anywhere before the end of her mandate,” said one senior Commission official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.
Speculation is rife that the current NATO chief may be asked to stay on, at least for a little while longer, to allow for a candidate such as von der Leyen to come in at a later stage.
“If Stoltenberg is prolonged until next summer, Ursula von der Leyen’s candidature would look logical,” said a third senior European diplomat.
But in an interview with POLITICO last week, Stoltenberg appeared keen to go home. The NATO chief has been in the job for over eight years, the second-longest tenure in the alliance’s seven-decade history.
Asked about gossip that he may stay on, the secretary-general shot back sarcastically: “First of all, there are many more questions in the world that are extremely more important than that.”
“My plan is to go back to Norway,” he added, “I have been here for now a long time.”
The alliance is divided on the matter. Some countries — particularly those outside the EU — would prefer a quick decision to avoid running into the EU’s own 2024 elections. The fear, a fourth European diplomat said, is that NATO becomes a “consolation prize in the broader European politics” as leaders haggle over who will run the EU’s main institutions.
Another challenge for von der Leyen would be Germany’s track record on defense spending — and her own record as Germany’s defense minister.
A decade ago, NATO countries pledged to move toward spending 2 percent of their economic output on defense by 2024. But Germany, despite being Europe’s largest economy, has consistently missed the mark, even after announcing a €100 billion fund last year to modernize its military.
From the German government’s perspective, keeping von der Leyen at the helm of the Commission might be a bigger priority than NATO | Kenzo Tribuillard/AFP via Getty Images
Additionally, some observers say von der Leyen bears some responsibility for the relatively poor state of Germany’s defenses.
From the German government’s perspective, keeping von der Leyen at the helm of the Commission might also be a bigger priority than NATO — even if she comes from the current center-right opposition. The EU executive is arguably more powerful than the NATO chief within Europe, pushing policies that affect nearly every corner of life.
Predictably, the Commission is officially dismissive of any speculation.
“The president is not a candidate for the job” of NATO secretary-general, a Commission spokesperson told POLITICO on Monday. “And she has no comment on the speculation.”
Who else can do it?
As with von der Leyen, it is unclear if some other names floated are actually available.
Dutch Prime Minister Rutte has dismissed speculation about a NATO role, telling reporters in January that he wanted to “leave politics altogether and do something completely different.”
A spokesperson for the prime minister reiterated this week that the his view has not changed.
Insiders, however, say the Dutch leader shouldn’t be counted out. In office since 2010, Rutte has significant experience working with leaders across the alliance and promotes a tight transatlantic bond.
The Netherlands is also relatively muscular on defense — it has been one of Europe’s largest donors to Ukraine — but not quite as hawkish as countries on the eastern flank.
“Rutte’s name keeps popping up,” said the second senior European diplomat, “but no movement on this beyond gossip.”
Others occasionally mentioned as possible candidates are Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, and to a lesser extent British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, Romanian President Klaus Iohannis and Slovak President Zuzana Čaputová.
But despite the gossip, officials acknowledge many of these names are not politically feasible at this stage.
Kallas, for instance, is perceived as too hawkish. And conversely, Canada and some southern European countries are viewed within the alliance as laggards on defense investment. Then there’s the fact that some capitals would oppose a non-EU candidate, complicating a Wallace candidacy.
As a result, a senior figure from a northern or western EU country appears the most likely profile for a successful candidate. Yet for now, who that person would be remains murky. Officials do have a deadline, though: the annual NATO summit in July.
“Either a new secretary general will be announced,” said a fifth senior European diplomat, “or the mandate of Jens Stoltenberg will be prolonged.”
