Nato summit was full of uncertainty

Keir Starmer meets Joe Biden at the Nato Summit (Picture: Number 10)

Last week’s Nato summit in the United States was packed with boasting and aggression. US president Joe Biden set the tone by proclaiming Nato “the greatest alliance the world has ever known”.

But he also highlighted his own struggle to convince the US and the world that he is capable of continuing as president when he introduced Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky as “President Putin”. Biden’s deteriorating condition in a way symbolises, behind the bluster, the weakness that ails Western imperialism.

The declaration issued by this summit targeted the challengers to US global leadership. Russia is still “the most significant and direct threat to Allies’ security”.

China is denounced as “a decisive enabler of Russia’s war against Ukraine through its so-called ‘no limits’ partnership and its large-scale support for Russia’s defence industrial base”.

Nato since its inception at the height of the Cold War in 1949 has been confined to North America and Europe. But its leaders now embrace global ambitions.

The heads of government of four Asia-Pacific states—Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand—took part in the summit. US national security advisor Jake Sullivan said last week, “Japan, South Korea and Australia are all on the road to invest 2 percent of their GDP on defence, a historic step forward,” in line with the target set for Nato members.

“The ties between the United States, Europe and the Indo-Pacific have never been more important or more interrelated than they are today.” Not surprisingly, China dismissed the accusations by “a relic of the Cold War” as “biased, slanderous, and provocative”.

“Without any evidence, Nato continues to spread falsehoods fabricated by the US, openly smearing China, sowing discord between China and Europe and undermining China-European cooperation.” The emphasis on Europe in these remarks is significant.

China is trying to prevent the European Union, which remains heavily dependent on trade with and investment in China, from joining fully in the US’s trade war with China. Beyond the rhetoric, the substance of the summit was about Ukraine.

Nato’s proxy war with Russia isn’t going very well. Russia’s superiority in numbers, munitions and air power is putting the Ukrainian forces under increasing pressure.

Russian forces are slowly advancing in the Donetsk region. There were announcements at the summit of various weapons Nato members are supplying Ukraine to improve its air defences and strengthen its air force.

The summit declaration tantalised Zelensky with the Nato membership for which he’s begging. “Ukraine’s future is in Nato… we will continue to support it on its irreversible path to full Euro-Atlantic integration, including Nato membership,” it said.

But the next sentence effectively took back this promise—“We reaffirm that we will be in a position to extend an invitation to Ukraine to join the Alliance when Allies agree and conditions are met.” Ukraine’s membership would have to be approved by all Nato member-states, which is a big stretch.

More fundamentally still, the in-house US magazine Foreign Policy points out, “The summit also highlighted a central tension in Western strategy to support Ukraine. Military aid has played a decisive role in enabling Kyiv to fend off Russian forces, but it has fallen short of enabling it to actually win the war.

“‘We’re basically propping up Ukraine to stay in the battle and make some advances and not outright win the battle,’ said Liana Fix, a fellow for Europe at the Council on Foreign Relations. ‘There’s not a real strategy for the war’.”

And there’s a Donald Trump-shaped cloud on the horizon. Long a critic of Nato, Trump last week posted that Europe owes at least £80 billion to match US aid to Ukraine.

There are plenty of Republican figures such as the defence intellectual Eldridge Colby who argues the US should leave the Europeans to provide for their own military needs and concentrate on China. Trump was already inching ahead of Biden in the polls before last Saturday’s assassination attempt.

It seems highly probable now that he’ll win in November. Nato faces an uncertain future.