News: Keeping it real at NATO

Monday, July 10, 2023

Keeping it real at NATO

Jul 10, 2023

It is standard for think tankers, journalists and sometimes even U.S. officials to cast geopolitical meetings as being especially important for one reason or another.

“The event comes amid unusually high tensions between X and Y.” “The gathering could prove a turning point in the blah blah of the so-and-so.” Your host is guilty of having written such sentences. They are, after all, a way to convince readers to keep reading and hard to disprove.

But in looking at the political, economic and military landscape ahead of the NATO summit on Tuesday and Wednesday, it’s probably worth tempering expectations about what will come out of the gathering.

— In a CNN interview broadcast Sunday, for instance, President Joe Biden made clear that Ukraine will not be joining the Western military alliance anytime soon. “I don’t think it’s ready for membership in NATO,” he said. If Ukraine were to join, it would have to be after its war with Russia is over, he said. Otherwise, “if the war is going on, then we’re all in a war.” (Of course, such a condition gives more incentive to Russia to continue the conflict.)

NATO members may still unveil some hypothetical “pathway” for Ukraine to join many moons from now, but anything seriously approaching membership is out.

— The odds are higher that Sweden will have a breakthrough this week on its push to join. But they’re not great. Hungary and especially Turkey appear unwilling to bend on their opposition to the Swedes entering the military alliance. Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan made that clear in a call with Biden on Sunday, and in a surprise today, Erdogan said Turkey should be given a path to join the European Union before Sweden enters NATO.

— NATO members have already begun pledging new aid for Ukraine, including an American agreement to provide cluster bombs (which may receive a frosty reception since many NATO countries ban their use). They also are racing to come up with a long-term security assistance framework for Ukraine.

Symbolically, this means a lot, but, as my colleagues note: “The initiative may ultimately amount to promises to continue much of the aid allies are already providing: arms, equipment, training, financing and intelligence.”

— Other signs of stasis? NATO cannot seem to find a new secretary-general, so it’s sticking with the highly regarded Jens Stoltenberg for another year. And many member countries remain far from the goal of spending 2 percent of their GDP on defense.

Summits can focus minds and impose deadlines on often slow bureaucracies. Discussions at such gatherings also contribute to long-term shifts in strategy for geopolitical blocs. The NATO summit will matter, and it’s possible that officials are keeping quiet a big surprise.

In a war, however, what happens on the battlefield is far more likely to prove “critical,” “crucial,” a “turning point,” or whatever other term historians will use — though Ukraine’s ongoing counteroffensive against Russia has yet to achieve any breakthroughs.

Meanwhile: Moscow says NATO leaders should use their summit to discuss conditions at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, where Russian forces have seized control, because an accident could have consequences well beyond Ukraine’s borders. Ukraine has warned that Moscow may be planning to blow up the station.

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A BREAKDOWN OF A SUMMIT-HEAVY WEEK

Biden in Britain: Biden is in Britain today. He’s meeting with King Charles III and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

Indo-Pacific Econ Talks: The fourth negotiating round of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework began Sunday and is underway until Saturday. A U.S. delegation is slated to participate.

NATO summit: The leaders of NATO countries will gather on Tuesday and Wednesday in Vilnius, Lithuania. Ukraine is a major agenda item, of course, as is Sweden’s still-stuck accession bid.

Asia meets: The East Asia Summit Foreign Ministers Meeting is held back-to-back with Association of Southeast Asian Nations regional and ministerial meetings from Tuesday to Saturday in Jakarta, Indonesia. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will be there on Thursday and Friday.

U.S.-Nordic Leaders’ Summit: Biden visits Helsinki, Finland for this gathering on Thursday. Aside from the Finnish president, the prime ministers of Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Sweden also are set to attend.

Putin and Prigozhin

Developing this morning: The Kremlin says Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Yevgeny Prigozhin five days after the leader of the Wagner Group attempted a rebellion on Russian soil. As my colleague Nicolas Camut reports: "Thirty-five people were invited to attend the high-stakes Moscow meeting, including 'all the commanders of the military detachments' and Prigozhin,'" according to Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov. The spokesperson also said the Wagner commanders were offered “further options for employment and further combat use."

Yellen about China

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has cast her visit to China as a success, saying it was substantive and has helped put the U.S.-China relationship on “surer footing.”

Yellen offered this rosy summary during a news conference Sunday after some 10 hours of meetings over two days in Beijing. But other than assurances that the two countries will keep talking, there were no real policy breakthroughs.

The Treasury chief offered no guarantees that the U.S. would lift Trump-era tariffs on China. She did, however, insist that U.S. plans to impose certain investment restrictions on China would be narrowly tailored. The idea is to protect Washington’s national security interests without imperiling the broader Chinese economy, she said.

Yellen, deeply aware of China’s importance to America’s economy, is one of the more moderate voices in the Biden administration when it comes to Beijing. But it’s unlikely that Chinese officials are buying everything she says, especially if U.S. policies don’t change. Chinese officials have long believed Washington wants to constrain their country’s economic, technological and geopolitical rise.

Yellen’s trip to China followed one by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Biden’s climate envoy, John Kerry, is expected to visit in the coming days.

Notable: CNN’s Biden interview included some readouts from the president of his past calls with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

A shake-up in the Netherlands

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte handed in his resignation to the country’s king as his four-party coalition government collapsed over migration policy disagreements.

Rutte has been the longest-serving prime minister in Dutch history, holding the reins since 2010. His conservative party wanted to make it harder for refugee families to reunite, but it couldn’t get all its partners on board.

According to The Associated Press: “King Willem-Alexander flew back from a family vacation in Greece to meet with Rutte, who drove to the palace in his Saab station wagon for the meeting to explain the political crisis that toppled his administration.”

Rutte is expected to lead a caretaker government ahead of elections later this year.

GLOBAL RISKS AND TRENDS

A DEEPENING CRISIS: U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is warning that the conflict in Sudan could turn into a “full-scale civil war.” Thousands have already been killed in fighting between the Sudanese military and a rival paramilitary force.

Much of the combat has been focused on Khartoum, the capital. But Guterres stressed that the crisis could spread well beyond Sudan’s borders into northeast Africa.

BREXIT BLUES: A leading British Conservative Brexit-backer now says the country needs more workers from the European Union. Former environment secretary George Eustice insists it’s not Britain’s exit from the EU that caused the labor shortages, but rather “the failure of our post-Brexit immigration policy.”

GET OUT: It’s harder than ever to escape North Korea, and Chinese surveillance tech is a major factor. The New York Times’ Choe Sang-Hun was given extraordinary access to texts, video, bank records and more for this harrowing account.

BREATHE EASIER: The Brazilian government says deforestation in the Amazon is down by roughly a third compared to 2022.

PEOPLE AND POWER

PAPAL PROMOTIONS: Pope Francis on Sunday named 21 new cardinals, including elevating the Vatican’s ambassador to the United States. That envoy, Archbishop Christophe Pierre, is a longtime Vatican diplomat who is originally from France and has been in the U.S. post since 2016. Read more about the pope’s move in the National Catholic Reporter.

AMERICAN TRAGEDY: Nasrat Ahmad Yar, 31, served for years as an interpreter for U.S. troops in Afghanistan before eventually reaching America in 2021. Last week, he was shot to death in the Washington, D.C., area while working as a Lyft driver. He leaves behind a wife and four children.

BRAIN FOOD

Read up: Why is it so hard to get Ukraine the ammunition it needs? Michael Brenes offers a tour of America’s hollowed-out defense sector in Foreign Affairs.

Read some more: Reuters has a new investigation of how the United States is taking on China through the use of undersea cables. It’s a reminder that the competition with China is playing out well beyond land.

Listen up: “Believe in Magic” is a BBC podcast about a mother-daughter combo and their questionable cancer charity. And if you haven’t already, you’ve got to listen to “Scamanda.” Both will make you question human nature on many levels.

ONE FUN THING

Australians have set a new world record in dancing the “Nutbush” in honor of legendary late singer Tina Turner.

Thanks to editors Emma Anderson and Heidi Vogt, and producer Sophie Gardner.

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