During NATO’s seventy-fifth anniversary summit in Washington last week, my private conversations with allied officials almost always landed on concerns about this year’s US elections, given former President Donald Trump’s doubts about NATO’s value and growing questions about US President Joe Biden’s durability. That was before this weekend’s assassination attempt against Trump at a Pennsylvania rally, which likely has only heightened allied concerns about US domestic volatility and unpredictability around the election—when gathering global challenges demand a steadiness that will be difficult to provide.
Over a decade of remarkable leadership, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has navigated an unruly Alliance of flawed democracies through some of their greatest historical challenges, including Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine. In my on-stage interview with him at the NATO Public Forum, which the Atlantic Council co-hosted, Stoltenberg addressed doubts over whether NATO will continue to forge common cause, as he prepares to step down on October 1.
“The reality is that despite all these differences, which are part of NATO, we have proven extremely resilient and strong,” he said. “Because when we face the reality, all these different governments and politicians and parliamentarians, they realize that we are safer and stronger together . . . That’s the reason why this Alliance prevails again and again.”
These new concerns over the direction of the United States were made all the more urgent by the Alliance’s recognition that NATO now faces a new axis of authoritarians—with China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea in the lead—that are working more closely together on defense-industrial issues than any such grouping before them, including Germany, Italy, and Japan in the 1930s and the Soviet Union and China in the 1950s.
The NATO Summit was expected to focus on Russia’s brutal war on Ukraine, and so it did, in ways that were both encouraging and disappointing. What was encouraging was that the Alliance did well in providing Ukraine additional military and financial support and even a devoted Alliance command, based in Wiesbaden, Germany. It fell far short by dodging two issues crucial to Ukraine’s immediate and long-term security.
First, and for reasons increasingly difficult to defend—especially in a week when Putin greeted the NATO Summit by striking a Kyiv children’s hospital in a deadly missile barrage—the Biden administration stubbornly refuses to let Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy use US missiles to hit military targets in Russian territory that are killing his people. Second, Biden also continues to stand in the way of any language promising a more certain and time-defined path to NATO membership for Ukraine, even though membership is what will provide Ukraine lasting security.
The less anticipated development of this past week—and the one with the most historic importance—was the summit’s remarkable consensus that the world has fundamentally changed since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. NATO now acknowledges the need to better address an axis of autocrats bent on revising the global order: China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.
As Stoltenberg wrote in Foreign Affairs ahead of the summit, foreshadowing its decisions, “Putin shows no intention of ending this war any time soon, and he is increasingly aligned with other authoritarian powers, including China, that wish to see the United States fail, Europe fracture, and NATO falter. This shows that in today’s world, security is not a regional matter but a global one. Europe’s security affects Asia, and Asia’s security affects Europe.”
That’s powerful stuff—and a significant rethink of the threats facing this transatlantic Alliance.
The bottom line, though not quite stated that way, was: Our autocratic adversaries have joined in common cause globally against us, and thus we must do more ourselves to address this gathering threat. The alternative is to live in denial until the threats advance past the point of being able to address them.
No more having it both ways
One of the more concise NATO Summit declarations I’ve read, which is worth reading to gain an overall feeling of the landscape, lambasted the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as a “decisive enabler” of Putin’s war. Beyond that, it focused on significantly deepening relations with the so-called Indo-Pacific Four (IP4): Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea, all of which were represented for the third consecutive NATO Summit.
Thirty-two allies met with their Indo-Pacific partners in encouraging harmony about the challenges China poses. The declaration’s tough, unprecedented language on the PRC is worth reading in full, but note the unusual clarity in its call to action, coming from a multilateral Alliance in which language negotiations can be stultifying: “We call on the PRC . . . to cease all political and military support to Russia’s war effort. This includes the transfer of dual-use materials, such as weapons components, equipment, and raw materials that serve as inputs for Russia’s defence sector.”
In my interview with Stoltenberg, he said that although Iran and North Korea were growing more important to Russia’s war effort, “China is the main enabler.” The PRC, he said, is “delivering the tools—the dual-use equipment, the microelectronics, everything Russia needs to build the missiles, the bombs, the aircraft, and all the other systems they use against Ukraine.”
The declaration said: “The PRC cannot enable the largest war in Europe in recent history without this negatively impacting its interests and reputation.” In his swan song summit as NATO leader, Stoltenberg told me that China “cannot have it both ways,” meaning it cannot maintain “a kind of normal relationship with NATO allies” while fueling the North Atlantic’s “biggest security challenge” since World War II.
It’s fair criticism that for all the growing recognition of China’s crucial enabling role in Russia’s war, around which there is now a welcome NATO consensus, there isn’t any agreement on what to do about it.
The sad truth, one worth saying out loud several times to recognize the gravity of the situation, is that for the moment the PRC is having it both ways. It is threatening Europe and profiting from Europe at the same time.
The world has changed much more dramatically in terms of autocratic common cause since February 2022 than Western leaders and voters have digested.
Still, this past week is a good beginning.
“I think it’s important that we recognize the reality [of China’s role], and that’s the first step toward any action,” Stoltenberg told me. “Let’s see how far we’re willing to go as allies.”
Ukraine is the new West Berlin
Stoltenberg stressed that despite the presence in Washington this week of the IP4, “there will not be a global NATO. NATO will be for North America and Europe.” But, he added, the North Atlantic region faces global threats, from terrorism to cyber to space. “And, of course, the threats and challenges that China poses to our security [are] a global challenge.”
Perhaps Stoltenberg is right that there won’t be a global NATO, but this week marked the significant beginning of a NATO that understands that its global responsibilities and threats are inescapable. That realization might have started with international terrorism after 9/11, but the increasingly close China-Russia strategic relationship is now at the core of it.
Speaking to the NATO Public Forum, Senator James E. Risch, the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, guided the Alliance to a newly published report from the committee’s Republican staff, “Next Steps to Defend the Transatlantic Alliance from Chinese Aggression.”
It lays out a powerful list of recommendations for the transatlantic community, including increased national and local collaboration on countering malign influence and interference from China, as well as improving institutional knowledge about everything from the workings of the Chinese Communist Party to the operational capacity of the People’s Liberation Army.
In the spirit of NATO’s growing Indo-Pacific focus, the Atlantic Council’s Matthew Kroenig and Jeffrey Cimmino recently published a “Memo to NATO heads of state and government” on the importance of engaging with the region.
“Some analysts argue that the United States should disengage from Europe and pivot to the Indo-Pacific, while European countries take on greater responsibility in Europe,” they write. This is the “wrong answer,” Kroenig and Cimmino explain. “Instead, Washington should continue to lead in both theaters. European countries should take on greater responsibilities for defending Europe, but they should also assist Washington to counter China and address threats emanating from the Indo-Pacific.”
With all that as context, this week’s NATO Summit perhaps should have done even more to ensure that Ukraine prevails and Russia fails. But allies did at least more clearly recognize that Putin’s criminal war on Ukraine isn’t just a national or even primarily a European security matter. Ukraine is the front line of a global struggle, a role that West Berlin played during the Cold War and a fact that China and Russia long ago acknowledged in their “no limits” partnership on the eve of the 2022 invasion.
Now comes the hard part
This past week, the contours unfolded for what might be NATO’s greatest struggle yet, after seventy-five years of existence.
Republican Congressman Mike Turner, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, told me on the sidelines of the summit this week that the burden allies share isn’t only a question of defense spending but also whether they still have the political will to defend democracy and freedom.
Having this week recognized the challenge as global and focused on Russia and China, having more closely embraced Indo-Pacific partners, now comes the hard part for the world’s most enduring and successful Alliance.
What does NATO do next?
Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @FredKempe.
This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points newsletter, a column of dispatches from a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.
Further reading
Fri, Jul 12, 2024
Experts react: What the NATO Summit did (and did not) deliver for Ukraine
New Atlanticist By
From an “irreversible” membership path to news about F-16s and air defense systems, Atlantic Council experts explain what the NATO Summit in Washington meant for Ukraine.
Wed, Jul 10, 2024
Our experts read between the lines of NATO’s Washington summit communiqué
New Atlanticist By
Atlantic Council experts offer their insights on NATO’s Washington Summit Declaration, released on Wednesday during the Alliance’s seventy-fifth-anniversary meeting in the US capital.
Wed, Jul 10, 2024
‘I’m an optimist for the future of this Alliance,’ says NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg
Transcript By
The outgoing NATO secretary general spoke with Atlantic Council President and CEO Frederick Kempe at the NATO Public Forum on July 10.
Image: A session of the NATO summit with its four Indo-Pacific partners -- Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea -- is held in Washington on July 11, 2024. (Pool photo) (Kyodo)