Washington Wednesday - Accomplishments from the NATO summit

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 6th of July, 2022.

You’re listening to World Radio and we’re glad you’ve joined us today! Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. It’s time for Washington Wednesday.

First up: Sending a message to Russia.

President Biden recently returned from Madrid, where he joined allies at this year’s NATO summit. While in Spain, he announced that the United States is stepping up its military presence in Europe.

He said the U.S. military will establish a permanent garrison in Poland, and...

BIDEN: We are going to send two additional F-35 squadrons to the UK and station additional air defense and other capabilities in Germany and in Italy.

REICHARD: The president is also sending two warships to Spain. And the United States is preparing to keep—as the president says for the “foreseeable future”—100,000 troops in Europe. That’s a 25-percent increase over U.S. troop levels before Russia invaded Ukraine.

EICHER: Other NATO allies are also moving to bolster the eastern flank of the alliance.

And President Biden recently announced another $800 million in military aid to Ukraine.

Here now to talk about what it all means is Bradley Bowman. He has served as a top national security adviser to members of the U.S. Senate.

REICHARD: Bradley, good morning.

BRADLEY BOWMAN, GUEST: Good morning to you! Thank you for the opportunity.

REICHARD: What do you believe President Biden and other NATO leaders accomplished during the summit last week in Madrid?

BOWMAN: I think at root what the president accomplished working with our North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies is that they assessed the change to security environment in Europe and globally. And they've made initial announcements to adjust the capabilities of the Alliance to respond accordingly. And I think that's exactly the way strategy should be conducted, right? We don't field forces based on what we feel like or what we think, right? You identify your core interest, you identify the most dangerous and most likely threats to those interests. And then you adjust the resources and posture, military posture that you have accordingly. And so there were some very important announcements here that I think are closing the gap between the military posture we need, the military capabilities we need, and that capability and posture that we have. But a lot of these efforts will not be quick. And will require sustained political and financial support both in Washington but also in capitals in Europe.

REICHARD: Well, as we mentioned, President Biden announced that the U.S. is shifting more troops, fighter jets, and other capabilities to eastern Europe to deter any potential Russian aggression. How significant are these moves in your view?

BOWMAN: I think they’re very significant. I tried to call balls and strikes with respect to the administration, and I was critical that the administration was too slow in providing weapons to Ukraine before the invasion. We knew that something big was coming early last year, and Secretary Blinken was warning in November that some sort of Russian attack was coming. And yet we lost valuable weeks in November, December, and January. But since the February 24th invasion, I do give the administration great credit for really moving heaven and earth to get extraordinary amounts of equipment to Ukraine. I mean, the Biden administration has committed $7.6 billion in security assistance to Ukraine. Now, $6.9 of that has come since the invasion, but they really have done a great job in reinforcing and sending weapons to Ukraine and also reinforcing NATO's eastern flank, right? Because we didn't want Vladimir Putin to see what he perceived to be as a weak response, and then proceed with pushing the invasion further, and even attacking a NATO member, which would have been of course invoke Article Five, and bring the U.S. into the mixm something that we've been able to avoid since 1949, when NATO was established.

REICHARD: President Trump often complained that certain NATO members were not pulling their weight in terms of paying for their own defense and that of the alliance. Is that still an issue?

BOWMAN: So it is, honestly. So in addition to the summit this week and the new strategic concept that was released, NATO also released its annual report on defense expenditures. And there's good news in that report and there's bad news. The good news is that it is non-U.S., so in other words, the other 29 members continue to increase on an annual basis their expenditures on defense. Translated, that means they're carrying more and more of the security burden themselves, which is great. Now, most of that increase started, honestly, not because of anything President Trump did. But because of the 2014 Crimea invasion. That's the good news that there has been growth in non-U.S. NATO defense spending. The bad news, as demonstrated in this NATO report released last week, is that 20 of the 30 NATO Allies still are not meeting the NATO guideline for spending 2% of gross domestic product on defense. And so what that means to me is that if these countries are already struggling to meet their current commitments to pay the current bill, if you will, and so we just at this summit said, we're going to do all these additional things. Well, are they going to have the political will over the long term to pay that more expensive bill? I don't know. I hope the answer is yes. But when you still have 20 or 30 not meeting the existing commitment, I honestly do have some concerns. Maybe President Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine have shifted the politics enough in those countries where they will be able to put their money where their mouth is, but I think it remains to be seen.

REICHARD: President Biden now is asking Congress to approve the bids of Finland and Sweden to join NATO. This is part of the final step of the process. Assuming this goes off without a hitch and both countries join, what is the significance of adding those countries to the alliance?

BOWMAN: It would be incredibly significant on multiple levels. It would be incredibly significant on multiple levels. Finland and Sweden do not have very large militaries, but they're very capable militaries. And they bring capability in a whole number of areas that would be valuable to the alliance and the United States and our European NATO allies have had a long standing relationship with both Finland and Sweden. So I'm not suggesting that we would be working together for that with them for the first time. But once they're in the Alliance—should all go well and they join the Alliance—then you can actually write them into the war plans and make assumptions and that is very, very helpful. But I would just add that you know, this is not over yet. I hope they do become members, because I think it's good from an American perspective. But we've had all 30 nations sign the accession protocols necessary for Finland and Sweden to join the alliance. But as some of your listeners may know, now their application needs to be approved by all 30 governments. And that means legislatures and parliaments approving them. And one country in particular to watch as Turkey, as some of your listeners may know, President Erdogan struck an 11th hour agreement with Finland and Sweden, which permitted him or enabled him to lift to his hold, if you will, on their application. But it remains to be seen whether the parliament in Turkey will back that move. And so this will take some time when you're talking about 30 different sovereign governments ratifying what was agreed to at the summit.

REICHARD: Let’s talk about U.S. policy with regard to Ukraine now. What more could or should the United States do to support Ukraine that it is not currently doing?

BOWMAN: You know, the United States, as I said earlier, has done a lot and we're doing more than any other country in the world. But, you know, this is unfortunately not going to be something that ends anytime soon, as far as I can tell. And there's a couple of dilemmas that are percolating that I think people need to be aware of. One is that we've basically sent most of the Russian or Soviet origin equipment that was available in Eastern Europe to Ukraine in the early stages of the war. And then when those options were exploited, then we started to send them Western equipment, American equipment, European equipment, and training them on that. And we've also done what's called drawdown authority. Whenever your listeners hear that word drawdown, what that means is we're using or taking equipment, U.S. reserves, reserves designed for our U.S. forces and sending them to Ukraine, I support doing that. But at some point, you run out of those reserves, or it becomes dangerous to keep sending that in terms of having what we need for our own contingencies. And so what that means is going forward, we're going to have to contract for additional weapons systems that we're sending. And that means months or years. And so one area of research here at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies that we've been looking at is where else in the world among non-NATO countries—outside Europe—can you find Russian origin and Soviet origin equipment that we can potentially get our hands on and send directly or indirectly to Ukraine. And our research tells us there are several countries that have both the weapons and potentially the political willingness to do that. So that's, I think, an area that we're gonna have to look at as well as we simultaneously try to over time transition Ukrainian forces to NATO equipment, which we'll be able to sustain and maintain more readily, and frankly, in most cases is more capable than the Russian equipment they're already using.

REICHARD: Bradley Bowman is senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Bradley, thank you so much. Appreciate your time.

BOWMAN: Thank you.

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