[FR] NATO summit in Vilnius: mixed results

The Atlantic Alliance Summit on 11 and 12 July, which brought together the 31 heads of state or government of its members in the Lithuanian capital, was supposed to be a summit to implement decisions taken since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. Unless a last-minute announcement from Ankara unblocks the issue of Sweden’s accession; and unless the Summit formalises the invitation to Ukraine to join the Alliance, as hoped for by President Zelensky and pushed for by some allies, including Poland, the Baltic countries and France.

Turkey did indeed lift its veto, but there was no formal invitation to Ukraine and, in fact, continuity prevailed. The Vilnius Summit was thus a continuation of the Madrid Summit in June 2022 and the broad outlines of NATO’s new Strategic Concept. The themes, tone and texts (final communiqués) are in fact quite similar. The allies reaffirmed their past commitments to unity in the face of Russia, to strengthening their defence posture on their eastern flank, to supporting Ukraine “for as long as necessary to Ukraine, redoubled budgetary efforts, and references to China, whose ambitions and ‘coercive policies’ are presented as contrary to the interests, security and values of the Alliance.

Of course, President Erdogan’s belated announcement that he would finally ‘allow’ his country’s parliament to ratify Sweden’s NATO accession protocol, after more than a year of bitter negotiations and obstruction by Turkey, allows the Alliance to display a welcome unity. Cohesion is also affirmed by the one-year reappointment of Alliance Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, himself a tireless architect of European and transatlantic consensus and a key player in the Turkish-Swedish negotiations.

1. Ukraine, not formally invited

But at the heart of the discussions, both in the preparations for the Summit and in the meetings in Vilnius, was the question of Ukraine’s present and future relationship with the Alliance. There is consensus that the half-commitment made at the 2008 Bucharest Summit is no longer tenable and that it is now appropriate to be more ambitious towards a country which, by fighting against Russia, is in fact providing security guarantees to the entire Alliance. In 2008, for fear of irritating Russia, as expressed in particular by France and Germany, the Alliance merely declared that Ukraine and Georgia ‘would become members of NATO’, without making any other commitments: both states have since been invaded by those whom it was intended to appease.

For some allies, particularly on the Alliance’s eastern flank, there was no option but to invite Ukraine to join NATO once the war was over, thereby making amends for the mistake made in Bucharest. For others, including the United States and Germany today, a formal invitation still carries risks with regard to a country – Russia – with which direct confrontation must be avoided at all costs. In this debate, after having long been in the camp of those opposed to Ukraine joining NATO, France has rallied to the thesis of future membership and, in the meantime, the provision of credible security guarantees to Ukraine. In Vilnius, however, the allies went little further than they did in Bucharest 15 years ago: ‘We will be able to extend an invitation to Ukraine to join the Alliance when the Allies have decided and the conditions are met,’ they stated (somewhat curtly) in the final communiqué of the summit.

In the meantime, a range of measures are planned to either support Ukraine in its current war effort or to accompany its reforms with a view to future membership. The Allies recognise the progress made by Ukraine in terms of Euro-Atlantic integration, interoperability and political interaction with the Alliance, to the extent that they have exempted it from the ‘Membership Action Plan’ normally required for any new member. In addition, the Allies are establishing a NATO-Ukraine Council, which met for the first time on 12 July. The Council will replace the NATO-Ukraine Commission (which has been blocked by Hungary in recent years) and will enable increased and higher-level political dialogue with Ukraine. Thirdly, while the Alliance as such has taken care to stay out of the conflict with Russia (the Ramstein group coordinating arms deliveries to Ukraine is not under NATO’s authority), a new ‘comprehensive package of assistance measures’ for Ukraine was announced in Vilnius, in line with the programme offered at the 2022 summit. The new package includes a series of activities and measures aimed at improving the performance and interoperability of the Ukrainian armed forces (training, provision of non-lethal equipment, assistance with defence sector reform, etc.).

Finally, long-term military and economic support was promised by the G7 countries meeting on the sidelines of the Vilnius Summit. The European Union, which has itself begun to consider ‘security commitments to Ukraine’, has joined the G7 plan. Defined outside of any international institution, bilateral assistance covers security, the provision of military equipment, training, information exchange, support for cyber security and resilience, and a series of economic measures.

Taken together, these various measures are tangible and demonstrate the strength of Western support for Ukraine, beyond NATO. However, from the perspective of Kyiv and a few other Eastern European capitals, it is the absence of a formal invitation to join the Alliance that is disappointing and will constitute the missed opportunity of the Summit.

2. The defence of allies

But NATO is first and foremost a military alliance mandated to defend its own members. In Vilnius, as since the beginning of the armed confrontation in Ukraine, the allies have therefore emphasised the strengthening of their defence posture in Eastern Europe. In doctrinal and operational terms, this means moving from a posture of deterrence through punishment/retaliation to a posture of deterrence through denial. Following the Ukrainian crisis in 2014, the allies deployed numerically small forces in the Baltic states and Poland, but these included the major Alliance countries, which were intended to deter Russia through the symbolic effect of their presence (the ‘tripwire’ idea) and the prospect of their reinforcement in the event of an attack. Since 2022, by increasing the volume of forces deployed in the Baltic countries, Poland, and also in the four countries further south (Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Slovakia),[9] the allies wish to deter any Russian incursion through the armed presence they would oppose to potential attackers (deterrence through denial).

These increased numbers are accompanied by new defence plans, the pre-positioning of equipment and weapons, the pre-assignment of forces to the defence of certain allies, and the overhaul of the force readiness system through the ambitious New Force Model (providing for the establishment of a force of 300,000 troops with a ‘high level of operational readiness’). The Vilnius Summit confirmed these guidelines. The establishment of three regional defence plans (covering respectively: the Atlantic and the Arctic; the Baltic Sea region and Central Europe; and Southern Europe) was announced, specifying how and in which areas allies should contribute to strengthening the Alliance’s defence posture. These plans should enable the implementation of the New Force Model announced in 2022. It was in this context that Germany announced at the end of June its intention to deploy up to 4,000 troops to Lithuania, where it is already the framework nation for a reinforced forward force battalion. For the Secretary General, these defence plans are the ‘most comprehensive ever established since the end of the Cold War’.

3. The budgetary effort

Defining an ambitious force format also requires substantial financial resources. At the Wales Summit in September 2014, a few months after the Ukrainian crisis and Russia’s annexation of Crimea, the allies committed to ‘move closer to the recommended 2% [of GDP spent on defence] over the next ten years’. Almost ten years later, many countries have indeed increased their defence spending, and the Secretary General likes to point out that since 2014, European states and Canada have spent an additional $350 billion (€326 billion) on defence. Nevertheless, less than a third of Alliance member countries are at the 2% threshold, and the issue of financial ‘burden-sharing’ has been a recurring source of tension between the Americans and Europeans. However, the war of 2022 led to significant increases in European defence budgets, and with 2024 approaching, marking the target set in 2014, the idea was put forward to revisit the 2% target, making it not a ceiling but a threshold. This is essentially what the allies agreed in Vilnius, defining a new commitment that no longer consists of converging towards 2% but of ‘investing at least 2% of GDP in defence each year’.

4. What Vilnius is not saying

Eighteen months after the start of the war, the unity displayed by the allies in Vilnius and the various commitments made to Ukraine underscore the credibility and cohesion of the Alliance, even as the Russian leadership was counting on a Western response that it considered inevitably shaky or short-lived. Nevertheless, the Alliance faces a number of challenges that were not addressed in the (public) debates in Vilnius.

Firstly, as at every summit, there is the question of the effective implementation of the decisions taken. In this case, whether it be the ambition of the new force model or defence spending, the recent past has shown that there can be a significant gap between formal commitments and the realities of national public policy.

Many observers have already expressed doubts about the allies’ ability to effectively deploy the force formats required by the new objectives (100,000 troops deployable within 10 days, plus 200,000 troops deployable within 20 days), whereas in the past, the availability of the 40,000 personnel of the NATO Response Force (which is being replaced by the new model) had always been uncertain.

Similarly, the ambition displayed in the financial sphere will quickly come up against the harsh reality of national budgetary choices in a difficult economic period. The Allies are also inclined to increase their defence spending more in line with their perceptions of threats, in this case from Russia, than with the commitments made within NATO. The allies’ ability to pursue a policy of supporting Ukraine, which is financially costly and has an impact on their own defence policies, is also at stake. And we know that the defence industries, which are being called upon to produce ammunition and other equipment, respond to long-term economic imperatives that are not necessarily those of governments.

Secondly, while Sweden’s forthcoming accession removes a thorn in the side of the Alliance, the twists and turns of the negotiations revealed the difficulty of the relationship within NATO between the ‘Western bloc’ and Turkey. The latter is undoubtedly of strategic importance to the Alliance. But how can we fail to note that on almost all of the major issues of concern today, the interests and values of the vast majority of allies diverge significantly from those of their Turkish neighbour?

Finally, while the Biden administration’s commitment has served to strengthen the Alliance’s cohesion in recent years, the prospect of the 2024 elections and the possible return of a less favourable US administration will increasingly loom over the transatlantic relationship. President Zelensky himself understood this well when he pushed for NATO commitments to Ukraine before the tide turned in Washington.

This uncertainty raises the question of the role of Europeans in building the credibility of the Alliance and its European component. The relationship between NATO and the European Union was not particularly praised by the Alliance summit, which in its final communiqué reiterates the narrative of the 2022 Strategic Concept, around the recognition of the importance of a ‘stronger and more effective European [not EU] defence, which contributes effectively to transatlantic and global security, complements NATO’s action and is interoperable with it’. In fact, while the war in Ukraine has clarified the division of tasks between the two organisations, the efforts made by the two actors in the field of ammunition and weapons production by their respective member states have been largely separate rather than coordinated. Thus, the various programmes and instruments requested – the European Peace Facility, the ASAP instrument and EDIRPA for the EU; the new capability planning cycle (NATO Defence Planning Process) and the implementation of an Action Plan for the Production of Defence Equipment (NDPAP) on the NATO side – have left little room for inter-institutional coordination. Tensions are even palpable when the NATO Secretary General reminds Europeans of the importance of developing a ‘transatlantic industrial base’, while the EU debates the priority to be given to European industry for the production of ammunition (three-phase March 2023 Plan).

Unsurprisingly, the NATO Summit said nothing about how efforts should be coordinated around, for example, the European pillar of the Alliance, which the French President has called for but whose contours remain largely undefined. The 2024 US elections are still a long way off, and in Vilnius, the priorities were simply elsewhere.