ISPI : 5 Jul 2023 Ukraine, Sweden, Spending and Cooperation: Four Priorities for NATO Camille Grand

 5 Jul 2023

Ukraine, Sweden, Spending and Cooperation: Four Priorities for NATO

Camille Grand 

The Summit has a solid agenda and will address some fundamental issues for the future of the Alliance and the future of European security.

COMMENTARY TRANSATLANTIC RELATIONS

The 2022 Madrid NATO Summit saw, inter alia, the adoption of a new Strategic Concept and a substantive Communiqué, a decision to expand NATO in Northern Europe by welcoming Finland and Sweden as invitees on a fast-track to membership, and a robust series of decisions to enhance deterrence and defence in response to the Russian war in Ukraine. In this context, holding another summit shortly after Madrid could have been unnecessary. The Alliance’s battle rhythm of summits is quite different from that of the EU Councils, with only 32 summits at the level of heads of State and Government in almost 75 years of transatlantic alliance. Until 2022, NATO typically held a summit every other year (most recently 2012 in Chicago, 2014 in Wales, 2016 in Warsaw, 2018 and 2021 in Brussels), plus a handful of shorter and less formal “leaders meeting”. The degradation of the European security environment changed this rhythm with a series of high-level virtual and formal engagements and a decision to meet more often.

Against this backdrop, the Vilnius Summit could have been a simple “photo opportunity” to display the unity of the Alliance as war rages on NATO’s eastern border. But it turns out that the Summit has a solid agenda and will address some fundamental issues for the future of the Alliance and the future of European security. Amongst the issues to watch, four should be highlighted as potential deliverables but also as stress tests on the robustness and unity of the Alliance.

First, it is time to close the chapter opened in Madrid regarding the accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO. Following the ratification of the accession protocols by their respective parliaments, Ankara and Budapest have now allowed Finland to join as a fully-fledged Ally, but the issue of Sweden remains still open just a few days before Vilnius. Moving forward is becoming a credibility issue for the Alliance in light of the Hungarian and Turkish missing ratification, essentially driven by bilateral disputes. Yet this is more than just a matter of political credibility: it is also becoming a security issue as Swedish membership will enable much closer allied cooperation from the Baltic to the High North, in a region of critical importance. While bilateral issues complicating accession to NATO are quite common, as the long controversy surrounding North Macedonia exemplified, the current security environment should serve as an incentive to move forward at pace.

Second, the issue of security guarantees to Ukraine is becoming sensitive again and could be summarised as “neither Bucharest (2008) nor Budapest (1994)”. While all Allies seem ready to support a strong message of political support to Kyiv as the counter-offensive unfolds, expressing a concrete readiness to sustain this effort “for as long as it takes” is of critical importance given Putin’s belief in his ability to exercise strategic patience longer than the West. Such a pledge of military support for the long haul needs to be accompanied by a political commitment to building a path towards NATO membership beyond the ambiguous message from the 2008 Bucharest summit, which ended up with a “yes in theory, but no in practice”. In concrete terms, this could combine the establishment of a NATO-Ukraine Council enabling a much closer participation of Ukraine in the activities of the Alliance, a credible path to membership and a willingness to provide more robust interim guarantees than the 1994 Budapest Memorandum that led to the denuclearisation of Ukraine. The most complicated issue remains the timeline: while some Allies express a concern at the idea of opening membership to a country still at war, others argue that offering such an opening might well be the best way to deny Moscow a de facto veto and to prevent the conflict from resuming after a cease-fire while providing proper reassurances to Kyiv. Lastly, and while some stabilisation of the line of control is necessary, Kyiv should not be expected to have regained full control of its entire territory. The accession of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1955 provides useful precedents in this context.

Third, as the Alliance approaches 2024 (the tenth anniversary of the Defence Investment Pledge taken at the Wales Summit), the issue of defence spending will be essential. Vilnius will be an opportunity to review achievements and agree future commitments. These should include: a renewed pledge to achieve the 2% and 20% targets without delays or caveats, with these targets being identified as floors rather than aspirational ceilings, as many Allies are now well above these benchmarks; a pledge to sustain this level of effort, which is critical to rebuild Allies militaries after decades of peace dividends; a focus on addressing the capability shortfalls identified in the NATO Defence Planning Process; and a reflection on how to connect NATO guidelines better with EU activities, which are becoming more significant.

Finally, the plans and capabilities NATO needs in the current and foreseeable security environment are the least visible issue, due to the classified nature of the conversation. However, it probably is the most important one in the long term as it will guarantee the security of the Euro-Atlantic area via a robust deterrence and defence posture. This is all the more crucial that no scenario suggests a more peaceful and stable relationship with Russia in the short term. This is about planning, training and exercising to ensure the right level of readiness and the ability to provide reinforcement at short notice. This is about the forward stationing of troops on the Eastern flank of the Alliance and defining the right volume of forces and the right set of forward deployed assets. This is about defining the right capability priorities to address shortfalls and prepare for the future. Finally, there is a lot of political and military fine-tuning to put in place a sustainable posture across all domains and with the right mix of conventional, nuclear and missile defence capabilities. It will likely not resemble the Cold War posture but it will nevertheless transform the Alliance’s strategy and priorities profoundly.

The ability of the Vilnius summit to deliver or, at the very least, offer significant progress on these four priorities will be a credibility test for the Alliance. Should NATO prove unable to meet this challenge, the message of political unity will be weakened. In some instances, it might boil down to laying the ground for more substantive decisions at the 2024 Washington Summit, but this still requires boldness now. Behind the sophisticated and sometimes convoluted language of Summit Communiqués, the robustness and credibility of the commitments on these four priorities will be key to defining success in Vilnius and the quality of the Alliance messaging.