As NATO gathers, unity among the alliance has become harder to sustain

VILNIUS, Lithuania – Ukraine will not be ushered into NATO when President Joe Biden and leaders of the Western alliance gather in Lithuania starting Tuesday. Sweden likely won’t either, its accession still blocked by a single member: Turkey.

For months now, negotiations have been underway that were supposed to be completed by the time the 31 nations of NATO – including the newest, Finland – meet at the summit in Vilnius, a city with a long history of Russian and Soviet domination.

The fact that none of this has been settled yet, even as frantic talks continue among the alliance, underscores how the NATO unity that Biden celebrates at every turn is getting harder to sustain as the war goes on.

The alliance works by consensus, increasingly infuriating its larger members, who supply much of the budget and heavy firepower. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine, who has spent the past week hopping between NATO capitals to drum up support, has threatened to skip the event if members do not make significant progress on forging a clear commitment for how, and when, it will be folded into the Western alliance.

Zelenskyy has attended a series of meetings critical to continued aid in battling Russia, so if he misses this one, it will be visual evidence of a breach.

In an interview broadcast on CNN on Sunday, Biden said of Ukraine, “I don’t think it’s ready for membership in NATO.” He then acknowledged a longstanding, deeper fear: That admitting Ukraine now, given NATO’s commitment to collective defense, would assure that “we are at war with Russia.” That’s an argument the president has been making for 15 months.

Germany agrees with Biden, but several former Soviet bloc nations now in NATO disagree, saying that Ukraine would bring one of the strongest and most battle-tested nations in Europe into the alliance and that it deserves entry now or as soon as there is a cease-fire.

Sweden’s entry appears far closer. But Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the NATO leader who flirts most openly with Russia and buys its arms, has barely budged in his objections, and officials of several NATO countries say they assume he is shaking down the West for a bigger payoff of aid or arms.

Biden, who arrives in Vilnius on Monday night, was on the phone with him again on Sunday, pleading the case for NATO unity. In a terse account of the call, the White House said, with some understatement, that Biden told Erdogan of “his desire to welcome Sweden into NATO as soon as possible.”

All of this would have been complicated enough to handle in a two-day summit, at the very moment European leaders are trying to sell their publics into turning NATO once again into what it once was: a real fighting force that trains and patrols to keep Moscow at bay.

But the membership disputes may be overshadowed by new worries that the long-awaited Ukrainian counteroffensive is bogged down, and that Ukraine could run out of ammunition – one of several scenarios that U.S. intelligence officials say President Vladimir Putin of Russia is thinking about to turn humiliation into victory.

The issue of exactly what to promise Ukraine will be the most vexing question at the summit.

The final communiqué is expected to say that “the rightful place of Ukraine is in the NATO alliance,” NATO-country officials said, but there is a debate about adding, “when conditions allow” or whether to detail some of those conditions. But beyond the phrasing, how Ukraine gets there, and through what process, remains in dispute.

Ukraine and the central European allies, especially those bordering Russia, say they want Ukraine to be promised immediate membership once the fighting stops.

The United States, Germany, the Netherlands and other countries reject that approach. They insist that Ukraine must undertake other reforms of its political, financial and judicial systems to qualify for membership. What matters now, they say, is practical help in the medium term – to commit to supporting Ukraine militarily and financially through the American presidential election and beyond.

Biden said last month that there will be “no shortcuts” for Ukraine getting into NATO, even after the war.

It may seem simply an argument about finessing the diplomatic language, but for this summit to succeed, it must demonstrate trans-Atlantic unity in supporting Kyiv’s efforts to expel Russian forces – and in deterring a new invasion if some kind of cease-fire is negotiated. Putin is watching for cracks, and Zelenskyy needs something encouraging to bring home in the midst of a long war and a grinding, casualty-heavy counteroffensive.

Amanda Sloat, senior director for Europe on the National Security Council, said on Friday that Biden will work with Ukraine to get them ready for NATO, but “has said Ukraine would have to make reforms to meet the same standards as any other NATO country before they join. So there’s standards that the alliance sets for all members, and the president made clear that Ukraine would need to make those reforms.”

No matter how the wording is worked out, NATO officials say another key element of the summit will be a demonstration of practical support for Ukraine. Putin, several NATO leaders have argued, believes Europe’s commitment will flag – and that, combined with an ammunition advantage, would ultimately lead to Ukraine’s defeat.

So the next two days will be filled with pledges, organized under a general pledge issued by some countries – perhaps the Group of 7, or a smaller group known as the Quad (the United States, Britain, Germany and France) – to which other countries will sign up, NATO-country diplomats said. The hope is to issue such a document with the pledges in Vilnius.

The document is meant to provide Ukraine with serious security commitments for the long run, even if it falls short of the security guarantee of full NATO membership. That means providing modern weapons and training that would ensure that Ukraine is so well armed that Russia would never try to invade it in the future.

Camille Grand, a former senior NATO official now with the European Council on Foreign Relations, said the challenge would be to avoid “simply repeating the vague promises of the past. We have to counter the notion that if you have a frozen conflict, you are not welcome.”