As NATO’s leaders and their teams mix in the corridors and cocktail parties surrounding their 75th anniversary summit in Washington, D.C., this week, their apprehension is palpable.
But it is not the prospect of further aggression by Vladimir Putin that is dominating their public and not-so-public expressions of concern—even though he is never far from their thoughts. It is not their inability to resolve internal debates over how much license they should give Ukraine’s military to use NATO contributed weapons to strike deep within Russia—even though it is clear such license is as essential as it is elusive.
It is not the fact that one of the heads of a NATO member state, Viktor Orbán, spent the last few days hobnobbing with Putin and later with Xi Jingping that has them ill at ease—although Orbán is a wildcard who could upset many of the plans of the consensus-driven alliance.
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No, the NATO leaders are obsessed with the same political drama that has dominated media attention here in the United States for the past two weeks. Yet what they fear may not be what you might assume.
They are watching the movements and statements of Joe Biden like hawks. They are looking everywhere for clues about his future candidacy for the White House. They are seeking the kind of intelligence that comes from pumping seatmates at formal and informal meals for information, gossip and opinions.
Yet, those summit participants and observers with whom I have spoken—even those who have noticed a marked decline in the U.S. president over the past four years—are not concerned with Biden’s ability to play a leading role in NATO during his second term. Not only do they express confidence in his judgment, but they have a great deal of confidence in the foreign policy team around him.
No, they do not fear whether Biden is too old to be president, they worry whether he is too old to beat Donald Trump—because Donald Trump is in the minds of all, an enormous threat to NATO, to Europe, and to America’s ability to lead. A Trump win makes Putin stronger, Ukraine more vulnerable, and casts the future of the alliance into doubt.
As Ivo Daalder, former U.S. Ambassador to NATO, said to me on my Deep State Radio podcast on Wednesday, “They’ll take Biden in a wheelchair over the possibility of another Trump presidency.”
The widespread conviction that Trump represents an existential threat to NATO comes from Trump himself.
Trump sought to pull U.S. troops out of Europe during his first term and Trump Defense Secretary Mark Esper has recently said that he fears Trump would try to pull the U.S. out of NATO.
According to The Return of Great Powers by CNN’s Jim Sciutto, Trump’s former National Security Advisor John Bolton said that in a second Trump term, “NATO would be in real jeopardy. I think he would try to get out.” Former Trump chief of staff General John Kelly is also quoted in the book as saying both that Trump “saw no point in NATO” and that “Putin was an okay guy.”
Trump has repeatedly said that he would not defend NATO members who were “delinquent” in their contributions to the alliance. Chillingly, in February of this year, he said he would “encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” with countries that did not contribute the target of 2 percent of GDP toward military readiness. (Countries do not pay dues to NATO and cannot be in any sense delinquent in their payments to the alliance, a fact that his aides repeatedly try to drill into him but to no avail.)
Further, Trump has promised to bring “peace” to Europe, and end the war in Ukraine immediately upon taking office which, given the positions of Russia and Ukraine, strongly suggest that he would simply agree to back the goals of Vladimir Putin and stop providing support to Ukraine.
This week, Ukraine’s Volodmyr Zelensky, clearly uneasy with Trump’s stance, called upon Trump to release the specifics of his ideas for ending the war. No one believes Trump would maintain the robust pro-Ukraine policies of Biden.
Britain’s Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer meets with U.S. President Joe Biden at the White House in Washington D.C., during the NATO 75th anniversary summit, July 10, 2024.
Stefan Rousseau/Pool via ReutersBiden’s welcoming remarks to the NATO Summit was designed to demonstrate he was still capable of strong leadership and by and large press accounts indicated that he succeeded. Even Fox News said so. Delegates also feel that he has served effectively as the host for the event during its first two days. But such initial impressions did little to dispel the concerns that Biden might not be able to stop the return march of Trump to the White House.
Polls that were released as the summit was getting underway were not comforting. The well-respected Cook Political Report shifted their projection for six key battleground states toward Trump. In one of those states, Wisconsin, a poll showed Trump leading Biden by 5 percentage points while the state’s incumbent Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin leading her challenger by 5 points, revealing she is outperforming the president by a substantial margin.
Pollster Nate Silver wrote that Biden has a weak electoral hand, rating his chances at winning in November at only 29 percent. Even “deep blue” New York state has seen such setbacks for Biden that it is now being considered a “battleground state.”
Such faltering by Biden has created real consternation among Democrats who are also running in the fall and who fear, in the words of Colorado Senator Michael Bennet, a Republican “landslide.” Even former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, historically very close to Biden, appeared somewhat cagey in her answers about whether Biden should step down, seemingly ignoring his repeated statements that he was running and leaving the door open to other outcomes by saying he should decide soon what he wants to do.
In other words, the discussion among political pros in Washington and that among the diplomats and defense officials at the NATO summit was focused on the same topic—not Biden’s fitness for office but whether he can do the one thing that is essential for the future of both NATO and democracy in America, and that is beat Donald Trump.
Age, ageism, physical health, and all the issues that seemed to dominate in the wake of the Biden’s debate debacle have now shifted more to the background. The discussion among those for whom the stakes are highest here in the U.S. and across the Atlantic has shifted to the nitty gritty numbers and the imperative of triumphing over Trump.
