NATO Summit at the Hague

Reflections on the direction NATO is going and how it impacts our future...

Back in May, I attended the Dayton Dialogue, a NATO associated public forum, as I have written about. Then a week later, I followed the Shangri-La Dialogue on-line. The following week was a State Department meeting in Florida for non-profits which I was able to attend in person. There was a 1 week break, and then was the G7 meeting in Canada. Following that, this week was the NATO Summit at The Hague, Netherlands. In parallel to that was the official NATO Public Forum, for which I was able to attend on-line (although their app didn’t work).

I came away from the NATO Public Forum with a very positive impression of what is happening in NATO, similar to what we saw at the Dayton Dialogue. The reason for this is that world events seem to have woken up European leaders to the reality of the danger they are in, and they seem to be really getting their act together to face the threat that Europe faces. Even though there is pushback to the narrative that excess entitlement spending in lieu of defense spending is part of the reason they are in the predicament they are in, they recognize that there is an element of truth to that narrative. Multiple European leaders at the forum reiterated how they recognize that on the continent they have been neglectful in this area, but that they are working very hard to rectify that.

Now, enter the media’s reports. There was a big difference in the impression that the forum gave me from actually attending the events on-line, compared to what some of the media outlets wrote about the summit. For the most part, they either had a short report on the agreed upon defense spending targets, or they wrote about the summit as if it was all about Trump, and how all the other nations were groveling to Trump, or they wrote about NATO’s failure to address the war in Ukraine. I suppose that writing anything about Trump gets attention, so perhaps that is the motivation for focusing on him. I would not deny that he is a force that needs to be understood and reported on, but the overall tone of the public forum, which reflected deliberations at the summit, was not really about Trump. It was about defending Europe from Russia’s aggression. As far as the summit failing to address the war in Ukraine, that also is a media narrative that is not really accurately reflected in what they were talking about. In all of the discussions about the Russia threat, it was very clear, and mentioned countless times, how the Ukraine war is fundamentally a part of those discussions.

Overall, I was impressed with the summit, and not really impressed with the media response. In general, I am not a media critic, and usually shy away from blasting the media for its biases. In this case, however, it is clear that most media outlets missed the mark. The tone of the summit communicated that Europe is going in the right direction on defense buildup, and not in any danger of breaking up, and will be united for a long time to come. The tone of the summit was not about Trump.

To summarize what was talked about in regard to defense spending, most of the focus was on the need for European nations to re-build their defense industrial base. Efforts are underway and a lot of work has already been done in this area, but there is still a lot of work ahead. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has said that Russia’s war economy has out-produced all of NATO’s defense production (including the USA) at a rate of over 4 to 1 over the past year and a half. This has highlighted a sense of urgency on the part of European leaders. In addition to that, Vladimir Putin has rebuffed President Trump’s overtures of peace on multiple occasions, and is building up troop levels and massing them near the borders of the Baltic states and Poland. Because of that, none of the NATO leaders believe that he will be willing to actually come to a peace deal unless deterrence proves to him that he cannot win.

Another concern at all of these events, which they were calling “the elephant in the room,” was whether the USA was committed to NATO and would honor Article 5 of the alliance. For those of you not familiar with that, that is the article that says an attack on one NATO member will be considered an attack on all, and all will rise to that member’s defense. Article 5 has only been triggered once in NATO’s history, on 9/11 in 2001, and the United States requested the alliance to come to its aid. All of the NATO members answered the call at that time.

At that time, America called for aid. Today, it is Europe that is calling for aid, and it is in preparation for a broader attack from Russia. Article 5 has not yet been triggered. If there is a Russian attack, it will come somewhere in Eastern Europe like Poland, or the Balkans, or against the Baltic states, or against Finland. All of NATO must be prepared to answer that call, including the USA. This was affirmed at the summit, as all 32 countries agreed to answer the call if Article 5 was triggered, as well as to abide by Article 3, the provision for defense spending.

In order for NATO countries to be equipped and have the ability to answer that call, the armed forces must be equipped and ready, and in order for that to happen, the defense industrial base must be a healthy functioning sector. Because NATO is not there yet, they are calling for aid from the USA, and President Trump has agreed to continue to help NATO. However, this is where things get serious. The Russia threat is real, and they are continuing to build a war economy, to recruit mercenaries from all over the world, and to build up their arsenal of strategic weapons. China is continuing to support Russia and supply them with materials to prosecute their war, while reducing or inhibiting exports of those same materials to Western-allied countries. Those materials are the very materials that are needed for Western countries to produce the weapons to defend against both Russia and China. So even though NATO and the EU are finally on the right path, they are still in a significant position of weakness compared to the aggressor nations, Russia and China.

Europe calls for aid. I am reminded of the Lord of the Rings, in the 3rd movie, “The beacons of Minis Tirith! The beacons are lit! Gondor calls for aid!”

There is a deep philosophical reason why we as Christians, even living in a post-Christian age, need to do our part to help meet this need. I will devote another essay at some point in the future to discuss this. For now, though, I will just emphasize, it is time to unite with the fight against the darkness that threatens to sweep the world into bondage under the authoritarian regimes of Russia and China. I am not exaggerating when I say that the threat that we face has never been more grave, and there are still many parts of our own country here in America that are blind to the danger that faces us. On top of that, our internal house is not fully in order yet. We are, however, not out of the fight, and in fact we just scored a significant tactical victory, with the destruction of Iran’s nuclear program, for which President Trump deserves credit. Perhaps it is gone for good, or perhaps it is out of the picture only temporarily. We don’t know yet for sure, but we have the advantage for now, and now is the time to press that advantage.