NATO chief’s final battle: Protecting Ukraine from Trump, US

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg is putting his legacy behind a final push to shore up international support for Ukraine in its fight against Russia.

The secretary-general, who will step down later this year after a decade leading the alliance, is pitching to the 32 NATO member countries a plan to establish a five-year, 100 billion euro fund for Ukraine, and for NATO to assume leadership of the U.S.-led Ramstein group, the monthly gathering of more than 50 countries coordinating weapons deliveries for Kyiv.

The ideas, putting Europe in more of a leading role over its security, are borne out of anxiety that the U.S. may be less reliable as a future partner. 

“This is not just Trump-proofing, but U.S.-proofing in some ways,” said Jim Townsend, an adjunct senior fellow with the Center for a New American Security and a former senior Pentagon official focused on NATO. 

“This is Europe coming to grips with the idea that — whether it’s [former President] Trump, or whether it’s Republicans in the House of Representatives, overstretch by the U.S. military, or whatever it might be, that Europe has got to step up.”

Stoltenberg’s mission is to have consensus among alliance members and a July announcement in Washington at NATO’s annual summit, this year marking its 75th anniversary. 

“We will hopefully move forward towards consensus and then we will have an agreement in place by the summit,” Stoltenberg said Wednesday in Brussels, ahead of a meeting of foreign ministers of NATO countries.  

It is expected to be Stoltenberg’s last summit as secretary-general, with Dutch Prime Minster Mark Rutte viewed as his likely successor. 

Ukraine’s push to join NATO

The stakes for the summit are high, following public tensions at the 2023 NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, where Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky chided the U.S. and other member states from holding back a concrete proposal to bring Kyiv into the alliance. 

The U.S. and Germany are the most forceful opponents of Ukraine receiving a bid to join NATO during the Washington summit.

“Ukraine will become a member of NATO. Our purpose at the summit is to help build a bridge to that membership,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters Thursday in Brussels.

Ukraine’s supporters have worked for months to craft ideas on how NATO could take a more forceful position of support for Kyiv amid fractures and pitfalls for the group.

But following through on a 100 billion euro fund, coordinating weapons donations, and institutionalizing a NATO training program for Ukrainian force will put NATO more directly in confrontation with Russia and a mark a major shift from what has been a somewhat cautious role for the alliance.

The U.S. and other Western allies, fearful of provoking Russian President Vladimir Putin, had for two years sought to achieve a certain distance between the alliance and Ukraine so as not to trigger a reaction from Moscow. 

But this has caused tension with Baltic, Polish and Ukrainian officials who say Kyiv joining NATO is the only guarantee against Putin reinvading Ukraine if a truce, cease-fire or peace deal is ever achieved. 

Stephen Flanagan, adjunct senior fellow at the RAND Corporation who served as senior director for defense policy and strategy at the National Security Council under former President Obama, said the new proposals for Ukraine are a “worthy goal” of trying to bridge the divide among NATO members. 

“I’d say this certainly has a chance of moving forward,” he said.

Resistance within NATO

Stoltenberg will be challenged with getting all alliance members on board. 

Hungary is viewed as the biggest obstacle, with Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó rejecting the NATO proposals.  

Slovakia could also prove a wild card. Parliamentary elections in September saw the victory of a far-right government that has shifted Bratislava’s position as more friendly to Moscow.

Slovakian Foreign Minister Juraj Blanár met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Turkey last month in a rare, high-level encounter between a NATO and EU member state and Russia. 

“Hungary and Slovakia could play games with this, we’ll have to see,” said Townsend, with the Center for a New American Security.

The Spanish and Italian foreign ministers have also raised concerns about details of the proposals over how much countries would be required to put in the 100 billion euro pot, concerned with duplicating funding for Kyiv that is being given on a bilateral basis and by the European Union.

In February, the EU approved a four-year, 50 billion euro aid package.

US concerned about Ramstein meeting proposal

And the Biden administration is raising concern about moving the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, known as the Ramstein group, under the leadership of NATO.

John Kirby, White House national security communications adviser, said the effectiveness of the grouping of 50-plus countries coordinating weapons deliveries for Ukraine is successful because it is led by the U.S.

The Ramstein grouping has a core that includes NATO, European Union members and Indo-Pacific partners like Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. But some participants hold back official recognition of their participation, straddling careful relations between support for Ukraine and continued ties with Russia. 

“What brought them together was American leadership; what’s keeping them together is American leadership,” Kirby said in a Wednesday call with reporters. 

But Stoltenberg is leaning into the proposals and is likely to rely on his reputation as NATO’s longtime leader to help reach consensus by the July summit. 

Stoltenberg, a former prime minister of Norway, has steered NATO through the anxious years of Trump’s attacks on the alliance and French President Emmanuel Macron declaring it as brain-dead in 2019. 

In January, Stoltenberg focused a trip to Washington on pitching a crowd of Trump supporters of the importance of NATO, telling an audience at the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation that NATO is a “good deal for the U.S.,” promoting U.S. jobs by relying on the American military manufacturing base and selling that member-states have increased their defense spending and burden sharing.

“He has great respect for all that he’s done to keep the alliance together over the last five years of his tenure, through difficult times,” Flanagan said. 

“It is true that Stoltenberg is an international civil servant and has to be careful. He has played a leading role in these efforts to support Ukraine. He’s like a chairman of a board, he has to know what the rest of the board members will support, but he has the power of persuasion.”