Last week, President Biden hosted leaders from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in DC to celebrate the alliance’s 75th anniversary. Created in 1949 by the United States, Canada, and 10 Western European countries, NATO sought to provide collective security against the Soviet Union. Since its founding, 20 more countries have joined the alliance, the most recent being Finland and Sweden in 2023. The most notable aspect of the NATO Charter is Article 5, which “provides that if a NATO Ally is the victim of an armed attack, every other member of the Alliance will consider this act of violence as an attack against all members and will take the actions it deems necessary to assist the Ally attacked.” The article’s language is ambiguous and does not specify what kind of support is required, thus allowing allies the flexibility to support the victim without declaring war on the aggressor. Article 5 has only been invoked once, after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.
The agenda for this year’s summit included Ukraine’s war effort against Russia’s invasion, challenges in the Indo-Pacific, cyber and missile defense, and supply chain resilience. The summit was also held amidst a recent upsurge of questions surrounding President Biden’s fitness for a second presidential term. As more members of the Democratic party encourage him to step down, outgoing NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg avoided questions about the president’s health, while German Chancellor Olaf Scholz supported Biden’s leadership.
In preparation for a possible Trump administration, leaders at the summit worked to strengthen NATO’s institutions, which have often been criticized by the former president. During his term, Donald Trump blamed countries for not spending the 2% of their GDP on NATO, which is a prerequisite to joining the alliance, and free-riding on the United States. He has gone so far as to imply that he would take a country’s defense spending into account before coming to its aid. However, this year, a record number of countries have met or exceeded their spending goals; out of the 32 NATO allies, 23 now meet the 2% target, up from six countries in 2021. In an effort to make NATO more resilient to U.S. domestic politics, European policymakers moved control of Ukraine’s military aid from U.S. command to NATO and signed long-term defense pledges with Ukraine to prevent political fluctuations in the United States from impacting aid. They also appointed former Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte as new Secretary General, a statesman known for his agile diplomacy. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who attended the summit, was particularly focused on the U.S. November elections, believing that the “whole world [would be] watching [the outcome].” Despite NATO diplomats’ concerns about a second Trump presidency, Jens Stoltenberg believed the United States’s commitment to the alliance would remain strong because of bipartisan support in Congress and a record number of allies hitting their spending goals.
During the summit, NATO members declared that Ukraine’s path to membership in the alliance was “irreversible,” but that it would only be possible once its war with Russia ended and when the country undertook a series of democratic reforms. While President Zelensky left the summit without a formal offer to join the alliance, Ukraine bolstered its ability to fight Russia’s aggression through securing F-16 fighter jets, $43 billion in aid over the next year, and dozens of air-defense batteries from various NATO members.
Strengthening NATO’s defense industrial base was a key action item of the summit, as Ukraine has faced mortar and artillery shortages since 2023. While the besieged country received new tranches of aid from NATO allies, it could take months or even years to operationalize the equipment. Production capacity and logistics will be the primary drivers of NATO’s support to Ukraine. In addition to heavy demands on their production lines, private defense manufacturers face another challenge: Russian sabotage. News broke during the summit that the United States and Germany foiled a Russian plot to kill the CEO of Germany’s largest manufacturer of 155mm artillery shells, munitions which are crucial to Ukraine’s war effort. This demonstrates that Russia is willing to intimidate the private sector after it failed to effectively deter European support for Ukraine.
For the third consecutive year, the alliance also invited major non-NATO partners like Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea to participate in the summit, signifying strong connections between Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific security. Making these connections clear, the delegations condemned North Korean and Chinese support for Russia’s war effort. Coordinating with Indo-Pacific countries on cybersecurity, disinformation, and sanctions demonstrates a significant effort by Western democracies to maintain the rules-based international order outside of Europe. While NATO increased collaboration with Indo-Pacific countries mostly because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Japan, Australia, South Korea, and New Zealand can address security issues like disinformation and cyberattacks in their own respective regions by working with the alliance.
In its final communique, NATO allies described China as a “decisive enabler” of Russia’s war against Ukraine and expressed concerns over Beijing’s nuclear arsenal and space capabilities, criticism which sparked a sharp rebuke from China. While the alliance has not historically focused on near-peer competitors outside of Europe, NATO has highlighted China as a potential threat to global stability since 2021. NATO’s involvement in the Indo-Pacific will likely increase as China’s malign behavior in the South China Sea and its support of Russia threaten democratic security. As the alliance extends its security interests toward Asia, direct military conflict with China is highly unlikely because NATO rarely responds militarily outside of Europe. However, as NATO’s cooperation with countries in the Indo-Pacific increases, China will probably convey its displeasure through joint military exercises with NATO competitors like Russia and gray-zone operations like cyberattacks and disinformation that seek to highlight NATO’s internal challenges.
Ultimately, the 2024 NATO Summit reaffirmed the alliance’s resilience to internal and external challenges. While alliance members Turkey and Hungary maintain close ties to Russia, perhaps seeking to act as intermediaries in a future peace settlement with Ukraine, the alliance appeared unified in a world full of complex security challenges. Despite wading into unknown waters ahead, the alliance will continue to serve as a bulwark against Russian revisionism and lay the foundation for countering China. Amid the proliferation of groundbreaking technologies like artificial intelligence and a rise in geopolitical tensions, the NATO alliance seems poised to maintain its role as one of the most effective institutions protecting Western values and the international order.