Amid Ukraine War and Internal Spats, NATO Seeks Show of Unity

BRUSSELS—The outcome of NATO’s annual summit, a gathering of three-dozen world leaders in the planning for months, is going down to the wire amid wrangling over one paragraph.

At issue is how much of a promise the North Atlantic Treaty Organization will make to Ukraine over its eventual membership. NATO in 2008 promised Ukraine a place at its table—eventually. Now, Kyiv’s unexpected success eroding Russia’s army and even sparking a mutiny by Russian paramilitaries has emboldened President Volodymyr Zelensky to agitate for fast action on accession.

The U.S., Germany and some other big NATO members have balked at offering specifics about timing or conditions for joining the alliance. Pushing against them are alliance members that were once under Moscow’s thumb. The leader of one, Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, says she has been reading a history of NATO expansion since the Cold War to sharpen her arguments in Ukraine’s favor.

The dispute, which boils down to the wording of as little as a single sentence in the two-day summit’s official communiqué, is one of several disagreements keeping NATO’s 31 members at odds. While differences aren’t unusual for the large and growing alliance, this year they take on greater significance due to the war in Ukraine and because NATO works by consensus. 

“We always negotiate until the last minute” to reach full agreement, said NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg in an interview. He said the alliance is on track for a “successful and very substantive summit,” which he expects Zelensky to attend.

Zelensky told the Journal last month that he might not attend the summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, if Ukraine doesn’t secure commitments it is seeking. Kyiv’s pressure campaign is unabashed. 

“Ukraine is performing the task NATO was created for,” Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said recently.

NATO summits are stage-managed to come off as displays of unity and strength. Intra-alliance disputes, such as frequent differences between historic rivals Greece and Turkey, often require extra time and attention to resolve. The U.S., meanwhile, is by far NATO’s biggest member and the force behind most of what it does, but Washington tries not to impose its will—at least not without first wooing and cajoling allies.

“The only thing they really have to deliver is cohesion,” said former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Douglas Lute.

On the surface, NATO cohesion looks strong. All members vocally support Ukraine in its fight against Russia and agree Kyiv will eventually join the alliance. They have backed alliance plans to rebuild military structures that atrophied after the Cold War. Turmoil around Wagner Group’s mutiny has reinforced a conviction across NATO that it must be ready for the unexpected.

Beneath that accord, though, conflicts threaten to make the two-day summit, which starts Tuesday, a tense affair. Turkey and Hungary are balking at approving Sweden’s bid to join the alliance, frustrating allies. Canada and many European members spend far less on defense than they committed to nine years ago, and now pressure is growing to raise the commitment level.

Even the choice of names used to designate two waterways has sparked fights and delayed approval of alliance-wide defense plans that all members otherwise agree on.

Joining alliance leaders will be peers from Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, with whom NATO is aligning on a range of issues, particularly China. French President

NATO has long grappled with internal conflicts, Stoltenberg noted recently. The Suez Crisis of 1956 pitted the U.K. and France against the U.S. In 2003, the second Gulf War split allies.

“It has happened before. It certainly will happen again—that there are disagreements in NATO,” he said.

Coordinating summits has also been problematic. In 2009, then-President Barack Obama thought Turkey had agreed on Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen becoming secretary-general, only to discover at a summit dinner that the deal wasn’t done. It took a night and morning of diplomacy before Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan agreed, recalled former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Kurt Volker.

Allies and NATO officials were so unsure about former President Donald Trump’s commitment to the alliance and willingness to sign off on a communiqué that one leaders’ gathering wasn’t called a summit, eliminating the need for a joint declaration. In 2018, Trump sent a meeting into extra time by angrily listing allies’ defense-spending shortfalls, according to people involved in the meeting.

Today, relations are more harmonious, even though most members are irked by delays in Sweden’s accession. On Monday, Stoltenberg will host Erdogan and Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson in the hope of winning the Turkish president’s assent.

The biggest differences within NATO, over how much to offer Ukraine, are being hashed out in calls between government leaders and in days of meetings at NATO’s Brussels headquarters that have left participants looking haggard. Members want Ukraine to see progress in its relations with the alliance, but most also want to avoid specific pledges such as a membership timeline that they would later be obliged to deliver on.

Instead, NATO plans to offer a package of political and practical support that, when taken together, will offer Zelensky enough to call a win. 

Military assistance and pledges of help—a huge part of what NATO members are offering to Ukraine—are being handled outside of the alliance itself, so that the group can continue to avoid direct conflict with Russia and call itself purely a defensive alliance. It is possible that the U.S. and other members will make a statement about lethal aid and security promises in Vilnius, say diplomats, but that would be in parallel to official summit proceedings.

One offering for Kyiv that members recently agreed on is to elevate its status in relation to the alliance. A new NATO-Ukraine Council will replace an existing lower-level commission. A negligible change in name, it holds great political significance, Stoltenberg said. 

In the new council, Ukraine will sit as a peer with NATO, not a junior partner, as in the commission. Ukraine will have the right to call a meeting of the council, which will have a crisis consultation mechanism, be able to establish working committees and take binding decisions. 

Stoltenberg plans to convene the Ukraine council’s first meeting Wednesday, with Zelensky participating. NATO’s only other council, with Russia, has been suspended since Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine last year.

“The NATO-Ukraine Council is a lot more important than people think, because a lot of work can be done,” said Camille Grand, a former NATO assistant secretary-general now at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

NATO also plans to offer Ukraine $500 million in nonlethal military aid, which includes help bringing the country closer to NATO standards in areas such as civilian control of the military.

“These are elements of a bigger picture,” Stoltenberg said.

While those practical offerings are largely settled, one of the biggest unresolved points remains abstract wording about Ukraine’s membership. Zelensky has acknowledged that his country won’t join NATO while a war is raging, so what he is seeking is clarity on how and when it will accede after hostilities end.

NATO officials say they are trying to craft what might be only one sentence to augment their 2008 promise at a summit in Bucharest, Romania. They are walking a line between repeating the Bucharest pledge and making firm promises.

“It is hard to go beyond Bucharest,” because that statement was “pretty crystal clear” that Ukraine will join the alliance, said U.S. Ambassador to NATO Julianne Smith. “That has been the challenge for us.”

Estonia’s Kallas wants specific steps for Ukraine’s path forward. “The only security guarantee that works and is much cheaper than anything else is NATO membership,” she said recently on Twitter.

German and U.S. diplomats are less aggressive. The U.S. finding itself in the minority, being pushed to action, is anomalous, said Volker.

“There’s a lot between restating Bucharest and inviting them to join,” said Smith, who said Zelensky won’t leave disappointed.

“We are going to show up in Vilnius with a package of actions,” Smith said. It will include words “paired with practical and political support.”

Write to Daniel Michaels at [email protected]