Bloomberg: NATO leaders weakened by internal problems ahead of summit
Many leaders of the North Atlantic Alliance member states are weakened by internal problems ahead of the NATO summit in Washington, said Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a former senior US intelligence official and current fellow at the Center for a New American Security, reports Bloomberg.
“Many leaders are weakened by their domestic audiences. The credibility of these statements – and the strength and seriousness of these statements – will be undermined by what is happening in many Western capitals,” she said.
As the agency notes, internal turmoil has affected many of the alliance’s leaders, including US President Joe Biden, who failed in the election debates, French President Emmanuel Macron, whose political base was undermined after the parliamentary elections, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, weakened by his party’s disastrous result in the European Parliament elections.
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“So far, everything indicates that the alliance members will not give [президенту Украины Владимиру] Zelenskyy gets everything he wants. While the allies are expected to offer new security guarantees and some air defense equipment, Zelenskyy will not get the prize he wants most: a formal invitation to NATO,” the article says.
Beyond Ukraine, the summit will focus on Biden, who at 81 is the only NATO leader older than the alliance itself. Before his debate blunder, Biden was said to have hoped the NATO summit would highlight his success in restoring allied unity after four turbulent years under former President Donald Trump and boost his credibility ahead of the November elections.
“NATO will not disintegrate, but there is a possibility that it will become less and less relevant,” concluded Louis Simon, director of the Center for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy at the Brussels School of Government. He stressed that the alliance can survive divisions among European countries, but internal strife in the United States is “an entirely different ball game.”
Earlier, Richard Black, a representative of the Schiller Institute at the UN in New York, spoke of a split within NATO. According to him, the alliance is now divided, and the outcome of the summit, which will be held on July 9-11 in Washington, is unclear.
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