Nato summit seeking to bring back solidarity across the alliance

WESTERN leaders, including US President Joe Biden, are making final preparations for this month's North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) leadership summit in Brussels which will see a re-set after the military alliance came under the most strain in its 70- year history during Donald Trump's presidency.

Former United States officials, including ex-National Security Adviser John Bolton, have confirmed that Mr Trump came close to announcing US withdrawal from the organisation, co-created by Washington in the post-war era, which would have been a body blow to its future credibility. The nadir of this era came in the extraordinary scenes in 2018 when, with Mr Trump throwing the alliance's annual summit into disarray by threatening to pull the US out, there were a series of cancellations of key announcements and press conferences.

To make matters worse, Mr Trump not only criticised Nato colleagues, but then went on in the days that followed to have a cordial meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki. This erratic behaviour not only alarmed Canada and Western European allies, but also put a chill down the spine of Eastern European states too, many of which were formerly part of the Soviet Union.

Yet, the challenges within Nato during the Trump era were by no means only of his own making. One of his critiques of the alliance, that more than half of members still do not spend the prescribed 2 per cent of GDP on defence, is a longstanding sore point that other US presidents have highlighted too.

Moreover, Mr Trump was not the only alliance leader during the Trump presidency to criticise Nato. Take the example of French President Emmanuel Macron's astonishing assertion in 2019 that the organisation was experiencing "brain death".

Mr Macron's remarkable outburst was driven by what he sees as a rapidly changing geopolitical landscape, including the diminished commitment of the US, under the Trump presidency, to Nato. Looking ahead to the 2020s and beyond, however, Mr Macron and other Nato leaders are aware of wider shifts in the global security environment, including threats and opportunities from China. What is perceived as Beijing's growing global assertiveness - including its missile systems - is a rising concern.

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In his comments, Mr Macron exemplified his assertion about Washington's waning commitment to Nato by the White House's failure to consult Western allies before pulling US forces out of Syria. This development reverberated inside the organisation as the move opened the way for a much-criticised move by Turkey - itself a Nato member which had just decided to buy the Russian-made S-400 anti-aircraft missile system - to push into Syria and create what it calls a security zone along its border. Meanwhile, Kurdish forces, which had been helping Western forces fight the so-called Islamic State group, were expelled from the area.

Mr Macron also declared that he "didn't know", under Mr Trump, if the US could still be relied on to defend the alliance under the terms of its founding charter which states that an attack on any one member will trigger a collective response. His comments, while clearly heartfelt, were slapped down at the time by other leading European leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Their preferred approach was to keep a diplomatic silence and try to 'last out' the Trump era hoping that it would only be one term. Mrs Merkel and others highlighted the broader, bipartisan support that Nato enjoys in Washington, as showcased in 2019 when Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg got several standing ovations when he addressed Congress.

In this context, and Mr Biden's replacement of Mr Trump, Mr Stoltenberg will seek to underline the continuing relevance of the Western alliance of countries with a collective population of around one billion. For all its weaknesses, Nato remains one of the world's most successful ever military organisations, and has helped underpin the longest period of sustained peace in the West's modern history.

SHOW OF UNITY

Post-Trump and Brexit, there will be a show of unity at the summit around the prospect of strong continued defence and security cooperation with London and Washington. In the face of new challenges, and opportunities, the alliance is already recalibrating strategic direction. At the last face-to-face summit, for instance, new perceived threats like China were formally discussed for the first time.

Inevitably, Russia will also be a key topic next week, especially around Ukraine, which has recently seen a build-up of Moscow-led forces. Following Russia's annexation of Crimea, and the wider destabilisation of Ukraine, Nato's relationship with Moscow remains at one of its lowest points since the end of the Cold War.

And there remains alarm in certain quarters about the West's capability to respond to what is perceived as a significantly enhanced Russian security threat. Whereas Moscow is estimated to have increased defence spending by some 80 per cent between 2008 and 2014, the counterpart figure for Nato countries collectively was a decrease of around 20 per cent, although there have been some increases in defence spending since then in numerous European states, and Canada, and a significant rise in the US.

One other bonus issue for intra-alliance harmony is that the longstanding burden sharing issue, which was perhaps Mr Trump's chief gripe given that the US accounts for around two thirds of total Nato defence spending, may be moving closer to resolution. The ex-US president had claimed a political victory over allies on the issue claiming that they agreed to reach spending of 2 per cent of GDP on the military faster than previously planned, but the reality is that he received no huge concessions in this area.

Numerous Nato states - even before Mr Trump championed this issue - had been pushing ahead with increases in defence spending, including a cross-section of the EU-28 under a new European Defence Action Plan that advocates greater military cooperation between the union. Here it is a combination of Russian military assertiveness, instability in the Middle East and Africa, not just Mr Trump's apparently uncertain commitment to Europe's security, that drove this spending move.

Taken overall, the Nato summit will seek to bring solidarity across the alliance after the disruptive diplomacy of Mr Trump. Yet, Mr Stoltenberg is well aware that, much as a show of unity will be put on, there remain concerns about whether the alliance is fit for purpose into its eighth decade.

• The writer is an associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics