President Biden is receiving excessive praise for his phone call with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but Biden and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg deserve congratulations for their conversation on Tuesday.
The two leaders hit the right note in discussing support for NATO’s deterrence posture and for European nations to invest more equitably in the alliance’s common defense.
Biden’s best moment came when he pledged to “strongly, strongly, strongly support our mutual defense based on mutual democratic values. I want to reaffirm the United States commitment to Article Five. It’s a sacred commitment.”
The president is correct. Article Five, the mutual defense clause in NATO’s charter which views an attack on one of the alliance’s 30 member states as an attack on all, is the heart of NATO’s credibility. Affirming Article Five matters because Russia, NATO’s enduring, primary threat concern, forms both its political and military strategies around fraying Article Five.
In peacetime, Russia uses a mixture of hyperbolic threats and energy supply blackmail to foster European skepticism toward Article Five. Putin’s strategy has been particularly successful with regard to Europe’s largest economy, Germany. A 2020 Pew Research Center poll found that while 63% of German respondents believed the U.S. would defend a NATO ally under attack, only 34% believe their own nation should join the fight.
Pew suggests these attitudes are sadly common across Europe (the British, Canadians, Dutch, and Baltic states being honorable exceptions). Similarly, Russian war strategy for an invasion of the Baltics or Poland is centered on rapid assaults to seize territory and establish defensive strongholds. Putin would then offer a ceasefire that he hopes would split the NATO alliance, forcing a peace favorable to Moscow.
Those data points speak to the broader challenge facing NATO: undue burden sharing.
In a quiet nod to former President Donald Trump’s insistence that allies invest more in defense, Stoltenberg noted that it was important that allies “continue to deliver on defense spending, fair burden sharing, and as long as we stand together, we are able to deliver security and preserve peace.”
The secretary-general’s explicit linkage between “defense spending,” “burden sharing,” and “stand together” is not accidental. It’s an argument Stoltenberg has repeatedly made, including in a 2019 interview with the Washington Examiner. He recognizes that standing together cannot simply mean the U.S. standing with most other allies on its shoulders. The Biden administration must enforce this understanding as it engages with Europe.
Ultimately, though, this was a positive phone call. NATO is an instrumental servant of Western and American prosperity, peace, and security.
