BRUSSELS — Arriving in Belgium on Wednesday, President Joe Biden will meet with trans-Atlantic leaders for several high-stakes summits on the war in Ukraine, testing the president’s ability to marshal European resolve against Russia’s aggression while holding firm on limits to America’s involvement in the conflict.
Biden, who took office promising to revitalize the United States’s alliances, will gather in Brussels, Belgium, and Warsaw, Poland, with leaders eager for American assurances as they discuss the security and humanitarian emergency on the continent’s eastern front.
The president is visiting the region for the first time since war broke out nearly one month ago and is scheduled to attend an emergency meeting of NATO heads of state and governments to determine how the bloc can fortify its response to the crisis in Ukraine. Fears have also grown in Poland that Moscow could extend the conflict across its border, raising the stakes for Biden as he seeks to avoid a direct confrontation with Russia.
“It’s a beautiful spring day, the sun is shining, the sky is blue, and there’s war in the east coming closer,” said Daniel Fried, a former senior State Department official and the former U.S. ambassador to Poland, speaking to the Washington Examiner from Warsaw as he walked through the city center past Ukrainian flags and billboards supporting the country’s cause.
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The welcoming response has extended to more than 1 million of Ukraine’s refugees so far, with more arriving every day.
One Pole quipped to Fried, “It turns out that Poland is the world’s largest humanitarian NGO.”
“But of course, the situation is grim,” the American diplomat said of the war that has caused millions to flee their homes for sanctuary deeper into central Europe as Russia’s mounted increasingly vicious attacks on their country.
Despite the success of Western measures aimed at punishing the invasion, Biden warned this week that “we should be careful of what’s about to come.” He said Russian President Vladimir Putin has been speaking about Ukrainian biological and chemical weapons, in what Biden called “a clear sign” that the Russian leader is weighing whether to use them himself.
“NATO has never been stronger, more united in its entire history than it is today, in large part because of Vladimir Putin,” Biden said in Washington on Monday. “And now Putin’s back is against the wall.”
Moscow has faced logistical and strategic setbacks in the war, while Western sanctions pummel Putin’s economy at home. Biden said he fears the challenges could trigger Putin to lash out more violently than before, including through the use of biological or chemical weapons.
“The point is: It’s real,” he said of the threat Putin may escalate the conflict into a dirty war. The more Putin struggles, “the greater the severity” of the tactics he may wield, the president added.
“You remember that the Biden administration said war is coming and a lot of people didn’t believe it,” Fried said of the skepticism prompted by Washington’s early warnings of an imminent invasion by Russia. “They nailed it.”
In Warsaw Saturday, Biden is set to meet with Polish President Andrzej Duda to discuss U.S. support for the humanitarian crisis in the country. More than a million Ukrainian refugees have fled their homes for Poland since Russian troops began rolling toward Kyiv three weeks ago. The two countries also recently engaged in a public disagreement over sending fighter jets to Ukraine by transferring them to a U.S. military base in Germany after administration officials raised concerns that the plan could increase tensions with Russia.
Privately, Poland will want to talk about future scenarios that it could face due to its position as the largest state on the bloc’s eastern front, Fried said. One Pole likened the sit-down with Biden to a “wartime summit,” telling the former U.S. official, “We’re not in the war, but the war is real.”
Some in Warsaw took note of a letter that Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy secretary of Russia’s Security Council, posted to Telegram this week titled “On Poland,” which lashed out at the country directly, leading some to fear the country could be the target of future Russian aggression. The former U.S. ambassador to Poland said many in the country interpreted it as a threat.
“Peering into the future, they don’t know how this goes,” Fried said. “Are the Ukrainians beginning to win? Or are the Russians so bogged down they can’t recover? In which case, does Putin escalate? Does he attack Poland?”
Biden has said he will not send U.S. troops to Ukraine and has shied away from providing support that could be viewed as direct involvement against Russian forces. Still, the president has repeatedly vowed to defend “every inch” of NATO territory with U.S. military support, and administration officials say he will reinforce this message while face-to-face with allied leaders.
“There are a number of NATO countries that overnight became front-line states, and those countries are understandably quite anxious,” said Kelly Grieco, a senior fellow on U.S. defense policy at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center.
She said the outbreak of war “has been an awakening for them,” with many European leaders stepping up their military commitments. “This is a high-stakes trip,” she added, with observers eyeing whether commitments to regional security are conveyed in more than words.
While the summits are about signaling unity in response to Russian aggression, Grieco said they also lend the president an opportunity to seize on Europe’s momentum for increased defense spending.
Administration officials who have spent weeks hammering out kinks in the alliance have talked about the need to fortify NATO and reduce European dependence on Russian energy to lay the groundwork for a more robust response.
Leaving room for Europe to assume primary responsibility for the continent’s defense is in line with America’s broader security goals, which is the challenge of managing a rising China, Grieco said. “The conflict hasn’t changed U.S. strategic priority,” she said.
While in Brussels, Biden will coordinate the next phase of defense assistance to Ukraine, the president’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on Tuesday. The president will also attend a G-7 meeting and address the 27 leaders of the European Union during a session of the European Council.
Sullivan told reporters that Biden would announce joint action to enhance Europe’s energy security while in Brussels, making headway “at long last” on the process of pulling away from Russian gas.
He also said that leaders meeting this week in Europe are expected to impose new financial sanctions on Russia’s economy and tighten existing penalties.
The president said that “knowing Putin fairly well,” or as well as leaders “could know one another,” the Russian leader likely expected to be able to divide the NATO alliance. “He never thought NATO would stay resolved,” Biden explained Monday, presenting this as a strategic foible in Russia’s prewar analysis.
Putin has faced logistical and strategic setbacks in the war as Western sanctions pound his economy at home and drive the country’s currency into the ground. By freezing Russia’s central bank foreign reserves, the West has cut off the country’s access to a war chest of rainy day funds. The actions have prompted a sweeping exit by multinational banks and businesses.
Sullivan said Biden views the sanctions as “sharpening the choice for Russia” and is pleased with how countries resolved to impose the penalties together.
“We’re seeing now that it mattered,” the president said of the efforts.
Washington has pressed for allies to work in a united fashion throughout the crisis, crediting the tactic as essential in isolating Putin on economic and diplomatic fronts.
Alongside the United Kingdom, Germany, and other European powers, the U.S. has since committed billions in military assistance to Ukraine to fight off the Russian invasion.
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The response to the crisis could shift the administration’s thinking on America’s role in Europe, Grieco explained. “The argument that the United States leadership is a requirement, that we’re the indispensable nation and without us, the Europeans will not be able to organize themselves, I think has been shown wrong,” she said.
“This conflict has shown there is a place for hard power in Europe,” Grieco added. “The challenge here is how does Biden incentivize our allies.”
