U.S. President Joe Biden waves from Air Force One as he leaves Washington for Dover, Delaware at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, July 7, 2023.
Kevin Wurm | Reuters
President Joe Biden leaves for Europe on Sunday, where he’ll spend time in three countries pursuing alliances which were tested by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
After arriving in London overnight, Biden will meet King Charles III the subsequent day for the primary time since his coronation. The following stop on the tour is the NATO Summit in Vilnius, Lithuania. Allied leaders will debate the war and revise plans to take care of Russian aggression.
The ultimate stop is in Helsinki, where Biden is due to have a good time the expansion of the alliance on Thursday, with Finland as NATO’s newest member.
His national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said the trip would “show the president’s leadership on the world stage.”
A take a look at Biden’s agenda and the problems he’ll face:
London
Biden arrives in London on Sunday night and is expected to have a full schedule of meetings on Monday.
“There’s all the time loads to seek advice from the UK,” said Max Bergmann, a former State Department official who heads the European Program on the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Biden will hold talks with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at Downing St. 10. Sunak faces elections by the tip of next 12 months. His Conservative Party is well behind the opposition within the polls.
Despite Sunak’s shaky political position, he fosters close ties with Biden, and this might be their sixth meeting since Sunak took office last October.
Bergmann said Sunak’s tenure was a pleasing change of pace after “there have been some concerns that Boris Johnson,” certainly one of Sunak’s predecessors, “is a loose cannon.”
Biden will visit the king at Windsor Castle, a royal residence near London. Biden was not present at Charles’s coronation – first lady Jill Biden went in his place – so this might be their first meeting since.
They’re expected to discuss climate change, a problem each leaders have focused on, and how to fund initiatives to tackle the issue.
Vilnius
Biden will spend two days within the Lithuanian capital, which hosts the annual NATO summit. He’ll attend meetings with leaders and give a speech from Vilnius University.
The alliance has been reinvigorated by the war in Ukraine, and its members are sending military equipment to the country to help repel the Russian invasion.
Biden on Friday defended what he said was a “difficult decision” to supply Ukraine with cluster munitions, which his administration said was key to the fight and backed by Ukraine’s promise to use controversial bombs rigorously. Biden will likely face questions from allies as to why the US is sending weapons to Ukraine which were banned by greater than two-thirds of NATO members because they’ve been answerable for many civilian casualties.
According to Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, the summit “will send a transparent message: NATO is united and Russian aggression won’t repay.”
But NATO has also struggled to overcome divisions on essential issues. Finland was admitted to the alliance that 12 months, but Sweden’s membership was withheld by Turkey and Hungary.
There is also no consensus on how quickly Ukraine ought to be invited to NATO.
Countries on NATO’s eastern flank want to act quickly, seeing it as a way to stop Russian aggression. The US and other countries advocate a more cautious approach.
One issue has already been settled, not less than for now. Stoltenberg’s term was prolonged for a 12 months as members couldn’t agree on a latest leader.
Senator Thom Tillis, who will attend the summit, likened the alliance to a gathering of dozens of relations who quarrel and clash but nevertheless remain united.
“Ultimately, you recognize you are family,” said Tillis, RN.C.
Tillis leads a bipartisan delegation together with Senator Jeanne Shaheen, DN.H., who said NATO is more powerful than before.
“This is the strongest military alliance in our history and I believe it only got stronger due to US leadership, due to Stoltenberg’s leadership and in consequence of Vladimir Putin’s threat to all NATO and other allies in Europe and the world and international order,” she said.
Helsinki
After two nights in Vilnius, Biden visits Helsinki. A stop is a little bit of a victory lap, but it might probably even be a reminder of unfinished business.
The Nordic country became NATO’s thirty first member in April, ending its history of non-alignment and demonstrating how the Russian invasion of Ukraine backfired in Europe.
Finland was due to join together with its neighbor Sweden, whose admission has stalled due to Turkey and Hungary. NATO requires the unanimous consent of all its members for enlargement.
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson visited the White House on Wednesday and met with Biden to sustain the pressure for membership. Nevertheless, there is no hope that the case might be resolved in Vilnius.
The White House bills Biden’s visit to Helsinki as “a summit of US-Nordic leaders.”
This is a very different occasion than the last US president’s visit to Helsinki five years ago.
During this trip, Donald Trump held a press conference with Putin and allayed concerns about Russian interference in Trump’s election victory.
Now, Biden is heading to the town to reveal how his administration has kept the road of defense against Moscow and expanded Western defences.