NATO summit: time for transatlantic reunion
The American President and the Secretary General of NATO, June 14, 2021. AFP - STEPHANIE LECOCQ
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4 min
The meeting of heads of state and government of NATO countries begins this Monday, June 14 in Brussels, at the headquarters of the organization.
This summit will first of all be an opportunity to symbolize the transatlantic reunion with the presence of American President Joe Biden, after four difficult years against Donald Trump who had qualified the Atlantic alliance as obsolete.
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With our correspondent in Brussels
,
Pierre Benazet
After a Trump mandate that
had strained relations within NATO
, Joe Biden intends to show by his presence the strengthening of transatlantic relations.
An opportunity for the thirty allies to revitalize
NATO
?
For some it is even the opportunity to
"revive" NATO
after it was judged "
brain dead
" by Emmanuel Macron in 2019.
“
I want this to be clear.
NATO is of paramount importance for our interests.
If it did not exist, we would have to invent what it allows America to do in the world,
”said the American president, thus showing the totally different position from that adopted by his predecessor Donald Trump.
Fight against new threats
The allies will start by putting their new strategic concept on track.
The current one is more than ten years old and dates from a time when international terrorism and operations in Afghanistan were at the center of NATO's concerns.
The new strategic concept will therefore focus on the new challenges identified by Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.
He wishes in particular to insist on conflicts in cyberspace, also in space with, for example, anti-missile detection and defense.
Jens Stoltenberg also wants to come back to the charge on his proposal to increase the common funding of the alliance, an idea for the moment badly received by some allies, including France.
On budgetary issues, like all his predecessors, Joe Biden should also remind European allies of their not yet fully bound commitment to increase their own military spending to 2% of their GDP.
Joe Biden seeks support against Russia and China
And it must be remembered that NATO is first and foremost a military alliance and it is really the defense of their countries in the face of external threats that mobilizes all the allies today. And while the United States does not fully dictate the agenda, Joe Biden and Jens Stoltenberg have been very vocal in
describing Russia and China as the two major challenges for the Alliance
. “
There is a growing awareness over the past two years that we have new challenges. We have Russia which is not acting in the way we had hoped for. And also China,
”declared Joe Biden during his first meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.
These two subjects provoke points of dissension within the organization because even if the majority agree to qualify Russia as adversary of NATO, Turkey, by buying Russian missiles, puts the allies in door- wrong.
And as far as China is concerned, the American desire to see it identified by the thirty NATO countries as a “
challenge
” also meets a certain skepticism among certain allies.
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