NATO’s response to Ukraine’s request for membership will be the most politically significant decision that the leaders take at the summit that begins tomorrow in Vilnius, but it will not be the only initiative that defines the present and future of the 31 countries that make up part of the military organization.
For the first time since the end of the cold war, the Atlantic Alliance will renew its regional defense plans to reinforce its deterrence and defense position against Russia, which will depend on the three allied headquarters in Norfolk (United States), Brunssum (Netherlands ) and Naples (Italy), responsible for the three major geographical areas of the Alliance.
These plans, thousands of pages of confidential military information, will define the new force structure and adapt the Allied command and control mechanisms, specifying, for example, which country is responsible for defending which part of Allied territory and defining a reinforced plan for joint maneuvers.
“There will be a plan for the North, the Atlantic and the European Arctic; another for the center, which will cover the Baltic region and Central Europe; and a plan for the south, for the Mediterranean and the Black Sea,” Allied Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg explained on Friday in Brussels before traveling to Lithuania. The goal is to be ready to respond to the “two greatest enemies of the Alliance, Russia and terrorism.”
The Vilnius summit will therefore be the moment to put into practice the decisions adopted a year ago in Madrid, where a new Strategic Concept was agreed upon and it was decided to increase high-availability troops from 40,000 to 300,000 and reinforce the eastern flank through the dispatch of new air and naval forces. “After Vilnius, the real work begins”, because once the plans are agreed “it is about having the capacity to execute them” and that “will take a considerable number of years”, explained the president of the Military Committee at a recent press conference. of NATO, Admiral Rob Bauer.
Currently, Spain is participating in allied missions in Turkey (since 2015 it has maintained a Patriot Unit near the border with Syria), Latvia (as part of the Reinforced Advanced Presence) and Estonia, where between August and December it will participate in air police in the Baltic. At the Vilnius summit, it is probable that it will be agreed that “Spain is somewhere else”, allied sources say, probably to defend allied territory further south.
Carrying out all these plans will require investment and the Allied leaders are expected to update in Vilnius the defense spending target agreed in Wales in 2014 so that the investment of 2% of GDP in defense is a minimum, a floor, not a ceiling. Although the figures have skyrocketed in recent years, especially among Eastern countries; in 2022 only seven of the 30 allies reached that level. In the last twelve months, spending has increased by 8.3%, a record, and the forecast is that this year eleven will reach the target
Unlike other issues, which arrive open to the summit, according to allied sources there is already a “political agreement” on the objective of allocating “at least 2% of GDP” to defense spending. Spain has gone from investing 1% to 1.26% of GDP in one year but it continues to be the third from the bottom that spends the least. However, the Government agrees with the commitment since it specifies that it must be assigned to capacities and recognizes the contribution to operations.
The main issue on which the allied delegations are still negotiating is the diplomatic language with which they will respond to Ukraine’s request for membership. The objective is to move forward with respect to what was agreed in 2008 at the Bucharest summit, when it was agreed that Ukraine would one day be a NATO partner but without putting anything on the table that would make its entry automatic before the end of the war , which would drag the Alliance into the conflict, or complicate hypothetical peace negotiations with Russia.
While Poland, the Baltic countries, Romania, Slovakia and Bulgaria are betting on a response that is as concrete as possible that does not leave ‘grey areas’ on the European map, others prefer to focus immediately, on helping Ukraine as much as possible in the military field. now, so that it can come out of this war as a sovereign and independent country. The United States and Germany in particular are cautious, but willing to expedite Ukraine’s path to NATO through a simplified procedure.
There is an important loose end since the Madrid summit and it is Sweden’s entry into NATO. While Turkey lifted its reservations to Finland’s accession this spring, it continues to hold back the other Nordic country. In compliance with the agreement reached in Madrid, the Swedish Government has reformed its Constitution and toughened its legislation on terrorism to respond to Ankara’s “security concerns”, but the Turkish Government demands more agility with extraditions and holds the authorities responsible for the recent Quran burnings in the country, permitted by the police as part of freedom of expression. Stoltenberg has summoned the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the Swedish prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, in Vilnius today to try to unlock the dossier. The signs that come after the marathon of meetings in recent weeks are positive, but it is not clear that Erdogan is going to be satisfied. Also Hungary still does not approve the entry of Sweden for reasons of internal politics, but it is thought that it will do so as soon as Turkey gives it the green light.
NATO has turned the Lithuanian capital, located less than 40 kilometers from Belarus, into a true fortress to welcome 40 heads of state and government with full security guarantees (apart from the 30 allied leaders there will be those of Ukraine, Sweden, Australia, Japan and other countries of the Indo-Pacific area). There are a thousand Allied soldiers guarding Vilnius by air and ground, by planes and helicopter gunships sent from Denmark and Finland; anti-drone teams and self-propelled howitzers sent by France and, finally, an impressive display of anti-missile batteries, from Patriots arrived from Germany to Spanish Nasams transferred from Latvia. “It would be beyond irresponsible to have our skies unprotected when Joe Biden and the leaders of 40 countries come,” said Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda, who hopes the summit will urgently put in place a permanent air police system in the Baltic.
