The NATO Summit and President Biden's Europe Trip

CFR experts discuss President Joe Biden's trip to Europe this week and the NATO Summit in Vilnius, Lithuania.

CREBO-REDIKER: (In progress)—I think we have some excellent speakers here today, a lot of questions that I’m hoping we can delve into and also some questions we’ll leave it open for about half of this to be Q&A from the audience.

We have forty-five minutes, three speakers, and let me just do a quick introduction of our three speakers. The first is Liana Fix, who is the fellow for Europe at CFR. And we have Matthias Matthijs, a senior fellow for Europe at the Council on Foreign Relations. And then Steven Cook, who’s a senior fellow for Middle East and Africa studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

So just to—just to kick off, this is an on-the-record Zoom for today and really to cover an Earth-shattering summit that we just saw in Lithuania. Two new NATO members, Finland and Sweden. We saw, you know, pretty extraordinary events with Turkey’s Erdoğan flipping at the last minute. And literally, we saw the reshaping of Europe’s security map by putting the whole of Russia’s western access to the sea, with the two new members. We had new pledges of weapons for President Zelensky. We had a joint statement of offering to support Ukraine and an invitation, sort of, to join NATO at some point. So quite a lot happening in Vilnius.

But what I’d like to do is start by turning it over to Matthias really to give a screen setting. What’s at stake for Europe in what we just saw? And also, what’s at stake for the U.S.? What do the main players get out of this—of this most recent meeting, particularly in terms of transatlantic unity?

MATTHIJS: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Heidi. And great to join this call with Liana and Steve.

The main goal of President Biden to go to this summit, the NATO summit in Vilnius, was to maintain and strengthen transatlantic unity. And I think one can say at the end of this, as this summit is coming to a close right now, that he’s succeeded in this. There were clear downplaying of expectations when it came to Sweden’s membership, and I’ll let Steve talk about this, how this finally came together with President Erdoğan of Turkey letting go of his longstanding veto. And so that was one.

And, secondly, was the long-anticipated wording, the commitment, whether there was going to be any progress compared to the Bucharest meeting in 2008 that had said vaguely that Ukraine’s future was in NATO but without any real commitment, any MAP, any—how to get there and any timeline or anything like this. And, of course, that has been debated ad nauseam in the last few years whether that was to blame for—and that had emboldened Putin to invade Ukraine before it actually was a member of NATO.

So there were clear divisions on this on the Ukraine question this time, right. Most NATO member states wanted to go further than 2008. But then the question is how much further, right, and I think a lot of people have been hiding behind Germany, behind the U.S. I think there’s divisions within the German coalition on this. There’s divisions within the U.S. administration.

But it was clear that Poland, the Baltics, countries that are, you know, in a way, self-interested, they’re closer to Russia. They would prefer Ukraine in NATO so they’re even more protected and there’s even a bigger umbrella.

But there’s also—I mean, these are the countries that have been the most supportive of Ukraine during the war and feel the strongest about, well, they are fighting in many ways for our freedoms and our security as well. But in the end, I mean, it’s a compromise organization, right. You need unanimity on these things.

We’ve gone from thirty members to thirty-one, soon to be thirty-two once Sweden joins. And, I mean, was the wording disappointing from a Ukrainian point of view? Probably. The Poles and the Baltics wanted to go further, yes, but it was definitely not something that Germany and the U.S. administrations would have been comfortable with.

You see noises from the U.K. and France that said they would have liked to have seen the word invitation in the statement, for example. But I think, overall, you know, Stoltenberg can look back at a very successful summit and so can President Biden, right. I mean, they managed to keep Western unity. There’s even a hint that Turkey is now more fully or at least, you know, it’s moving towards the Western camp on the Ukraine question.

They avoided any major fallouts on this and I think, in the end, this was from a diplomatic point of view a successfully anticipated summit, which, you know, there could have been some real drama there and I think in the end they avoided this.

CREBO-REDIKER: So you said it was a clear win for NATO and for President Biden.

I’m interested, Liana, on your take. What does this actually mean for Ukraine? Why was President Zelensky disappointed? What does it actually mean to drop the MAP—the Membership Action Plan—and do we see any hint of language suggesting a quicker path to NATO for Ukraine than we might have seen previously? And I guess what is—what are the advantages and risks of the position that NATO adopted?

FIX: Thank you, Heidi. Yeah, I will make two points.

I mean, first, exactly, what does it mean for Ukraine’s NATO perspective and what else has Ukraine been offered beyond the NATO communiqué. I think that’s an important point that is a little bit—does not get the attention as the Ukraine-NATO perspective.

So what did Ukraine get out of that? The first is it was never about immediate NATO membership for Ukraine. It was always about the question what kind of language can be included which hints at the criteria and the timeline. And Central and Eastern Europeans, but also France and the U.K., have been quite clear that they want a language which includes a hint at a timeline, something like after the war, after the fighting, and the word invitation. It should be an invitation to Ukraine to join NATO after the war.

What did Ukraine get in the final communiqué? The language was that allies have to—it will become a NATO member when allies agree and conditions are met, which is a little bit of a circular statement because, obviously, the NATO alliance has to agree on such a step—it’s not something that needs repetition again—and also conditions are met. It is actually something that Ukraine hoped would not be repeated in the statement because NATO allies agreed that Ukraine does not need a NATO Membership Action Plan.

Why is a NATO Membership Action Plan important? It has been in the past the most important instrument of NATO to bring new members into the alliance, and it laid out a roadmap with conditions to be fulfilled from interoperability and democratic governance. And Finland and Sweden were the first countries that were able to drop this Membership Action Plan. They were so advanced that they could immediately join the alliance.

That’s exactly what Ukraine has hoped for, and it got it. So it does not need a Membership Action Plan, this long, drawn-out process, to become a NATO member in the future. But it also means dropping a hypothetical precondition for an outcome which is not yet agreed to because there’s not yet an agreement when exactly Ukraine will become a NATO member. So then the question mark of how much of a concession for Ukraine dropping the Membership Action Plan actually is.

And the last point, what did Ukraine get apart from this wording from NATO? We have a NATO Ukraine council. We have an assistance package for Ukraine from NATO. And all this suggests that, in comparison to the Bucharest 2008 summit, when it was said that Ukraine will become a member, the language might not have changed that much, but the context has changed.

This time it was not the United States that was pushing to accept Ukraine into NATO and European allies being against it, as it was the case in 2008. This time it was the United States being more reluctant on a concrete timeline and many European allies being in favor. So we see a change of the context of the discussion about Ukraine’s membership perspective, which is perhaps something like a Bucharest-plus, if one wants to call it that way.

What else got Ukraine out of—beyond the NATO membership language and NATO membership perspective? That is the G-7 commitment that will be announced today by the bilateral member states. And that’s actually even more important than the language on the NATO membership perspective, because the commitments of G-7 members are those commitments that Ukraine needs right now, long-term commitments for equipment, for intelligence, for training, and also for support of the defense-industrial base in Ukraine and closer cooperation between the defense-industrial bases in Europe and Ukraine.

So that is actually the heart of the matter, this G-7 communique and the bilateral commitment the G-7 members will make for Ukraine. That is what should deter Vladimir Putin in the future—at least that’s what is the hope—and less the NATO Membership Plan, which even if some say it will embolden Putin that he doesn’t see a clear change in the NATO membership language, but these G-7 statements actually was at the core of the outcome for Ukraine.

CREBO-REDIKER: So I want to bring Steven in here, because there was a great deal of drama in the run-up to this NATO summit. And it really—you know, there was Erdoğan, who was blocking Sweden for such a long time, and we didn’t know, you know, whether he would actually come through at the summit. Was this—you know, what was the drama for? And will—you know, was this all about F-16s in the first place? And so how would you characterize what we’ve seen happen with President Erdoğan and Turkey around this particular summit?

COOK: Many thanks for the question, Heidi.

I think to, you know, veteran Turkey watchers and people keenly observant of President Erdoğan, there was always going to be drama leading up to the summit. I think that this was part of his thinking going into it, that it would be important for him to demonstrate to the Turkish public that Turkey is important in NATO councils and can affect what happens within NATO.

It’s been a prime directive of President Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party to demonstrate that Turkey is an independent actor and, in fact, pursues an independent foreign policy. It’s not some mere strategic asset to NATO on its southeastern flank, and in particular wanted to show that Turkey is independent of the United States.

I think the wagering was, before the Quran burning, was that—in Sweden—was that Erdoğan would create this drama, this tension, ahead of the summit and then agree sometime during the summit. What was the surprise was that, in his phone call with President Biden ahead of the summit, he brought up Europe. It was a surprise to everybody, including President Biden, that he expected a clear statement from NATO members about Turkey’s membership in the European Union, something that has been, you know, in the deep freeze for many, many years. And I think it was—again, this was part of Erdoğan’s strategy to demonstrate how important Turkey is and how important Turkey is in NATO, and can actually manipulate NATO.

He did overplay his hand, however. And my understanding of what happened was immediately after that phone call American and European diplomats made it very clear to their Turkish counterparts, including to President Erdoğan, that he was at risk of further undermining already fraught relations with both the United States as well as NATO, and more broadly Europe. So that’s why we had this kind of sudden change. We had you know, within twenty-four hours the demand on Europe and then—and then a kind of congratulations, Sweden is in.

Part of this is F-16s for Turkey. But Sweden was necessary, but not sufficient for Turkey to get the OK from the U.S. Congress on F-16s. And my understanding is that there is going to be some conditions on these sales about how Turkey can use those F-16s, and if they are used to violate Greek airspace and the United States is unable to resolve that issue diplomatically the transfer of those planes will come to an end. And that’s something that is a direct result of congressional pressure on the administration, and at this point if President Erdoğan wants those F-16s Turkey’s going to have to accede to those conditions.

CREBO-REDIKER: Can I just draw you out a little bit more? Because there was a side drama, obviously, going on around the near confrontation between Greece and Turkey in the Aegean and what this is—what was also playing out in addition to Sweden. That would just be, I think, helpful to hear.

COOK: That’s exactly right. And that’s the major condition of the F-16 sale, is that what members of Congress—notably Senator Bob Menendez, who’s the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, but also a number of others had raised objections to the transfer of F-16s to Turkey because they might be used against Greece in the Aegean. I should note that since the February earthquake Turkey, which had been routinely violating Greek airspace in the Aegean, has refrained. There have been no overflights whatsoever. This has built a significant amount of goodwill after the Greeks offered very significant assistance to Turks after the—after the earthquake. Nevertheless, the issues in the Aegean have not been resolved.

And the concern coming from members of Congress was that the F-16s that the United States would be supplying would be used to destabilize the situation in the Aegean. And that’s why we’ll see in the coming days two things, I think, that are important: basically, a memorandum stating that the United States will expect Turkey not to use the F-16s in this way. If they do, the United States will try to resolve it; if they don’t, then those sales will come to a halt. There will also be an announcement of a very significant sale of weapons to the Greeks: more F-35s than the twenty that they were initially promised and a whole array of very significant weapons systems from the United States to the Greeks.

CREBO-REDIKER: So fascinating dynamics playing out—playing out around this summit.

I just want to go back to Matthias and ask a little bit more about what the backstory is on EU membership for Turkey and sort of why they—why President Erdoğan would bring it up, particularly on a phone call with President Biden, who doesn’t actually have a say here.

MATTHIJS: Yeah, that was incredibly cheeky of President Erdoğan to bring this up. I mean, the history of Turkey and the EU is a—is a long one, right? I mean, they first expressed interest in 1959. They applied to be a candidate in the still EEC I think it was in ’87, became a candidate in ’99, and started negotiating in 2005. And of course, many of those chapters to the negotiations have been stuck on things like freedom of the press, rule of law, independence of judiciary, the death penalty, I mean go on and on and on. And so it was always understood that this was going to be frozen as long as Erdoğan was going to be in power, and that he had no interest in, you know, like, making those changes. I mean, he’s, quite frankly, moved in the opposite direction, especially in the last ten, fifteen years, even though he was moving in the right direction in the very early time of—of his time in office.

I mean, he’s, obviously, using this as another front of leverage. I mean, I think it is on the one hand a clear opening to the West, right? I mean, the Azov fighters he released for Ukraine that Russia had asked him to keep is a clear siding with Ukraine. I mean, expressing interest in EU accession at a time when Finland and NATO are joining—sorry—Finland and Sweden are joining NATO, which now means that the overlapping between the EU and NATO has become much more coherent, right, with, of course, the exception of the U.K., that left the EU.

So, I mean, it’s not clear what he wants out of this, apart from—I mean, this is traditional Erdoğan negotiation tactics, right? I mean, everybody at the EU side who’s dealt with him on the refugee deals in 2015-2016 was kind of, like, raising their eyebrows. Like, where did—where did this come from? But I think for him, it’s an additional point of leverage and signaling point that, you know, like, he wants to be part of the West, as long as it suits him.

CREBO-REDIKER: So—go, please.

COOK: For me—if I could just jump in quickly?

CREBO-REDIKER: Yeah, of course.

COOK: I would just caution folks to reserve judgement on the clear shift to the West. Much of what Erdoğan did ahead of the—ahead of the summit was performative. It was tactical. Ahead of the summit was in trouble over Sweden to begin with. So there were a number of splashy things that he did before Vilnius, and now has accepted Sweden and is being congratulated for being the statesman that he is. But Erdoğan is always going to want to pursue an independent foreign policy.

There’s still an invitation out there, and Putin is supposed to be in Turkey in August. Let’s see what happens. There’s some aspects of the Putin-Erdoğan relationship that are beneficial. The grain deal, for example, which is supposed to expire on Monday. But nevertheless, I would not make the—I wouldn’t say definitively that the Turks are returning to us. And, as Matthias pointed out, there is a long list of things that Turkey needs to do just to get back to the point where they were in 2005 to begin negotiations again.

So this is in good news, that Sweden is in NATO. And Turkey reviving its efforts to get into the EU would also be a good thing. I’m not quite sure that President Erdoğan in his current incarnation of both him and his party are genuinely interested in that, other than for tactical reasons.

CREBO-REDIKER: So, Steven, thank you for bringing up Vladimir Putin’s name, since we had studiously—you know, it had not actually come up yet in this conversation. (Laughs.) One of the obvious major players in all of these dynamics. Just one thing before we open up to Q&A. Liana, you mentioned that—you know, or, we’ve all talked about disagreements in the alliance in the run-up to negotiating the language on Ukraine, including the last-minute withdrawal of language on setting up in Japan a NATO office. So this language changed quite a bit towards the end, before the final. What were some of the differences that played out between the member states in Europe, NATO member? And how do you see this playing out in the future, based on what we just saw?

FIX: Yeah, we had actually a very interesting dynamic at this NATO summit, which we never had before. We had a dynamic where suddenly France changed its position and joined the U.K. and the Central and Eastern Europeans in supporting a NATO perspective for Ukraine. And everyone who has followed French politics in the last years has to be surprised. The reason is that we see it is part of a greater outreach of President Macron towards the Central and Eastern Europeans, which has started with a speech that he has given at the GLOBESEC conference. And he has admitted in the speech that telling Central and Eastern Europeans to shut up, as Jacques Chirac has done it, was the wrong approach. And that Central and Eastern Europeans were right, and it is for France and for Western Europeans to listen more.

Why does he do that? Because Macron obviously realizes that power in Europe is shifting, and that Central and Eastern Europeans, because of the Ukraine war but also because of the membership of Sweden and Finland, because of a stronger weight of the Nordics in the European Union and NATO, have a greater voice. And he wants to make sure that he has followers in the European Union, and that he is not alone in his leadership capabilities. So that was interesting. And on the other hand, we’ve seen that Germany and the U.S. were basically siding on the other side, being more restrained on this perspective. Which is not surprising, because German foreign policy basically throughout this war has followed U.S. leadership.

So it was very much a U.S. leadership position on restraint, on a clearer NATO perspective for Ukraine, and Germany following Biden’s approach. Which has been the case in the past, but it does suggest that for the next NATO summit in Washington that we will see next year—and it will be an important summit, where we will see a lot of NATO members having to show their numbers, how much do they actually spend by now, have they reached the 2 percent, which is now the floor not the ceiling? That’s the new language on that. And we might see at this NATO summit in Washington, a new dynamic on Ukraine, a further shift, because it does seem that Germany and the U.S. are more isolated now than it has been in the past. And that there will be further push towards stronger language on Ukraine’s perspective. So entirely new dynamics within the NATO alliance, which we haven’t seen so far in the last years.

CREBO-REDIKER: So thank you for such a robust overview of all of these very complicated dynamics. I want to just remind anybody who has recently joined our call, we have Steven Cook, who is CFR’s senior fellow for Middle East and African Studies. We have Liana Fix, who’s a fellow for Europe. Matthias Matthijs, senior fellow for Europe at the Council. And this is on the record. We are going to open it up to questions from participants. And we look forward to continuing the conversation with you. Thank you, again, for joining us today.

Who do we have our first questions from? I’m looking for a raised hand, and I think I have Howard LaFranchi. If you could introduce yourself, and then very happy to have you on our call today. Thanks.

Q: OK, hi. yeah, this is Howard LaFranchi with Christian Science Monitor.

And I’m just wondering if you could go a little bit farther on, my understanding—and I was looking around—so we haven’t seen what the—any hints of what will be coming out of the G-7 meetings. But what we might expect in terms of security assurances. And, as you all know, leading up to this summit, the comparison was repeatedly made to Israel. And I’m wondering how you see these assurances matching up to what the U.S. offers Israel.

CREBO-REDIKER: So who would like—I think all three could tackle that pretty easily from different perspectives. But why don’t I go to Liana first.

FIX: Yeah. I think the Israel model and the discussions about the Israel model in the runup have always been a little bit flawed. And the administration has been careful not to push that narrative too much, because the differences are just so obvious. I mean, Israel is obviously a nuclear armed state. And what the G-7 is aiming for, and Ukraine’s partners are aiming for, is to have a multilayered, multilateral Israel model, if I want to call it that way.

So the G-7 is the umbrella which sort of commits all of G-7 members to extend some kind of long-term security commitments to Ukraine. But the G-7 members individually decide what kind of form these commitments will take. So most G-7 members will address weapon deliveries. So, for instance, the pledge both in money but also in long-term perspectives, saying that, for instance, within the next three years these kinds of amounts will go to Ukraine on training, on intelligence, and on cooperation between the defense industrial bases. So these are the four elements. And each individual G-7 member state will announce how sort of its commitment with Ukraine will look like specifically.

So it is a kind of G-7 multilayered, multilateral Israel agreement. But it does not have the same kind of sort of bilateral co-actor as between the United States and Israel. And it is a little bit more detailed and less clear than the ten-year memorandum between the U.S. and Israel, because it will come—the individual—that the details will come from the member states. So it’s a little bit more difficult to grasp, but in fact that is what it is supposed to be. The Israel agreement for Ukraine, but with more member states and with individual commitments by member states how they understand the long-term security commitment. And that’s supposed to deter Vladimir Putin in the long term to start the fight again.

CREBO-REDIKER: So please use the raise hand function to ask any more questions. And then I’ll ask Matthias and Steven to jump in on the Israel comparison question as well. Matthias.

MATTHIJS: Yeah. On the G-7, Heidi, perhaps you know this best than all of us. I mean, I’m not aware of the G-7 ever extending security guarantees to another country. I mean, let’s not forget this was supposed to be an econ and finance, not a security, organization. Let’s also not forget at some point it was the G-8, which included Russia, that then was, you know, slowly gotten rid of 2008 and definitely since 2014.

So I think it’s—there’s a huge symbolic value. It’s supposed to get beyond the election cycles. And, yeah, I think Liana is right. There’s nothing that could stop a potential president from ’24 to do away with any of this.

I think we should see this as a complement to the NATO summit and the commitments that were made to future membership even though no date and no formal invitation. But, I mean, yeah, it you take the statement of the G-7 at face value this should get Ukraine—this should make it easier for Ukraine to become a NATO member in the future even though, of course, it falls short of what Ukraine might have wanted.

COOK: Let me just clarify what the United States provides to Israel. There is nothing that says that the United States will come to the defense of Israel. What historically the United States has done has helped ensure Israeli security through the copious amounts of weapons transfers, political and diplomatic support in international fora.

It wasn’t actually until 2008 that the qualitative military edge was even codified in the Naval Transfers Act. So what—and the military-to-military relationship has really turned into a cooperative defense tech relationship as well.

So I see significant, significant differences between what the United States and Israel have done over fifty years versus what either the Ukrainians with the G-7 are thinking about in terms of, quote/unquote, “security guarantees” for the Ukrainians.

In fact, the Israelis, after the early years of seeking security guarantees from the United States, decided that they didn’t want them. They didn’t want to be—their maneuverability, their freedom of action in the region, to be constrained by the United States.

So we have a number of memorandums of understanding about how many billions of dollars a year the United States is going to contribute in terms of weapons and defense cooperation. But there’s nothing that says the United States will be the cavalry if the Israelis get into trouble.

CREBO-REDIKER: That’s a great backdrop just to understand what the—you know, what the comparison is and isn’t, what’s relevant and what’s not.

I would—I’m just going to remind everyone raise your hand if you have a question. We’d love to have your questions come in.

But I guess I’d like to actually ask the Putin question. What does this mean? What does this mean from Erdoğan’s—you know, he’s played both sides against one another. The enlargement of NATO—Putin has been saying that the war is actually against NATO, not Ukraine, and I guess strategically for Europe, moving forward, since the land war is in Europe what—how would you characterize what this summit meant for Putin?

FIX: I can try and give it a start.

Because, I mean, there are basically two interpretations out there. I mean, the first interpretation is that the summit and the outcome of the summit, especially on the Ukraine question, might embolden Putin to continue the fight because Ukraine, with this summit declaration, it remains in the gray zone. It remains on the path towards EU membership but not yet clearly on the path and concretely on the path towards NATO membership.

The other interpretation is that giving Ukraine a clear NATO perspective after the fighting ends would have emboldened Putin to never stop fighting and would have given him the reason to refuse any negotiation offers, to not come into any talks because he would be afraid that if he does so Ukraine will become a NATO member the next day.

And I think it’s difficult. I mean, we can’t—and we don’t really know what the thinking is in Vladimir Putin’s head. But I think both of these arguments have their value and have to be taken seriously overall in the whole package together with Sweden and Finland. It is, obviously, countering all the goals that Vladimir Putin had with this war from the beginning.

CREBO-REDIKER: Matthias?

MATTHIJS: Yeah. I mean, I think the main takeaway for Putin is that, again, a lot of countries want to join NATO and not that many want to join his Eurasian Union, or whatever it’s called these days. Sweden joining adds a serious military player with a border, I mean, very, very close to Russia that makes that side of the alliance even more capable.

I mean, yeah, if you wanted to be optimistic from the Russian point of view, you could say NATO is somewhat divided. I mean, yeah, but it’s mostly about speed and not about direction. And there’s, I think, understandable caution on the part of the NATO members not to be drawn into this war.

And, yeah, I mean, it does look like Ukraine is lost, right, for any sort of future Russian security arrangement. I mean, I don’t think he can get around it. I mean, maybe the hope is that this conflict, whatever the line of contact is, will stay where it is, and then at some point there will be a peace settlement around it and that these, Crimea plus the four provinces, at least the biggest part of it, is going to be on Russia’s side. But it’s clear that this has given the Ukrainians everything to fight for and, I mean, with all the support they will need to be successful.

So I don’t think there’s any bright points. I mean, I know Russian propaganda is trying to spin this as bad for Ukraine, this summit, because they didn’t get everything they wanted. But again, I find it hard to believe, even though I think Liana is right that the two perspectives on this are valid, right. It’s not black or white.

COOK: Let me just add—

CREBO-REDIKER: The big question—

COOK: Oh, I’m sorry.

CREBO-REDIKER: Sorry. I was going to ask, Steven, the big question is this relationship between Vladimir Putin and Erdoğan. Where does this go from here?

COOK: Yeah. In the Turkey-watching world, there’s a lot of conjecture about what’s going to happen with the grain deal and what’s going to happen on the relationship and how Putin is going to seek to retaliate against Erdoğan.

I should point out that Russia and Turkey are on opposite ends of a number of significant conflicts—Libya, Syria, Nagorno-Karabakh—yet Putin and Erdoğan have been able to compartmentalize those differences and work on a variety of issues together—economic issues, cooperation, a grain deal, those kinds of—even discussed the expansion of security cooperation between Russia and Turkey at one point.

The—it strikes me that Putin, you know, has sent signals that he’s not going to renew the grain deal. He’s done that before. Erdoğan has responded by saying that the Turkish navy will escort ships out of the Black Sea. I think in the end—I’m not a Putin watcher, but I think in the end they’re going to work it out. After all, Putin does not want to damage the one place where he does have a significant amount of support, and that’s in the Global South, Africa. I mean, the Egyptians are dependent upon and the Egyptians are determined to maintain good relations with the—with the Russians, and now things about the Ukrainians.

So I suspect that will get done in some way, shape, or form. And if I’m right and the kind of way in which Erdoğan has approached the Vilnius summit in this kind of performative way, charm offensive, it will go back to this 360 independent foreign policy, and that means working with Putin.

I think the Turks are also putting themselves out—I think they have a good case to make—that if this were something that were going to come down to negotiation, that Turkey would have to play a role. The Russians don’t want to talk to the French. They’ll talk to the Germans, but that’s about it. But Turkey and Erdoğan are the ones they’ve had the most contact with.

And I’ll point out that the now chief of Turkish national intelligence was in Washington a number of months ago when he was still an adviser to President Erdoğan in which he talked quite openly about the need for a negotiated end to the conflict—otherwise it will go on as a frozen conflict for years and years—and that Turkey was appropriately positioned to play the role of mediator and facilitator of talks.

So I don’t think that Erdoğan is going to give that up just because, you know, the winds are blowing in a certain direction. Like I said before, compartmentalization and an independent foreign policy are what we’ll expect from Erdoğan with regard to Russia and Putin.

FIX: And just to underline what Steven had said, I think there’s no way that European countries at this point can come and enter a mediating role. I mean, this has really changed compared to 2014, where Germany and France had the leadership role. We had some signs from France at the beginning of the war that Macron wanted to play a mediating role, but even that has changed. Macron has changed his position on that. He has not—this has not come up in the last month again. And both France and Germany are, obviously, perceived as being too much into the European, too much into the Western camp to be a reliable mediator. And at the same time, the allies—Central and Eastern Europeans—would not accept France and Germany to take on this role. So there’s literally no one in Europe left apart from Turkey that can assume this role when France and Germany weren’t up to it again.

CREBO-REDIKER: So I’d like to first remind everybody please, you know, feel free to raise your hand in the “raise hand” function if you have any questions. I would like to bring this just a step back to what I found fascinating, which was the Japan—the Japan NATO office was dropped at the last minute, because there is this backdrop that is—that is how the security agreements in the Indo-Pacific are going to—are going to mesh with security agreements in NATO. And there’s a lot of—there’s a lot of discord between European members of NATO about what role Asia should really play and how large the footprint—the geographic footprint NATO should actually take part in. So Japan has been—you know, Kishida’s been very forward-leaning in going to Kyiv when Xi Jinping was in Moscow, and going and making—you know, making statements, Taiwan—when Lithuania was penalized for its comments on Taiwan. So there is this nexus between Asia and Europe that has a strong security link. Where were the divergences in Europe on having—on having this office—this representational office in Japan? Liana, I’m looking at you because I think that’s where the French—the French dynamic played a big role here.

FIX: I can start and then Matthias, I’m sure, has—can jump in on that.

I mean, it was France. It was clearly President Macron who has said that he does not agree to a NATO office in Tokyo, surprisingly because it didn’t seem to be from a U.S. perspective something which is—perspective something which is controversial. I mean, it’s not the first time that there is a NATO office outside of Europe. There was also a NATO office in Central Asia. But the French concern comes from the fact that for the first time since the beginning of the war China has actually reacted to NATO in a way which it has not reacted in the past. So it is taking up Russia’s language on NATO. It is taking up this language that NATO is an instrument of the West and of the United States to expand its hegemony in the world, and so on. So from the Chinese perspective NATO has been placed firmly into a competitive relationship and a confrontational relationship with the United States. And that’s where French thinking came from: Well, this is one step too much because we would alienate China placing sort of directly a NATO office in Tokyo.

But together with Macron’s remarks when he was on his way back from Beijing, which he later backtracked and tried to explain when he said that basically it’s in Europe’s interest to stay neutral in a conflict between Taiwan and China and the United States and China, this doesn’t look good. I mean, it does look from a U.S. perspective, at least, as if Europeans are willing to have the United States at their side in Europe but are not willing to be at the side of the United States in the Indo-Pacific regardless of some of the progress that has been made in the Indo-Pacific strategies of Europeans. So it is—it, unfortunately, adds to this perspective here in Washington.

CREBO-REDIKER: Matthias?

MATTHIJS: Yeah. As much as there’s agreement within the European Union or the European side of NATO on how to deal with Russia, there isn’t when it comes to China, right? There’s at least four or five different opinions. I mean, there’s been a clear shift on the EU side from, you know, living in a kind of rules-based world and wanting everybody else to follow those rules towards developing more sort of U.S.-style tools on how to deal with coercion from China and all—I mean, all the things that the EU Commission has created from investment screening to export controls, all the things they’re talking about, and procurement directives, and so on. Clearly, a lot of this is aimed at China.

That said, on the national level it’s one thing to cut yourself off from Russia when it comes to oil and gas. It’s quite another thing to cut yourself off from Chinese markets, right? And so there is very much a desire among certain European leaders, especially Macron but also Scholz, to not needlessly alienate the Chinese. Earlier we were talking about how Turkey was one of the first last countries that could be playing a mediating role. I mean, some people still believe China could play that role. At least could have some influence over Russia. Maybe not be seen as a neutral arbiter in these things. But, you know, there were clear hints that the nuclear threat had waned because of China warning Russia not to go that route, and things like that. So there is a kind of balancing there.

And Liana is right. I mean, this was clearly Macron who didn’t want this office in Japan, even though I think they’re quietly encouraging Japan’s efforts to support Ukraine within the G-7. But that’s—I think the China—how to deal with China for Europe is a much tougher nut to crack than it is on how to deal with Russia. Especially as long as there’s no clear provocation, right, to Europe’s interests.

CREBO-REDIKER: So I think that is going to wrap it up for this CFR webinar. Again, this was on the record. I want to thank Steven Cook, Matthias Matthijs, and Liana Fix—three of our top CFR fellows on these topics today. Thank you all for joining. And we look forward to seeing you again on Zoom.

COOK: Thank you.

MATTHIJS: Bye. Thank you.

FIX: Thank you, Heidi.

CREBO-REDIKER: Take care.

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