Wednesday Briefing: NATO Summit Begins

The 75th anniversary of NATO was intended to remind potential adversaries of its members that a larger group of Western allies would stand against aggression.

Instead, the summit, which began yesterday in Washington, feels overshadowed by uncertainty. Will President Biden continue to vie for a second term, and what could happen if Donald Trump returns to the presidency?

Biden is hosting the three-day event while under intense scrutiny for signs that he can’t manage another four years. Democratic lawmakers met privately yesterday to discuss their concerns about Biden’s candidacy, but they appeared unwilling to push him aside.

When he was in office, Trump threatened to pull the U.S. out of NATO, and once declared the alliance “obsolete.” This year, he said he would let the Russians do “whatever the hell they want” to any member country he saw as an insufficient contributor. The U.S.’s European allies have begun discussing what a second Trump term might mean for the alliance, and whether it could continue to support Ukraine in its war against Russia without support from the U.S.

NATO’s new leader: Mark Rutte, who is set to take over as the alliance’s secretary general in October, is known as a pragmatist.