The NPR Politics Podcast - NATO Expansion To Move Ahead Despite Russia's War In Ukraine

Episode Date: June 29, 2022

The alliance is poised to admit Sweden and Finland after Turkey dropped its objections to their membership. The U.S. will bolster its military presence in Europe as Russia continues its war in Ukraine. And Biden's trip to Europe to meet with other world leaders has included a number of meetings on global inflation and the economy.This episode: White House correspondent Scott Detrow, White House correspondent Tamara Keith, and national political correspondent Mara Liasson.Support the show and unlock sponsor-free listening with a subscription to The NPR Politics Podcast Plus. Learn more at plus.npr.org/politics Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Lee from San Francisco. I just drove from DC to New York and went to a Wawa for the very first time where I had a hoagie. Good for you. This podcast was recorded at... He should be in radio. What a great set of pipes. It's a good radio voice. What percentage of podcasts that you host, Scott, have a Wawa or Sheets reference in the timestamp. Many. A substantial, a significant number. It is 1.38 Eastern on Wednesday, June 29th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but Buc-ee's will still be the best

highway pit stop of all time. Okay, here's the show. You know, that's debatable. I have nothing against it. It's magical. Did he say Buc-ee's? What did he say? Buc-ee's debatable. I have nothing against it. It's magical. Did he say Buc-ee's? What did he say? Buc-ee's, yes. It's like a mall-sized convenience store in Texas. Ooh. I guess I need to diversify my convenience store shopping.

Hello there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Scott Tetreault. I cover the White House. I'm Tamara Keith. I also cover the White House. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. Well, he's no Matt Damon, but President Biden is wrapping up a Euro trip. Tam, you are with the president in Madrid right now where a NATO summit is underway. That's just after a G7 meeting in Germany. And on NATO, this is one of the most important NATO summits in decades.

Yeah, I think that you can safely say that. This follows an emergency NATO summit earlier this year following the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. For the longest time, NATO was withering. You know, it was like difficult to harangue the members of NATO into contributing to their own defense or the collective defense. Well, hey, that's over with. And all of these countries are announcing increased force posture and even adding new members to the alliance. It is just a completely different conversation than was being had a year ago or two years ago or three years ago. But Mara, let's, I mean, we've talked about this before, but let's just underscore how much invading Ukraine has backfired for Vladimir Putin, because one of the reasons, many reasons, but one of them was he was trying to prevent NATO from,

you know, touching up on Russian borders. Now Finland is set to join NATO, and it'll do just that. Yeah, this is really interesting. Vladimir Putin's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine has given Europe a new purpose, and that includes NATO. He said one of the reasons he did it was because he didn't want Ukraine to join NATO, even though there was no prospects of that happening in the next couple of decades. He really, really didn't want them to join the EU, but he just didn't want to have the West right on his border. And that's what would have happened. So Ukraine wanted to be part of Europe, part of the West. And then two other countries, Sweden and Finland, Finland has an 800 mile border with Russia, said, whoa, if he can do that to Ukraine, he could do that to us.

And they decided to drop their decades-long posture of neutrality and apply for NATO membership, and they have been accepted. So this is something that Putin didn't want, but he caused to happen. So unintended consequences, the very definition of unintended consequences. President Biden was an enthusiastic backer of this expansion as soon as Sweden and Finland decided this is what they wanted to do. He brought their leaders to the White House to give a big endorsement. But, Tam, it was still not a done deal until the last minute because every other NATO nation has effective veto power over new members. Turkey was threatening to use that veto power. There were a lot of negotiations. And as we tape, Biden just finished meeting with Turkey's president.

What was going on there and how did that play out over the last few days? It has been fascinating because coming into this trip, the sense was that it wasn't going to happen during this NATO summit, that conversations would happen and, you know, the ball would be advanced a little bit at least. But the idea of Sweden and Finland being accepted into NATO this quickly, it just didn't seem that likely. And U.S. officials were projecting that it didn't seem that likely. The issue is that Turkey raised some concerns about Sweden and Finland around their approach to terrorism, and Turkey had some concerns that had to be worked out. So there have been these intensive

negotiations with Turkey and Sweden and Finland. One thing that we don't know if Erdogan got, but he was asking for, is he wanted Sweden and Finland to stop harboring Kurdish separatists. And he considers them terrorists. Right. We don't know if he got any commitments on that. Sweden and Finland made commitments to Turkey that satisfied Turkey's concerns about their harboring of people who Turkey perceives as terrorists. They put out statements and they got to a place that was good enough. Mara, the backdrop to all of this, though, was that Russia continues to slowly but steadily gain in this brutal war in eastern Ukraine. And in recent

days, as kind of a show of force ahead of and during this NATO meeting, Russia escalated its missile strikes into Kiev and other locations far from the front, which seems to be a clear signal that this is going to last a long time, no matter how much military support NATO is shoveling into Ukraine. That's right. But what's really interesting is there are a lot of people who think that Russia's strikes on that shopping mall, a civilian target, helped NATO come together quicker to accept Finland and Sweden. So yet another show of force by Russia that backfired. There's no doubt that as many people predicted from the beginning that the war in Ukraine would become a grinding process. Russia has more people, more armaments, and Ukraine put up a valiant fight, is putting up a valiant fight, kind of was an inspiration to the world, showed Europe what it means to be a European or to want to be one. And now I guess the question is, how fast can the United States, which is the biggest supplier of weapons to Ukraine, get them the ammunition and the weapons

they need to slow Russia down or even take back some of this territory that Russia is grabbing? And just to go back to the Sweden and Finland application really quickly, it's not a totally done deal. I mean, certainly all of these nations in NATO have agreed that, and the leaders have agreed that letting them in and expanding the alliance is a good idea. But actually, it requires the parliaments in all of those countries to sign off. So there's another step or 30 other steps. That's good clarification. And on that note, we're going to take a quick break. More in a second. We are back.

And, Tam, as massive as Russia's invasion of Ukraine is and as much as that hovered over these meetings, it's not the only big thing happening. Every other country is facing inflation. Many of the other leaders that Biden is meeting with because of inflation, because of a wide range of other things are facing a lot of political pressure back home. How did the economy, particularly inflation, come up this week? Well, certainly at the G7 meeting, which is a meeting that is focused on primarily economic issues, it came up. They had a session about it. We don't know exactly what came out of that. But, you know, it was interesting to me that the leaders did not, you know, publicly talk as much about inflation as I guess I might have expected. But there are two areas where they

did make some announcements in progress. One, they talked about food shortages and food prices being driven by those food shortages, in particular grain that is stuck in Ukraine with Russia preventing it from getting out. They didn't come up with a fix, but they definitely talked about it and they said that they are working on it. Well, there's been conversation about kind of creating new supply lines, rooting it through Western Ukraine over land, right? Did any of the details come up at least? And setting up silos, grain silos in Poland? No. Yeah. And just flagging, this is a huge and growing problem that we're going to be talking more about down the line because of the percentage of the world's grain that comes from Ukraine, and as you said, is stuck

there. And they are working intensely on this, but they did not have a big announcement of a solution. I have a question, Tam. There's been so much talk about the U.S. and Europe kind of losing their patience for the sacrifices they're going to have to make to keep these sanctions on Russia, the sacrifice in the form of higher prices. Do you think that Europe is losing its will to keep a tough approach to Russia because of the economic pain? Yeah, they did announce more

sanctions and tariffs coming out of the G7 meeting. So thus far, they haven't stopped moving forward on that. They also did come away with a plan to begin a process of discussing at the ministerial level. And so that's a lot of qualifiers there. But an oil price cap, it's not really clear how that would work. But the idea would be to try to both deprive Russia of its ability to continue to fund the war through oil sales while also somehow pushing down oil prices. Again, there are just a lot of details to be worked out on that. And Sam, I feel like it's often the case with big trips that are supposed to be about something else, that there's this split screen between what the president is doing overseas and what is happening in the U.S. And I think that was an extreme degree on this trip.

Roe v. Wade is overturned right before President Biden heads to Europe. And then world leaders. But, you know, it's kind of awkward to answer and he hasn't. There will be a press conference tomorrow where I'm sure the president would love to just be asked about how great it is that NATO has pushed back on Russia. But odds are that he's going to get questions about the Roe decision. He's going to get questions about the January 6th hearing. You know, as that hearing was going on yesterday, I was in the pool. So the small group of reporters that follows the president around and he was at this dinner in the Royal Palace in Madrid. And the press corps is sitting in a hold room off to the side watching this hearing. It is just an incredible split screen. And the president has tried and his staff have really

tried to just stay focused on what they're doing over here. And they insist that other leaders haven't been asking them about this, haven't asked the president about this. But I will say right before the G7, at least three of the G7 leaders other than President Biden, put out really strong statements condemning the Supreme Court decision and calling it, among other things, horrendous. You know, whether or not they mentioned it to him, there is tremendous anxiety in Europe about the future of American democracy and whether it's going to survive. And they're also worried about Donald Trump being the president again. There's no doubt about that.

They breathed a huge sigh of relief when he didn't win re-election. But, you know, American democracy is still kind of teetering on the edge and hanging by a thread, whatever metaphor you want. So there's no doubt that there's anxiety about this, whether or not they're bringing it up to Joe Biden personally. Yeah. Yeah. All right. That is it for today. We will be back in your feed tomorrow with some expected major Supreme Court decisions. And depending on what the president says, when Tam and other reporters ask some questions, maybe news from that press conference as well. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the White House.

I'm Tamara Keith. I also cover the White House. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.