NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Monday Turkey had finally approved Sweden’s entry into the alliance Photo: EFE/EPA/OLIVIER MATTHYS
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the western military alliance, holds its summit in 2023 with the Ukraine war as the basis of its talks, as in 2022, but with new developments due to the more than 500day conflict, a milestone has been reached last week.
The meeting will take place this Tuesday (11th) and Wednesday (12th) in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. Below are the key points to discuss:
End of the Turkish soap: green light for Sweden
This Monday (10th), the eve of the opening of the summit, Turkey ended months of soap opera and finally agreed to Sweden’s accession to NATO.
Last year, Sweden and Finland decided to abandon decades of military neutrality and applied to join the alliance after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Turkish President Recep Erdogan has taken a stand against the two Nordic countries’ membership, claiming that both host members of groups Ankara considers terrorists.
The country’s approval was necessary because new NATO members are only admitted if there is a unanimous decision by the existing member states. Helsinki and Stockholm made concessions to overcome Turkish resistance, and Finland eventually joined the alliance in April, but the Swedes still held back.
A positive sign came last week when a Swedish court sentenced a man with ties to a Kurdish organization that Ankara, the United States and the European Union consider terrorists to four and a half years in prison and subsequent deportation from the country.
Days earlier, however, the Turkish government had been annoyed by Sweden’s approval of a protest in which a copy of the Koran was burned in front of a mosque in Stockholm.
The Turkish President also made another lastminute demand. “Let’s make room for Turkey first [ingressar] in the European Union, then we make way for Sweden [na OTAN]”Just like we paved the way for Finland,” Erdogan said at a press conference on Monday.
“Turkey has been waiting at the gates of the European Union for over 50 years. […] “Almost all NATO member countries are European member countries,” he argued.
The Turkish blackmail has caused resentment among other members of the alliance. “Sweden meets all the requirements for NATO membership. the other question [entrada da Turquia na UE] It’s a topic that has nothing to do with it. And that’s why I don’t think it should be considered a related issue,” said Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
“We believe these are separate issues. “We have long supported Turkey’s aspirations to join the EU, but that is a separate issue from Sweden’s NATO membership,” US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said at his daily news briefing.
Everything indicated that the standoff would continue, but on Monday evening (Vilnius local time), the secretarygeneral of the military alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, said at a press conference that Erdogan had finally agreed to forward the proposal to the Turkish parliament to allow entry from Sweden.
This was announced by the Norwegian politician after a meeting with Erdogan and Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson. The last hurdle seems to have been overcome: the Hungarian government, which had also spoken out against Sweden’s accession, announced a change of position last week.
Ukraine’s entry is still a long way off
Ukraine’s case is even more complicated than Sweden’s. NATO states that any aggression against a member country is aggression against the entire alliance, which would require direct entry into the war against Russia if Ukrainians joined the organization and sent in troops, contrary to the current model, where NATO Kiev supports military equipment, intelligence, humanitarian and financial aid, but does not deploy troops.
Fearing the unpredictability of a direct confrontation with the world’s secondlargest military power, many NATO members are currently opposed to Ukraine’s accession.
“I don’t think there is a consensus within NATO on whether or not to include Ukraine in the NATO family now, in the middle of the war,” US President Joe Biden said in an interview with CNN.
“If this happens, for example, then you know and I repeat again we are determined to defend every inch of territory that is NATO territory. It’s a commitment we all make, no matter what. if a war [envolvendo um paísmembro] happens, so we’re all at war. If that’s the case, we’re at war with Russia
[entrada da Ucrânia]’ Biden reasoned.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will personally attend the NATO summit in Vilnius, and Stoltenberg said Monday the allies at the meeting in Lithuania would explore the possibility of reducing the country’s accession process from two phases to a single one. However, as long as the war with Russia continues, Kiev’s chances of joining remain slim.
Separately, security guarantees for postconflict Ukraine will be discussed in Vilnius that is, even if the country does not join NATO immediately afterwards, how would the alliance militarily and financially help Ukrainians prepare for NATO? Possibility of further Russian attacks.
More military spending
Another consequence of the war in Ukraine is that in the event of Russian aggression against members of the Alliance, NATO must present its first postCold War defense plans.
To achieve this, an agreement must be reached that all member countries should spend 2% of GDP on defense spending, a target set in 2014 and to be achieved within a decade. Now this minimum percentage would be mandatory. According to Portal information, only 11 of the 31 countries in the alliance reach this level.
Still, an arms race appears to be underway, fueled largely by the war in Ukraine and tensions in East Asia: military spending around the world has hit a new record in the annual survey by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), published in April.
Figures for 2022 suggest that global military spending rose 3.7% in real terms in 2022, reaching $2.24 trillion, the highest ever reported by the Sipri survey. (With EFE Agency)
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