This is an audio transcript of the Rachman Review podcast episode: ‘Nato’s moment of truth’
Gideon Rachman
Hello, and welcome to The Rachman Review. I’m Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs commentator of the Financial Times.
This week’s podcast is about the future of Nato. My guest is Oana Lungescu, who was the spokesperson for Nato for more than a decade from 2010 to 2023 and is now a distinguished fellow at the Royal United Services Institute here in London. Later this month, on June 24th and 25th, the Nato alliance will hold one of the most important summits in its history. Just this week, Mark Rutter, the Nato secretary-general, said that Russia could be ready to attack a Nato nation within five years. But President Donald Trump has raised questions about America’s continued commitment to the alliance. So can Nato keep it together at a time of peril?
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Mark Rutter voice clip
The fact is, we need a quantum leap in our collective defence. The fact is, we must have more forces and capabilities to implement our defence plans in full.
Gideon Rachman
That was Mark Rutter, the Nato secretary-general, speaking in London earlier this week. It was one of a series of increasingly urgent statements that the head of Nato has been making. At the end of 2024, he urged alliance members to switch to a wartime mindset.
Mark Rutter voice clip
Danger is moving towards us at full speed. We must not look the other way. We must face it.
Gideon Rachman
If, as expected, Nato members commit to spending 5 per cent of GDP on defence at this month’s summit in The Hague, that’ll involve a huge increase in defence spending across Europe. But is it really necessary? That was the question I put to Oana Lungescu.
Oana Lungescu
I think it’s long overdue, actually, Gideon. You may remember that over 10 years ago, in 2014, when Nato leaders met in Wales just after Russia had illegally annexed Crimea, they agreed on a 2 per cent of GDP on defence target. And by now, 23 out of 32 allies meet that target, but there are still some that haven’t actually even reached that. However, over this last decade, things have got worse when it comes to the threat landscape. Russia is now in the fourth year of its brutal war in Ukraine, the full-scale invasion. China is militarising at breakneck speed, and you have this alignment of autocracies with China, North Korea, and Iran, all supporting Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. So, I think it’s really important that when they meet in The Hague later this month, leaders agree on 5 per cent of GDP on defence.
Gideon Rachman
But is it really realistic? Because, as you say, I mean, some haven’t even reached the 2 per cent target yet. And Britain, which has just produced a big defence review and is regarded as one of the more serious players in European defence, said, well, we will go to two and a half per cent and we’re aiming for three, but they don’t really give a date. It’s just a huge leap to 5 per cent when you have so many other pressures on public spending and the debt is very high. Do you really think they’ll do it?
Oana Lungescu
I think they will certainly say they will do it, and then, of course, there will be lots of questions about how long it will take them to get there. But obviously, these are hard choices for all heads of state and government, for all societies. Yet what Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte and his predecessor Jens Stoltenberg before have made clear is that our prosperity, our way of life, depends on our security. We see what happens when you’re at war. You just need to look at Ukraine to see that all the money invested on welfare, on hospitals, on schools, on kindergartens, on the economy can literally go up in flames overnight if you’re in war. So I think leaders have to make that difficult argument to their publics that prosperity, our way of life, really depends on our security and a stronger defence. And I think that’s what Mark Rutte is doing right now ahead of the summit.
Gideon Rachman
Yeah, I mean, the speech in Chatham House was pretty strong and people in Nato talk about the possibility of Russia attacking a Nato nation within five years. What do you say to those who say, come on, you’re overstating it, Russia wouldn’t take that risk. And even if they did, Russia’s been fighting, as you say, for four years in Ukraine and they haven’t even taken Kharkiv. So why should we be so scared?
Oana Lungescu
Actually, Russia already sees itself as being at war with the west. You just need to listen to what President Putin and former president Medvedev and the people around them are saying.
News clip
For his State of the Nation address, President Putin returned to a well-worn theme, the villainy of the west and his supposed inability to do anything other than invade Ukraine.
[VLADIMIR PUTIN VOICE CLIP]
Oana Lungescu
They see this not just as a war against Ukraine, but a war to divide the west and to divide Europeans amongst themselves and to divided Europeans from the United States. And it’s a war to actually help reshape the world order together with China, Iran, North Korea. So, the stakes go beyond Ukraine, even though, of course, Ukraine in itself is very important.
And what we have seen over the last couple of years is this unprecedented campaign of sabotage, destabilisation, attacks on our critical infrastructure, assassination attempts and assassinations on European soil. And Britain, of course, has also seen cyber attacks on the NHS, obviously the Skripal attacks and others. So there is a lot going on beyond what Nato would call the Article 5 threshold, a full-scale military attack on a Nato ally. But there is really growing consensus among military and intelligence chiefs that Russia is reconstituting its capabilities and could attack a Nato country within three to five years. So in a way, Mark Rutte was perhaps a bit at the optimistic end of the scale when it comes to these assessments.
Gideon Rachman
OK, so we talked about intentions and touched on capabilities, but I guess the two things do need to be separated. If we accept, for the sake of argument, that you’re right, that Russia does see itself as at war with the west. Why do we think they have the capabilities to take on the Nato alliance or to even think about it?
Oana Lungescu
They don’t need to do that much, in a way, because looking at how they operated in Ukraine, it started with the so-called little green men, the soldiers without insignia on their uniforms in Crimea, and with so-called ethnic Russians militating for a separate Donbas in the east of Ukraine. Those were actually covert actions to start with, rather than a full-on military attack.
So that’s why what we’re seeing now, this pattern of sabotage and destabilisation across Europe in many different ways, from arson to assassinations and attacks on infrastructure, are part of the Russian way of war, which is a continuum of different types of actions. So you could imagine Russia claiming that it’s coming to the support of, say, ethnic Russians in one of the Baltic countries who they would claim don’t have their full rights, their full language rights, for instance. Or that there’s some search and rescue operation that they need to be part of after an accident not far from Russia’s borders. So, there’s a whole range of things that can’t be imagined. Short of a full-scale invasion, tanks rolling in. It’s much easier to destabilise a country without an overt attack.
And that’s where, of course, Nato would find itself in a bind because it would need to decide very fast what it needs to do. Whereas deterrence is much cheaper and more effective if you can already show your adversary or potential adversary that you have the military presence, you have the military capabilities, you have the situational awareness, and you have the will to prevent any such attack or attempted attack.
Gideon Rachman
So what is this 5 per cent made up of if it’s not just been plucked out of the air by President Trump?
Oana Lungescu
The 5 per cent of GDP target that I’m pretty sure will be decided at The Hague summit later this month actually comes in two bits. So on the one hand, you have 3.5 per cent of the GDP on hardcore military capabilities, including millions of artillery shells, thousands more tanks, tens of thousands more troops, 400 per cent more air and missile defence capabilities. But there’s also a second bit, which is 1.5 per cent of GDP on so-called defence-related expenditure, and that would be stronger cyber defences, but also stronger infrastructure, better roads, airports, ports, tunnels, bridges, to enable a fast reinforcement, for instance, from the west of Europe to the east in case that were needed.
So there’s a lot more that needs to be done, and it’s a whole spectrum of capabilities. Let me also say that this figure of 5 per cent, even though of course it happens to be the figure that President Donald Trump has been mentioning for the last year or so in terms of what he wants Nato allies to invest in defence. This 5 per cent figure isn’t just pulled out of thin air. It’s based on a whole process which started with the development of Nato’s new defence plans, which are the most detailed since the cold war. And based on those defence plans, military planners and commanders and defence planners at Nato HQ looked at the capabilities and the forces in terms of numbers and readiness that would be needed to implement those plans. And they’ve looked at the gaps that are there. And based on that analysis, they have developed the capability requirements for each Nato ally so that they know what they have to provide so that Nato as a whole, as an alliance, has what it takes to defend itself. So it’s a whole process and that’s how they got to 5 per cent.
Gideon Rachman
But could you just spell it out for us, why do we think that the whole of Nato, all these countries, richer than Russia, would not be able to defeat Russia fairly easily? I think Rutter argues that in fact Russia has a lot of capabilities that Nato doesn’t have, you know, in terms of troops, weapons. What are these gaps?
Oana Lungescu
One of the things that Russia has, of course, is a top-down system, an autocratic system, basically deciding that Russia is at war and therefore Russia has a war economy. So it’s been able to speed up the production of military equipment much faster than we have been able to do in our democracies. So I’m just looking at what Mark Rutte said in his speech, and I think the figures are quite telling, saying in terms of ammunition, Russia produces in three months what the whole of Nato produces in a year. And it’s expected to roll out 1,500 tanks, 3,000 armoured vehicles and 200 Iskander missiles this year alone. This is on a scale that Nato allies, despite the fact that they are 25 times bigger in terms of their economy than Russia, just haven’t been able to master, which is why the Nato summit will be about money, but it’s also going to be about weapons. We need to be able to strengthen our defence industrial base, to bolster our production and to speed up what we are producing together so that we can have everything we need to fill the capability gaps that are there.
Gideon Rachman
Is it also about manpower, because although the Russia-Ukraine war has been fought a lot by drones, the casualty rates are very, very high, and Russia seems to be able to mobilise an army of, you know, a million-plus, whereas if you look at the British army, it’s down to, what, 73,000 people?
Oana Lungescu
Some of it is also about manpower, as you said. So, for instance, the German defence minister said after the recent meeting of Nato counterparts that Germany had been asked to add 50 to 60,000 troops to its armed forces. So we’re talking about large numbers of brigades, manoeuvrable large land formations because we have over the last 20 years or so focused more on expeditionary operations such as Afghanistan and Iraq, rather than territorial defence of our own countries. So there is that mind shift which is in a way a sort of back to the future, back to the cold war mind shift, which is needed also in terms of generating those large number of troops.
Gideon Rachman
Of course, the other big question that Nato faces is not just Russia, but also its own internal coherence. You said that the 5 per cent figure that Trump has mentioned has a basis to it, but the background is concern that Trump’s commitment to Nato is, to put it this way, less than wholehearted. I mean, I think in the 2018 summit, which I think you were at, there was even some question that he might pull America out of Nato. Is the political background really fitting to get this alliance going again?
Oana Lungescu
Yeah, clearly there are challenges near and far for Nato, but there are also challenges within. And indeed, I was at the 2018 summit in Brussels, and that’s exactly what Nato allies are at pain to avoid again at The Hague, which is why they will have a very short summit with a single working session of the 32 allies to minimise the scope for any surprise or any outbursts from President Trump that could upend the whole Alliance.
Back in 2018, Donald Trump came to Brussels, said, well, you’re all happy, but I’m not. And he went around the leaders at the table and gave them chapter on verse on what they were spending and what they were not spending on defence. And basically said, if you don’t do more, the US will do our own thing. After that, he actually was reassured during the meeting that there was a new sense of urgency and that allies would indeed be spending more. So he left the summit saying that there’s a new spirit of unity in the alliance. And after that summit, the money came pouring in, as Trump himself said, with a very significant increase in defence spending because of the pressure that he had put on the alliance, but also because of the threats from outside.
So I think the message from Trump continues to resonate, also because it’s not a new message. Practically every American president, starting with Eisenhower, going on to Kennedy, of course, President Obama, who called Europeans free-riders.
Barack Obama voice clip
The situation in Ukraine reminds us that our freedom isn’t free and we’ve got to be willing to pay for the assets, the personnel, the training that’s required to make sure that we have a credible Nato force and an effective deterrent force.
Oana Lungescu
So Trump is not the first one to do that, and President Biden and Trump himself in his first term. And it’s also something that you hear every time you go to Washington, you hear it in Congress, it’s a bipartisan concern. And while much has been done until now, clearly there is an urgency to do much more and much faster because, as with every American administration, there is an ongoing review of American presence in Europe. We probably will not have the outcome of that assessment until after The Hague summit, but then the question will be how many American troops and what American capabilities may leave Europe to pivot towards the Indo-Pacific and perhaps also to the Middle East.
So I think the agreement on five per cent is absolutely key, but just as key will be the timeline for that agreement. Mark Rutte, the secretary-general, would prefer that Nato allies meet this new target by 2032, also keeping in mind the five-year timeline for Russia’s reconstitution of its forces. The Baltic countries and Poland would push for 2030 because they’re much closer to the threat, while countries such as Spain or Canada, who feel they’re really further away would prefer 2035. So the battle for Mark Rutte will be to ensure that any US withdrawals are done gradually and in co-ordination with other allies, so that there are no gaps left in Europe, either in terms of troops or of capabilities, before Europeans are ready to fill them and to ensure European defence.
Gideon Rachman
So what’s the situation right now? I mean, if the Americans hypothetically were to pull everything out now, would Europe be able to defend itself without them?
Oana Lungescu
I don’t think there’s any plan to pull out everything. There’s a discussion about the conventional capabilities and the rotational troops that the United States have in Europe. There are about 80,000 American troops, probably about 20,000 of those have been deployed to Europe and are rotating immediately after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. So, there is scope to perhaps pull out part of those troops and redeploy them to the Indo-Pacific.
The question perhaps will be less about the number of troops, but also about the capabilities because the United States has the type of enablers, key capabilities like air-to-air refuelling, air and missile defence, which the Europeans are still struggling to procure. And these things take time. You can’t just get them off the shelf.
So I think this is a conversation that’s already started. It was interesting that when chancellor Merz of Germany went to the White House and met President Trump, he sort of got a reassurance from Trump that American troops would stay in Germany. We’ve also had similar reassurances to Poland, which, of course, is investing more than anybody else in defence in Nato, more than the United States, with about 4.3 per cent of GDP on defence. The American defence secretary also more or less promised that American troops would stay in Poland.
So we’ll have to see how this conversation goes, but I think the main point is to continue engaging and to highlight to the United States why the security of Europe is also important for the security of the United States. This is in a way the frontline of America’s defence. And when the Norwegian prime minister went to the United States, he also showed President Trump how Russia’s nuclear submarines, which are just around the corner in the Kola Peninsula from Norway, are being tracked by the Norwegians on their way to the US. So these are all arguments why it’s important for Europe to have America here, but it’s also important for America to be part of the defence of Europe.
Gideon Rachman
But that’s not an argument that Trump’s always seem to be convinced by. I mean, if you remember the confrontation with Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, Zelenskyy tried to make that argument. He said, you know, you’re not always going to be protected by this big, beautiful ocean.
Oana Lungescu
I think there’s this ongoing discussion with some more isolationist members of the administration wanting to separate the Euro-Atlantic theatre from the Indo-Pacific theatre, basically saying what happens in Europe, the Europeans should look after it, what happens in the Indo-Pacific, the challenge of China is a very separate thing and America will deal with that.
The point that Nato allies and secretary-general Rutte have been trying to make in Washington is that the two theatres, the Euro-Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific, are actually interconnected because China is watching Russia’s war in Ukraine very closely. It’s also watching the sort of sanctions that Russia is labouring under. It’s watching how the war of attrition is going. The types of capabilities that are more effective than others, and the leaders of the democracies of the Indo-Pacific, Japan, South Korea, but also Australia, New Zealand, are also watching very closely. And their message has been, what happens in Europe actually does have an impact on what happens in Asia. And what happens in Europe could be happening in Asia, because China could be emboldened by a Russian victory in Ukraine to blockade Taiwan, for instance, and other authoritarian powers around the world would also draw their own conclusions if Russia were allowed to get away with controlling Ukraine.
Gideon Rachman
But it’s not just an argument about priorities, Indo-Pacific versus Euro-Atlantic, is it? Because perhaps the most fundamental thing underpinning the anxiety within Nato is that Trump has at times seemed more hostile to Nato members than to Russia. I mean, he has threatened to annexe Greenland, which is part of Denmark, a Nato ally. He has talked about incorporating Canada, another Nato ally, into the United States. And the United States have voted with Russia and Iran and North Korea at the United Nations. So is the political basis still there for Nato?
Oana Lungescu
I think the basis is there, but it can’t be taken for granted, which is why I think the Europeans and the secretary-general of Nato, Mark Rutte, are continuing to engage very carefully, very deliberately with President Trump, but also with other parts of the American administration. On the one hand, because they also want to avoid the possible contagion between the tariffs war and Nato defence and security. A lot of the animosity that you hear from President Trump about Europeans tends to be about the European Union and how the European Union is seen as treating the United States. So there is a reason why the whole discussion about the negotiations between the EU and the US on tariffs will take place after the Nato summit, because I think nobody in Europe wants to see everything mixed up in The Hague leading to a blow-up among Nato leaders about negotiations with the EU, for instance.
Gideon Rachman
And how has the Trump administration’s ambiguity about Russia affected Nato planning? Because Nato used to say Russia was the threat, but I believe at least for a period, and maybe it’s still going on, America was not prepared to go along with that under Trump.
Oana Lungescu
I think the language from the Trump administration has been evolving gradually, especially after the agreement on critical minerals with Ukraine. So there is now talk about a lasting and sustainable peace, for instance, and the just peace. So yeah, I think that discussions about language remain very sensitive. But in a way, they don’t have to reopen those discussions at The Hague summit, and I think they will really try to avoid reopening any discussions about, say, Nato’s strategic concept, which was adopted in 2022, and which makes it clear that Russia is the most immediate and direct threat for Nato. They will also try to avoiding reopening the conclusions of the Washington Summit last year which spoke about Ukraine’s irreversible path towards Nato. Rather unusually for a Nato summit, which tends to have very long summit communiqués of tens of pages, the summit communiqué in The Hague will probably be no more than five paragraphs or so on a single page, where they basically look at defence spending and defence capabilities. And the references to Ukraine are rather minimal on the understanding that whatever’s been decided before still stands.
Gideon Rachman
So to summarise, this Nato summit in The Hague, I mean, I suppose we all have a tendency sometimes to say this is the most historic, the most important summit, but it does seem potentially a fork in the road. If it goes right according to the way that Mark Rutter and perhaps you would like it to go, you’ll get to the other side, you won’t have a blow up between the US and Europe and you will get this commitment to 5 per cent and a real rearmament within the Nato alliance. But if there is an argument, then the whole thing could begin to look much more unsteady.
Oana Lungescu
Yes, absolutely. This is of course, Trump’s first Nato summit in his second term and everybody wants it to be a reset and they want President Trump to see Nato as a win, just as he actually ended up seeing Nato at the end of his first presidency, when money started pouring in. So the aim is to have this short, very sharply focused summit in The Hague with this single figure, 5 per cent, to do that very quickly and to move forward to actually start implementing what they’ve decided. Because I think there is a realisation that time is running out, not just because of Russia’s rearmament, but also because, of course, the second Trump presidency also shows that the isolationist tendency in American policy has re-emerged and is there to stay. So we’ll have to see how fast, how deliberate the pivot to the Indo-Pacific is, but clearly that is a trend which cannot be ignored in Europe.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Gideon Rachman
That was Oana Lungescu of the Royal United Services Institute ending this edition of The Rachman Review. Thanks for listening, and please join me again next week.