Ep55. NATO Summit 2024 – Did it help Order the Disorder?

Disorder

A week ago today, NATO wrapped up its 75th anniversary summit. At the event genuine support of Ukraine was on full display. Discussion of how to Trump-proof NATO dominated the agenda, partnerships with NATO’s southern periphery were side stepped and the war in Gaza was largely ignored. All of this was choreographed to project unity and paper over disagreements within the alliance. But do such optics actually help to Order the Disorder?

To find out we’re joined by Jane Kinninmont – who was in Washington at the Summit. She tells Jason about the discussions on the margins of the summit – mostly about Joe Biden – and the glaring omission from the formal agenda: the Israel-Gaza conflict. She also shares a live-show discussion among her; Élie Tenenbaum, the Director of IFRI’s Security Studies Centre in Paris, just back from a mission to Kyiv; and Dr. Isabelle Werenfels, a senior fellow at the German think tank SWP. The trio opine on their impressions of the summit, the key announcements on Ukraine (which were quite minimal), the role of Spain in raising the Gaza issue, and what a Trump presidency might mean for NATO.

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Producer: George McDonagh

Exec Producer: Neil Fearn

Show Notes Links

“Trump-proofing NATO” has been one of the buzzwords around this summit. The BBC covers the issue here: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3gr90jnxjvo

The NATO summit’s official communique is here: https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_227678.htm

Jane, Isabelle and Élie were all members of an independent experts group appointed by the NATO Secretary-General to contribute ideas on NATO’s approach to the Middle East and Africa, some of which were picked up in the summit communique. The expert group report can be found here: https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/2024/5/pdf/240507-NATO-South-Report.pdf

Jane and Isabelle wrote a version of the report here as a policy brief for SWP: https://www.swp-berlin.org/10.18449/2024C25/

Elie’s most recent study on the military situation in Ukraine can be found here: https://www.ifri.org/en/publications/politique-etrangere/articles-de-politique-etrangere/military-stakes-war-ukraine

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