WASHINGTON (AP) – President Joe Biden leaves for Europe on Sunday, where he will spend time in three nations tending to alliances that have been tested by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
After arriving overnight in London, Biden will meet the next day with King Charles III for the first time since he was crowned. Next, the centerpiece of the trip, the NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania. Alliance leaders will discuss the war and review plans to deal with Russian aggression.
The final stop is in Helsinki, where Biden is expected to celebrate the expanding alliance Thursday, with Finland as NATO’s newest member.
His national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said the trip would “showcase the president’s leadership on the world stage.”
A look at Biden’s agenda and the issues he will face:
London
Biden arrives in London on Sunday night and is expected to have a full schedule of meetings on Monday.
“There’s always a lot to talk about with the UK,” said Max Bergmann, a former State Department official who directs the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Biden will hold talks with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at 10 Downing St. Sunak faces an election late next year. His Conservative Party is far behind the opposition in opinion polls.
Despite Sunak’s shaky political position, he has fostered close ties with Biden and it will be their sixth meeting since Sunak took office last October.
Bergmann said Sunak’s tenure has been a nice change of pace after “there were some concerns about Boris Johnson,” one of Sunak’s predecessors, “being a loose cannon.”
Biden will visit the king at Windsor Castle, a royal residence outside London. Biden didn’t attend Charles’ coronation — first lady Jill Biden went instead — so this will be their first meeting since then.
They are expected to talk about climate change, an issue that has focused the two leaders, and how to fund initiatives to address the problem.
Vilnius
Biden will spend two days in the Lithuanian capital, which hosts the annual NATO summit. He will participate in meetings with leaders and deliver a speech from Vilnius University.
The alliance has been reinvigorated by the war in Ukraine, and members have been pouring military hardware into the country to help repel Russia’s invasion.
Biden on Friday defended what he said was a “difficult decision” to supply Ukraine with cluster munitions, a move his administration said was key to the fight and bolstered by Ukraine’s pledge to use the controversial bombs carefully. Biden is likely to face questions from allies about why the US would send a weapon to Ukraine that more than two-thirds of NATO members have banned because it has a history of causing many civilian casualties.
For Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, the summit “will send a clear message: NATO is united and Russia’s aggression will not pay.”
But NATO has also struggled to bridge divisions on important issues. Finland was welcomed into the alliance this year, but Turkey and Hungary have blocked Sweden’s membership.
There are also disagreements over how quickly an invitation to Ukraine to join NATO should be extended.
NATO’s eastern flank countries want to move quickly, seeing it as a way to deter Russian aggression. The US and others advocate a more cautious approach.
One issue is already resolved, at least for now. Stoltenberg’s mandate has been extended by a year because members could not agree on a new leader.
Senator Thom Tillis, who will attend the summit, likened the alliance to a gathering of dozens of family members who bicker and clash but nevertheless stick together.
“At the end of the day, you know you’re family,” said Tillis, RN.C.
Tillis leads a bipartisan delegation along with Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, DN.H., who said NATO is more powerful than before.
“It’s the strongest military alliance in our history, and I think it’s only gotten stronger as a result of American leadership, as a result of Stoltenberg’s leadership, and as a result of Vladimir Putin’s threat to all NATO allies and other countries. in Europe and around the world and the international order,” he said.
helsinki
After two nights in Vilnius, Biden visits Helsinki. The stop is a bit of a victory lap, but it could also be a reminder of unfinished business.
The Nordic country in April became NATO’s 31st member, ending its history of non-alignment and showing how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has backfired in Europe.
Finland was to join alongside its neighbor Sweden, whose admission has stalled. NATO requires the unanimous consent of all its members to expand, and the US has been unable to overcome objections from Turkey and Hungary.
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson visited the White House on Wednesday and met with Biden to keep up the pressure for membership. But there is little hope that the issue will be resolved in Vilnius.
The White House is billing Biden’s visit to Helsinki as a “Nordic US Leaders Summit.”
It’s a very different occasion from the last time a US president visited Helsinki five years ago.
During that trip, Donald Trump held a press conference with Putin and brushed off concerns about Russian meddling in Trump’s election victory.
Now Biden heads to the city to demonstrate how his administration has held the line against Moscow and expanded Western defenses.
___
Associated Press writer Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed to this report.
Close Modal
Suggest a correction
Suggest a correction
Source link
