President Biden’s Leadership Strengthens NATO and America’s Standing Abroad.

​In one of my blogs last year I raised the question “Would Ukraine be better off if Trump was president?” The answer, for me at least, is a resounding no! Without the financial and military support from NATO countries, Ukraine would not be able to stand up to the military might of Russia. Russia would overrun Ukraine’s territory and annex it, much in the same way as it did to the Crimea in 2014. Soon Ukraine would no longer exist as an independent country.  

​The United States’ policies toward aiding Ukraine, under the leadership of President Biden, have strengthened the Western alliance and made NATO​  more united than it has been in decades. Finland was recently admitted to the alliance, and President Biden helped negotiate a deal with Turkey’s President Erdogan to remove the final roadblock to allowing Sweden to join NATO.

President Biden also helped to secure commitments from all NATO member nations to allow Ukraine to join the alliance once the war with Russia is over. Under Article 5 of the NATO treaty, an attack on one member is regarded as an attack on all of them. If Ukraine became a member of NATO before the end of the war, it would put the United States and other member nations at war with Russia. The United States is simply not willing to go to war with Russia over the invasion of Ukraine. In addition to escalating and widening the war by involving all NATO countries, Putin is just crazy enough to use nuclear weapons if he felt backed into a corner. 

Last week President Biden traveled to Helsinki to congratulate Finland’s president on becoming the newest member of NATO. During his time in Helsinki the president also met with the leaders of Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Iceland. President Biden gave assurances of cooperation between our countries and conveyed the United States’ commitment to NATO.
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The contrast between President Biden’s recent Helsinki Summit and the one attended by President Trump in 2018 couldn’t be more different. At the summit in 2018 Trump met privately with Vladimir Putin. After the meeting Trump sided with Russia against his own U.S. intelligence agencies, disavowing the findings that Russia had indeed interfered in the 2016 elections.  Trump stated during a press conference that he believed Putin, who had told him that Russia had not meddled in the U.S. elections. This left many of the United States’ allies in Europe shaken, questioning whether or not they could rely on security commitments from the United States going forward.  

​Despite Donald Trump’s attempts to rewrite history, it has been extensively reported over the years that he was no friend of NATO. On several occasions Trump told his top national security advisors that he wanted to pull out of NATO. If not for his chief of staff John F. Kelley and his national security advisor John Bolton, he might have done just that. He called the alliance obsolete and berated member states for not paying their fair share. Even though these claims were not true, it undermined confidence in the alliance and created division between members. In short, President Trump left the future of NATO in doubt, and President Biden has unified and strengthen it.

The COVID pandemic taught us that the world is more interconnected and interdependent than ever before. Economic and strategic relations between nations are vital, and that is particularly true for the United States.   Tackling worldwide threats such as disease, climate change, and microplastic contamination of the environment will require strong relationships and cooperation among nations.
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It would be foolish to think that the United States has the resources and will to go it alone against military and competitive threats from the likes of China, Russia, and Iran. The United States cannot go it alone. Without security alliances such as NATO, and partnerships in the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific region, we will go the way of ancient Rome, the British Empire, and the Soviet Union. International relationships and alliances are key to the long-term prosperity and survival of our country.    

​ChatGPT or any form of artificial intelligence were not used in the writing of this blog.
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Thanks,
Armchair American