In Conversation with Sara Moller

Trump, Ukraine, and NATO Beyond 75

Rick Landgraf: Welcome back to the Ties That Bind, NATO at 75 and Beyond, a podcast of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. I'm your host, Rick Landgraf, Senior Fellow in the Eurasia Program at FPRI. My guest today is Sara Moller. Sara is an Associate Teaching Professor and Director of International and Alumni Affairs in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University, an adjunct senior fellow with a defense program at the Center for New American Security, and a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. Sara, welcome to the show.

Sara Moller: Thanks, Rick, delighted to be here.

RL: Okay, let's jump right in here. A lot has been made about how NATO has tried to Trump-proof the Alliance going back to earlier this summer at the Washington summit and even before that.

Now this Trump proofing is now a reality because Trump has been reelected. Can you tell us a bit about how NATO has tried to “Trump proof” the Alliance?

SM: Sure, let me just say first that I've always been a bit of a skeptic when it comes to the idea that you can “Trump-proof” NATO, which is a US-led alliance, because to my mind that would require downgrading the role or the power of the United States inside NATO's integrated military command. And as long as America remains the supreme guarantor of Europe's security and defense, the US president, whoever that is, whoever he or she may be, will always exert greater influence within the Alliance than the other Allies. That's just a fact. But having said all of that, we did see signs that Allied officials, with the support of the Biden administration, were trying to prepare for this eventuality, the reelection of Donald Trump over the course of the late summer and into the fall.

And I think where you saw this, the clearest was probably in efforts to so-called “NATO-fy” support for Ukraine. For example, this past summer, on the heels of the 75th anniversary summit in Washington, NATO leaders announced a new command, the NATO security assistance and training for Ukraine command or NSATU for short.

It's headquartered in Wiesbaden, Germany, and it's supposed to oversee training of Ukrainian armed forces in Allied countries and provide support for long-term development of Ukraine's armed forces, as well as coordinate the transfer of security assistance material to Ukraine and the repair of some equipment.

Now, the interesting thing to note is that when it was announced this past July, NATO said they anticipated the office would eventually grow to have some 700 staff members or personnel. And it is supposed to be fully operational by the end of 2024.

But even though it is an effort to institutionalize support for Ukraine inside the NATO architecture, a significant number of those 700 bullets, at least at least initially, were being held by US personnel. And while it's hard to get accurate data on this point, there's enough to suggest that a non-trivial number of those 700 positions will still be staffed by Americans.

So for example, Finland recently announced it was contributing six people to the mission. Six, not 16, in case listeners missed that the first time around. And Croatia has been embroiled in a political debate all autumn because its populist president is opposed to supporting the mission at all. So there are some political elements within the Alliance who worry that this new NATO command could lead to NATO directly becoming involved in the Ukraine-Russia conflict, independent of what Trump may or may not do.

RL: It sounds like a huge command. And it seems that the United States would have a large share of that or a sizable chunk of that. And as you mentioned, a smaller country with a smaller military, Finland has six. But in theory, would all 32 allies staff this command?

SM: Well, Hungary negotiated an opt-out under Secretary General Stoltenberg over the summer because Hungary was opposed to the creation of this command. And what we're seeing in Croatia is an open political debate about whether that country will provide any troops.

That, coupled with some of the smaller contributions from other NATO Allies, again leads me to the conclusion that even this effort, which was intended to NATO-ize support for Ukraine, will end up, at the end of the day, being very much a US-led initiative inside of NATO.

RL: NATO has gone to great trouble to avoid being seen as directly involved in the Ukraine war. However, it is involved in coordinating military assistance to Ukraine. Individual member states, including the United States, but many others, are providing support in a number of ways, including the direct transfer of weapons, training soldiers, targeting, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance support. So I ask you, what then constitutes direct involvement in the Ukraine war?

SM: It’s an excellent question, and you’re absolutely right that NATO has been at pains not to become directly involved in the Ukraine war and has repeatedly stressed that it is not directly involved. But there’s a reason for that. Remember, NATO is a defensive alliance, and as such it has a responsibility to all 32 of its members, and Ukraine is not yet a member, so it has a responsibility to its 32 members to ensure it does not undertake actions of an offensive military nature.

My own view is that NATO was very careful early on in the conflict to steer clear of that risk, but the creation of the NATO Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine (NSATU) risks moving the needle closer to the direct involvement end of the spectrum. So yes, as you know, NATO Allies acting in their national capacity have provided Ukrainian armed forces with military assistance and high caliber weapons, the latest being the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), and other things like intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR). But the key here is that all of this has played out, until now, outside of what I like to call big NATO: the Alliance’s institutional architecture.

And under NSATU, it’s expected that NATO will deploy personnel to western Ukraine to advise Ukrainian armed forces in country, no longer just out of country. To my mind that comes with risks: What do you do if there’s a strike that kills NATO personnel? Allies have said they won’t treat that as an attack on them, and therefore Article 5 is off the table. So countries like France, who plan to send personnel to Ukraine for training, have signaled they understand and accept that risk to their nationals, but there’s the ideal in theory and what happens in practice, and war seldom adheres to theory.

So I worry a lot about that. What if there’s a Russian strike that kills a dozen NATO personnel and NATO does nothing? What signal does that send to Moscow if the North Atlantic Council (NAC) deliberates and decides not to respond, or, if NATO decides to respond and retaliate militarily then we’re in an entirely different world, and frankly I’d like to avoid seeing the NAC and NATO being put in a position of having to decide how to respond to such an eventuality.

So, back to your question, what constitutes direct support by NATO as opposed to stuff individual allies are doing either in their national capacities or in groups with other allies: to my mind that would be things like Allied aircraft and enforcing a no-fly zone over Ukraine. This was something that was floated by the media early on in the war, but even though that would involve national assets, national aircraft.

A no-fly mission would automatically entail the involvement of NATO’s Allied Air Command, which is the headquarters responsible for operations in Europe, so there would be a degree of direction coming from a NATO entity, and that, in my mind, would constitute direct support.

Another example would be what is likely to happen in the coming months: deploying NSATU personnel to the front-line. So if you define the front-line today as pretty much anything east of the line running from Kharkiv to Ginepro; but even then I’m pretty risk-averse by nature so I would prefer not to see any NATO personnel east of Kyiv, if I’m honest. Having them so close to the fighting could be construed as direct involvement because the advisors would then be supporting front-line troops and their combat operations targeting Russian forces as opposed to providing advice and training to them in western Ukraine, in places like Lviv, which is some 1,000 km from the front.

So I guess the way to approach this question would be to employ the counterfactual. If the situation was reversed and Russia was providing military support in a conflict in which the United States was engaged in, what would we consider direct involvement? So during the Korean War, for example, Russian pilots flew MiG-15s, but Washington kept this quiet and out of the newspapers at the time because officials rightly worried that the conflict could escalate from a proxy-war into a direct confrontation between the two. And this signals to me that this is not a new concern, obviously but I do think it is something that the Alliance has to think carefully about going forward. That’s how I tend to look at this.

RL: That’s great insight there and it seems like maybe NATO’s certainly involved in a slippery slope and to a certain extent, it seems that direct support and direct involvement is in many ways in the eye of the beholder.

SM: Absolutely.

RL: A lot has been made about what a Trump 2.0 presidency would look like for NATO and how the United States’ role within the Alliance may evolve under Trump moving forward. What are a few different scenarios that you could foresee happening?

SM: I'm a firm believer, Rick, in the axiom, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. So I learned long ago not to make any predictions where Donald Trump is concerned. Frankly, I'm innately skeptical of anyone who claims to have insight in this regard because he flies by the seat of his pants. He is an extremely volatile leader. He's known to change his mind based on whoever he spoke to last.

He also loves to rile folks up and be provocative and make outlandish statements and then sit back and watch the fallout. We know he's trumped Keith Kellogg, who is a retired lieutenant general and served on his National Security Council staff during his first term to be the Russia-Ukraine envoy. And there's a proposal floating around town and in Europe for ending the war, which would include delaying Ukrainian entry into NATO for a decade.

We also know he's picked for his ambassador or permanent representative to NATO, Matt Whittaker, who's a relatively unknown entity. But beyond that, I think it's worth keeping in mind that judging by his first term, folks who serve in the Trump administration tend to have a very short shelf life.

And I expect the same pattern to continue here with lots of turnover in the national security portfolio. So I think, frankly, NATO should be prepared for anything and everything. But at a minimum, I expect we'll see a lot more chaos and inflammatory rhetoric, than we saw obviously during the Biden tenure. And judging by his interview with NBC's Meet the Press this past weekend, it doesn't seem like President-elect Trump has changed his view of NATO as a golf club where members pay dues.

In other words, he still has this very transactional approach to America's allies. And so I don't expect we'll see much change there from the first term. Now, if he chooses to attend next year's summit in The Hague, which at this moment is an open question, right? I'm sure we'll see some fireworks there, as was the case during any summit during his first term. But beyond that general overview, I'm frankly not comfortable predicting because he is such an unpredictable character.

RL: Right, there's a lot there to go on. I wanted to ask you about any potential negotiation or or even a ceasefire agreement, and specifically this issue of NATO membership for Ukraine. And I think you if I heard you right, you said a condition would be delaying NATO membership for Ukraine by another decade.

Of course, NATO has said, going back to the Bucharest Declaration in 2008, that Ukraine would become a member of the Alliance, and we're going on 16 years now since that commitment was made.

I'm having difficulty understanding why Russia would accept something like this if part of the reason that Russia invaded in the first place was to prevent Ukraine from being integrated into NATO.

SM: That's a valid point. I have no insight into Moscow's rationale or whether this is indeed a serious offer. I'm going solely based on open source reporting in the Post and Times and elsewhere saying this is one of the elements of a proposed Trump deal since the president-elect has as repeatedly stated the war will end 24 hours after he takes office. I also think it's worth noting, though, that President Trump, in opposing Ukrainian membership in NATO, will find some support among other NATO allies. There's a reason that even under the Biden administration at this past summit, the Alliance did not extend an invitation. They talked about the bridge to membership being shortened, but it's still a bridge.

And that's because while we haven't seen as much play of it or discussion of it in the media, which tends to focus on German and US opposition to Ukraine, there are other NATO allies who have frankly ridden the coattails behind the scenes and also have some apprehensions about Ukraine joining NATO anytime soon. And these are not just allies like Slovakia or Hungary who have, let us say, problematic regimes in that they are less liberal than other NATO allies, but there are some countries who continue to oppose Ukrainian membership.

RL: And Hungary has been one of those that's been against Ukrainian membership for many years, as you say.

SM: The most vocal. They're not the only ones who have been against it, right? Even Germany has said the time is not right. And it's also worth noting that there are developments underway in European domestic politics. We focus a lot, and rightly so, on US domestic politics in this podcast, but Europe gets a vote too, and the independent European capitals get a vote. And here I'll just briefly note the somewhat alarming recent Romanian presidential elections, the first round in which a pro-Russian candidate did surprisingly well.

And we see also, whether it's in Croatia, and their opposition to NSATU, which I mentioned a moment ago, or other NATO countries, we do see the far-right making inroads, and the far-right historically has been less supportive of Ukraine because they tend to double down on this nationalist populist rhetoric.

RL: Right, I wanted to turn to a commentary you provided earlier this year that appeared in Survival, an issue of Survival, which is in the Journal of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. I believe this issue was released right around the time of the Washington summit back in July.

You argued that as NATO leaders gather in Washington to celebrate the 75th anniversary, the organization continues to grapple with difficult questions regarding how to effectively respond to Russian aggression in Europe. And to find a way forward, the Allies must first confront the growing strategic mismatch between NATO military plans, public messaging, and national capabilities.

If European officials cannot convince their constituents that Russia is a chronic threat, they will face ongoing difficulties in implementing the defense upgrades needed to deter Russia. How has your thinking evolved on this subject from summertime up until now, NATO's anniversary predicament?

SM: Right. If anything, I'm even more concerned in this regard that the public rhetoric about the Russian threat is not being matched behind the scenes, not just in terms of defense investments, but also emphasis on personnel commitments. As part of the NATO reforms, defense posture reforms, there are demands for, frankly, many more billets than the NATO allies have shown willingness to fill. And that's true not just of the NSATU command, but across the Alliance as it's going about reworking, retooling its command structure.

That coupled with the continued intensity of Russian kinetic hybrid attacks against Europe leaves me with concern, frankly because while Russian gray zone or hybrid attacks against NATO are nothing new, I would say over the last two years or 18 months we have seen that these have become much more kinetic and much more frankly in your face where it increasingly seems like Russia doesn't even care if it gets caught or if there's a direct Russian handprint or fingerprint on these attacks, whether it's striking undersea cables or tempted assassinations on industry leaders.

It just seems like we've entered a new phase in this gray zone or hybrid conflict. And to date, I think NATO is still struggling with what to do about it. They know it's a challenge. Russia is unlikely to go anywhere soon. And in this respect, the Alliance had been working towards a new Russia strategy, which was going to be the main deliverable at next year's summit in The Hague. As part of that, I suspect countering Russian hybrid activities in Europe would have been a major component of that new Russia strategy.

But it's an open question to my mind, whether we will see that now, given Trump's election. The president could come in and say, there's no need for this. Or his administration could try to water down the Russia strategy as part of some larger Russia-Ukraine deal or another scenario you could envision. So I remain equally, if not more, concerned about this.

RL: Right. And one of the the challenges I see in terms of responding to this, this spate of hybrid attacks and and they're certainly becoming more intense, more frequent, is how it implicates Article 5 of NATO’s charter, the mutual defense clause: if one Ally is attacked all other Allies will respond.

What's interesting about that going back to the verbiage of the original treaty, it doesn't tell the Allies how to respond and it doesn't force them to respond militarily. But Russia seems to be probing and testing Article 5 of the Nato charter.

SM: Absolutely, and my concern is that whether it's a direct or accidental crossing of a red line, the NATO alliance could be tested and found wanting. So strategic ambiguity, according to one theory, is good in that it leaves the target or adversary questioning, and that in of itself, that questioning of how you will respond to any scenario or crossing of a red line, can serve as a deterrent under one logic or interpretation of strategic ambiguity.

But what I worry about is in the case of NATO, which has now so much political division it within it, some of which we addressed earlier, that the NAC, the North Atlantic Council, could end up engaging in prolonged negotiations over how to respond to an Article 5 level scenario, whether it's hybrid or cyber or something else, and in that window of opportunity NATO would eventually respond. But the political uncertainty and delay would shake, I think, Allies' confidence in the Alliance and also signal to our adversaries that NATO may not be as strong as we hope it is.

RL: Right. You could hypothetically envision a scenario—there's been a lot of research and commentary on this and over the past ten years—in which Russia conducts some sort of a lightning strike against one of the Baltic states, let's say, in that space going across border incursion, and where NATO is going to respond and how is it going to respond, that time period of deliberation causes real uncertainty and skepticism of the Alliance and its resolve.

SM: Absolutely, whether it's a fait accompli or any other scenario like you described. In fact, there was even a book a couple of years ago, I'm looking at my bookshelf called War with Russia by former General Sir Richard Sharif, which lays out, and which I recommend to the listeners, a very realistic scenario for how NAC delay in negotiation could damage NATO's response timeline.

RL: Last question here for you, Sara. Obviously we've talked about Ukraine today. We've talked about Russia previously on this podcast. We've talked about NATO looking at the Indo-Pacific region and making the case that the European theater and the Indo-Pacific theater are connected and there's shared threats, shared challenges in those two theaters.

From your perspective, what other sort of challenges does NATO face over the next decade? What are the biggest sort of obstacles?

SM: I think, broadly speaking, NATO and the world in general are entering a period of great uncertainty and instability. We're already in it, I think it's fair to say. And that is bound to have consequences for NATO because it will have to learn to navigate this increasingly volatile era of geopolitical competition and regional and global instability.

Whether it's the volatility that we're witnessing this week in the Mediterranean with the collapse of the Syrian regime—which is obviously a good outcome, but there's a lot of uncertainty about what comes next—whether it's the war in Gaza or Lebanon, whether it's the war in Sudan, it's clear to even the most casual observer by now that we are living in unstable times.

And at the same time, Russia isn't going anywhere, as I mentioned earlier, and has stepped up its kinetic attacks against the Alliance. And that presents NATO with a lot of challenges on its border, on its periphery. And there are also internal challenges to the Alliance itself, democratic backsliding within the Alliance. We spoke about Hungary and Turkey, Romania, Croatia, and others to include, maybe even the United States, what Frank Fukuyama almost two decades ago referred to as the rise of illiberal democracies.

I think it's worth remembering here that NATO is also a political alliance. When new members sign the Washington Treaty, the Alliance's founding document, they commit themselves not only to safeguard each other's freedom, but also to maintain the principles of democracy, individual liberty, and the rule of law.

And I think it's fair to say that these are increasingly under attack around the world, but also within the Alliance itself. And increasingly, I worry that this may end up proving to be NATO's biggest challenge in the coming years.

RL: As NATO has turned 75 and looks beyond, there's certainly no shortage of challenges and obstacles over the next decade or so. But it has proven itself to be adaptive, resilient, and found ways to reinvent itself over its history. So I think there's also reason to be somewhat optimistic.

SM: Yes, I forget who it was, but I believe it was a former US government official who quipped that if we hadn't invented NATO, we would have to because the purpose for which it was created remains so vital to the future of not just US but European security.

RL: Absolutely. We'll have to leave it there. Sara, thank you so much for joining us on the Tides That Bind.

SM: My pleasure, thank you.