These are precarious times for Biden, NATO - and for us all

The second was the extent to which Europe’s homegrown political maladies were on display, threatening to hamper what was meant to be a reaffirmation of NATO members’ commitment to the alliance, 75 years after 12 countries first came together in Washington to sign a historic defence pact in the wake of the Second World War.

To the take the case of Biden first, it wasn’t just his verbal gaffes, something not unusual in the long political career of a man who overcame a childhood stutter. Following his dismal debate performance against rival Donald Trump in Atlanta, Georgia, last month even closer attention than ever has been given to Biden’s age and cognitive ability.

While Biden himself has refused calls to take a cognitive test in the wake of that damaging debate performance, arguing instead that the challenges of his job amount to daily cognitive tests, this has done little to assuage the concerns of an increasing number of leading Democrats. 

Donald Trump on the campaign trail (Image: free)

At least 19 congressional Democrats – 18 House members and one senator have publicly called on Biden to withdraw from the race as of last Friday morning. While this number represent a relatively small fraction of the more than 200 Democrats on Capitol Hill, their damning statements have intensified scrutiny of Biden and his ability to serve another four years as president.

Biden’s mistaken reference to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “President Putin,” at the NATO summit and then mixing up the name of his vice president, Kamala Harris and his rival Trump at a following news conference, only added to the clamour in some Democrat quarters calling for him to stand aside in the coming campaign. 

Even before last Thursday’s press conference - Biden’s first solo one in eight months - there was more bad news hovering over the president as a Pew Research poll found that 71% of Biden’s own voters wanted both him and former president Trump to drop out. 

But even as calls for Biden to step aside or take a medical test grew, doctors say such calls for a cognitive exam alone couldn’t make a definitive determination whether Biden is fit for duty and could be misconstrued by non-medical professionals who don’t have a full picture of the president’s health.

“A snapshot in time is not a diagnosis,” Dr Sharon Sha, clinical professor of neurology and neurological studies at Stanford University, recently told the American business magazine Forbes, adding that cognitive tests don’t provide a diagnosis either, but can instead suggest whether more detailed testing, such as an MRI or brain scan, is needed. 

“Just a score on that test is not as helpful as the quality of the information the test tells you and whether it suggests there should be additional testing,” Sha added.

As the Forbes magazine article also reminded,  Trump underwent cognitive testing at his own request in 2018 amid concerns about his mental acuity and has repeatedly boasted that he “aced” the exam, though the former president has had a few lapses in lucidity of his own lately.

Supporters hold up signs for U.S. President Joe Biden as he spoke at a campaign event in Detroit (Image: free)

Medical opinion about Biden aside, some political observers say that one question that’s received much less attention is whether Biden’s physical and/or cognitive limitations - real or perceived - will have any impact on US foreign policy itself.

Writing in the US based Foreign Policy magazine last week, columnist and Professor of International Relations at Harvard University, Stephen M. Walt, made the case that Biden’s seeming frailty “doesn’t endanger America.” 

Addressing the question of whether adversaries or even some US allies might try to take advantage of a president whom they believe is no longer at the top of his game, Walt cited a few historic examples that deliver a “mixed verdict”. 

He cites the case of then-Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Richard M. Nixon, and Ronald Reagan who all had various medical conditions or ailments whose performances might at times have been undermined by them, but there’s little evidence that in each case their conditions had much impact on US policy or on the actions of other states to exploit them.

“These examples remind us that presidential impairment may not be as serious an issue as people initially think,” wrote Walt.

“Although US presidents are obviously important, they are never solely responsible for formulating or implementing policy. All presidents have a team in place; policy options and likely responses to different scenarios are often discussed in advance of implementation… and subordinates will step up and take over if a president is somewhat impaired,” he added.

It’s unlikely too Walt says that the Biden administration would launch any big foreign-policy initiatives between now and the election.

But all this will do little to reassure some Democrats, US allies and voters  who have again now witnessed Biden found wanting on the global stage over the past week. Not that the NATO summit didn’t have enough built-in problems at the outset with or without Biden’s verbal gaffes.

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As the Financial Times Brussels Bureau Chief, Henry Foy, wry observed, “weak leaders, hung parliaments, caretaker governments and rogue mischief makers,” were the order of the day in terms of the “rag-tag squad” the EU brought to NATO’s summit last week. 

In short, European leaders arrived in Washington divided on both Ukraine and how to handle a potential Trump return, meaning the stakes could not be higher for them in terms of being keen to show they can shoulder their contribution to the NATO defence budget for the continent’s security. 

The problem here though is that recent elections have re-shaped Europe’s political landscape. The most noticeable manifestation of this was the conspicuously low profile kept by France’s president Emmanuel Macron, whose mind might perhaps have been rather preoccupied with how France will be governed after last weekend’s election. 

It was left to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who himself oversees his own fragile political coalition to offer other members some reassurance on Macron’s behalf. 

 “France has a strong president… I am not wondering what will happen (to the country),” he said, speaking up for the usually self-assured Macron.

While Macron did also reassure his allies that the failure of the far right to gain power was a sign of the strength of France’s pro-Ukraine centre, the fact remains that right now seven European NATO countries have far right parties in their government or rely on their votes to rule. Not all however are sceptical on continued support for Ukraine 

Italy's Giorgia Meloni for example despite her far-right politics and polls showing that half of Italians would like to stop sending weapons to Kyiv, has doubled down on her strong support for Ukraine motivated no doubt by the fact as she sees it as a ticket to the European political mainstream.

But other differences too remain among NATO’s European members, particularly on the issue of Ukraine’s accession to the alliance. Germany for example, alongside the US, is wary of Ukraine's speedy accession to NATO while Poland, like many other Central and Eastern European countries is keener in getting Ukraine into the alliance. But even here there are outliers who remain something of a burr under the NATO saddle. 

Chief among them is Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. While on the face of it both appear solid members of the alliance with Hungary spending 2.1 % of GDP on defence, above the alliance target and Turkey having NATO's second-largest army after the US, the problem for NATO is that both have broader interests in common – notably being cosy with Russia.

Viktor Orban (Image: free)

Just recently only days after Hungary took over the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU, Orban flew to Moscow to meet Russian leader Vladimir Putin. There he praised Russia as a great empire, encouraged the Kremlin to make plans on European security architecture and even took a swipe at NATO for bringing the West to the brink of conflict. 

“No serious man can raise any serious conversation that Russia has an intention to attack NATO,” he said in an interview with Politico magazine. 

"I know the Russians ... They are rational. They are hyper-rational,” Orban added, much to the irritation of Kyiv and its NATO allies. No sooner had the Hungarian leader shook hands with Putin than he was in the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, visiting the US Republican candidate and insisting that Trump is “going to solve” Russia's war in Ukraine, when he becomes president in November.

For his part Trump agreed with Orban. “There must be peace, and quickly. Too many people have died in a war that should have never started!” he said in a post on his platform Truth Social.

That all of this did not sit well with both NATO and the Biden administration goes without saying. Between Orban’s unabashed embrace of Putin and Trump, continuing problems on Ukraine’s frontlines and the political re-landscaping of Europe as well as the travails of some of its leaders all mean that NATO is far from upbeat right now.

“The recent transatlantic debate has focused on how to Trump-proof NATO or America-proof European defence,” said Mathieu Droin, visiting fellow at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies and formerly a senior French diplomat.

“But what Orban's behaviour shows us is that NATO and the EU face a crosscutting issue of dealing with leaders or potential leaders who do not believe in, or care about, the transatlantic bond or the European project,” Drion told Politico magazine in a recent interview. 

Apparent as the divisions in NATO are though, they still however appeared insufficient to derail last week’s summit which was more about implementing decisions to tighten defence cooperation and boost arms for Ukraine taken in earlier meetings in Madrid and Vilnius. 

Still, the lack of unity does not play well for either the alliance or for Biden who finds himself in an increasingly weak position both in term of his own presidential candidature and perception of his standing on the world stage.

This weekend the US president was pulling out all the stops in seeking to revive his struggling re-election campaign, holding a rare rally in Detroit on Friday and telling a cheering crowd he wasn’t going to leave the race. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (Image: free)

Biden got another boost too when two prominent Democrats - Representative James Clyburn and California Governor Gavin Newsom - said he should stay in the race. Clyburn, 83, is a respected voice among Black Americans whose support is essential to Biden's 2024 campaign, while Newsom, 56, is one of several younger governors who are widely seen as the future of the party. 

As Biden finished his speech and waved to the crowd in Detroit on Friday, he did so to the background music of Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down.” But with the Democratic National Convention when the party’s nominee is officially chosen a little over a month away, there is still time - albeit short - for Biden to back down even if he shows little sign of doing so. 

As for NATO, it’s latest annual gathering amply revealed its own vulnerabilities as it too waved farewell to secretary general Jen Stoltenberg who has chaired ten consecutive NATO summits. 

In a nutshell, these are tricky times for the US president and the security pact he described in the summit’s opening address as the “the single, greatest, most effective defensive alliance in the history of the world.” 

Some will agree with Biden others not, but there’s simply no escaping the fact that for both the US president and the alliance he holds so close to his heart, it was a wobbly week all round in Washington.