Even as troubles mount at home, President Joe Biden is leaving for a trying trip abroad.
Biden will spend July 9 and 10 in London, meeting with King Charles III and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, before a crucial trip to Vilnius, Lithuania, for NATO meetings amid the war in Ukraine. A related final stop, on July 13, will be in Helsinki to meet with Nordic leaders.
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“On Sunday, the president will depart for his next major trip overseas, at a time when we have indeed regained our global standing as a strong and trusted partner for peace, progress, and security,” national security advisory Jake Sullivan said. “This trip will reflect that progress, and it will showcase the president’s leadership on the world stage.”
The trip will mark clear progress for the NATO, most notably Finland’s ascension to it, but the war still represents arguably the largest foreign policy crisis of Biden’s presidency to date.
Of note is the mere location of the NATO Summit in Vilnius, Lithuania. The city is located in eastern Europe, less than 40 miles from the border with Belarus, which has been described as a client state of Russia, and Lithuania also borders an enclave of Russia to its west.
“The location certainly is interesting,” Victoria Coates, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said. “The Baltic nations were freed from Soviet domination when it collapsed. They take this all very seriously.”
Coates said the location sends a signal of support to Lithuania and its Baltic neighbors, who can relate to what is happening in Ukraine, but also to Russia and Belarus.
The president will be in similar territory when he travels to Finland, which shares an 830-mile border with Russia that makes its new NATO membership all the more significant.
A big goal for the trip will be securing that Finland’s western neighbor, Sweden, joins NATO as well. That deal has been in the works for months, with objections from Turkey and Hungary holding up the process.
Biden met this week with Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, praising his country’s role as a regional security provider and underscoring his commitment to seeing it join NATO as soon as possible, according to a White House readout.
“We highly appreciate your strong support for Sweden’s NATO accession,” Kristersson said during the public portion of the meeting. “That means a lot to us. We do seek common protection, but we also do think that we have things to contribute with to be a security provider for the whole of NATO.”
Another significant development from this week was the extension of NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg for another term, which Biden said signals the alliance “is stronger, more united and purposeful than it has ever been.” Sweden would become the 32nd NATO member.
The meetings come as the war in Ukraine reaches another critical point, with counteroffensive actions on Ukraine’s part underway in an attempt to recapture lost territory. It’s unclear if Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will attend, though Sullivan said he would be welcomed.
Support for Ukraine remains mostly bipartisan in Congress, though questions have emerged about the dollar amount and length of the commitment. Biden’s recent decision to provide Ukraine with controversial cluster munitions led to disagreements on Capitol Hill.
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Coates would like to see more clarity about what the end goal of the war is, especially given that the United States has already spent nearly $150 billion supporting Ukraine since the war began almost 500 days ago.
“That’s a pretty massive investment in what is essentially a European war,” she said. “The president will couch this in terms of being a global struggle for democracy. We can support democracy all we want, but that’s not why you go fight a war… What does victory look like? What are our national security interests that are at stake here?”
