In Vilnius, NATO Got Two Wins and One Big Loss

Three important things occurred at NATO’s Vilnius summit: a breakthrough, a little-noticed but hugely consequential success, and a disappointment. The breakthrough was Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan finally consenting to Sweden’s membership. The success—the most important outcome of the summit—was approval of more than 4,000 pages of military plans for the actual defense of NATO countries. The disappointment was that Ukraine was not given a path to NATO membership.  

The breakthrough made early headlines from the meeting. President Erdoğan had been blocking Swedish accession for months, demanding that Sweden alleged Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) activists and Gülenists (something the U.S. also locks horns with Turkey over); lift its embargo of arms to Turkey; and adopt friendlier legislation on terrorism, precondition: Turkey’s admission to the European Union. Fortunately, and somewhat surprisingly, Erdoğan assented to NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg’s bargain, which evidently included a bilateral meeting with President Joe Biden, U.S. delivery of F-16 fighter planes to Turkey, and the creation of a NATO “special coordinator for counterterrorism.”