Macron spoke of ‘brain death’ but allies are more involved and the EU has gained another weight

In Vilnius, NATO member states want to reinforce the message that the Atlantic Alliance is far from the “brain death” that Macron advocated in 2019 and demonstrate that everyone recognizes that this is a “decisive decade.”

Within an organization that sometimes finds it difficult to find consensus, “unconditional support” for Ukraine, as Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has repeatedly said, this Friday, the North is unanimously proclaimed by the 31 countries that make up the Organization. Atlantic Treaty (NATO).

But this is not the only message that member states want to convey to their adversaries and other countries that one day seek to join the Atlantic Alliance.

In 2019, French President Emmanuel Macron shook the organization’s foundations when he called for NATO’s “brain death” by pointing to a loss of influence and importance in the international geopolitical panorama.

The context of height matters. Donald Trump was then the president of the United States of America (USA), the country that led the Atlantic Alliance from the very beginning and whose leadership has more weight in the decisions of the military-political organization.

During his term, Trump has been a vocal critic of how much Washington has invested in NATO compared to other member states, and has even questioned US perseverance.

Across the Atlantic, Emmanuel Macron took his US colleague’s skepticism as an opportunity to inject the European Union (EU) agenda into NATO and present it as a pole of leadership. This Friday, 22 of the 27 EU member states are part of NATO, which includes 31 countries.

A more European agenda will result in Paris gaining a greater upper hand in the organization, similar to what is already happening when decisions are negotiated at the EU level.

But “brain death” was seen by NATO as a message that could gain support in adversary countries, namely China, Russia or Iran. And this had to be countered.

For this reason, the efforts that have been made since 2014 with the Russian invasion of Crimea, Ukraine, have received a new impetus. Since that time, Jens Stoltenberg has become more vehement in his insistence on the need for member states to invest more in defense in order to standardize countries’ capabilities as much as possible and demonstrate the fallacy of “brain death” claims.

NATO representatives considered that the support, albeit little declared, that began to be provided to Ukraine after the “rehearsal” in Crimea, eventually paid off and prevented the fall of the country in the first days of the invasion that began in February 2022.

The presidency of Joe Biden, Trump’s successor, has allayed fears of a US withdrawal from the Atlantic alliance and solidified Washington’s position as a “headliner”.

In September 2021 at the United Nations, Biden spoke of a “decisive decade” for the world and announced that he wants to resurrect NATO to face a world that is undergoing profound changes and that it will wake up to a large-scale invasion of Russia in a few months.

The war inevitably forced European dominance to join NATO, as there were fears that the conflict in Ukraine could spread, for example, to Lithuania and other countries of the Baltic region.

Therefore, the organization began to strengthen its position in this geographical area in order to rethink the Russian threat. In 2022, during the Madrid summit, the then 30 member states agreed to increase the number of soldiers in the reserve and strengthen the flank that borders Russia.

Battalions will give way to brigades, and proposals are expected to be made at next week’s summit to increase the number of soldiers who, if circumstances warrant, can quickly be placed in the service of NATO’s Allied High Command. There are currently 40,000, but the goal is to reach 300,000 as soon as possible.

In parallel with NATO, the 27 member states of the European Union, many of which, like Portugal, still do not reach 2% of gross domestic product (GDP) as a minimum investment in defense, want to strengthen their military and technology industries in this area in order to Europe did not lag behind other allies, especially now that the war is “at the door”.