The NATO summit scheduled for Wednesday June 29 in Madrid in Spain is a “pivotal” summit, analysis on franceinfo Alexis Vahlas, teacher at Science Po Strasbourg and former political adviser to NATO. He thus agrees with the position of Jens Stoltenberg, the Secretary General of the Atlantic Alliance, who assures us that this summit is “historical” as the Alliance lives “its most serious security crisis since the Second World War” and that Turkey has lifted its veto on the future integration of Sweden and Finland into NATO.
franceinfo: How important is this NATO summit in Madrid?
Alexis Vahlas: It is a pivot vertex. The good news of this memorandum of understanding between Turkey, Finland and Sweden is that it can signify a strategic turning point. This obviously means above all to Russia that when it tries to prevent its expansion and curb the sovereignty of the States, NATO manages to expand. Obviously, NATO is united at 30, soon to be 32, in Madrid. This was the goal for several for several weeks.
What makes Turkey finally agree to the entry of Sweden and Finland into NATO?
I think Turkey didn’t want to be seen as the holdout preventing the Alliance from celebrating this development. And then, it’s true that it had already happened with the appointment of a previous secretary general where, again, Turkey had said ‘Wait for me, I’m going to monetize this. I have interests. This gives an image of the absence of natural Western solidarity, of ideological estrangement from Turkey. So you shouldn’t go too far. We didn’t make too many concessions to Turkey and that’s what counted.
Jens Stoltenberg, the Secretary General of NATO, says that Russia is a direct threat to the security of NATO countries. How will Russia react?
Russia will always react in the same way. We are now in a completely conflicting logic. But NATO’s position is clear. We are a defensive alliance. The more aggressive Russia becomes and acts in violation of international law, the stronger our alliance becomes. The more we also show that we become on the contrary attractive and we expand.
There was a time when Emmanuel Macron spoke of a NATO in “a state of brain death”. Is that time over?
Yes, part of the problem is over: we were under the Trump presidency when he [Emmanuel Macron] spoke these words. We also had a problem with the Turkish ally within NATO and the problem does not disappear with this distance. Now NATO is doing much better as it has an identified enemy again. A clear threat to all these allied nations.