00:00 Well, for more analysis, we can speak now to Sophie Arz, who is the Programme Officer
00:03 for the German Marshall Fund's Geostrategy North team. Thank you so much for joining
00:08 us. We're just going to look at a map of NATO and on our screens there we can see 31 countries,
00:16 almost 32, but not quite. That'll perhaps happen in October. What message did this NATO
00:23 summit send out with regards to the strength of the alliance, do you think?
00:28 Good evening. Yeah, I think the main message here today and yesterday has really been the
00:33 importance of cohesion and the importance of strong action and strategic direction that
00:42 all the allies agree on. And this was also one of the messages that President Biden emphasised
00:49 this evening in his speech following the summit. He really focused on much more than NATO and
00:57 the war in Ukraine and really voiced a rallying cry for action and cohesion. And I think this
01:05 was a message that we could see throughout the summit. There were, of course, small disagreements.
01:12 It took some time to come to certain results. But the message that we heard, especially
01:17 from the United States, was that there was broad agreement on the broad strokes and on
01:23 the big picture.
01:24 And how do you think that will then have been interpreted by, let's say, NATO's adversaries?
01:31 Well, I think demonstrating a strong message of cohesion is one of the most important things
01:37 that NATO can do. I think this is something that has been said again and again during
01:43 the summit and on the sidelines, President Putin really tried to rip the alliance apart.
01:49 He tried to sow distrust. And instead, he got a stronger, larger NATO and more capable
01:56 NATO with Finland now in the alliance, Sweden on its way to the alliance and Ukraine on
02:02 the way to be more closely integrated and a closer partner.
02:07 As you mentioned, there was a bit of friction. There were some divisions as well. I mean,
02:12 you'd have thought that perhaps Keeve's expectations with regards to eventual NATO membership
02:18 would have been managed a little bit more carefully ahead of time, wouldn't you?
02:24 Well, I think there was a good amount of expectation management, but I think President Zelensky
02:30 is very good at calling attention to the needs of his country and he used the opportunity
02:37 as well as he could. And I think he's had a great track record and actually initiating
02:43 change that way. So I think in the end, the assurances that he got maybe didn't go as
02:50 far as he hoped. And NATO allies and the US acknowledged as much and understand that he
02:56 would have wanted more. But I think he probably understands what the limitations are.
03:02 Sure. One of the other big headlines from this summit was Turkey lifting its opposition
03:08 to Sweden joining NATO. Why do you think there was a change of heart there by President Erdogan?
03:16 And do you think he had a strategy at all? Or was he shooting from the hip?
03:20 Yeah, I'm not sure. Obviously, I don't have any insights into his mind. But I would say
03:27 that maybe EU accession was not so much on his mind, but maybe he just wanted to launch
03:35 a last minute effort to call attention to Turkey's interests and make sure that the
03:42 allies paid attention to that. And it seems like Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, as
03:48 well as other NATO allies, had some serious conversations and they were able to agree
03:53 in the end and decide for what's best for the alliance overall.
03:57 We just got some pictures coming into us here, France 24, of Air Force One arriving in Finland.
04:03 Obviously, the US President keen to visit the 31st member of NATO. How much stronger
04:12 is NATO as a result of the invasion of Ukraine?
04:19 I mean, I think NATO is much stronger. It's definitely been a watershed moment and led
04:24 it to a lot of rethinking on the part of the allies. And I think that NATO is stronger
04:30 because of Finland and soon to be Sweden in the alliance in many ways. Finland is an incredibly
04:36 capable partner. And NATO has worked very closely with Finland and Sweden in the past.
04:40 So there's always a lot of interoperability already and a lot of history of close cooperation.
04:47 But now NATO can really move forward in taking that up a notch and to another level. And
04:53 one of the really important deliverables here at the summit has been the agreement on new
05:00 regional defence plans, which really set in stone kind of how the alliance will adjust
05:09 its posture, how the alliance will react in the case of crisis. And I think these plans
05:16 are classified, so I don't have any insight into them. But what we're hearing is that
05:20 they really will help to clarify command and control and also really help the allies identify
05:27 some of the capabilities and needs that they still need to develop further.
05:30 Yeah, as you're talking, we're just seeing Air Force One come into vision now as the
05:36 sun sets there in Helsinki, where the US President Joe Biden is just arriving now, having flown
05:43 in from Vilnius. I mean, overall, would you say that President Vladimir Putin appears
05:50 to have massively underestimated NATO's resolve when he took that decision to invade Ukraine?
05:57 Yes, absolutely. I don't think he could have seen that coming or else I don't think he
06:02 would have made the decision. And I think the US has played a big role in kind of setting
06:08 the direction here. And this is also a point that President Biden made this evening in
06:13 his speech. The US was really instrumental in using its intelligence sharing capabilities
06:19 to already share some of the plans that they saw Putin potentially developing, some of
06:26 the troop movements, and really helped to preempt some of the thinking and really rallied
06:33 the alliance closer together. And I think Putin probably did not expect that the alliance
06:40 would react so quickly, so strongly. Of course, some people will say still not quickly enough,
06:45 but probably much more quickly than Putin envisioned. Okay, well, thank you so much
06:50 for taking the time to speak to us, Sophie Arts, Programme Officer at the German Marshall
06:54 Fund. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you so much.
06:57 (swooshing)
