Is NATO a Good Deal?

On the first day of this year’s NATO summit, Carnegie hosted Tobias Billström (minister for foreign affairs of Sweden), John Hickenlooper (U.S. senator), Janet Napolitano (founder of the Center for Security in Politics at U.C. Berkeley), and Jim Sciutto (anchor and chief national security analyst at CNN) to discuss how the seventy-five-year-old alliance benefits the public. An excerpt from their conversation, which has been edited for clarity, is below. Watch the full event here.

Jim Sciutto: With the NATO summit in Washington this week, this is a friendly audience to the argument that NATO is the key to security for Europe and for the United States and its allies. But the fact is, in this country, a good 40 percent of the population doesn’t buy that. . . . Has the pro-NATO voice failed to make the case to the American population at large that NATO is in its interest, that NATO is necessary, and that NATO is not a financial burden?

John Hickenlooper: Well, I think we’re seeing a tipping point. For too long, most Americans took NATO for granted. And there’s a level of collective amnesia. . . . I just spent the last couple of weeks going around parts of Colorado. I talked to people around Colorado about the reality of NATO and how these thirty-two countries make every one of us stronger. [The alliance] is tied into our economy, our sense of security, which, again, the optimism you need to have a strong economy comes from that security. It's a collective effort that pays huge dividends to everybody. It doesn't matter where you are in the state. In the rural areas, like most of our states, [there] are higher percentages of Republicans. There's an age break, and older Republicans in rural areas have a vivid memory of the circumstances before and during World War II, what that meant, what it was like, and how horrendous it was for everyone. So I think we have to kind of relive that and make sure those stories get told again.

Jim Sciutto: What do you think is missing from the case made by President Biden and Democrats and Republicans who support NATO and who believe that NATO is not only a values cause for the United States but also a national security cause? What is missing from that message in terms of convincing more American voters that [the alliance] is necessary?

Janet Napolitano: I think what's missing is to make the case about NATO's relevance now and for the future. . . . There are new security threats that affect the globe that are also relevant in the cybersecurity space. The U.S. position will be stronger if we are joined with our NATO partners.

Jim Sciutto: Mr. Foreign Minister, how did you make the case to skeptical Swedish voters that it was in Sweden's interest to join NATO? And I wonder, was fear the driving force, being closer to the Russia threat?

Tobias Billström: Well thank you. I will start by saying that I represent the country who decided at the end of the Napoleonic war to embark on a policy of being nonmilitary and nonaligned and who maintained that policy for 200 years through the two world wars just mentioned [and other crises since]. That changed with the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine. I would argue, however, that that change came about as a sequence. We started already in 1994 [by] entering into the Partnership for Peace. So the road toward full membership was set for some decades. But it's very true that the reason we shifted our policy was because we saw that Russia is on the move. Russia is trying to recreate its empire again at the expense of other states in our neighborhood. And being part of the great defense alliance that NATO represents is the only way for Sweden to create a space of safety and security for the population. And that was the case being put to the Swedish population. . . . The Swedish population saw with their own eyes what was happening, and they responded in kind.

Jim Sciutto: Senator, on the case of kitchen table issues. . . . I often try to explain this to folks when I'm giving talks that, you can open an office for your company in Eastern Europe or in China reliably and safely under the rules-based international order, which sounds boring. Your child can study abroad in Eastern Europe or Asia. There are benefits to the rules-based international order, and NATO, and a kind of world that is not run by “might makes right.”

John Hickenlooper: People in rural Colorado, who let's say are working on a farm and doing what they've done for decades. They're in some way insulated from that. It's not directly there, but they're fully aware of it. On the Fourth of July, I went up and had breakfast with a remarkable farmer in Colorado named Keith Barth, who I've known for a number of years. And he's fully aware of what the global markets are and what the war in Ukraine does to commodity prices and for crops. I mean, this isn't as removed from those kitchen tables as we sometimes think. And as our economy becomes more global, so does our consciousness to a certain extent.

Janet Napolitano: Yeah, I think the senator has it right. When the issues get translated into something tangible that voters live in or appreciate, they understand it. And, in sectors of the economy like agriculture, which are inherently global in nature, there is a very good understanding of how the United States was situated in terms of the international market structure. So, I agree. Voters are much more tuned in. They're tuned in in a different way than, say, the Beltway. The lens is different than the punditry, but they are tuned in.

Jim Sciutto: So it strikes me that the nuclear implications of a U.S. withdrawal or step back are underdiscussed and underreported, in that if the United States were to either formally leave NATO or effectively do so, European nations might very well make a security decision to go nuclear. I mean, there's been discussion of this. You can see a similar calculation by South Korea and Japan. And then, going onward, Saudi Arabia, in relation to an Iran threat. One, I'm curious how concerned you are about the threat of nuclear proliferation, if you have that retreat. But two, I wonder if that might be a way to convince American voters. That's another reason to be involved, right? It's a less safe world in that environment.

John Hickenlooper: It's certainly a point worth discussing, and I think it does get people's attention. And I think it is a real risk. You begin to destabilize the status quo, and you're actually instigating the kinds of thoughts and discussions that will lead some countries to go in a nuclear direction. When I was a kid, we'd have nuclear raid training, and we'd have to go in our schools, leave our classrooms, sit in the hall. Now we're going to have cybersecurity training, right? So it's not just nuclear when we destabilize or step back from our alliances, in the modern world. . . . It is the emboldening, the attacks that come not only from Russia but also from Iran and North Korea, all kinds of places that are bent on our destruction and attacking our economy.

Janet Napolitano: We should not forget Russia's direct involvement in our electoral process. They did it in 2016. They probably did it before 2016. They're very knowledgeable about the psyche of the U.S. voter. They've been at it for a long time. And they know how to precisely target different messages to different communities. There's nothing to suggest they haven't been at it in 2022 and 2024. And that should be viewed as a direct threat to our nation, our democracy, how we conduct ourselves. The thought that [our elections are] being partially manipulated by an outside state actor ought to make us all take a step back. But unfortunately, that message has gotten conflated into partisan politics, and we've lost sight of what's really going on. . . . And the United States is not the only target of this kind of interference. I mean, this is an international phenomenon where open and free democratic societies are involved.

Jim Sciutto: All over Europe. I don't have to tell you that because you experience it every day in your politics, as do NATO allies. How do you respond to that? How do you respond to that kind of interference in your politics, in your elections? Are you better at it than we are?

Tobias Billström: Well to my mind and all the information that I have, we have good resilience against this in Sweden. The authorities tell us, for both the recent elections for the European Parliament and before, we haven't seen any major attempts to disrupt or disturb. But you cannot rule out that in the future. And yet it's very clear, especially in previous French elections, that there were attempts made by Russia to try and influence them. And the UK has also made the same allegations. . . . What you have to do is, as always, try to win the democratic case by being open, by talking, by showing transparency. It is by this resilience that our democratic institutions will be able to overcome this at the end of the day. You can try to launch armies and try to convince people via that. But I think it's a problem.

However, I see some cases where you can really see that the countries you mentioned—not only Russia but also China, Iran, and North Korea—are grouping together in order to disrupt things. And we saw that with the campaign directed at the Swedish social services, the so-called enemy campaign . . . which tried to make the case that Swedish authorities were kidnapping children of Muslim families. This is, of course, complete rubbish. There have never been any such things going on. But that campaign was built on original cases where people that had been in conflict with the social services, then shared millions of times on the internet. It is a campaign still running, and the attempt is to try and disrupt the Muslim population in the Swedish society and turn it against Sweden. . . . So we have to understand that they will try to find weak spots in our societies and exploit them. And we can only prevent this by acting together and by joining hands in the free world. And if we don't do that well, they will pick us off one by one, of course. And countries in Eastern Europe are also experiencing attempts by Russia to influence their elections in the same manner as I spoke about before.

Jim Sciutto: Another question that's dominating discussion this week is whether Ukraine actually has a future in NATO, or if it’s just talk. . . . What's the reality?

Tobias Billström: The reality is that Ukraine definitely has a future in NATO as a full member. And I think it is inevitable, but this is the way we are going to end up. Whether you use the term “an irrevocable path,” the path forward is very clear. It is only Ukraine that can decide when [a peace negotiation] comes about. But when it comes about and with the outcome [of the war], the only way of preventing Russia from ever attacking Ukraine again is by bringing [Kyiv] into the alliance. And I think we will be able to do that. And that will be a process. But, I mean, I say this without any kind of irony or sarcasm, but if you look at what Ukraine will bring to the table, they will bring the most war-experienced, and perhaps best-equipped, army in Europe at the moment. So, fulfilling the actual military commitments is not going to be in any of the discussions. That would be other discussions.

And I think that this is all well and good. I think this is the way it should be. And [NATO] should allow every country to decide, in accordance with the open door policy, to decide that security solution. Actually, what brought Sweden and Finland into the alliance was that we exercised our right to decide what kind of security solution we would have, which is actually the basis of the entire security order—not only the European security order but also the world security order. So I think that we should stand up for Ukraine's right to walk this path. That doesn't mean that you don't have to fulfill commitments, of course you have to. But you should be allowed to walk the path.

Jim Sciutto: And that's always my answer to the question when the argument is made to me that, oh, NATO expanded into Eastern Europe, or why did NATO push up on Russia’s [border]. I say, well, ask the Swedes, or the Finns, or ask the Estonians. Ask them why they chose the democratic process to join. And it's a survival issue.

Tobias Billström: It is never NATO that expands. It is always individual states that, for historical reasons or reasons of present day, make the decision to join the alliance. And that should always be repeated. There is no sinister conspiracy bringing countries into the NATO family. It is always individual decisions by countries.

Janet Napolitano: I'm delighted the NATO summit is happening in [the United States] this year, because I think it gives a great opportunity to refresh [the issue] in people's minds. Why NATO? Why now? Why it matters?

Tobias Billström: Well, we definitely live in very interesting times, as they say. And I can only again repeat that we are joining NATO, leaving behind a 200-year-old policy of being a nonmilitary country. You don't do that very lightly. We do it because it is necessary to do it. But having said this, the fact that we are doing it also shows our confidence in the alliance. And what gives me hope is the fact that the alliance shows, being the most successful alliance in world history, that there is hope for the future. If we stand together.