When I look back at NATO’s 75th-anniversary summit, the image that will stick in my mind won’t come from the conference itself.
Instead, it will be the indelible scene of a pediatric surgeon — his white apron covered with blood — desperately trying to rescue any tiny bald patients trapped in the rubble after a Russian Kh-101 missile collapsed the chemotherapy ward at Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital in Kyiv on July 8.
By deliberately targeting the most advanced children’s medical facility in Ukraine on the eve of the NATO conference — as well as a nearby maternity hospital that specializes in problem pregnancies — Vladimir Putin sent a chilling message to NATO members as well as an embattled President Joe Biden.
The summit, for all its real achievements, was still hobbled by the frightening lack of leadership in Washington — from both parties. It exacerbated the failure of NATO to truly put Ukraine on a clear path to membership. And Putin smiled.
Most grotesque was Donald Trump’s total inability to grasp the Moscow threat as he prattled at campaign rallies about his “very good relationship with Putin” and his disdain for NATO. (Summiteers spent much time trying to figure out how to “Trump-proof” further military aid to Ukraine.)
But Biden, who clearly understands the stakes, still blocked a Kyiv response to the attack on the hospital. He failed to lift the U.S. ban on letting Ukraine use U.S.-made long-range missiles to strike the aerodromes from which the attack was launched, deep inside Russian territories.
Since Russia has opened a new front by sending thousands of glide bombs into Ukrainian cities, the only way to stop this aggression is at its source. The U.S. touted NATO’s new aid package of U.S.-made Patriot air defense systems and F-16 warplanes to Ukraine. But here again, U.S. and NATO policy is too little, too late.
Kyiv, which lacks any viable air force, has been begging the West for Patriots to protect its cities since the war began. While Western allies have a reported 100 systems, until now only Germany has delivered — sending two — while the U.S. donated one.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Washington that seven new Patriot systems are the minimum needed to protect major cities. But at the summit, Germany, Romania, and Washington offered only one new Patriot system each. Another will be cobbled together from European parts, and another Italian system will help NATO deliver five altogether.
Israel has eight Patriot systems, on loan from the U.S., which it has put into mothballs because it considers them old technology, long replaced by Israeli defenses. Yet, the White House has failed to press Jerusalem to return some or all to Washington to be forwarded to Ukraine.
Even with all the uncertainty, there was some good news at the summit.
The event demonstrated that Putin’s violent effort to destroy a peaceful neighbor has revived and unified the alliance — along with Biden’s leadership. Two-thirds of NATO countries now met the 2% floor on defense spending, and, for the first time, there are some serious efforts to unify allies’ defense production and innovation.
Moreover, contrary to Trump’s claims, the European Union plus individual member nations are already giving Ukraine far more military and economic aid than the United States. And $40 billion in annual military aid will now be funneled proportionately by member states through NATO to try to Trump-proof any U.S. military aid cutoff.
The current White House policy of helping Ukraine hold the line — without providing the weapons needed for it to win — won’t work. If Biden acknowledges that truth — and lifts restrictions on long-range ATACMS missiles, while retrieving those Patriot missile batteries from Israel — the Democrats could show their foreign policy smarts in November, compared with Trump’s Putin-blindness.
But failing a White House sense of urgency, most of the many Ukrainian think tank and parliament members with whom I spoke at the summit left Washington deeply worried about Biden’s limits and the possibility of a Putin triumph, aided by Trump.
They were determined to fight on, despite U.S. weakness, but more than a little scared.
Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial board member for the The Philadelphia Inquirer. Readers may write to her at: Philadelphia Inquirer, P.O. Box 8263, Philadelphia, Pa. 19101, or email her at trubin@phillynews.com.
