Turkey’s Erdogan Upstages Biden’s NATO Summit

This week, NATO leaders gathered in Vilnius, Lithuania, to welcome Sweden as the newest member of the alliance. The terms of Sweden’s ascension are a personal triumph for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the man who has become the de facto arbiter of the alliance’s future amid President Joe Biden’s abdication of U.S. leadership.

Erdogan recently laid out NATO’s policy toward Ukraine, declaring this past weekend, “There is no doubt that Ukraine deserves NATO membership” while standing beside Ukraine’s President Zelensky in Istanbul. Joe Biden, on a trip to London before the NATO summit, seems to not even have been informed of the announcement before it happened.

The incident further illustrated the extent to which U.S. influence around the world is increasingly dependent on the whims of figures such as Erdogan.

In the case of Erdogan, this meant effectively side-lining the president of the United States from negotiations over the future of the alliance America founded. By first vetoing Swedish ascension, and then laying out conditions rather than agreeing to American mediation, Erdogan forced Sweden, the European Union, and Ukraine to approach Ankara bilaterally, excluding the United States from the process. He made clear to the Swedes that whether they joined NATO or not depended not on the preferences of Joe Biden, but on his own.

Here, Erdogan’s willingness to be magnanimous played in his favor, demonstrating why he has been so successful. Had Erdogan held out for impossible conditions, such as initial demands for full European Union membership, Sweden would have rejected them, and NATO states would have sought an alternative mechanism. By keeping his demands “reasonable,” he made it less of a hassle to appease him than to work with Biden to bypass Turkey.

The result was that Sweden’s ascension to NATO was announced not by Joe Biden at the NATO summit, but rather in Vilnius the day before, without Biden present. Instead, the announcement featured NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, and Erdogan, hailing what Stoltenberg proclaimed was a “historic day.”

Joe Biden, who was in London, seems to have been caught by surprise. The official White House statement is remarkably vague, implying strongly that the United States had not been consulted about the progress of the talks, and was uncertain what, if any conditions, were involved.

“I stand ready to work with President Erdogan and Turkey on enhancing defense and deterrence in the Euro-Atlantic area,” Biden’s prepared statement read. “I look forward to welcoming Prime Minister Kristersson and Sweden as our 32nd NATO Ally. And I thank Secretary General Stoltenberg for his steadfast leadership.”

No mention is made of specific ways of “enhancing defense and deterrence in the Euro-Atlantic area” with the clear implication being that Turkey has secured a blank check Biden and his team would be expected to fill in at the summit.

It would be an error to cast the events as a defeat for American interests or goals. Sweden will be joining NATO, and Turkey is likely to adopt a much more pro-Western line for the foreseeable future. It would be out of character for Erdogan to undermine NATO when he has just invested so much work into acquiring a decisive voice in its management.

Nonetheless, it was a defeat for Joe Biden, who was too weak to take yes for an answer when Sweden asked to join NATO, and was forced to tell the Swedes to get Erdogan’s permission first. This represents a shifting power structure within America’s own institutions.

Before the 2004 election, an anonymous advisor to President Bush, bragging to a journalist, declared America to be an empire. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality,” the advisor said. “And while you’re studying that reality –  judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors… and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

If that was ever the case, it clearly is no longer so in 2023. The U.S. lacks the ability to will reality into existence. It was unable to will democracy into existence in Venezuela, much less Russia or China.

The idea that Saudi Arabia, widely derided as a U.S. puppet state in 2003, follows orders from Joe Biden in 2023 is laughable. Even Israel not only resists U.S. efforts to meddle in its internal affairs, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced plans to visit Beijing this month.

The Biden administration cannot be blamed for shifts in geopolitics which began under the Obama administration, though the policies pursued then by many who are now leading figures in the current administration greatly contributed to current dynamics. Furthermore, the U.S. position was never as strong as it appeared during the Clinton and Bush administrations, when delusions about American invincibility tempted policymakers into a belief that free trade could turn China into Canada.

The Biden team, can, however, be blamed for being slow to adapt, with the result that they badly alienated Saudi Arabia, potentially “lost” Brazil to China by backing Lula da Silva over Jair Bolsonaro last year, and are now forced to operate as supplicants to Erdogan and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

By contrast, it was Donald Trump whose much maligned “personal outreach” to foreign leaders demonstrated a grasp of the changing realities of global politics far in advance of most of the beltway elite. Trump seemed to grasp that the ability of either the United States or China to wield direct influence abroad in a world following the Iraq and Afghanistan wars would depend not on raw force, but the ability to coordinate with key regional actors.

With the support of Israel and Saudi Arabia, Donald Trump demonstrated that it was possible for America to dominate the Middle East without the need for troops or the appeasement of Iran. Joe Biden rapidly learned that without either, the U.S. is powerless to even free a college student in Iraq.

The Trump administration’s mischaracterized “pro-strongman” policy was based on securing the loyalty of key regional actors, most of whom were elected, and whose greatest demands were not U.S. policy concessions but merely to be treated with respect. The act of treating Jair Bolsonaro, Erdogan, and Modi with respect and not lecturing them about “human rights” issues (which were often akin to the complaints American liberals have about states restricting transgender surgeries for minors), was enough to secure their allegiance to American policy in their regions. This in turn allowed America to engage on other issues from a position of strength.

Despite his best efforts, Biden has failed to break with this policy. All he has managed to do is transform it into a purely transactional one. The United States is once more forced to deal with Saudi Arabia and Turkey, but both countries know the Biden team bares them no goodwill, and they demand to be paid in advance.

This shift to a transactional relationship was not just evident with Erdogan. The contrast was obvious when it came to the recent visit by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the United States. When Modi visited under Donald Trump, it was a sign of genuine friendship culminating in a Howdy Modi rally in Texas attended by tens of thousands. A similar mass outpouring of support was visible in Donald Trump’s visit to India. When Modi came to the United States this time, however, there were remarkable echoes of Erdogan’s approach to NATO.

Modi granted audiences to a series of academics, policy makers, and business leaders desperate to make his acquaintance before addressing a joint session of Congress, but Biden was almost a bystander. That Modi’s reception was a matter of regretful necessity rather than pleasure was evident on both sides, not least by constant leaks from within the Biden administration of lower level officials suggesting that the United States had not “forgotten” his human rights record.

This month, the U.S. Under-Secretary for Democracy and Human Rights will travel to India to meet with “civil society” and “opposition politicians.” The approach is worse than useless. Modi knows he is indispensable. It merely encourages him to reinforce the message as Erdogan did.

Biden is not responsible for American reliance on Erdogan or Modi. Erdogan had a right under the NATO treaty to veto Sweden’s ascension. Modi has helped turn India into a major power. As long as Biden and his team insist on making public their resentment of this situation, they will force the leaders America relies on to respond in kind as Erdogan did. Next time, it might not be a European trip they ruin for Biden.

Daniel Berman is a frequent commentator and lecturer on foreign policy and political affairs, both nationally and internationally. He holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from the London School of Economics. He also writes as Daniel Roman.