The risk of the Ukrainian war escalating in the Black Sea, the shock presence of Cuban military forces on the battlefield, and the final steps to confirm Swedish NATO membership were all topics of discussion as NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg addressed the European Parliament Thursday morning.
On September 7th, Stoltenberg was addressing a joint meeting of Parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Defence committees, where the NATO boss was accused by various anti-war MEPs of overpromising Ukraine on NATO membership at a recent meeting of the alliance in Lithuania.
In his opening remarks to MEPs, Stoltenberg commented on his hopes that Swedish NATO membership would be finally approved when the Turkish Parliament reconvenes in the next few months. He commented that the accession of Sweden and Finland would mean 96% of EU citizens would be within NATO as he commended cooperation between NATO and the EU.
Despite the ambition of Eurocrats to play a greater military role in the conflict, many pundits have noted that Brussels has fallen behind NATO due to its inability to coordinate its conflicting foreign and military policies, despite the European Defence Agency taking the landmark step to purchase weapons on behalf of the bloc for the first time this week.
During the questioning, Lithuanian Renew MEP Petras Auštrevičius stated that the current Ukrainian conflict was a mixture “between WWI and WWIII.” Various Bulgarian and Romanian MEPs quizzed Stoltenberg on a potential expansion of the firing line to include the Black Sea, in light of the suspension of an agreement to allow Ukrainian grain travel unassailed.
Romanian MEP Vlad Gheorghe asked Stoltenberg if NATO was taking precautions against the risk of Russian drone attacks on Romanian territory after Bucharest admitted that a Russian drone had in fact been downed on its territory. The event sparked fears of an Article 5 moment, in which NATO members treat an attack against one as an attack against them all.
Two Spanish MEPs, Antonio López-Istúriz White and VOX’s Hermann Tertsch, also raised the issue of Cuban and potentially even Venezuelan military presence in Ukraine, after Cuban citizens were exposed as being trafficked to the Ukrainian frontline to fight, with a warning that Cuban intelligence services were far more formidable than their army would suggest.
By far the most critical comments of the morning session regarding the war came from socialist anti-NATO MEPs Clare Daly and Mick Wallace. Both warned that the much-lauded Ukrainian counteroffensive was foundering. A socialist MEP from Ireland, Wallace praised the role of China as an arbitrary power in Ukraine (as opposed to a more belligerent NATO) as he questioned what exactly constituted the “rules-based order” Stoltenberg and his alliance were ostensibly there to protect.
Regarding the issue of China, Stoltenberg stated that while NATO didn’t “regard China as an adversary” the military alliance did not share the same values as Beejing’s ruling CCP and noted China’s relative ambivalence on Ukraine and willingness to partner with Russia despite Western sanctions.
While outwardly unified relations between NATO and the EU have been strained by the war in Ukraine, most recently over Quran burnings in Sweden, rumours abound that current EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen may seek the NATO top job in 2024.
