Risch hails NATO as successful alliance in face of Ukraine war

WASHINGTON – As leaders from NATO countries kicked off a two-day summit in Lithuania’s capital Tuesday, with the annual meeting dominated by the war in Ukraine, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee called the alliance “the most successful political and defensive organization that’s ever been on the face of the planet.”

In an interview at the Capitol, Sen. Jim Risch of Idaho said the North Atlantic Treaty Organization – formed by countries in North America and Europe for their mutual defense in the wake of World War II – is as essential as ever, even to his constituents half a world away in the Inland Northwest.

“NATO is important because the national security of the United States of America is the most important issue that the federal government exists for,” he said. “And there is nothing that gives us better security than the NATO organization.”

President Joe Biden and the leaders of other NATO member countries arrived in Vilnius on Tuesday with a packed schedule, including talks on Sweden becoming the alliance’s 32nd member and a path for Ukraine to one day join the pact.

Biden and other leaders have ruled out Kyiv’s immediate accession – to the frustration of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy – largely because doing so would force all of NATO into a direct war with Russia. The North Atlantic Treaty requires each of the alliance’s members to treat an attack on any NATO member as an attack on all of them.

In response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Finland and Sweden – two nations that had maintained neutrality – opted to join NATO. Finland officially acceded in April, but Turkey blocked Sweden’s membership, saying the Scandinavian nation was harboring Kurdish groups that Turkey’s government considers terrorists, even after Stockholm made membership in the groups illegal.

Hungary followed suit, drawing the ire of Risch, who used his powerful committee role to block a U.S. arms sale to the country until its government allowed Sweden to join NATO. On the eve of the summit, the leaders of both Hungary and Turkey relented, saying they would support Sweden’s accession.

Risch said that Turkey – which has been part of NATO since 1952, just three years after the alliance was founded – has long used its membership in NATO as leverage to achieve domestic goals. Since joining the pact in 1999, Hungary has often followed Turkey’s example, he said.

“They’re not autocracies, but they kind of lean that way,” he said of Turkey and Hungary. “They’re different than the rest of the allies there and they hang together on these kinds of things, but they’ll do what’s right.”

Risch said the addition of Sweden and Finland “changes things dramatically,” including by expanding NATO’s border with Russia.

“They bring a lot to the table,” he said of the two Nordic countries. “Their military abilities are very good. They know Russia about as well as anybody does, being right across the border from and sparring with them over the years.”

Despite the drama over NATO expansion and the high stakes of the Ukraine war, Risch said the NATO summit is first and foremost a chance for the member nations’ leaders to hash out their differences.

“Do we always agree? Of course we don’t,” he said. “To get 32 countries to agree on anything is very difficult. What we all agree on is that Russia is a problem and that Russia has got to be stopped from its imperial ambitions.”

As Ukraine has ramped up a counteroffensive in recent months to retake Russian-occupied territory in the southeast, the Ukrainian military has run dangerously low on the munitions supplied by the United States and other NATO members. On Friday, the Biden administration announced it would give Kyiv cluster munitions – controversial weapons that many nations have scrapped because of the risk they pose to civilians.

While some progressive Democrats, including Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Seattle, have criticized the move, Risch said Biden should have supplied cluster munitions to Ukraine earlier. The Idaho Republican criticized the administration’s reluctance to send certain weapons and military vehicles, which the White House has said may escalate the war by provoking Russia to use more destructive weapons – perhaps even nuclear arms.

“If you don’t escalate, you’re not going to win,” Risch said. “I’ve said from the beginning, give them everything that shoots, except nuclear.”

As the war stretches well into its second year, a vocal minority of Republicans in Congress have voiced skepticism about U.S. support to Ukraine, but Risch says he doesn’t anticipate their ranks growing large enough to stop the billions in military aid.

His message for those GOP lawmakers has a few parts, Risch said. First, he points to the Budapest Memorandum, a 1994 agreement in which Ukraine agreed to give up what was then the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal, which it had inherited from the Soviet Union, in exchange for security guarantees.

“We said to them, ‘Give up your nuclear weapons. We’ll take care of you,’ ” Risch said. “And so we have a legal obligation and we’ve got a moral obligation. It’s the right thing to do.”

Second, Risch argued that if the United States and its allies allow Russian President Vladimir Putin to win the war, he won’t stop there. Finally, he said Chinese Premier Xi Jinping is watching what the United States does in Ukraine and could be emboldened by a withdrawal of U.S. support to Ukraine.

“If we turn tail right now and run,” he said, “the die is cast in China, I believe. I think Taiwan is in grave, grave danger.”

The NATO summit will continue Wednesday with a packed agenda, including meetings between Zelenskyy and several NATO heads of state.