The CSPC Dispatch — June 20, 2025
Welcome to the CSPC Dispatch!
In this issue, CSPC President & CEO Hon. Glenn Nye explores the urgent need to modernize American alliances in an era of renewed great power competition. Senior Fellow Robert Gerber examines how the U.S. is expanding its commercial diplomacy efforts to compete for major international deals. Senior Fellow James Kitfield reflects on NATO’s moment of reckoning as it faces critical questions about leadership, burden sharing, and long-term viability. CSPC interns Jessica Firestone and Seth English analyze President Trump’s recent executive order on elections and its implications for the separation of powers, while intern Jaya Nambiar provides an overview of Ukraine’s evolving relationship with NATO and the United States.
As always, we hope you find the Dispatch informative and welcome your feedback on how we can continue to improve.
It’s Time to Revitalize American Alliances
By Glenn Nye
A key foundation of American strength and security has been its carefully cultivated alliance relationships. NATO forming the underpinning of transatlantic security and the U.S. alliance with Japan providing invaluable access and shared approaches to Indo-Pacific security, are two powerful examples. But alliances, like all productive relationships, need to evolve over time to ensure they remain tailored to the threats and challenges of the times and to earn enduring support from the public who bear the costs of mutual defense. Alliances need not suffer binary choices. Spending time pondering whether the U.S. should or should not engage in European security, for example, is a false choice. Asking what the key goals and return the U.S. gets from its security relationships with European partners is a sensible question. In order to re-establish the foundational value of America’s key alliances a thoughtful review of the current threat environment, goals, and desired benefits is needed.
Such a review should be forward looking, determined to establish or refresh alliance relationships that meet the needs of today and tomorrow, not maintain or reset alliances to the realities of the past. Though challenging and including some risk if relationships are not managed with respect, modernizing our alliances is vital given where we are today. It would be riskier to try to cling to “status quo” arrangements that were created under old security realities.
American policy makers need to engage in a bi-partisan review so that newly refreshed alliance arrangements are created to stand the test of time and not subject to whipsaw changes after each election cycle. Support for alliance relationships should be firmly grounded in the value and benefits the U.S. gains from each commitment. Likewise, Americans should assume that our partners in Europe and the Pacific, for example, will also want to re-evaluate their roles, commitments and return on investments. Significant increases in European and Japanese defense budgets will help with this dialogue. This revitalization should be undertaken with these key principles in mind:
Build the Force of the Future, Not the Past
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has shown that traditional conventional weapons, artillery, troops and missiles, still play a key role at scale in modern warfare. But the conflict has also shown that new technologies like drones and electronic warfare, combined with the ability to learn and iterate quickly on the battlefield can be decisive. A revitalized NATO should not seek to recreate the Cold War era tank force but should build an agile force incorporating modern lessons. If deterring Russia from future aggression in Europe is the key goal, developing capabilities that can put Russian energy infrastructure at risk on land and sea might be one cost-effective deterrent. Developing ways to counter and respond quickly to asymmetric attacks and active measures would be highly additional. In the Pacific, high quantities of autonomous undersea vehicles and submarines are likely to be a key part of a force designed to deter China from aggression in the region, for example.
Get Better at Procurement, Quickly
President Trump and U.K. Prime Minster Keir Starmer have both declared intentions to rapidly improve defense procurement methods to achieve readiness goals faster and create a more agile force. This is a vital element of the success of their goals but is easier said than done. It will likely require sincere and consistent top-level attention to break the cycle of slow, risk-averse procurement approaches endemic to large bureaucracies. It could be among the most important contributions either leader makes to individual or collective national security if they are successful. There is already notable supporting legislation in Congress, introduced by Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee Wicker (R-Miss.), but sustained executive attention will be vital to success.
Ensure Collaboration in Production and Deployment
Undoubtedly, American and allied policy makers will want to spend increased defense funds on domestic defense industries and technologies, but it would be highly inefficient for each country to try to build a parallel set of the same capabilities from exclusively individual domestic economies. The nature and advantage of alliances is intrinsically connected to leveraging component strengths for coordinated effect on collective goals. In the short term, allied governments can benefit from American tech while over the longer term collaborative projects should parallel domestic increases in industrial technology bases across alliance partners. A recent collaboration between Anduril Industries and Rheinmetall to produce autonomous air vehicles for European deployment is a good example of partner collaboration.
Broaden Alliance Architectures
Successful modern alliances will go beyond sharing heavy air lift, mechanized ground forces, and naval capabilities. More effective coordination of economic security policies and leveraging tools of economic statecraft should go hand-in-hand with military deterrents. Greater intelligence sharing and willingness to wield cyber and other asymmetric capabilities will help modernize alliance utility.
Refreshing and revitalizing America’s alliances will be a serious project competing for attention bandwidth with ongoing conflicts in Europe and the middle east and must take place while economic and trade negotiations between the same allied governments may take precedence in terms of immediate focus. It is high time, however, that these alliances be recrafted so that they can continue to serve as a fundamental bedrock of American security and advantage in great power competition.
Big Deals: Trends in Commercial Diplomacy
By Robert W. Gerber
Major government procurement tenders, such as power stations, airports, civilian aircraft, and telecommunications infrastructure, are the big prizes in overseas markets. U.S. companies can compete and win when there is a level playing field, i.e., where bidding processes are fair and transparent, regulations are predictable, and when countries uphold the principal of “national treatment,” meaning that foreign competitors do not face discrimination. But often, some of these elements are missing. U.S. and (European) companies may also find themselves competing in third country markets against a Chinese state-backed company seeking market share rather than profits, which results in losing a bid to the lower-cost Chinese competitor. These are some of the reasons why there is a need for smart commercial diplomacy, sometimes known as commercial statecraft.
The Championing American Business Through Diplomacy Act of 2019 encourages an expanded whole-of-government effort – led by State Department’s Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs and the Department Commerce’s International Trade Administration (ITA) - to promote U.S. business interests abroad. It codifies the use of embassy “Deal Teams” and Deal Trackers, which are interagency mechanisms designed to capitalize on major foreign procurement offerings and part of a suite of services embassies provide to American businesses. These include Country Commercial Guides that help U.S. companies navigate foreign markets and “direct line” calls where the ambassador briefs U.S. industry on a particular topic of interest. The Department of Commerce/ITA runs an Advocacy Center to help companies win foreign government procurement contracts. ITA also hosts industry networking events and offers fee-based trade missions and customized export and foreign market counseling through its domestic and overseas offices. (The Department of Defense has its own military sales program to promote U.S. defense hardware.) Unfortunately, U.S. companies are often unaware that embassies offer these programs and services. In 2020, the General Accounting Office counted 759 Foreign Service Officers with economic and commercial responsibilities serving 163 countries. They have extensive knowledge, insights, and contacts that can create pathways to private business opportunities. Washington must empower these FSOs so they may devote time to business outreach and provide them with mandatory pre-deployment training in commercial tradecraft. The effectiveness of the Department of State’s commercial diplomacy also depends on having a confirmed nominee in the positions of Undersecretary and Assistant Secretary for Economic and Business Affairs.
Observers expect the U.S. Development Finance Corporation (DFC) – which also lacks a Senate-confirmed CEO - to play a more prominent role in the Trump Administration’s strategy to “advance American commercial leadership.” Created to help U.S. companies compete with Chinese companies for overseas infrastructure projects, DFC can now invest with equity in foreign projects that support U.S. exports and domestic projects that attract foreign direct investment. Its priority sectors include critical minerals supply chains, energy, and communications infrastructure. During the confirmation hearing for the DFC’s CEO-nominee, Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) warned: “Until recently the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Millennium Challenge Corporation were laying the groundwork for private investment by building roads, installing electricity, delivering fresh water. And without these development projects, it will be harder for the DFC to attract the private investments necessary to counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative.” She could have added that USAID ran programs that fostered business-friendly environments overseas, which benefited American companies.
The Export-Import Bank offers export insurance and direct loans to foreign buyers of U.S. goods. Ex-Im Bank has some new authorities, and we can expect it to provide more financing for overseas projects that support U.S. supply chain security, particularly in critical minerals. For example, Reuters recently reported that Ex-Im is considering a $120 million loan to U.S.-based Critical Minerals Corp for a rare earths mining project in Greenland. The agency’s authorization will need to be renewed in 2026.
In May 2025, President Trump invited the CEOs of Boeing, Google, Nvidia, Blackrock, and three dozen other companies to join him for meetings with government leaders in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. Whereas France, Germany, and China regularly bring business delegations on head of state visits overseas to promote their respective “national champions” and Presidents Obama and Biden did the same, President Trump’s scrum of CEOs stood out in terms of the roster and the White House’s claim that the visit had produced $2 trillion in deals. The Washington Post reported that several of the “new” business deals were actually agreed to prior to 2025. The White House announced a new $4 billion investment by an Abu Dhabi-based company in an aluminum smelter in Oklahoma, though the parties only signed a non-binding memorandum for future discussions. The takeaway here is that presidential business delegations do not always deliver what they may appear to.
In summary, there is an important role for commercial diplomacy and changes are afoot. These include an emphasis on government support for outbound investment where it strengthens U.S. supply chains and leads to more exports; investment (sometimes with equity) taking the place of development assistance; and a president playing the role of chief matchmaker for international commercial deals. It is worth noting though that despite these efforts, some companies have enough breadth and resources that they do not request or need U.S. government help, while others are reticent to engage for fear of being tagged to the U.S. government and its policies – preferring to be viewed as a multinational company.
NATO’s Moment of Truth
By James Kitfield
“They hate us.”
That was the assessment of the Trump administration recently offered in a private conversation with a senior European diplomat from a major NATO country. That gloomy view of transatlantic relations is widely shared in Europe, and not just because a leaked Signals chat earlier this year revealed that the U.S. vice president and secretary of defense privately described Europeans as “pathetic” geopolitical freeloaders.
Or because of the administration’s brusque treatment of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office, and relative coddling of Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. Nor is it simply about Trump’s unilateral imposition of tariffs or recent insistence that the European Union was “formed in order to screw the United States.” The gloom is not even primarily about Trump’s threats to take Greenland from Denmark by force if necessary or to make Canada the 51st U.S. state, even though those comments were deeply insulting to both NATO allies.
At core, the profound unease that has descended over European capitals is about being left largely leaderless at a time of vulnerability and great peril, with the Russian bear on the prowl on the continent, Chinese mercantilism threatening the European economic model and Washington constantly casting doubt over the future of the alliance they have relied on for decades.
For all those reasons, the upcoming June 24 to 25 NATO Summit in The Hague is shaping up as one of the most consequential and uncertain in the alliance’s history. America’s closest allies have a host of questions and the Trump administration is providing few answers. Will the U.S. follow through on rumored troop withdrawals from Germany, or even from Europe writ large? Will it surrender the position of Supreme Allied Commander-Europe, always held by a senior U.S. military officer in the past, further eroding American leadership in Europe? Will Trump offer critical backing for a European coalition willing to put troops on the ground to guarantee Ukraine’s sovereignty in the event of an elusive peace deal with Russia? How will the Trump administration react if a settlement is reached and Russia repositions hundreds of thousands of battle-hardened troops on NATO’s eastern border? Can Europe even still trust in the American nuclear umbrella?
To discuss these existential questions I recently spoke in Paris with Martin Quencez, Managing Director of Geopolitical Risk and Strategy for the German Marshall Fund (GMF), and Gesine Weber, a fellow on GMF’s Geostrategy team. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: Just before last year’s U.S. presidential election, you both co-authored an analysis that essentially argued that European leaders had been lulled into a sense of complacency by the Biden administration’s strong embrace of the transatlantic relationship and leadership on the issue of support for Ukraine, and thus the European Union (EU) failed to institute needed security reforms. Do you still believe that?
Quencez: Looking back four years ago, the European Commission wrote extensively about the need to renew the transatlantic relationship after the disruptions of the first term of Donald Trump. We had a very pro-European president in Biden, and the commission argued for a fundamental reboot of the transatlantic project. From a historical perspective, if you look at where that relationship is today, you’d have to conclude that the Biden administration and the E.U. both failed to fundamentally transform the transatlantic partnership.
Q: Doesn’t the Biden administration get high marks in Europe for rallying the transatlantic alliance to support Ukraine in its war against Russian aggression?
Quencez: Yes, that was a true success, and it was not a sure thing in the beginning. Biden handled it very well if the goal was to keep the alliance together in support of Ukraine. Somewhat ironically, however, there was so much emphasis put on the need to unite allies and crack down on divergent views on the war in Ukraine that it prevented innovative thinking on how to transform the alliance. You couldn’t help but notice that a lot of officials on both sides of the Atlantic whose experiences dated back to the Cold War felt comfortable with a fight against the Russians. They knew how to do that. So it was a period of some inertia in terms of NATO transformation.
Q: But hasn’t NATO traditionally looked to the United States to lead during such crises, as the Biden administration did?
Quencez: Yes, but you also had the experience of the Afghanistan withdrawal. That decision was made by the Biden administration without even consulting European nations that fought alongside you for 20 years. That was a transatlantic mission directly involving NATO, and yet the Americans ended it without even seeking the views of its European allies, and, of course, it ended very badly. Then you also had the AUKUS deal [the trilateral security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States to sell Canberra nuclear submarines for the first time, tanking a deal by France to sell it less capable diesel submarines – editor’s note]. Certainly for the French, that reaffirmed the belief that America doesn’t even think about Europe as a whole when making those types of important security decisions.
Q: So you believe an opportunity was lost over the last four years to fundamentally rethink the nature of the transatlantic alliance?
Weber: There was this paradox. The first Trump administration and the Ukraine war provided a massive shock to the European security structure that theoretically should have prompted Europe into profound strategic reflection on the future of the continent’s security, and the part the United States would play in that going forward. We needed a fundamental rethinking of the European security order and the nature of the NATO alliance.
Instead, U.S. leadership of the alliance in support of Ukraine led to a sort of status quo bias. A lot of European officials who were comfortable with an anti-Russia stance just assumed once again that not much had changed since the Cold War. We would just let the United States lead on other global challenges. Because of that bias, the E.U. and NATO largely missed a window of opportunity to move beyond status quo thinking and reimagine NATO and the European security order for the future. Yes, we’ve seen increased defense spending in Europe, but without that strategic reflection on the future of the transatlantic alliance. Europe has been reactive, but not proactive.
Q: You clearly believe that such a strategic transformation would lead to a Europe able to act more independently in terms of providing for its own security?
Weber: I think Europeans will have to have those discussions some time in the future, but because of Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine, many European officials are not willing to risk a clash with the United States on these issues. Despite a growing awareness of an over-dependence on the United States, there’s no willingness in Europe right now to think anew on the subject. Germany basically assumes that Europe is incapable of defending itself, so Berlin puts all its eggs in the U.S. basket. That’s also primarily the view from the Baltics and the Nordics. Despite unhappiness about many U.S. decisions, they are willing to be subservient because at the moment security triumphs over all other issues.
Q: But don’t you sense that the Trump administration would not only embrace, but is in fact demanding, that Europe take more responsibility for its own security?
Quencez: Yes. Actually, there’s been a lot more intellectual debate on that subject in the first months of the second Trump administration than in four years during the Biden administration. There’s a lot of fear and concern on the part of Europeans, because they’ve been forced to grapple with the tough question of what happens if the United States isn’t there for us anymore? I think the Trump administration is really open to hearing about ways to transform European security structures, and giving Europeans more decision-making responsibility. There are still some taboos, such as putting U.S. soldiers under European military command, which I don’t think Washington would accept. So this is a very chaotic time in terms of transatlantic relations, but I can’t help but notice that Europeans are at least having these debates now.
Q: You don’t see NATO returning once again to the old Cold War consensus?
Weber: One element of the current dynamic is a generational difference. There’s new thinking about the global order on both sides of the Atlantic by officials and analysts from a younger generation that didn’t live through the Cold War. It may have been nice in the past to take the U.S. security umbrella for granted, but the return of President Trump has forced younger Europeans especially to consider whether it’s healthy to depend on U.S. hegemony to such a degree? There’s also a new generation of U.S. officials whose most relevant memories are not of the Cold War, but rather lessons from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the growing U.S. competition with China. We saw that clearly in the Signals discussion among top Trump officials who questioned the traditional role of the United States as a benevolent hegemon tasked with protecting the global commons, and why that was really in the U.S. interest. That discussion certainly plays into European thinking as well, as did [Vice President J.D.] Vance’s speech at the Munich security conference. The idea of a cohesive, U.S.-led block of democracies aligned against autocracies in a sort of black-and-white confrontation that was pushed by the Biden administration is also problematic for many Europeans.
Quencez: That leaked Signals discussion just reinforced the fact that this asymmetric relationship between America and Europe is not healthy. In a way Vance’s position that he can’t stand helping Europeans again by defending these trade routes that don’t really matter to the United States makes sense. Why should the United States defend interests that they don’t share? Why can’t Europeans think first about designing their own security structures?
Q: What about the argument that the United States acts in ways that benefit Europe because we share common, democratic values?
Quencez: In a way the United States and Europe are struggling with the same challenge: we both want our common values to inform our foreign policies, but we’re uncomfortable with how that’s being framed on the other side of the Atlantic. Europeans in general feel uncomfortable with this American idea that the world is divided in a black-and-white way between “good” and “bad” nations. There was concern during the Biden administration, however, that if you make that argument you would push the United States away. Now we’re hearing the opposite argument that if you don’t talk openly about Europe doing more for its own security, the Trump administration will abandon Europe.
Q: Who do you believe is winning that argument in Europe today?
Weber: There is a big, intra-European debate going on about to what extent you pursue this shift from a U.S. to a European-led security order. One camp believes the United States is going to withdraw its security umbrella to a significant degree regardless, so Europe has to step up. The other camp believes that by doing more in its own defense, Europe will just push the United States away.
Q: Do you believe there is a sweet spot between those two arguments?
Quencez: Well, the Biden administration failed to find that sweet spot between reassuring U.S. allies in Europe while at the same time driving needed reforms and change. The Trump administration has dropped the idea of offering any reassurance, but it is driving change. That said, I can imagine a scenario where Europe fails this test and in four years we are still talking about needing another “wake up call,” even after the first Trump administration, the Covid pandemic, the Ukraine war, and now the second Trump administration.
Q: What is keeping Europe from passing that test?
Weber: Essentially the issue is that security policy is still being formulated by the individual member states of the European Union, and not coordinated and rationalized at the top. That is a massive problem that has created a gap between European ambition and capability. The European Commission has actually articulated an ambitious strategy for making Europe a major geopolitical actor, but it has no means to enforce that strategy. What’s urgently needed now is a revolution in geopolitical thinking in Europe.
Q: What do you expect to see from the upcoming NATO Summit?
Quencez: The Trump administration is clearly posing the question of why Europe can’t provide for its own security and still needs the United States to base 100,000 troops on the continent, and Europeans are struggling to answer that question. Because they are eager to sustain NATO, I think there will be a serious discussion on where Europe can take the lead in the short term, and what U.S. capabilities are still essential, such as the nuclear umbrella. In the mid-term, Europe doesn’t currently have enough long-range missiles, but it could in five years. Europe is already moving towards supplying conventional forces to guard the eastern border of NATO. The larger question is whether President Trump will just say I’m not interested in your big plans, and you’ve got to make all these changes yesterday.
Q: How important will the question of NATO’s continued support for Ukraine be at the summit?
Weber: Immensely important. The perception of the threat from Russia varies among European states, with countries in the east such as Poland and the Baltics and the Nordics seeing a direct threat to their territory, which is felt less in Paris and Berlin. But there is general recognition that the outcome of the Ukraine war will have a massive impact on the European security project, which is why Europe is so invested in the conflict. I think Europe’s most successful negotiating stance with the Trump administration will be to stress that a European “coalition of the willing” will supply peacekeepers to sustain any eventual peace deal that is reached.
Q: The perennial question in Washington has always been what leaders speak for Europe. Any thoughts?
Weber: In terms of Ukraine and security, we’re seeing the old alliance of Great Britain and France come to the fore again. Under [Chancellor Fredrich] Merz, Germany is also joining the conversation, but it has never led on issues of security. So all of the key security decisions revolve around the traditional Franco-British axis, especially because they are the continent’s only nuclear powers. Poland is also stepping up in terms of political leadership and defense spending, but it has not offered a lot in terms of strategic thinking on Europe’s security transformation.
James Kitfield is a Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of the Presidency & Congress, and a three-time recipient of the Gerald R. Ford Award for Distinguished Reporting on National Defense.
Trump’s Executive Order On Elections Could Redefine Separation of Powers
By Jessica Firestone and Seth English
President Trump signing Day 1 Executive Orders.
On March 25, 2025, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14248: “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections.” As one of the 161 executive orders signed in Trump’s second term, this order delivers on the President’s concerns with identifying “cases of election fraud or other election law violations.” The Executive Order enforces stricter eligibility and citizenship requirements to vote in federal elections, prohibits counting ballots addressed before but received after Election Day, and threatens to withhold funds to states that do not comply with the new regulations.
Trump’s threat to obstruct federal funding concerns two sources: discretionary grants through the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and congressionally appropriated funds through the Election Assistance Commission (EAC). While the DHS funds fall within the purview of the executive branch, attempting to withhold funds provided for the EAC via Congress casts doubt on the President’s ability to enforce this threat.
More importantly, Trump’s Executive Order raises a constitutional question concerning the regulation of federal elections. Election procedure is only briefly explained in Article 1, Section 4 of the Constitution. The Elections Clause reads: “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections… shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations.” In plain language, states are free to carry out federal elections in a manner of their choosing so long as Congress does not impose their own regulations. Over the years, Congress has continually regulated federal elections in the states through legislation, including the Voting Rights Act, the National Voter Registration Act, and the Help America Vote Act. These acts outlawed racial discrimination at polling places, expanded access to voter registration, and replaced outdated election equipment.
The Elections Clause, like all Constitutional provisions, was subject to fierce debate as the Founders sought to strike a balance between federal and state power. Delegates like James Madison argued congressional oversight was necessary to curb potentially unfair state election laws. On the other hand, Virginia legislator George Nicholas cautioned that if the states refused to hold federal elections, there would be no Congress to redress these elections. Moreover, it was logistically impossible for the fledgling federal government to oversee a uniform election in the highly decentralized and geographically expansive Union. In the end, the Elections Clause was a compromise between all of these factors to ensure reliable elections across the states, while still allowing Congress to guard against potential abuse.
Central to this case, the Elections Clause makes no mention of the executive, whose only role in federal election regulation is whether or not to sign Congress’s proposed legislation. Likewise, subsequent Supreme Court decisions merely re-affirm Congress’s sole power to regulate federal elections. Decisions in cases like Foster v. Love (1997), Smiley v. Holm (1932), and Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, Inc. (2013) deal exclusively with the federal-state conflict.
Although election regulation has historically been a conflict between Congress and the states, Trump’s Executive Order opens for the first time a case of intra-federal conflict between executive and legislative authority. With this unprecedented dispute, judges are now forced to decide: do presidents have the legal authority to amend Congressional statutes regulating federal elections?
On April 3, nineteen Attorney Generals from Democrat-controlled states filed a joint lawsuit in the Massachusetts District Court seeking to halt the Trump administration’s Executive Order. The AGs allege the order “usurps the States’ constitutional power and seeks to amend election law by fiat.” The filing argues that, according to the Constitution, Congress is the only body with the constitutional authority to regulate national election procedures. In addition, the filing contends that implementing Trump’s order would create chaos and widespread confusion among state election commissions attempting to follow the new guidelines, potentially disenfranchising voters.
Judge Denise Casper answered the defendants claims with a preliminary injunction on June 13th, halting the Executive Order’s implementation. The Judge agreed that compliance with Trump’s order would require significant and “irreparable harm” to state resources. Thus, an injunction was in the public interest to protect state funding as well as voter participation.
To clarify, the main source of conflict in the courts is the jurisdiction—rather than the provisions—of the order. Unlike the executive, election regulations can indisputably be implemented through the legislative branch. The SAVE Act, which has already passed in the House, parallels some of the President’s goals, including amending the National Voter Registration Act to require proof of citizenship while registering to vote in federal elections.
Moving forward, federal judges will have to decide where the line must be drawn between the President and Congress. Much like Trump’s previous Executive Orders attempting to direct funds appropriated by Congress or claiming discretion over independent agencies, this order builds towards an empowered executive. A decision in this case could have broad implications for the future of presidential power, potentially signaling a transformation of the executive-legislative relationship in a time of growing concern over Congressional independence.
Jessica Firestone and Seth English are interns at CSPC and seniors at Penn State majoring in Political Science and Philosophy.
An Overview of Ukraine’s Relationship with NATO & the United States
By Jaya Nambiar
The 2025 NATO Summit will take place next week June 24th and 25th in The Hague, the Netherlands. The officially declared goal of the summit is “to address the challenges facing the Alliance and further strengthen NATO’s deterrence and defense.” There has been a lot of buzz about the all but confirmed raise in expected defense spending, with allies called to spend at least 5% of GDP on defense (3.5% on core defense spending and 1.5% of GDP per year on defense and security-related investment). With that said, there is a lot of uncertainty and differing opinions surrounding NATO’s support for Ukraine, which will be a key topic at this year’s summit. To offer a background this article will briefly overview Ukraine’s historical relationship with NATO.
Ukraine’s Established Partnership with NATO
When Ukraine declared independence in 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the country joined the North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC) which was established as a forum for dialogue and cooperation with NATO’s former Warsaw Pact adversaries. In 1994, Ukraine joined the Partnership for Peace program. In 1997, Ukraine and NATO developed a Distinctive Partnership. At the 2008 Bucharest Summit, it was established that Ukraine would become a member of NATO once membership conditions were met; the country’s next step was to pursue a Membership Action Plan (MAP). Despite this, no timeline was presented and a MAP was not granted due to lack of consensus. Following Russia’s invasion of Georgia in August 2008, the Bush administration pushed to permit both Ukraine and Georgia to develop Annual National Programs enabling direct consultation with the two countries about their progress toward membership. This helped integrate Ukraine and Georgia into the alliance outside of the conventional MAP process. Further, in 2023, the MAP requirement was waived for Ukraine, but it was signaled that membership would be postponed until after the war.
NATO and U.S. support for Ukraine
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, NATO and Allies have provided unprecedented levels of support to Ukraine. NATO provides practical support to Ukraine through the Comprehensive Assistance Package (CAP) for Ukraine, which covers urgently needed, non-lethal assistance and longer-term capacity building projects meant to help Ukraine reform its defense and security sector. The CAP was launched at the 2016 Warsaw summit to help support Ukraine following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. In 2022, NATO Allies agreed to strengthen CAP and in 2023, they agreed to develop the CAP into a multi-year program of assistance. As of February 2025, NATO Allies and partners have contributed approximately 990 million USD to the Ukraine CAP Trust Fund in support of these initiatives.
Though that does not include separate funding— since the 2022 invasion, U.S. Congress has passed major bills aiding Ukraine which amount to $175 billion in spending, $128 billion of which has directly provided aid to the government of Ukraine and the remaining has funded U.S. activities related to the war.
NATO Expansion
President Putin has cited eastward NATO expansion (i.e. Ukraine’s preliminary steps to joining NATO) as the principal grounds for the Russian invasion; he alleges there was a promise by Western leaders to restrict new members and avoid eastward expansion. NATO has stated that in the initial stages of talks surrounding German reunification, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker and his West German counterpart, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, briefly floated the idea to not to allow new members to join with each other and Soviet leaders, “but diplomatic negotiations quickly moved on and the idea was dropped.” Additionally, Robert Zoellick, the U.S. diplomat who helped negotiate the end of the Cold War, decidedly states that Putin’s claims about Ukraine are part of a disinformation campaign, and that “there was no promise not to enlarge NATO.” NATO maintains that any European nation has the right to make its own decision to pursue membership.
Ukrainian Membership: Mixed Opinions
Former Norwegian NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg defined Ukrainian membership as possible in the long term but not until after the war ended.
As of 2024, seven NATO members were against Ukraine’s call for immediate membership. The two biggest being the United States and Germany, with countries like Belgium, Slovenia, and Spain often being described as “hiding behind the U.S. and Germany.”
In February of this year, German defense minister Boris Pistorius said "he regretted" the decision to rule out Ukraine joining NATO without a wider discussion. Sweden's defense minister Pal Jonson insisted membership was "not off the table.” Member states like Poland and Lithuania have been very vocal about supporting Ukraine’s immediate membership.
The United States’ attitude towards Ukraine and NATO has shifted with this year’s change in administration. President Trump’s primary concern with NATO is for Allies to increase their spending to 5%. After a dramatic interaction with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, the president temporarily halted military aid to Ukraine in March, which was (barely) offset with increased European aid. On April 30, 2025, the United States and Ukraine entered an agreement to establish the United States-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund which was officially launched May 23rd. The deal gives the United States special access to projects involving Ukraine's reserves of critical minerals.
And, So What?
The road to NATO membership for Ukraine is often described as “irreversible,” but the timeline remains unclear. There are concerns that if Ukraine were to join NATO with the Ukraine-Russia War unresolved, there would be an immediate trigger of Article 5 which would obligate NATO members to directly engage in the conflict.
During a hearing in the House of Representatives focused on Assessing the Challenges Facing NATO, Massachusetts' Representative William Keating asked Witness RADM (ret.) Mark Montgomery about “the cost of Putin being successful in Ukraine” and about forces NATO and the United States would “have to deploy in Eastern Europe and how expensive would that be.”
RADM (ret.) Mark Montgomery stated that the United States “already [has] a brigade in Poland, it would take a division in Poland. We have battalions in the Baltic states, it would take brigades in the Baltic states… we would actually have to significantly increase at least those rotational forces,” which would cost a lot more than presently expected military aid.
Though the cause of Ukraine’s membership in NATO is unlikely to advance at the upcoming summit, it is important to contextualize Ukraine’s long history with NATO and the stakes of Ukrainian failure for NATO members.
Jaya Nambiar is an intern at CSPC and senior at Lake Forest College majoring in Economics and International Relations with a minor in Spanish.
CSPC in the News
Towards a ‘NATO First’, First-in-NATO maritime strategy
Originally published in the Broadside on June 16, 2025:
As the U.S. pivots to the Indo-Pacific, Joshua Huminski breaks down the next steps the UK can take to implement a NATO-first maritime strategy and fill the transatlantic gap. Following the release of its Strategic Defense Review, Britain has an opportunity to lead in Euro-Atlantic security and rebuild its forces to meet today’s geopolitical realities. Read the full article here.
Hague Summit Series: Trump and the Rebalancing of NATO
Originally published in Estonia’s International Centre for Defence and Security on June 9, 2025:
Joshua Huminski breaks down how the Trump administration is reshaping NATO and the transatlantic alliance. The realities behind the rhetoric, the push for fairer burden-sharing, and the strategic Indo-Pacific pivot. Read the full article here.
The Strategic Defence Review: The view from Washington
Originally published in Britain’s World on June 10, 2025:
Joshua Huminski analyzes the UK’s new Strategic Defence Review for the Council on Geostrategy — its ambitious goals, political trade-offs, and what it signals to Washington amid shifting global priorities. Read the full article here.