Biden Commands NATO Stage as Trump Seeks Trial Delay – U.S. News & World Report

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump haven’t been on a debate stage for a long time. But the sitting president used his institutional advantage this week to draw a stark, if unsaid, comparison with Trump: Leader of the free world, delivering speeches on global democracy vs. an indicted former leader who’s awaiting expected further charges on an effort to undo American democracy.

In Vilnius, Lithuania, for a NATO session and private meetings with individual allied leaders, Biden took center stage, crowing about the expanding security alliance and pledging to stick by Ukraine as it fends off an attack from neighboring Russia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin “was betting NATO would break. He thought our unity would shatter at the first testing. He thought democratic leaders would be weak. But he thought wrong,” Biden said in a speech at Vilnius University.

“We will not waver. I mean that,” said Biden, who was wearing a blue-and-yellow striped tie, displaying the colors of the Ukrainian flag. “Our commitment to Ukraine will not weaken. We will stand for freedom today, tomorrow and for as long as it takes.”

Biden got a big round of applause from the crowd of nearly 10,000 people, who included dignitaries, civil society leaders, diplomats and members of the Lithuanian public. Translating that to the American voting public, however, is a trickier task.

Biden may have played a central role in adding two more members to NATO and building a broad coalition to help Ukraine defend itself, experts say. But “to be honest, nine times out of ten, they (voters) are not going to care, especially this far out from the election,” says Daniel Drezner, professor of international politics at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.

Foreign policy is more likely to be a factor if it goes badly – for example, if a president is presiding over a long and unpopular war, analysts say. Drezner notes that Biden’s approval ratings took a deep dive after the bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 and never fully bounced back.

For Biden, any edge he gets from his European trip comes less from the substantive developments from the meeting and more from the image it projects, says Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center.

In the “family photo” Biden took with other world leaders, “he was front and center, smiling broadly and looking the role, the great statesman role – and looking the same age as most of the people there,” says Miller, referring to concerns at home about the age of Biden, who will be 82 on Election Day.

“When Joe Biden was running in 2020, that was the whole point of his campaign – ‘I know how to do this. I’m a normal person, and I will right the ship,’” Perry adds. And now that he’s running for reelection, Biden’s message is, “I will become, once again – as we should be – the strongest leader of what we used to call the free world,” Perry says.

Trump, meanwhile, reveled in being the opposite of the elder statesman, instead casting himself as the champion of the non-elites. As president, Trump pulled out of international treaties and criticized NATO. John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser, said in his 2020 memoir that he had to convince the former president not to pull out of NATO at a 2018 summit.

Biden doesn’t mention Trump much by name, and when it comes to foreign affairs, the sitting president comments frequently on how much he’s traveled on official work abroad and how he knows many world leaders by name.

American support for NATO is solid. And since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, public attention has been refocused on Europe, says Dina Smeltz, senior fellow, public opinion and foreign policy, at the the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, citing polling by the group showing that 81% of Americans want to maintain or increase the country’s commitment to NATO.

And the trip has gone about as well as the White House could have expected. Turkey dropped its opposition to Sweden’s pending membership in NATO, a boost for a president whose stated goal is to strengthen international alliances and keep Putin from splintering NATO.

Biden also had a lengthy meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who dialed back an angry tweet he posted Tuesday night about not being invited to join NATO and thanked Biden for the United States’ ongoing military support, including a controversial decision to provide Ukraine with cluster munitions.

NATO announced a major security program Wednesday for Ukraine. And while Zelenskyy was not given a timeline for Ukraine to be invited to join the alliance, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the country would be spared the task of a “membership action plan” – basically shortening the time for Ukraine to pass the tests for inclusion.

“It went very well. We accomplished every goal we set out to accomplish,” Biden told reporters on Air Force One, en route from Vilnius to Finland – NATO’s newest member.

“The one thing Zelenskyy understands now is whether or not he is in NATO now is not relevant” because the commitments made by the alliance, Biden said.

The details of the week, however critical to American foreign policy, might be lost on much of the voting public, Smeltz says. But the images could give Biden a boost, she adds.

“Biden looking presidential and respected among this coalition of NATO leaders that he organized could help him – especially compared to the NATO summit just after the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the chaotic execution of that exit,” Smeltz says.

“After all, Americans are also voting for commander in chief, not just president,” she adds. An image, it appeared this week, Biden wants to convey to voters.