Joe Biden is heading to Europe A king and a war are on his agenda

 

After arriving at night in London, Biden will meet King Charles the next day, the first time since Charles was crowned, AP reports.

 

Next is the centrepiece of the trip, the NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania. Alliance leaders will debate the war and revise plans for dealing with Russian aggression.

The final stop is in Helsinki, where Biden on Thursday is expected to celebrate the expanding alliance, with Finland as the newest member of NATO.

 

Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said the trip would “showcase the president’s leadership on the world stage.”

 

Biden arrives in London on Sunday night and is expected to have a full schedule of meetings on Monday.

“There’s always a lot to talk about with the UK,” said Max Bergmann, a former State Department official who leads the Europe Programme at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.

Biden will hold talks with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at 10 Downing Street. Sunak is facing an election by the end of next year and his Conservative Party is lagging badly behind the opposition in opinion polls.

Despite Sunak’s shaky political standing, he has fostered close ties with Biden and it will be their sixth meeting since Sunak took office last October.

Bergmann said Sunak’s tenure has been a nice change of pace after “there were some concerns about Boris Johnson,” one of Sunak’s predecessors, “being a loose cannon.”

Biden will visit the king at Windsor Castle, a royal residence outside London. Biden did not attend Charles’ coronation - first lady Jill Biden went in his place - so this will be their first encounter since then.

They are expected to discuss climate change, an issue that has been a focus for both leaders and how to finance initiatives to address the problem.

Biden will then spend two days in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, which is hosting the annual NATO summit. He will take part in meetings with leaders and deliver a speech from Vilnius University.

The alliance has been reinvigorated by the war in Ukraine, and members have been pouring military hardware into the country to help repel Russia’s invasion.

Biden on Friday defended what he said was a “difficult decision” to provide cluster munitions to Ukraine, a move his administration said was key to the fight and buttressed by Ukraine’s promise to use the controversial bombs carefully.

Biden is likely to face questions from allies on why the US would send a weapon into Ukraine that more than two-thirds of NATO members have banned because it has a track record for causing many civilian casualties.

For Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, the summit “will send a clear message: NATO stands united, and Russia’s aggression will not pay.”

 

But NATO has also struggled to bridge divides over important issues. Finland was welcomed into the alliance this year, but Sweden’s membership has been blocked by Türkiye and Hungary.

There are also disagreements over how quickly to extend an invitation to Ukraine to join NATO.

Countries on NATO’s eastern flank want to move quickly, viewing it as a way to deter Russian aggression. The US and others advocate a more cautious approach.

One issue has already been settled, at least for the time being. Stoltenberg’s term has been extended for a year because members could not agree on a new leader.

SeNATOr Thom Tillis, who will attend the summit, likened the alliance to a gathering of dozens of family members who bicker and clash but nonetheless remain united.

“At the end of the day, you know you’re family,” said Tillis.

Tillis is leading a bipartisan delegation along with SeNATOr Jeanne Shaheen, who said NATO is more powerful than before.

“It’s the strongest military alliance in our history, and I think it only has gotten stronger as a result of US leadership, as the result of Stoltenberg’s leadership and as the result of the threat from Vladimir Putin to all of the NATO allies and other countries in Europe and around the world and to the international order,” she said.

After two nights in Vilnius, Biden visits Helsinki. The stop is a bit of a victory lap, but could also be a reminder of unfinished business.

The Nordic country in April became the 31st member of NATO, ending its history of nonalignment and demonstrating how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has backfired in Europe.

Finland was supposed to join alongside its neighbour Sweden, whose admission has stalled. NATO requires unanimous consent of all its members to expand, and the US has been unable to overcome objections from Türkiye and Hungary.

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson visited the White House on Wednesday and met Biden to keep up the pressure for membership. But there is little hope that the issue will be resolved in Vilnius.

The White House is billing Biden’s visit to Helsinki as a “US-Nordic Leaders Summit.”

It is a much different occasion from the last time a US president visited Helsinki five years ago.

During that trip, Donald Trump held a news conference with Putin and brushed off concerns about Russian meddling in the Trump election victory.

Now Biden is heading to the city to demonstrate how his administration has held the line against Moscow and expanded Western defences.