The NATO summit was not only about Ukraine. It was about the role of the past and how it affects NATO and the EU, writes Judy Dempsey

By the time you read this, we’ll have all moved on from the NATO summit that took place in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius in July towards other persistent topics. 

There’s Ireland’s housing crisis; the worry that Donald Trump might beat President Joe Biden in the 2024 election for the White House; and Russia’s continuing war against Ukraine, to name a few. The list is long. But a common threat runs through these issues: the enduring role of the past and how societies in the 21st century have to deal with it.
The past is a compass. It offers the way to the future if there is a political willingness to deal with history. The past can also be distorted. 

That sense of the past was clear when attending the NATO summit. 

The summit’s conclusions fell short – for some, way too short – by failing to offer Ukraine membership of the US-led military alliance once the war was over. 

Lithuania and the other two Baltic States, Estonia and Latvia, but also Poland and the Czech Republic, were disappointed. They believed that Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who led the opposition against a membership date, did not have the political courage or historical compass to offer Ukraine at least a timetable. 

The bottom line is that, for different reasons, this decision was about Russia. 

Biden, who is facing re-election and simmering unpopularity with American support for Ukraine, does not want to drag NATO into a direct confrontation with Russia. Germany thinks the same but is not committed to admitting Ukraine to NATO. Yet, this war has given Germany a big chance to lead Europe and create a strong NATO caucus inside the alliance. Germany demurred. 

This brings us to Lithuania. 

It has been a staunch ally of the Belarussian opposition and an unremitting supporter of Ukraine. For Lithuania, it is about Kyiv defeating Russia. But it is more than that. Lithuania and the other Baltic States see the war in Ukraine through the prism of Russia but in a special way, distinct from Western Europe. 

For Lithuania, this is about Russia trying to regain control over the countries of Eastern Europe, which include not only Ukraine but also Belarus, Moldova, Georgia and Armenia. 

Lithuania also sees Russia aiming to create a new cordon sanitaire between the EU/NATO countries and Eastern Europe – a kind of updated version of the Cold War divisions of Europe. 

In the view of the Central Europeans, Russia’s imperial ambitions must be stopped. Eastern Europe must not be turned into a grey Russian-controlled zone. The prospects for instability would be too high and dangerous.

Germany and the United States, for their part, see the war in Ukraine through the prism of Russia as a nuclear power and threat – as if Russia is not already threatening the security of Europe. They do not see it in terms of the past but in terms of realpolitik.

For Central Europe, the past is the legacy of the violent Soviet occupation of the region that must not be repeated in Ukraine. 

The past for Western Europe is how, with huge American support, today’s EU was built. It was a peace project constructed upon the ruins of World War Two. This peace project is now being challenged by Russia. The war in Ukraine is about two different European narratives. It is time to reconcile them. 

Judy Dempsey is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at Carnegie Europe and Editor-in-Chief of Strategic Europe