Patrick Turner
My name is Patrick Turner. Welcome to CEPA’s State of the Alliance, a series bringing together thought leaders from Europe and North America to discuss a changing geostrategic landscape, and to deliberate on the most pressing issues facing allies and partners. So a very warm welcome to Jean-Arthur Régibeau, the Belgian Ambassador to the United States. Ambassador, thank you very much, indeed, for joining us.

Jean-Arthur Régibeau
It’s a pleasure.

Patrick Turner
So let’s get straight to it. So two years after the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine, can you give your assessment of NATO’s efforts so far to support Ukraine?

Jean-Arthur Régibeau
I think that we have to make a clear distinction between NATO as an organization and its member states. It was decided, and I think wisely, from the start that NATO as such should not be involved. Ukraine is not a member of NATO, is not covered by the security guarantee of Article Five. But all member states of NATO have an interest in supporting Ukraine and resisting this awful aggression. And so we concentrated on the member states pulling together, but not necessarily within the framework of NATO. And that was the right decision. And so far, I would say that we have been quite good in supporting Ukraine, we just hope and we push that it will remain that way. We are waiting for important decisions here in the US Congress, European member states have made their reports so far. Obviously, we do have a shortage on the European side, which comes to weapons and military equipment. We do provide a lot actually, we do finance, also quite a lot. For the first time ever, the EU is spending money on defense equipment, on weapons, which is really unheard off. But that’s the one area where European support alone is not sufficient. So we definitely also want to see mm, a continuing us effort in that respect.

Patrick Turner
Terrific. And can you just zooming in a bit on Belgium? I know that Belgium has been working on improving its defense spending, its capabilities and has been providing important support to Ukraine. So could you give us a sense of what Belgium in particular has done and plans to do in support of Ukraine?

Jean-Arthur Régibeau
Yes, So actually, even before the start of the war in Ukraine, the government had decided to increase the defense budget. And just a few weeks into the war of aggression, the government decided to even increase. Now we realize that we are still far from the 2%. On the current trajectory, we should reach 2% beyond 2030. And many people in our political class realize that’s much too late. But we do have national elections also on June ninth. And that’s one of the issues for the new government to be formed after the elections is how fast and how far shall we increase our defense budget. The Ukrainian war, obviously, is a trigger. It’s a trigger because we fully realize it’s also part of our own security, even softly. You know, you could say, well, just two hours from Kyiv by flight, but two hours is not a lot nowadays. And from Lisbon to Helsinki, everybody feels concerned about the future of Ukraine, because it’s not just about Ukraine, but also the courage and the resilience of, of the Ukrainians deserves really, really some admiration. Now, what we’ve been doing since the start of the war is to provide equipment, but also buying new equipment. There is if I concentrate on the military side, you know, the list of the equipment we procured is two pages long. It’s the in the hundreds of millions of euros, you have to remember that Belgium is a country the size of Ohio, so we have 12 million people. And what is crucial is that everybody contributes its bid according to its means. But we realize that we can do even more so far we have delivered to both lethal and non-lethal equipment. For example, we also provided trucks that’s also something armored forces need. But when it comes to the broader picture, we also contribute to strengthening the Eastern Flank of NATO, we sent we have troops in Lithuania together with the Germans and Romania together with the French. Frigate has been engaged to patrol the seas. So it’s part of the of a wider effort. And for 20 years now, we’ve been sending F 16s, to the Baltic states for air, air policy over there, so which still has a powerful deterrent effect, and a kind of indirect support to Ukraine. Now, what we also plan to do in order to support Ukraine further, its participate in the initiative to provide Ukrainians with F 16s, because we have had F 16s for over 40 years now. And we do have expertise. And there are other programs where we will participate. The latest is that Belgium committed 200 million euros to participate in the Czech initiative to deliver more ammunitions to to Ukraine. And that’s an overview.

Patrick Turner
Very good. So a little while ago, we were talking to the Czech Chief of Defense and talking to him about that initiative. So chapeau for contributing, can I just take it a little bit further and ask you what the level of public support at the moment for supporting Ukraine, that impressive array of support that you just laid out, and increasing defense spending?

Jean-Arthur Régibeau
Well, it’s actually something remarkable, in Belgium. First of all, defense spending, you know, traditionally, we’re a pacifist country. We have had World Wars on our soil. And even before that many European battles just remember Waterloo. That’s just 15 kilometers south of Brussels. And so, even today, the memory of war is in our collective memory. Absolutely, everyone in Belgium. So that Flanders Field in World War One, the Battle of the Bulge in World War Two, so we know what what war is like, and we don’t like it. But in this case, it’s one more reason to understand the destiny of the Ukrainians, because actually, they’re in a situation very similar to ours when we had been invaded by a neighboring empire. And there is a kind of spontaneous support for Ukrainians. We welcome around 75,000 Ukrainians on a permanent basis. They enjoy a special refugee status across the EU, which means that we provide them with financial support. They can work, they have, they can have a job, they send their kids to schools. And that’s not really a big issue. It’s mainly a logistical issue, but actually not that much. And politically, it’s it doesn’t raise any criticism or very little. And it’s quite remarkable that the same is happening around the defense budget. Nobody in the coalition, for example, is criticizing the need to increase the defense budget, where political parties do disagree is on the way to do it. And that will be settled after the election. It’s part of the electoral campaign. But everybody understands that we need to increase our expenses for defense and security.

Patrick Turner
Great, thank you very much. So moving to the EU. So Belgium currently holds the Presidency of the EU and one of your stated priorities is that the EU should fully utilize its security and defense capabilities. Can you say a little bit about what the EU has been doing and what more it should do to secure Europe’s defenses.

Jean-Arthur Régibeau
So I want to emphasize that sentence was much more difficult for NATO to be in the front line in supporting Ukraine, the EU has been on the front line. And so when I mentioned all the Belgian efforts they are supplemental to what we collectively do also at EU level, so there is the contribution of the member states, but there is also a contribution by the organization itself. And I note, I noticed, for example, earlier that the EU is spending money to deliver weapons to Ukrainians, which is quite remarkable. But now and actually just yesterday, the EU Commission went one step further by developing a paper on European industrial defense policy. This big event in our history, the war in Ukraine, made us realize that we need to do much more better and faster. And we do have a sizable European industry when it comes to defense, but actually it’s more 27 different industries. And it has been the policy of Belgium for a very long time that if we actually pulled our efforts in a more efficient way, we would deliver a much better quality, a much better quantity for the same amount of money. And so if we increase the amount of money we’re spending, it should be even a multiplier. And so the EU launched this initiative yesterday that we fully support. Now the trick will be to implement it, actually. And the initiative wants to make sure, for example, that we will procure military equipment much more together than what are we actually doing. The goal is not to go to one-hundred percent and probably not even necessary, but to be more efficient. And we also want to provide incentive to the industry to develop their capacity and work together.

Patrick Turner
Okay, so can I take that a little bit further again and say, in the light of war on the European continent, not a war in which our countries are directly fighting, but war on the European continent. Do you think European countries in NATO, in the framework of the EU, as individual countries have stepped up enough in the face of that circumstance? Or is there still further to go?

Jean-Arthur Régibeau
Oh, it has further to go. But I would still say that I was quite surprised by the speed and the depth of our reaction in the weeks following the aggression. We were very fast, very united in taking sanctions, totally coordinated with the United States, which was the thing to do. You know, the German Chancellor spoke of a changing times site and vendor. He said that Germany was going to spend one hundred billion euros on military equipment, defense budget, or the increase absolutely everywhere in Europe. So the turnaround is remarkable. Now, is it enough? No, clearly no. So we need to go further. And I think that it’s it’s a new awareness in many, many member states.

Patrick Turner
So thank you very much. So there will be a NATO 75th Anniversary Summit in Washington, here in Washington in July, this year. So many people are looking ahead towards that with interest. What would you like to see the Alliance achieve at that summit?

Jean-Arthur Régibeau
Well, I think the main thing to achieve is unity. That’s crucial. And it has to be real unity. If I can take a conter example, what we should not do is like the Bucharest summit in 2008. We ended up with a compromise decision, which proved to be dramatically bad about Ukraine and Georgia. Saying that they will eventually join NATO, but without any data in the future. So that, there was actually no more security for Ukraine. But the Russians could claim that NATO, NATO could be on Ukrainian soil the day after tomorrow. And why did we have such a bad decision? Because the preparation for the summit was awful from a diplomatic point of view. So the decision was first put on the agenda barely three weeks before the summit. And it was obvious going to Bucharest that there was no consensus. And because of the lack of consensus, we took probably what was the worst decision ever taken by NATO collectively. So we have absolutely to avoid. So the main key for the next summit is unity. And that means that the diplomatic work towards the summit in Washington in July, must be perfect. And unity is the strength. I think it’s our collective strengths. And that’s what really deterred a potential aggressors like Putin.

Patrick Turner
So are you can you say now that you’re confident that there was a good process to get to a good outcome at the summit? Or is it too early to say?

Jean-Arthur Régibeau
Too early to say. There are a lot of discussion. We are part of it, but just together with 30 other member states soon, thirty one with Sweden. The process as started, we do realize that everybody will watch what the summit will say, about Ukraine. And that’s probably the most important aspect, because our collective deterrence capacity also depends on what we can provide Ukraine with.

Patrick Turner
So can I just add an extra question about the summit? What other issues would you like to see progress on, we’d already talked about defense industrial production capacity, but are there other critical issues that you see for the summit in Washington?

Jean-Arthur Régibeau
Well, actually, the main issue for this year will not be decided in Washington in July, it will be decided in the United States in November. It’s is always going to be the next president of the US. And what whatever the decision taken it will have which consequences for the Alliance. And that’s for the American voters to decide. I would say that anything else we could decide in July will be peripheral to this most important aspect. But what some things that we are discussing together in NATO circles, for example is could NATO itself as an organization help coordinate the efforts by nations to bring more support to Ukraine. And does not mean that we need to have full feet on the ground in Ukraine, we can perfectly provide more assistance, technical training to Ukrainians by having a center of support outside Ukrainian territory.

Patrick Turner
Right. So thank you very much indeed, Ambassador. Thank you for tuning in to the State of the Alliance series. Please visit cepa.org And be sure to follow CEPA’s social media accounts to stay up to date on the latest analysis and upcoming events.