The North Atlantic Treaty Organization will mark 75 years since its foundation at a multi-day summit next week in Washington, D.C. 

While the schedule will include celebrations of the organizations and meetings of its members, it will also serve as a test of President Joe Biden’s resilience amid questions of his fitness and an affirmation of support to Ukraine amid its defensive war against Russia.

“This will be a historic summit because it will celebrate the 75th anniversary of our alliance, but we’ll also make important decisions for the future,” said NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.  

State Department Principal Deputy Secretary Vedant Patel says history will play a major role in this year’s summit.  

“I think you’re going to see a lot of historical callbacks to the growth of the alliance and where the alliance has been over the years,” he said. The last summit held in Washington, D.C., was for the Alliance’s 50th anniversary in 1999.  

President Harry Truman signed the North Atlantic Treaty in Washington, D.C. in 1949. At the time, 12 countries signed the threaty, pledging to protect each other and maintain a spirit of solidarity within the Alliance. Now NATO has 32 allies, including Finland and Sweden, which joined within the last year and a half. Several other non-members who work with NATO will also take part in the summit. 

Though Stoltenberg identified defense, deterrence and strategic partnerships as top priorities for this year’s summit, the ongoing war in Ukraine stands near the top of the list.

“The stronger our support for Ukraine is, the sooner the war can end,” he said.

Ukraine, while not a NATO member, has expressed interest in joining the Alliance, and the feeling is apparently mutual. At the last NATO summit, allies agreed that Ukraine will join NATO once membership conditions and ally concerns are met. In the meantime, the U.S. and other NATO allies and partners have signed agreements to build up Ukraine’s defenses.

“Certainly it is not a replacement for NATO membership, but it’s something we see as a bridge to NATO’s eventual welcoming of Ukraine,” Patel said.

Biden is expected to host an event with Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during the summit, in which nearly two dozen allies and partners will meet. Biden will also announce steps to strengthen Ukraine’s air defenses and military capabilites to help Ukraine defend itself and deter Russian aggression.

A "bridge to membership" effort that will be announced next week is expected to include training coordination, equipment coordination, logistics force development, and political assistance. It’s also expected to include a financial pledge, according to an administration official.

"Together, the Washington summit will send a strong signal to Putin that if he thinks he can outlast the coalition of countires supproting Ukraine, he’s dead wrong," the administration official told reporters Friday.

But Hungary, and its Prime Minister Viktor Orban, may well be an obstacle to Ukrainian membership. Orban, a right-wing strongman who reciprocates admiration with Trump, recently met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow to discuss the war in Ukraine. Notably, Orban is one of the few European leaders who has kept ties with Russia despite its invasion of Ukraine. He’s also been frequently critical of Western support for Ukraine.

The summit will be a major test for President Joe Biden, after a week of growing intraparty strife. 

He’s expected to host a series of events thrughout the week, including a welcoming event for NATO leaders on Tuesday at the Mellon auditorium, the site of the original North Atlantic Treaty signing. The next day Biden will welcome Sweden into the NATO alliance during a meeting, followed that evening with a hosted dinner at the White House. On Thursday he’s expected to host NATO allies and partners who have negotiated bilateral security agreements with Ukraine, followed by a full press conference.

That conference will be his first major press event since his debate with presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump last week. Biden’s shaky showing in the debate has spurred many Democrats — including an increasingly sizable contingent of Senators and members of Congress — to ask that Biden leave the race.

The White House expects the summit will highlight Biden’s leadership within NATO, including his work to rebuild American standing on the world stage in the wake of Trump’s isolationist foreign policies.

World leaders, a senior administration official told reporters, "know how effective he’s been, what the president has done over the last three years to reinvigorate the NATO alliance" and resist Russia’s "unprecedented aggression against Ukraine."

The White House official noted to reporters that 23 NATO allies are spending at least 2% of their nation’s GDP on alliance defense, up from nine allies in 2021. And those allies, they noted, are spending that money on American platforms and munitions, in a shot to tie American economic prosperity to dedication to the NATO alliance. That’s significant, considering Trump has threatened to leave NATO should he win the White House, unless European nations step up their contributions to the organization.

The official also pushed back on a reporter's question, asking if alliance members are looking to project strength amid stretches of political weakness and untestedness that leaders like Biden, France's Emmanuel Macron, Germany's Olaf Scholz and new United Kingdom Prime Minister Kier Starmer.

"Collectively the alliance is of course stronger, more capable of deterrence and defense, better postured with more precise planning that is aligned to its strategic vision and the strategic concept that was unveiled a few years ago," the official said. "I think the alliance is in great shape."