Biden proclaims NATO alliance 'more united than ever' in contrast to predecessor Trump

The itinerary included a NATO summit, a brief stop in the United Kingdom and a coda in the Finnish shoreline capital that included a news conference in the ornate Gothic Hall at the presidential palace.

The itinerary included a NATO summit, a brief stop in the United Kingdom and a coda in the Finnish shoreline capital that included a news conference in the ornate Gothic Hall at the presidential palace.

The president was Donald Trump and the year was 2018. In July of that year, Trump had upended the annual gathering of the military alliance, criticized the British prime minister to the London tabloids and ultimately, in Helsinki, sided with Russian leader Vladimir Putin while casting doubt on his own intelligence community.

President Joe Biden’s journey through Europe this week was nearly identical, but every point of his three-country tour was an unsaid yet indelible rebuke of his predecessor who tore through the continent a half-decade ago. It was a portrait of a leader whose ardent belief in international alliances will be part of his case for reelection, particularly if Biden faces a rematch against Trump and his opposing worldviews next year.

During Mr. Biden’s concluding news conference in Helsinki, he took umbrage at a question about whether he could guarantee the United States would continue to be a reliable partner abroad, a query that conveyed allies’ concerns about Trump, whose foreign policy disdained the same alliances Biden cherishes.

“Nobody can guarantee the future, but this is the best bet that anyone can make,” Biden said of the U.S. commitment to the 74-year-old military alliance. When a Finnish journalist noted that Biden said no one could make guarantees, he testily responded: “Let me be clear, I didn’t say ... we couldn’t guarantee the future. You can’t tell me whether you’re going to be able to go home tonight. No one can be sure what they’re going to do.”

Voice raised, he declared, “I’m saying, as sure as anything can possibly be said about American foreign policy, we will stay connected to NATO -- connected to NATO, beginning, middle and end. We’re a transatlantic partnership. That’s what I’ve said.”

His five-day trip to Europe — which wound through the United Kingdom, Lithuania and Finland — was meant to demonstrate the force of the international coalition against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And Biden appeared confident he had accomplished that mission, proclaiming that he and other NATO leaders showed the military alliance “more united than ever.”