Biden ends Europe trip with message that echoes past
Warsaw, March 26
Twenty-five years ago, Joe Biden visited Warsaw, Poland, with a warning: Even though the Soviet Union had collapsed, some of NATO’s original members weren’t doing enough to ensure the alliance’s collective defence.
“Now it is time for the people of western Europe to invest in the security of their continent for the next century,” said Biden, then a US senator.
Biden, now President, spoke here again on Saturday as European security faces its most precarious test since World War II. The bloody war in Ukraine has entered its second month, and Western leaders have spent the week consulting over contingency plans in case the conflict mutates or spreads. The invasion has shaken NATO out of any complacency it might have felt and cast a dark shadow over the continent.
US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the speech would outline the “urgency of the challenge that lies ahead and what the conflict in Ukraine means for the world”.
Biden’s remarks will end a four-day trip that included an earlier stop for a series of summits in Brussels. While in Warsaw, he dropped in Saturday morning on a meeting between US and Ukrainian foreign policy and defense leaders. — AP
