the whole world will reap the rewards of your labor for years to come

July 11, 2024 10:41 AM

"Now, if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to end my remarks a slightly unusual way." During his speech opening the 2024 NATO Summit, President Biden surprised NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg with the Presidential Medal of Freedom (CNN).

So much of the progress we’ve made in the Alliance is thanks to the secretary. He’s a man of integrity and intellectual rigor, a calm temperament in a moment of crisis, a consummate diplomat who works with leaders across the political spectrum and always finds a way to keep us moving forward.

Mr. Secretary, you’ve guided this alliance through one of the most consequential periods in its history. I realize I — as I was talking to your wife — I personally asked you to extend your service. (Laughs.) Forgive me. (Laughter.) And you put your own plans on hold.

When the Russian war on Ukraine began, you didn’t hesitate. Today, NATO is stronger, smarter, and more energized than when you began. And a billion people across Europe and North America and, indeed, the whole world will reap the rewards of your labor for years to come in the form of security, opportunity, and greater freedoms.

For these reasons, I am pleased to award you the highest civilian honor that the United States can bestow: the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Stoltenberg's term as NATO Secretary-General expired on October 2, 2022, but after Russia invaded Ukraine, he agreed to continue for a year, abandoning his plan to become Governor of the Norges Bank.

Stoltenberg has been a strong supporter of Ukraine. Finland and Sweden joined NATO during his term.

This is the 38th Presidential Medal of Freedom awarded by Biden.

Biden has rebuilt the US alliance with NATO, which he called "the single, greatest, most effective defensive alliance in the history of the world."

Biden Underscores NATO's Enduring Strength as Alliance Marks 75 Years , DOD News, Joseph Clark
Biden surprises NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg with the Presidential Medal of Freedom , CNN, Donald Judd and Michael Williams
WATCH: Biden delivers remarks celebrating the 75th anniversary of NATO, PBS
Biden awards Medal of Freedom to NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, Axios, Avery Lotz

posted by kristi (23 comments total)

Here's the completely non-senile Republican candidate for president talking yesterday.

You know I saved NADDO [sic] because when I went down — hey, Barack Hussein Obama, has anyone ever heard of him?

He would go, he would go and, you know, go to wherever the holding had a meeting and he’d make a nice speech and Bush would go and make a nice speech and he would leave, in all fairness. Bush, Bush!

But he makes a nice speech and they’re all going to make speeches, and then they wouldn’t even stay there a day.

I went and didn’t make a nice speech. I said, what the hell are you doing? Nobody’s paying, nobody was paying.

And I didn’t want to be obnoxious because I felt it was the first time I’d ever done this. And what? I didn’t even know what the hell NATO was too much before, but it didn’t take me long to figure it out. Like about two minutes.

(it actually goes on longer than this)
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 11:15 AM on July 11 [26 favorites]

Biden has rebuilt the US alliance with NATO, which he called "the single, greatest, most effective defensive alliance in the history of the world."

Well, at least it keeps the military industrial complex eating well.
posted by so fucking future at 11:16 AM on July 11 [9 favorites]

Heather Cox Richardson's "Letters From an American" from last night backs Biden up on saying that NATO really is all that.
posted by wenestvedt at 11:30 AM on July 11 [9 favorites]

>I didn’t even know what the hell NATO was too much before, but it didn’t take me long to figure it out. Like about two minutes.

--Donald Trump

The Dunning–Kruger effect is defined as the tendency of people with low ability in a specific area to give overly positive assessments of this ability.

--Wikipedia, 'Dunning–Kruger effect'

If you're very, very stupid, how can you possibly realize that you're very, very stupid?

--John Cleese
posted by Sing Or Swim at 11:35 AM on July 11 [23 favorites]

Well, at least it keeps the military industrial complex eating well.

They don't need NATO for that.

The way I see it? Fascists, kleptocrats, and authoritarian regimes keep trying to break it up. If anything NATO provides an effective deterrent to wars of aggression from those shitheels because the only thing they do understand is power. We can strive to love one another but when confronting injustice and evil, love without power is sentimental and anemic.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 12:05 PM on July 11 [44 favorites]

The very idea of (the vast majority of) Europe being at peace for three generations is unprecedented. NATO has been a damn miracle.
posted by whuppy at 12:14 PM on July 11 [41 favorites]

Our other option is TFG who literally body-checked the PM of Montenegro after they were admitted to NATO. Like, you'd have to have been eating a lot of Beluga sturgeon with your friends to have that kind of reaction.
posted by credulous at 12:19 PM on July 11 [6 favorites]

Trump will host Orbán at Mar-a-Lago again (PBS, July 11, 2024) "Orbán made an unannounced visit to Kyiv last week where he held talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy" then "[Orbán] made an unannounced trip to Moscow days later to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a rare trip to Russia by a European leader that drew condemnation from Kyiv and other European capitals. After that, he flew to Beijing to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping, where he described China as a stabilizing force amid global turbulence and praised its “constructive and important” peace initiatives.

"Speaking on the sidelines of the NATO summit on Thursday, Finnish President Alexander Stubb rebuked Orbán for his visits to Moscow and Beijing, which EU leaders have rushed to clarify were not endorsed by other European leaders. 'I’ll say it out loud, I don’t think there’s any point in having conversations with authoritarian regimes that are violating international law,' Stubb said. 'He can do it on his own behalf. But I fundamentally disagree about doing that. I simply do not see the purpose.'"

Trump praises ‘fantastic’ Viktor Orbán while hosting Hungarian autocrat at Mar-a-Lago (CNN, March 8, 2024)
Trump NATO summit starts with insults to US allies (CNN, July 11, 2018) (Transcript at NATO.usmission.gov, including press Q&A, bluster, pro-Putin remarks)
posted by Iris Gambol at 12:24 PM on July 11 [6 favorites]

With no enthusiasm for Biden, I do want to note that performing a good, natural-sounding speech often doesn't generate a very readable transcription - historic speeches were often read exactly as written or the transcriptions were smoothed out. I don't find that excerpt upthread incomprehensible as spoken English. What I do find incomprehensible is the idea that you go to give a speech at NATO and trash the extremely popular former president who was instrumental in getting you into your present position.
posted by Frowner at 12:31 PM on July 11 [2 favorites]

re: Orbán visiting Trump: "There is speculation that Orbán is acting as an intermediary between Trump and Putin, for whom the destruction of NATO is a key goal."

"Russian aggression is a deep concern for NATO countries; so is Trump, who worked to take the U.S. out of NATO when he was in office, vowed he will accomplish that in a second term, and in February 2024 told an audience that if he thought NATO countries weren’t contributing enough to their own defense he would tell Russia to “do whatever the hell they want.” (Biden noted yesterday that when he took office, only nine NATO countries met their target goal of spending 2% of their gross domestic product on their defense, while this year, 23 will.)

"Biden was key to rebuilding the NATO alliance after Trump weakened it, and the leaders at the NATO summit told foreign policy journalist for The Daily Beast David Rothkopf that they were “not concerned with Biden’s ability to play a leading role in NATO during his second term.” They “express confidence in his judgment” and “have a great deal of confidence in the foreign policy team around him.” But they worry about Trump." [Letters from An American]
posted by Iris Gambol at 12:35 PM on July 11 [6 favorites]

> What I do find incomprehensible is the idea that you go to give a speech at NATO and trash the extremely popular former president who was instrumental in getting you into your present position.

I'm not clear if I'm misreading your statement or if you misread dances_with_sneetches, but they posted an excerpt of Trump at his rally Tuesday night not Biden at NATO.
posted by haileris23 at 12:43 PM on July 11 [7 favorites]

Having come of age in the 80's, it was a scary time. Once everyone had lots of nuclear weapons, stuff kind of had to change. Mutually Assured Destruction certainly came into play as a limiting factor for going rogue with a nuclear weapon. So you had to pay for the "Assured" part.
posted by Windopaene at 12:45 PM on July 11

Peripherally related, Russia has apparently been conducting sabotage operations in Europe to try to prevent arms shipments to Ukraine. Up to and including a foiled plot to assassinate the CEO of a German arms manufacturer.
posted by learning from frequent failure at 12:48 PM on July 11 [4 favorites]

How does Orban get visas to go visit Trump at Mar a Lago but not make any official government appearances with the actual government/members of the State Department?
posted by eviemath at 1:13 PM on July 11 [2 favorites]

I'm not clear if I'm misreading your statement or if you misread dances_with_sneetches, but they posted an excerpt of Trump at his rally Tuesday night not Biden at NATO.
posted by haileris23 at 12:43 PM on July 11 [2 favorites +] [⚑]

Whoops! Boy, that is a powerful reminder how easy it is to see what you expect to see, not what is there. Discussion in other threads about the Biden administration's apparent negative remarks about Obama had me totally primed to read carelessly. As I'd say at work, I will flag this issue for myself going forward.
posted by Frowner at 1:38 PM on July 11 [8 favorites]

Stopping Trump, and by extension Putin, in whatever ways possible should be the top priority of the United States and European Union. They remain threats to NATO, but also to the rest of the world.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 1:40 PM on July 11 [6 favorites]

How does Orban get visas to go visit Trump at Mar a Lago but not make any official government appearances with the actual government/members of the State Department?

He doesn't need a visa. Hungary is a provisional member of the US Visa Waiver Program, which enables citizens of participating countries to travel to the U.S. for tourism or business for 90 days or less without obtaining a U.S. visa.
posted by RichardP at 1:42 PM on July 11 [2 favorites]

Live updates: Joe Biden calls Volodymyr Zelenskyy 'President Putin' at NATO summit ahead of solo press conference

It was a simple mix-up that, for another leader on another day, would have been written off as an awkward gaffe.

But for this leader, on this day, it's fuel for a raging fire.

(End quote).
posted by freethefeet at 3:45 PM on July 11

He doesn't need a visa. Hungary is a provisional member of the US Visa Waiver Program, which enables citizens of participating countries to travel to the U.S. for tourism or business for 90 days or less without obtaining a U.S. visa.

Ah. That does explain it. Except now I am galled at Orban being able to travel freely to the US while many much more decent human beings have a much harder time doing so. Sigh.
posted by eviemath at 6:04 PM on July 11 [1 favorite]

Well, at least it keeps the military industrial complex eating well.


We appreciate your comment, Sergey.

It was a fairly factual statement, which, although I don’t know the original poster’s motivations one way or the other, is not necessarily pro-Putin propaganda. Eg., I can simultaneously believe in the validity of Ukraine defending itself against Putin’s imperial aggression and the requirement for armaments to do so, while also understanding that the way in which those armaments are produced involves a military industrial complex that involves quite a bit of price gouging and some truly questionable people getting very, very rich, and that has warped US civil society in some ways that I find rather negative. Or I can simultaneously believe that NATO was for a long time a problematic Cold War relic that should have been replaced by more political and civilian treaties (that incorporated mutual defense aid in a secondary rather than primary manner), and that NATO is not in any way to blame for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and that such claims are conspiracist propaganda. Anyway, NATO is a military treaty organization, which requires certain levels of arms production by at least some of its member states, which in turns supports a military industrial complex. Whether you think that’s a good thing or a bad thing or an ambiguous but currently necessary thing is opinion, but the first part is simple fact.
posted by eviemath at 6:18 PM on July 11 [4 favorites]

It was a simple mix-up that, for another leader on another day, would have been written off as an awkward gaffe.

Also important to note that Biden caught it himself and immediately self-corrected.
posted by darkstar at 7:52 PM on July 11 [8 favorites]

Let’s also note the Biden Panic won’t subside if we insert it into every discussion of the man’s activities, whatever the context, on point or not.
posted by notyou at 7:43 AM on July 12 [1 favorite]

I mean, that's the hazard, isn't it? If he's speaking at an event, he will inevitably make a mistake, forget someone's name, mumble, ramble, etc, you know, the thing, and it will be caught on camera, and people will see it, and remember all the other times, and because the American Presidential Election is the most important thing in the country, nay, the world, it will drown out any other relevant discussion.
posted by jy4m at 7:52 AM on July 12 [1 favorite]