This conversation was recorded in late November and has been edited for clarity.

Rick Landgraf: This is the Ties That Bind, NATO at 75 and Beyond, a podcast of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Today, I’m speaking with Congressman Brendan Boyle, who represents Pennsylvania’s second congressional district, which is entirely within the city of Philadelphia. He is also the chairman of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly’s political committee. Congressman, thank you for joining us today. 

Congressman Brendan Boyle: Great to be with you.

RL: You recently attended the 70th annual session of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, which took place from November 22nd to the 25th in Montreal. Our listeners are aware of some of NATO’s institutions, such as the North Atlantic Council, which is the supreme decision-making body, also the Senior Military Committee, which is the senior military authority inside of NATO, but they may not know much about the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.

What is the parliamentary assembly and what is it’s purpose?

BB: Well, it’s great to be with you and it’s a natural question because it’s probably not as well known. Essentially the parliamentary assembly is the legislative component to NATO. All 32 NATO nations send a certain delegation of members of their own respective parliaments to serve in the NATO parliamentary assembly. Approximately seven years ago, I was appointed to be part of the US delegation. It is a bipartisan delegation, an equal number of Democrats and Republicans. And so we meet with our counterparts who are MPs in the UK parliament or members of the German Bundestag, et cetera. We meet every February in Brussels at NATO headquarters for our first session of the year, and then three other times at different NATO capitals or major cities throughout the year. 

I have found it to be an incredibly meaningful experience and a natural extension of my congressional service. I’ve built up relationships and real friendships with members of parliament from Europe and and from Canada. In light of the full scale Russian invasion of February 2022, I think that those relationships have proven to be enormously valuable in the world that we’re living in.

RL: Now what sort of role does the parliamentary assembly have in working with the North Atlantic Council or with the military committee? Is this an advisory role or is it something a bit more? 

BB: No, it’s something quite more. After all, we’re the ones who are ultimately paying for the defense budgets for each of these NATO countries. For example, as you know, recently, NATO’s major strategic document was updated at the Washington summit, the first time in 10 years. We wrote a lot of what ultimately went into that document and had been doing a lot of that sort of legwork for years in advance. It was a very important update by the way because the previous NATO strategic document said that Russia was a strategic partner and didn’t mention one word about China. So we led to a major revision  of the NATO strategic document. 

Of course, the primary role we play is as members of our own home country’s parliaments, or in our case, the United States Congress. But the fact that we’re able to come together and speak with one voice on NATO policy has in some ways ended up leading our home country executives branches when it comes to NATO policy. We were probably ahead of where our executive branches were on a number of things as it relates to NATO, especially vis-a-vis Russia.

RL: Now you’ve been involved in the parliamentary assembly for some time. um But going back a little bit further into your own background, what got you interested in foreign policy and foreign relations in the first place?

BB: Well, I was first elected to Congress exactly 10 years ago, and my first committee was the Foreign Affairs Committee. So from the very beginning, I’ve been quite involved as it relates to foreign policy. But I have to say, my initial interest in foreign affairs really goes back to as far as I can remember. I was a fairly nerdy school kid and I was always following this stuff. I think the fact that I grew up at the tail end of the Cold War in the 1980s, played a major factor. One of the most memorable events of my childhood was November 9th, 1989, the day the Berlin Wall fell. I was 12 years old, and about to turn 13, and that whole year where so many countries behind the Iron Curtain started the year off as communist and unfree. And by the end of the year, we’re free. 

That was really the most dramatic year of my childhood. And I followed it enormously carefully. I remember watching movie after movie as a kid about how the Soviets might win and how we would face annihilation. And then to see all of that go away, and see the democratic revolutions throughout Europe, there was a belief at the time that we’re at the end of history and we all live happily ever after. And then in the post 9/11 world you recognize that, well, you know real life isn’t quite that simple. So these are issues that have interested me for really my entire life.

RL: As you said, the Cold War, of course, was was part of NATO’s original existence, and then the Alliance has done quite a bit to adapt to the post-Cold War strategic environment from opening up to the countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union or Warsaw Pact countries, eventually inviting quite a number of those countries into the Alliance through enlargement then broadening its partnerships kind of across the globe and and broadening its its reach, missions, and operations across the globe to include Afghanistan, which a lot of allies and partner partners played a really large role in.

I wanted to ask you about your perspective as someone who’s born and raised in Philadelphia. Obviously, the Foreign Policy Research Institute is Philadelphia’s foreign policy focused think tank, one of the very few foreign policy focused think tanks outside of Washington, DC.

You mentioned earlier about growing up in the post-Cold War and the Cold War era toward the end. And I remember, I’m sure as you do, watching those movies, Top Gun, the Rocky movies, especially Rocky IV with the yeah ah big fight against between Rocky and Ivan Drago, seeing the Cold War sort of play out on on the big screen. As a Philly guy, what sort of outside perspective do you bring to your work at NATO?

BB:  Well, first I’m very proud that FPRI is based here in Philadelphia. I’m a strong supporter of it. It’s important to me as a born and raised Philadelphian and someone who lives here. I don’t want us to just be known abroad as New York and Washington and oh yeah, there’s some other city in the middle. I have to admit as a Philly guy that bothers me. And so I was proud this past spring to bring more than 50 of my NATO parliamentary colleagues to Philadelphia. So these are people who are MPs from across Europe and Canada. And I had them here in our area for three days: a day at Princeton University, where I’m a visiting lecturer this semester, and then two days right in the heart of Philadelphia on Independence Mall, overlooking Independence Hall for two days of our sessions.

So that was an opportunity for me frankly to show off our city and the sort of overwhelming enthusiastic praise I got from my colleagues really was gratifying. So making sure that the institutions here in Philadelphia are more known worldwide and it’s not just New York and Washington is something important to me and it complements the work that I do in Congress. 

I will make one other point. We are a city that has obviously over the generations been populated by immigrants, and second and third immigrant generation families, including my own. My father and my mother’s parents were born in Ireland. We have a large Eastern European and former Soviet Union immigrant population over the last 40, 50 years. And so that actually gives a kind of domestic reason why I, as a member of Congress from here, need to pay attention to this stuff, even if I didn’t have the strong interest in foreign affairs that I do.

I have a large Ukrainian American diaspora in my district in Philadelphia that has been working with me in my office from the first day I was elected 10 years ago. So that does give kind of a homegrown reason to be involved in these issues, even above and beyond my own interest in foreign affairs and why I think they’re important to the United States of America.

RL:  And that kind of goes into my next question. The topic of US engagement abroad and America’s relationship with allies and partners abroad, has been a hot topic of the presidential campaign over the past year or so. And to some extent, NATO has been more politicized than it ever has been within a domestic political context. How do you explain to your constituents, how and why NATO is important for US national security?

BB: This is the key question right now at this time. There has always been an isolationist instinct in the United States of America. One of the many things Mark Twain is famous for saying is that America has two best friends in the world, Miss Atlantic and Mr. Pacific.

There’s also that old joke that the real purpose of NATO is to keep the US in, the Russians out, and the Germans divided. Now obviously that last part about Germany is no longer operable, but I think the first two very much are about keeping the Russians out and the US in. There has always been a fear in Europe that the US would turn within itself and ignore Europe and we’d be forced to relearn the lessons of history which would end up sending a lot of American service members over to fight in Europe. Presidents of the recent past or relatively recent past from Ronald Reagan and Dwight Eisenhower to JFK, through both Bushes had been quite eloquent about the fact that we need to resist that isolationist tendency because it’s a terrible mistake. We’ll end up paying a far bigger price if we ignore Europe, both in financial terms and more physical terms. If we ignore threats in Europe from dictators who want to change borders by force. 

I know that it is very easy to buy into the empty populist argument that you hear nowadays that, well, we have problems here in the US. Why should we be spending resources over there if we need those resources here? You know, throughout history, that argument’s been made by folks on the far left and on the far right. It is an unwise argument. The reality is the money that we spend to be involved in NATO right now and on defense is a drop in the bucket compared to what we would have to pay if we had to fight another major war.

RL: Right. And addresses my next question as far as why should US taxpayers care about NATO? And I think you summed it up very eloquently there that the price will be much more if the US turns its back now.

And you know to NATO’s credit, as far as defense, investment, and spending, it’s now 24 of 32 allies that are spending the 2% of their GDP on defense, which was agreed to back at the Wales summit in 2014. There’s been a debate now about whether or not that 2% should represent a ceiling or a floor.

And whether allies collectively need to move forward with a 3% or 3.5% percent, that remains something to be seen over the next several years of where the Alliance is going to go.

So that brings me to my next question. From your perspective, someone who is talking with folks from around the Alliance, from around NATO member countries, what do you think are the biggest challenges facing NATO over the next decade?

BB: The challenges are both external and internal. Externally, the challenge, the threat from Vladimir Putin, has united NATO like never before. Ironically I was in the chair in Brussels in February, 2022 holding the gavel in the days leading up to ah Vladimir Putin’s brutal full scale invasion of Ukraine. And indeed the last day of our session in Brussels was that Wednesday, then in the early morning hours of Thursday was in fact when Putin sent in the tanks to siege Ukraine.  So I saw firsthand in those days the way that crisis brought everyone together. 

I think that we can meet the external threat, and I think in some ways the last two and a half years have actually been the best months and years of the NATO alliance. 

The other threat actually worries me more, and that is the threat from within, the internal threat. And that’s the  idea that some of the major powers, including and especially the United States, would walk away from NATO and turn our back on the alliance. I have to say it is that threat that keeps me up at night. Over and over when I was in Montreal this past weekend at our NATO parliamentary assembly session, that was the major chatter by far. Every one of my MP colleagues who I’m friends with and have gotten to know over the last several years coming up to me saying, Brendan, what’s going to happen next? What should we expect? 

And it’s not just a threat within the United States, by the way, because of the pandemic and the inflation crisis that followed. We’re seeing a rise of populism in Europe as well. The upcoming German elections give me reason for real concern in terms of what that outcome could be.  

So, I think the next year or two will be very challenging for those of us who firmly believe in the transatlantic alliance, and believe that it’s important and that we need to stick with it.

RL:  I’m curious about the specific concerns that some our European allies may have have regarding US involvement. Is it a concern principally about a US outright withdrawal from the alliance or disengagement or is it somewhere in between from your view?

BB: It’s all of the above. I don’t raise this to be partisan because I think US foreign policy at its best is when it is as bipartisan as possible. But let’s also face facts. Donald Trump’s rhetoric on NATO obviously concerns a lot of our allies. Twice, as we now know from people who served with him in his first term, he attempted to pull the United States out of NATO only to be stopped by senior military officials, people like General Milley and some others, General Mattis, et cetera, who were able to convince him not to do it.

I’m not sure that those responsible voices will be around in a second Trump term. And our allies follow American politics very closely. Frankly, perhaps they follow it more closely than the ordinary American voter. I mean, they are almost obsessed with American politics. So they see here the same sort of rhetoric from Donald Trump and they’re concerned about an outright withdrawal. They’re also concerned about the scenario that you could call death by a thousand cuts. Meaning the United States would not formally withdraw from NATO, but suddenly we’d be pulling troops from allied countries where they’re currently stationed, or cutting back on spending, or doing other sorts of things. It would be almost a quiet quitting, so to speak, to use a term that was in vogue a couple of years ago in a different context.

That scenario concerns our allies as well. There has been rhetoric in the past from Donald Trump that if an ally country was invaded, that the United States shouldn’t do anything. I think he said something effective to “Who the hell cares?” And then, of course, his comment, you know famously at a rally where he was encouraging Putin to invade NATO countries that weren’t at the 2% level. So all of that is naturally, deeply concerning to our NATO allies.

RL: In your discussions this past weekend up in Montreal, what’s the current feeling and sentiment about how the war in Ukraine is going and the possibility for advancing Ukraine’s membership in NATO.

BB: I think there is recognition that we are essentially at a stalemate. We’re seeing an intensity in fighting now. I think that’s going to continue through January 20th. It might be that both sides are attempting to gain as much of an advantage on the ground as possible by going into some sort of a negotiation. 

There is real concern, I think, among some that the US would signal a walking away or a cutting back on funding, which would give the Russians a major advantage. Now, I try to remind my colleagues that Congress is a co-equal branch of government and that when we ultimately did have the vote on the last major aid package for Ukraine. In the end, we got every single House Democrat to vote for it, and we got almost half of House Republicans to vote for it.  So, there is still a strong overall bipartisan majority of support. The challenge is that within the majority party, the House Republicans, there’s a strong deference to what President Trump will want.

RL: Congressman, I’d like to end on a little bit of a lighter note. You have Irish heritage. Ireland is one of the few countries in Europe that is not a member of NATO. Of course, it is a member of the European Union. From your view, will Ireland ever join NATO and why or why not? What do you say about that?

BB: The closest Ireland may get is having an Irish American with such an Irish name like Brendan Boyle chairing one of the committees of the NATO parliamentary assembly. But I would say that the shock of February 2022 was such that obviously it prompted Finland and Sweden, who had always been neutral, to immediately reevaluate that decision and join NATO. This is something that would have been unthinkable if we were having this conversation just three years ago. 

And even in Ireland, there is now a debate on defense and what the future direction should be. As you mentioned, the irony is no single country is more supportive of its European Union membership than Ireland. The fact that the UK is a member of NATO does create a level of awkwardness given history there. But Ireland has been an independent country, at least 26 of the 32 counties, so about 80% of the island, has been an independent country for a century now. So I think the further we get along in the Irish story, some things that you know weren’t really possible in the 20th century will be reevaluated in the 21st century. 

What you are seeing, though, I think there is more support for Ireland’s involvement on the military side within the auspices of the EU. I think you will see that that continue. And then, of course, Ireland is one of the NATO partner countries. So the irony is they actually are maybe doing things with NATO more quietly, just not as a formal member. But when you have a major event like Putin’s mass invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, it does overnight bring about some things that once were seemingly impossible. Ultimately a decision, of course, for the people of Ireland to make. But I wouldn’t rule out anything for the future.

RL: Right. As you say, geopolitical shock events like Russia’s invasion in 2022 can have profound effects on countries, just looking at the example of Finland and Sweden. 

BB:  Exactly. 

RL: Congressman Boyle, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate it.

BB: Thank you.

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