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NATO to Reinforce Chemical, Biological and Nuclear Defenses; Official Says, Biden Lays Out Issues Facing NATO in Coming Months; Jackson Faces Tight Confirmation Vote Amid GOP Opposition. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired March 24, 2022 - 10:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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[10:30:00]

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: All right, this just coming into CNN. We've got some breaking news. The NATO secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, just announcing that NATO will, repeat, will reinforce its chemical, biological and nuclear defense systems on fears, and these are significant, fears that Russia is planning to use similar weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine. Out of an abundance of caution, NATO taking these moves.

Up next, in the next hour, the president, President Biden, will meet with the president of the European council before attending a special session of the group for the latest in a series of high-stakes summits underway here in Brussels right now. He's holding now these meetings with western leaders because of the Russian war against Ukraine.

Every stop today is an opportunity for the president of the United States to reassert the U.S. leadership on the global stage and all this happens amid a war that's causing increased anxiety for so many people in Europe and elsewhere, of course, around the world.

And a special session of the European council, by the way, President Biden is expected to announce here in Brussels new sanctions against Russia and also to discuss Europe's dependence on Russian oil and energy. Very big and important issue as well, Russia takes in a lot of cash as a result of those oil exports.

[10:35:05]

Joining us now is the staff writer for The New Yorker Magazine, CNN Contributor Evan Osnos. He's also the author of the really terrific, important book, Joe Biden, The Life, The Run and What Matters Now. Evan, thank you so much for joining us.

In light of these enormous challenges facing the world leadership right now, what would be a successful outcome for this truly extraordinary summit?

EVAN OSNOS, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, you said it right, Wolf. It is really hard to overstate how extraordinary this is, to have three of these sessions on a single day put together over the course of just a week or ten days. It is a recognition of how truly grave the immediate crisis is. As you said just a moment ago, you have now NATO acknowledging the risk of a chemical attack. The president of the United States, Biden said his way out of town, that that is a real threat. That in itself and addressing that, announcing it, putting Vladimir Putin on notice, that is a big piece of this. He is an audience for this.

And part of having a session like this, the most important word is unity, showing Vladimir Putin, showing the rest of the world that three weeks or a month into this war that you do not see divisions within NATO, within the E.U., that you see that they are, in a sense, steeling themselves for a very difficult and cooperative road ahead.

BLITZER: What Putin has done is tremendously unify the NATO alliance. It's really impressive to see how these 30 leaders are working together.

You've said, Evan, that this meeting here in Brussels is about more than just the short-term needs for more weapons in Ukraine, that it's essential, that is certainly essential but not necessarily the whole story. What do you expect President Biden's message will be as a result of this, these three summits? He's going to be holding a news conference fairly soon.

OSNOS: Part of what he's signaling, Wolf, in Europe and around the world is that the world has changed. I mean, as he said, that we are right now, because of Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, because it has effectively undermined the architecture of peace that has prevailed since the end of World War II, that we, all of us, all members of NATO, members of the E.U. all have to prepare for what that means. It means changing where we get our oil and gas from, it means reducing our reliance on Russia. And, fundamentally, it means beginning to regard Vladimir Putin as what he has made himself, which is a pariah.

That is a profound change from the world that we've inhabited since the end of the cold war. And part of what a summit like this does is it sends a message. It's not only a forcing mechanism that makes us make choices about how we can help Ukraine tomorrow. It's also about announcing to the rest of the world they're beginning to organize in a way that will isolate Putin in precisely the way that they have to if they're going to try to prevent this kind of aggression.

BLITZER: You've studied Joe Biden. You've written a terrific biography of him, a really important book. I've covered him now for a long time as well. He's been spending the last 30, 40 years on national security and foreign policy when he was a senator for 36 years. He was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was vice president under President Obama for eight years. To a certain degree, correct me if I'm wrong, he's been preparing for this kind of summit for decades.

OSNOS: Yes. It's sort of uncanny, actually. The fact is much of his professional life has been wrapped around these questions of how do you keep Europe peaceful, how do you avoid the bloodshed that defined so much of the early 20th century. His very first trips as a senator in the early '70s was going over to Eastern Europe, and, of course, he's made many trips to Moscow. I'm remembering one in particular in 1997. He went to Moscow. And he came away with a conclusion that sort of resonates today. He said, I think that Russia's concerns about NATO reflect as he called a deeper psychological problem about the loss of empire. Hard not to look at it today and say, well, there was a message there that still rings true 25 years later.

BLITZER: Certainly does. Evan Osnos, as usual, thank you very, very much. I appreciate it.

Poppy, back to you.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN NEWSROOM: Okay. Wolf, thank you so much.

Still ahead, as NATO considers the worst-case scenarios from Russia, what we can expect from the additional troops NATO plans to add to its eastern flank.

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[10:40:00]

HARLOW: This morning, a senior administration officials tells CNN that during President Biden's closed door meeting with NATO leaders in Brussels, he laid out a number of issues that the alliance is going to need to grapple with in the coming months, including finalizing force posture changes on NATO's eastern flank, John.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: It follows NATO's secretary general announcing that the alliance is set to approve major increases of forces on its eastern flank.

Joining us now is retired Major General Paul Eaton, former Commanding General of the Coalition Military Assistance Training Team in Iraq. General, thanks so much for being with us.

We do have some breaking news, which is that Ukraine's armed forces is saying that they're seeing signs that Russia is transferring weapons and equipment to Belarus, moving equipment into Belarus.

[10:45:07]

This follows our own reporting that there are concerns within NATO and U.S. intelligence that the Belarusians are looking to enter the war themselves on the side of the Russians to send troops in. What do you see as the significance here?

MAJ. GEN. PAUL EATON (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, what the Russians are obviously doing is creating another front, a distraction for President Zelenskyy. And it creates another problem, another intel problem, another force structure positioning problem for the Ukrainian Armed Forces. This is troubling and it was -- it will prove to be a very bad idea in the outcome.

HARLOW: In terms of how that would change NATO's calculus, the force posture changes that we've been reporting on across the eastern flank, I wonder what you think of the prime minister of Estonia, Kaja Kallas, writing in The New York Times this morning, that the forward presence needs to become a forward defense of land, air and sea, she wrote, and that would mean more combat-ready allied troops stationed permanently in the Baltic states supported by long-range artillery, air defense and other enabling capabilities. She goes on to say, it would mean more NATO ships patrolling the Baltic Sea. I mean, she's talking about a long-term significant change. What do you think?

EATON: Poppy, I served in the United States Army in Europe for years, and we operated very closely to the German border. That was our defensive plan. What we're seeing right now is a -- the world has changed. We've got to roll back and consider doing exactly what we're talking about right now. It would help to open up another front for Mr. Putin to be concerned with.

Put the Kaliningrad Oblast under the range of NATO artillery and other interact fires to see a significant armored presence vicinity of the Kaliningrad Oblast and garrison. We should also consider NATO forces, naval forces outside of Vladivostok, outside of the Baltic port where the Russian northern fleet is located in Kaliningrad.

What we're hearing from the Baltic States is that we are reverting back to how we did it in the '70s and '80s when we had to deter the Soviet Union at that time.

BERMAN: General Eaton, the Ukrainian forces say they have struck a Russian ship in the port of Berdyansk and we've seen video evidence of this. This is port city has occupied, and this is a Russian landing vessel, pretty large vessel. The Ukrainians said they have been able to set off explosions in it. There had been some secondary blasts there. What's the significance of this, what we're looking at here?

EATON: This is terrific. It is overdue. And I don't know what weapon they used to go after that ship, be it air delivered or a land-based anti-ship missile program. But we were hoping that we would see, you know, the Norwegians, I believe we used this anti-ship missile system on our ships, but that we would put the fleet that he has there in the waters outside of Mariupol and the landing craft that we've seen and put them at risk. And what we've seen today is a great first step. There are others to follow.

HARLOW: Well, retired Major General Paul Eaton, we appreciate your time so much. Thank you.

EATON: Thank you, Poppy.

HARLOW: And we'll be right back.

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HARLOW: Right now, the Senate Judiciary Committee is holding its final confirmation hearing for Supreme Court Nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. She will not appear today but senators are hearing testimony from witnesses defending her record. The official confirmation vote will take place on April 4th, but several Republicans are demanding that presentencing reports behind Judge Jackson's decisions in child pornography cases and this comes after two contentious days of questioning, including though an emotional moment for Jackson as Democratic Senator Cory Booker lauded her path to this historic nomination.

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SEN. CORY BOOKER (D-NJ): You did not get there because of some left- wing agenda? You didn't get here because of some dark money groups? You got here how every black woman in America who's gotten anywhere has done, by being like Ginger Rogers said, I did everything Fred Astaire did but backwards in heels.

[10:55:00]

And so I am just sitting here saying, nobody is stealing, nobody is going to make me angry, especially not people that are called in a conservative magazine demagogic for what they're bringing up. It just doesn't hold water.

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HARLOW: It's quite a moment. Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin says he is concerned about Republicans boycotting the vote but says the committee will not cave to GOP demands.

Well, thank you so much for joining us for our special live coverage today. We'll see you back here tomorrow morning. I'm Poppy Harlow. My colleagues, Wolf Blitzer and Kate Bolduan, continue after a quick break.

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