WASHINGTON (AP) — Growing skepticism about President Joe Biden’s reelection chances has European leaders heading to the NATO summit in Washington confronting the prospect that the military alliance’s most prominent critic, Donald Trump, may return to power over its mightiest military.

NATO — made up of 32 European and North American allies committed to defending each other from armed attack — will stress strength through solidarity as it celebrates its 75th anniversary during the summit starting Tuesday. Event host Biden, who pulled allies into a global network to help Ukraine fight off Russia’s invasion, has called the alliance the most unified it has ever been.

But behind the scenes, a dominant topic will be preparing for possible division, as the power of far-right forces unfriendly to NATO grows in the U.S. and other countries including France, raising concerns about how strong support will stay for the alliance and the military aid that its members send to Ukraine.

At the presidential debate, Biden asked Trump: “You’re going to stay in NATO or you’re going to pull out of NATO?” Trump tilted his head in a shrug.

Biden’s poor debate performance set off a frenzy about whether the 81-year-old president is fit for office or should step aside as the Democratic presidential candidate.

Even before the debate, European governments were deep in consultations on what they could do to ensure that NATO, Western support for Ukraine and the security of individual NATO countries will endure should Trump win back the presidency in November and temper U.S. contributions.

Some Americans and Europeans call it “Trump-proofing” NATO — or “future-proofing” it when the political advances of other far-right political blocs in Europe are factored in.

This week’s summit, held in the city where the mutual-defense alliance was founded in 1949, was once expected to be a celebration of NATO’s endurance. Now, a European official said, it looks “gloomy.”

There are two reasons for the gloom: Russian advances on the battlefield in the months that Trump-allied congressional Republicans delayed U.S. arms and funding to Ukraine. And the possibility of far-right governments unfriendly to NATO coming to power.

The official spoke to reporters last week on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations among governments.

Rachel Rizzo, a senior fellow on NATO with nonpartisan think tank the Atlantic Council, says she has a blunt message for Europeans: “Freaking out about a second Trump term helps no one.”

For allies at the summit, she said, the key will be resisting the temptation to dwell on the details of unprecedented events in U.S. politics and put their heads down on readying Western military aid for Ukraine and preparing for any lessening of U.S. support.

Trump, who before and after his presidency has spoken admiringly of Russian President Vladimir Putin and harshly of NATO, often focuses his complaints on the U.S. share of the alliance’s costs. Biden himself warned nearly 30 years ago about already-steady criticism of Europeans not carrying their weight in NATO.

The 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union lulled the West into thinking the Russian threat had been neutralized, leading to military spending cuts. Now, NATO allies are bolstering their forces against any wider aggression by Putin, and a record 23 nations in NATO are meeting defense-spending goals.

Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, says Trump in a second term would work to get the U.S. out of NATO. Congress passed legislation last year making that harder, but a president could simply stop collaborating in some or all of NATO’s missions.

Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

Elections in France, likewise, appear set to bring a NATO-adverse far-right party under Marine Le Pen into greater power. Far-right forces also are gaining in Germany.

Some European officials and analysts say that’s simply the rise and fall of voter allegiance in democracies, which NATO has dealt with before. They point to Poland, where a right-wing party lost power last year and whose people have been among NATO’s most ardent supporters. They also note Italy, where right-wing populist Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has won praise as an ally.

In part in response to the United States’ political upheaval, Europeans say they want to “institutionalize” support for Ukraine within NATO, lessening the dependence on the U.S.

European allies also failed to get enough weapons to Ukraine during the delay in a U.S. foreign aid package, outgoing NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg acknowledged in a visit to Washington last month.

That’s “one of the reasons why I believe that we should have a stronger NATO role — is that role in providing the support,” Stoltenberg told reporters.

An initiative likely to be endorsed at the summit is NATO taking more responsibility for coordinating training and military and financial assistance for Ukraine’s forces, instead of the U.S. Europeans also are talking of giving Ukrainians a greater presence within NATO bodies, though there’s no consensus yet on Ukraine joining the alliance.

Europeans say NATO countries are coordinating statements on Ukraine for the summit to make clear, for example, that additional Russian escalation would face substantial new sanctions and other penalties from the West. That’s even if the U.S., under Trump, doesn’t act.

As for NATO security overall, besides European allies upping defense spending, they’re huddling on defense strategies that don’t rely as much on the U.S. There’s also growing emphasis on ensuring each country is capable of fielding armies and fighting wars, the European official said.

The possibility of a less dependable U.S. partner under Trump is generating discussions about Europeans playing a bigger role in NATO’s nuclear deterrence, according to the Poland-based Centre for Eastern Studies security think tank. The U.S. now plays the determinative role in the nuclear weapons stationed in Europe.

But European countries and Canada, with their smaller military budgets and economies, are years from being able to fill any U.S.-sized hole in NATO.

“If an American president comes into office and says, ‘We’re done with that,’ there is definitely will in Europe to backfill the American role,” said John Deni, a senior fellow on security at the Atlantic Council. “The Brits would jump on it.”

But “even they will acknowledge they do not have the capacity or the capability, and they can’t do it at the speed and the scale that we can,” Deni said. “This notion that we are somehow Trump-proofing or future-proofing the American commitment — either to Ukraine or to NATO — I think that mostly is fantasy.”

An Israeli minister has endorsed Marine Le Pen for French president, saying she would make an “excellent” leader for the country as her right-wing party seeks significant gains in the current election. 

“It is excellent for Israel that she will be the president of France, with 10 exclamation marks,” Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli said Tuesday, later indicating that his view may be shared by other members of Israel’s leadership. 

“I think I and Netanyahu are of the same opinion,” he said when asked whether the Israeli prime minister shared his view, according to The Times of Israel. The outlet stressed that it remains unclear what had prompted Chikli to discuss Le Pen. 

Le Pen’s National Rally outperformed expectations in the European parliamentary elections, trouncing French President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party and prompting him to call a snap election as he felt it created tension in the country if the electorate no longer believed in his party and their policies. 

FRANCE’S RIGHT-WING NATIONAL RALLY LOOKS TO SEIZE ON RECENT ELECTORAL GAINS

The gamble has thus far played into National Rally’s hands, and it has continued to perform well in the first round of its parliamentary election, just as it did in the European elections. The second and final round of the country’s parliamentary elections started Sunday.

Le Pen has unsuccessfully run for president three times – in 2012, 2017 and 2022, improving her rank and share of the vote each time during that decade. Her most recent run saw her win 41.5% of the vote against Macron. 

Some speculate that the cultural issues at the heart of the election will propel National Rally – and potentially, in the 2027 presidential election, Le Pen – to control of the country. Immigration has proven a strong issue for right-wing parties across Europe, as well as the pushback those parties have shown to recent antisemitic protests and attacks.

RIVALS MOVE TO BLOCK FRANCE’S RIGHT-WING NATIONAL PARTY’S ELECTION MOMENTUM

French far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party’s leader and member of parliament Marine Le Pen speaks to the press at the party’s headquarters after the first results in the second round of the French regional elections in Nanterre on June 27, 2021. (Geoffroy van der Hasselt/AFP via Getty Images)

Serge Klarsfeld, a renowned Nazi hunter, last week announced that he would throw his weight behind National Rally, telling French outlet LCI that if choosing between “an antisemitic party and a pro-Jewish party, I would vote for a pro-Jewish party,” referring to National Rally, according to Le Monde. 

Antisemitism has taken sharp focus in the election after the alleged gang rape of a 12-year-old Jewish girl that many have cast as a hate crime. Two adolescent boys arrested in a Paris suburb were hit with preliminary charges in relation to the crime, with prosecutors alleging that the rape had been religiously motivated, ABC News reported. 

Rabbi Moshe Sebbag of the Grande Synagogue in Paris said that the election has indicated to him that French Jews have “no future” in France, telling The Jerusalem Post that he urges “everyone who is young to go to Israel or a more secure country.” 

MACRON ON EDGE AS FRANCE’S RIGHT-WING NATIONAL RALLY PARTY GAINS MOMENTUM IN FIRST ROUND OF ELECTIONS

Nazi hunters Serge Klarsfeld, left, and Beate Klarsfeld arrive to attend a national tribute at the Pantheon to late Holocaust survivor Simone Veil and her late husband, Antoine Veil, in Paris on July 1, 2018. (Ludovic Marin/Pool Photo via AP)

Sebbeg argued that even if the far-right National Rally has voiced support for Israel’s defense against Hamas following the Oct. 7 attack, the party’s roots come from a place of antisemitism that continues to trouble him. 

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Jean-Marie Le Pen has repeatedly been convicted of antisemitic hate speech and made statements downplaying the Holocaust, according to The Guardian, which prompted Marine Le Pen to distance herself and the party from its founder – her father. 

“Many Ashkenazi Jewish families here since before World War II couldn’t think to vote for National Rally, yet the Left has been antisemitic in recent times,” said Sebbag. “The Jews are in the middle, because they don’t know who hates them more.”

At least 14 people have been killed after heavy rains triggered flash floods and landslides across Nepal, with disaster teams searching for nine missing, police said on Sunday.

Flooding in neighbouring India and Bangladesh has also caused widespread damage and affected millions.

“Police are working with other agencies and locals to find the missing people,” said Nepalese police spokesman Dan Bahadur Karki.

People have been killed or are missing in multiple locations, he said.

Monsoon rains from June to September bring widespread death and destruction every year across South Asia, but the numbers of fatal floods and landslides have increased in recent years.

Experts say climate change and increased road construction are exacerbating the problem.

Parts of Nepal have been receiving heavy rainfall since Thursday, prompting disaster management authorities in the Himalayan nation to warn of flash floods in multiple rivers.

There have been reports of floods in several districts of lowland areas bordering India.

Last month, 14 people were killed in Nepal in ferocious storms that brought landslides, lightning and flooding.

In India, floods have swamped the northeastern state of Assam, with six people killed in the last 24 hours, the Assam State Disaster Management Authority said on Sunday.

That takes the death toll from downpours in the state since mid-May to 70, according to the PTI news agency.

In low-lying Bangladesh, downstream from India, the disaster management agency said floods had hit more than two million people.

Much of the country is made up of deltas where the Himalayan rivers the Ganges and the Brahmaputra wind towards the sea after coursing through India.

The summer monsoon brings South Asia 70-80 percent of its annual rainfall.