NATO Summit to focus on Afghanistan

CHICAGO - The heads of state and government from 28 member countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) are to convene here in Chicago this weekend for the security bloc's 25th summit, with the issue of Afghanistan and the alliance future dominating the agenda.

Afghanistan

With NATO set to hand over security responsibility to the Afghan side by the end of 2014, the alliance is set to negotiate what happens both before and after that date in Afghanistan.

US officials have long indicated that the most important topic at the summit would be Afghanistan. Philip Gordon, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, made the point during a recent Senate hearing.

Gordon said the United States anticipates three results from the summit, including an agreement on an interim milestone in 2013 when the International Security Assistance Force's (ISAF) mission will shift from combat to support for the Afghan national security forces; an agreement on the size, cost and sustainment of the Afghan forces beyond 2014; and a roadmap for NATO's post-2014 role in Afghanistan.

Prior to the summit, the United States has already inked a strategic pact with the Afghans, which lays out future support for the Afghan government and its national security forces until 2024. US forces also secured access to Afghan facilities beyond 2014, allowing it to continue training of Afghan forces and counterterrorism missions.

Paraag Shukla, senior research analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, told Xinhua in an interview that in signing the agreement prior to the Chicago summit, the United States "sets up a framework in which we can engage our international partners to also provide their own firm commitment to Afghanistan."

James Stavridis, NATO's supreme allied commander for Europe, expressed optimism on the outcome of such negotiations.

"What I am hoping to see is a commitment to resourcing the Afghan national security forces post-2014," Stavridis said Monday of the May 20-21 summit, which will include the 28 NATO heads of state and government representatives from many of the 50 nations that make up the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan.

"I am fairly confident we will see that, and I think that will be the key to long-term success," Stavridis said.

Alliance future

Apart from Afghanistan, the NATO summit is also to deal with the increasingly uncertain longterm viability of the organization. However, as countries face daunting financial and fiscal challenges, while grappling with elections, NATO is unlikely to be best positioned to deal with the issue, but how it reacts could provide clues.

In a recent press interview, Stavridis said while not necessarily a top agenda item, the apparent inability of some NATO partners to spend 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense as agreed is likely to come up during the summit.

According to NATO statistics, only five members, including the United States, Britain, France, Albania and Greece met that goal as of 2010.

As European countries try to deal with the debt crisis, more spending cuts maybe on the way. Stavridis expressed concern that the situation could adversely impact military readiness, and said the United States needs to pressure those who do not meet those minimum levels of spending.

NATO is also trying to find other ways to deal with budget shortfalls, betting on the success of "smart defense" -- essentially pooling capabilities in light of shrinking defense budgets confronting all the NATO members.

Missile defense is a poster child of such endeavor, and US officials have said the first phase of President Barack Obama's European Phased Adaptive Approach has completed, and the new missile defense system has reached interim operational capability, meaning it could be integrated with the NATO command-and-control system to begin standing up the NATO missile defense system.

Apart from missile defense, US officials indicated leaders would also note the Baltic air policing mission, in which NATO member nations rotate their fighter jets to defend the airspace over Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia, as well as a new alliance ground surveillance system that will give commanders a comprehensive picture of the situation on the ground.

Stavridis said NATO's operation in Libya drove home the importance of such a system, and as a result, 13 allies plan to procure a variant of the Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle and the associated command-and-control base stations and to operate them on behalf of all NATO members.

"As we face these financial pressures today, clearly we need to, in any alliance, come together in efficient ways so we can ... generate capability for reasonable amounts of money," he said.

The leaders are also to adopt a Deterrence and Defense Posture Review, which will "identify the appropriate mix of nuclear conventional and missile defense capabilities that NATO needs to meet 21st century security challenges," according to Gordon, assistant secretary of state.

A recent paper done by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Brookings Institution and the Royal United Services Institute noted that leaders are unlikely to reach a consensus on major decisions to reshape the alliance's deterrence and defense posture, but will likely agree to extend something like the status quo.