It is high time that NATO’s European members start doing some serious thinking about the future of the 63-year-old alliance. After its rather successful summit in Lisbon 18 months ago, this month’s NATO meeting in Chicago will struggle to produce a similarly upbeat outcome. In Lisbon, a bright and shiny new “strategic concept” for the alliance was enthusiastically endorsed, agreement was reached on what appeared to be a credible strategy for winding down the war in Afghanistan and plans for a European ballistic missile shield were given the go-ahead. Beneath the surface bonhomie that usually prevails at these events, the mood in Chicago will be a good deal scratchier. The somber backdrop will be Europe’s continuing financial crisis and its corrosive impact on already constrained defense budgets. Also looming will be America’s official downgrading earlier this year of the importance it affords to the transatlantic security relationship compared with the more urgent need to meet the military challenge of China; and an Afghan campaign which is in some danger of being undermined by an unseemly rush for the exit.
Even the satisfaction derived from the one exception to the gloom – last year’s impressively executed NATO intervention in Libya – has faded. Libya exposed fundamental cracks within the alliance over “wars of choice.” Two big member countries, Germany and Poland, sniped from the sidelines while only eight of the 28 allies were willing to carry out strike sorties. America’s slightly grudging backseat support was both a warning of its impending semi-detachment from Europe and an unwelcome reminder that even Britain and France, by far the two most militarily capable (and willing) European members, turned out to be embarrassingly short of the “enablers,” such as Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance (ISTAR), air defense suppression and aerial refueling, which only America has in abundance.
The early phases call for using Aegis radars on ships and a more powerful radar based in Turkey. Later phases call for moving Aegis radars to Romania and Poland.
NATO says that the future ballistic missile defense system passed a significant technical test on 4-5 April during a series of simulated engagements. In another April test, a similar theater missile defense system tested jointly with Russia also performed well, it says.
Critics have dismissed the missile shield as an expensive "make-work project" designed to provide the 63-year-old alliance with a raison d'etre after it winds down its presence in Afghanistan.
Fogh Rasmussen said leaders will discuss ending the alliance's combat operations in Afghanistan by the end of 2014, while remaining committed to the training mission after that. He said he was confident that the international community – not just the U.S., NATO and other partner nations engaged in the war – will commit itself to help finance Afghan security forces after 2014.
"The reason is that from a political point it's much better to give the defense of Afghanistan a strong Afghan face by handing over the full responsibility to the Afghan security forces, and from the economic point of view it's less expensive to finance Afghan security forces than to deploy foreign troops," he said.
Fogh Rasmussen also said he felt confident that whoever wins Sunday's French presidential election, the country will stay committed to the operation in Afghanistan based on the principle "in-together, out-together."
Polls predict that incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy will lose the May 6 runoff to Socialist Francois Hollande, who has vowed to speed up the timetable for a pullout of France's 3,600 troops from Afghanistan by the end of this year.
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