NATO Dissonance

A harmonious summit marked by unity was what the NATO leadership had ordered up. The main stumbling blocks had already been removed and the compromises were already preordained, whether it was the date for withdrawal from Afghanistan, the European missile defense shield, the stationing of nuclear weapons on European soil or the necessity for a cooperative armaments policy. But now Obama’s home game in Chicago, another a battlefield on his way to re-election, isn’t going as smoothly as had been hoped.

The disagreement with Russia over missile defense continues unabated and NATO is at odds over the unmanned drone, project but the main concern seems to be François Hollande’s election victory. That could signal the outbreak of a new debate that everyone had thought was settled. The disagreements over the 2010 Lisbon agreement to end combat involvement in Afghanistan by 2014 had been ironed out and all that remained to be decided in Chicago was how best to beef up Afghan security forces. But the newly elected French president has promised his supporters to begin withdrawing the 3,300 remaining French troops from Afghanistan immediately after his inauguration this year. Brussels, as well as Washington, fears that doing so might cause a domino effect among the remaining allies, all of whom would prefer to get out of Afghanistan sooner rather than later in any case.