NATO Summit Ignores Crucial Issues to Focus on Afghanistan

If one examines how the public in NATO member countries perceived the outcome of the NATO summit in Chicago, which ended on Monday, and compares its reaction to that of the Russian public, it reveals an obvious distinction. In Russia, everyone is writing and talking exclusively about NATO’s European missile defense project. Outside of Russia, there is practically no word on missile defense; this problem does not concern anyone in NATO member countries, and in fact, they are certain that the summit held in Chicago was completely devoted to Afghanistan.

How to Exit

Specifically, most of the talk focused on what NATO is doing in the next two years to transfer responsibility for security in Afghanistan to Afghans. The date for the cessation of combat operations and the withdrawal of troops was confirmed in Chicago on December 2014. The new French president, Francois Hollande reiterated his campaign promise that his troops — 3,300 men — will be pulled out earlier than scheduled, by the end of this year, but agreed to leave some troops for “non-combat” missions.

The details of what will happen after the withdrawal of NATO troops were also discussed. Afghan President Hamid Karzai was the most prominent figure at the summit. Everyone vied with each other for his attention, promising him extra money to maintain the security forces and encouraging him to come to an agreement with the Taliban. And although the Pakistani team arrived in Chicago, including the president, no less, they refused to reopen the NATO supply routes.

Overall, nothing fundamentally new was covered; numerous new complexities and details were discussed about the “Afghan issue,” the focus of the summit. Possibly NATO will somehow respond to Moscow’s statement that it cannot just leave Afghanistan without reporting to the U.N. Security Council. Of course, just out of courtesy it will respond, and even report back, but it will still leave, because it cannot do anything else in that country. Is this not cheap security?

It should be noted that the NATO summits are always a big event, in part because they occur so rarely. The previous NATO summit was held in 2010 in Lisbon. The Chicago summit was theoretically supposed to be a historic one because of the magnitude of the decisions to be made, which were originally expected to be unrelated to Afghanistan and instead concerned mainly with the new principles of security spending.

Something to this effect was being discussed in Chicago, and was even given the names — almost slogan-like — “security in an age of austerity” and “smart defense,” a favorite idea of Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen. Of course, it could not simply be called “cheap.” The fact is that the defense budgets of all NATO member states are being reduced, and not all members of the alliance will be able to maintain armed forces capable of independent operations. However, if the military efforts are integrated into a single system, it will cost less.

Further, NATO planned to discuss what is happening in the Middle East and how to proceed. What is taking place there is not democratization, but something far worse, and this has been clear for a long time. An adequate answer needs to be found for this situation because, generally speaking, it is a threat. Nevertheless, there was not even a serious conversation about Syria at the summit. It seems there was no time for it.

There is also a drawn out, unresolved debate about nuclear weapons — when and against whom to use them, theoretically of course, under new circumstances. Overall, it is something to the effect of a “reinvention of NATO,” the new doctrine of the alliance. Though, apparently NATO will get around to it only after the Afghan saga ends. If there were any debates in Chicago on non-Afghan issues, there were few that surfaced.

Cooperation Will Come to an End, Suspicions Will Remain

To reiterate, the problem of missile defense, judging by the media’s coverage of the summit everywhere but Russia, is still nonexistent and does not appear to have been discussed at the summit. However, the Russian media took the opposite view: Commentary includes copious details about each word said in passing regarding the first phase of the creation of a missile defense system — the one that, supposedly, created protection against individual launches from countries outside NATO members’ space. The system will be complete by 2018. Russia was reassured by a paragraph in the declaration that states that the system cannot undermine the force of strategic deterrence in Russia and that the alliance is ready for a dialogue on this topic.

Clearly, this is an excuse, and the challenges for NATO regarding this topic lie ahead. What will they be? They will surface when the cooperation with Russia on Afghanistan ends, and the distrust about the strategic balance remains and subsequently increases.

In fact, we truly share security zones with NATO, and overall we have a lot in common, even in seemingly trivial matters: During a solar eclipse on Sunday, in both Moscow and Chicago, groups of “occupiers” on the lawns were disassembled. We detained 40 people, and the U.S. detained slightly more. They have, just as we do, a growing impatience for these people to calm down, not only in elite circles, but also in the wider community. The American government is here in Chicago, discussing the lives of American soldiers in Afghanistan and the war’s cost to an already deficient budget, and they are protesting against it …

Nevertheless, we must admit that although we have similar maladies in our societies, because NATO members absolutely refuse to accept discontented Russia as a serious threat, they will create their own missile defense system, and this is a mistake. Missile defense will not only foster persistent distrust between Moscow and the NATO capitals, but will pose a security threat to our common Euro-Atlantic space.

This threat typically comes not from the airborne, explosive metal or plastic objects themselves — it is in the mind. But as we saw, the minds of NATO leaders were preoccupied with the not-so-brilliant outcome of the Afghan operation, and as a result, they missed an opportunity to take care of other security mechanisms.