Its not just President Donald Trump who is skeptical of the North Atlantic alliance, in other words. Its the American people. To the extent that U.S. citizens think about NATO at all, they disagree about whether honoring its commitments would be worth the sacrifice.

This wavering commitment likely signals a belief that American protection is no longer necessary for European security or that the United States has different priorities from when NATO was created 70 years ago. If NATO wants to earn the confidence of American citizenswho, after all, elect the American president whom NATO allies deal withthe alliance must rethink its mission for the 21st century.

To be sure, most Americans still have a general sense that NATO is important to our countrys security, according to another recent survey by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. But even that survey found the same divide on whether Americans would opt to retaliate against a Russian attack on a NATO ally. As recently as the late 1990s, nearly 70 percent of surveyed Americans supported sending U.S. troops to defend a new NATO member from a military attack.

Whats going on? NATO is in the midst of an existential crisis; its original mission is a vestige of an earlier era. Even the current secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, acknowledges that theres no imminent military threat from Russia (whose economy has dwindled to the size of Italys), and the Germans certainly dont seem intent on territorial expansion. So, Americans who retain a positive impression of the alliance might yet hesitate to sacrifice blood and treasure on a mission they dont see as vital to their interests.

Trump has seized on NATOs troubles, dismissing the treaty as obsolete. That critique is not particularly constructive, and his transactional accounting of member states financial contributions smacks more of petty grievance than of grand strategy. But his provocations have led to some soul searching.

French President Emmanuel Macron recently worried aloud about the brain death of NATO and encouraged Europe to regain military sovereignty and reassess the reality of what NATO is in the light of the commitment of the United States. Macron doesnt lay this all at Trumps feet, though; he says it was very astute for the United States to refocus on the rest of North America, as it did beginning under President Barack Obama, and to shift the U.S. geopolitical gaze toward Asia. In the wake of these comments, NATO will now convene a group of experts to strategize about the alliances futurean encouraging step.

If every crisis also represents an opportunity, leaders ought to use their meeting in London and subsequent gatherings to reimagine NATOs mission. Doing so could revive the popular support that gives it license to operate.

Russian meddling in democratic elections might be a place to start. Its increasingly clear the main threats to open societies are not military. If NATO remains a military alliance, it is unfit to respond to these types of threats. Three years after Estonia acceded into NATO in 2004, Russia in fact did attack the Baltic country. But because it was a cyberattack on banks, media outlets and government agencies, and there was no major loss of life, the alliance was powerless. One could imagine, in our era, that the integrity of European democracy would be better defended, Russian hostility better deterred and public support better assured if a cyberattack on one NATO country were treated as a cyberattack on all.

NATO members might argue the alliance is adapting to modern times by expandingit has grown from 12 countries 70 years ago to 29 today. But, on some level, expansion perpetuates the problem NATO seeks to solve. This sprawl has brought in a motley set of national interests to a body that requires consensus. Would Bulgarians fight for Belgium if it were attacked? Or, as Macron ponders, if Syria decides to retaliate against Turkey, will we commit ourselves under [Article 5]?

The real danger of an alliance with neither a clear purpose nor a clear adversary is its tendency to unnecessarily provoke citizens of nonallied countries. As Michael OHanlon at the Brookings Institution has pointed out, Russians see a psychologically and politically imposing former enemy that has approached right up to their border. NATO has strengthened autocracy and weakened democracy movements in and around Russia.

This was utterly foreseeable. In fact, it was foreseen by the man whose policy of containment helped to defeat Soviet communism. In 1998, at 94 years old, George Kennan spotted the perversity of expanding NATO when, he said, Russias democracy is as far advanced, if not farther, as any of these countries weve just signed up to defend from Russia. Kennan predicted, Of course, there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are. In a sense, his prophecy has come true.

If the Russian military is not the nemesis of the 29 NATO member countries, then who or what is? In a news conference with Stoltenberg on Thursday, Macron ventured it was terrorism, not Russia or China. This isnt so far-fetched: The only time any member country invoked Article 5 was when the United States did so after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. But Macrons comment quickly led to derision from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who suggested Macron doesnt know what the fight against terror is and should have his own brain death checked out first. In a case of badly entangled alliances, Erdogan is annoyed because French troops are in Syria working with Kurdish forces that Turkey considers terrorists, while Turkey is striking a deal with Russia on controlling parts of Syria that were once patrolled by the United States.

NATO has a proud history and could yet have a productive future. But it must seek a new purpose that Americansand the citizens of other member statescan get behind. And it must heed Ismays call to use the kind of clear language that is only achievable with clear purpose. Only then will it be more than an alliance in search of both a mission and an adversary.

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Opinion | Its Not Just Trump. The American People Are Skeptical of NATO, Too. - Politico

LONDONIn response to the covertly recorded footage of European leaders mocking the U.S. president, a jilted Donald Trump announced Wednesday the official formation of a cooler, way more powerful NATO with his new best friends Oman, Macedonia, and Suriname. We are going to have so much fun without you losers, said the U.S. commander in chief of the impromptu new intergovernmental alliance he formed after proclaiming that the old NATO is stupid, explaining that he had already poured billions of dollars of funding into the collective to ensure they have the best summit ever. France and Canada think theyre so cool, but we could totally destroy them in a fight. I already met with Qaboos, Stevo, and Dsi, and were gonna get matching satin jackets and theyre gonna look sick. At press time, Trump was already threatening to pull out of his newly formed alliance after accusing its members of not paying their fair share of the budget.

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Jilted Trump Announces Formation Of Cooler, Way More Powerful NATO With His New Best Friends Oman, Macedonia, And Suriname - The Onion

A general view during the NATO leaders summit in Watford, England, December 4, 2019. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

With the NATO summit wrapping up, President Trump continues to complain, accurately, that some allies like Canada are not spending 2 percent of their GDP on national defense, as the alliance requests of its members.

Theres really no good excuse for any member nation failing to hit that 2 percent threshold. In the most current report from NATO, the United States spends 3.42 percent, Bulgaria spends 3.25 percent, Greece spends 2.28 percent, the U.K. and Estonia both spend 2.14 percent, Lituanias at 2.03 percent, Latvias at 2.01 percent, and Poland hit 2 percent on the dot. A bunch of NATO members are just below the threshold Turkeys at 1.89 percent, France is at 1.84, and Norway is at 1.8 percent.

Fifteen NATO members are below 1.8 percent; Canada is at 1.31 percent. The real stragglers are Belgium (.93 percent), Spain (.92 percent), and Luxembourg (.56 percent). The Luxembourg Army has a strength of approximately 430 professional soldiers, and a population of about 600,000 people.

What makes the low percentages particularly infuriating is that NATO allows countries to define military spending pretty broadly. A NATO country doesnt have to spend more on fighter jets and tanks to hit that threshold; the alliance guideline is to spend 20 percent of the military budget on equipment.

If a country wants to spend more beefing up its capabilities in search-and-rescue or disaster response, or radar systems that would help with civilian air traffic control as well, they can do that. If a countrys national police, gendarmerie, carabinieri, coast guard are trained in military tactics, are equipped as a military force, can operate under direct military authority in deployed operations, and can, realistically, be deployed outside national territory in support of a military force, then they count as military spending, too.

Lets say youre a left-leaning European government that thinks guns are icky but likes spending more on government. Pay raises for military personnel and their pension systems counts as military spending! Ammunition for training, petroleum products, spare parts, rents, engineering equipment, transport vehicles, research and development . . . all of that counts towards a countrys military spending under NATO rules. Come on, guys. Just a little effort, and you would leave the president with a lot less to complain about.

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Theres No Excuse for NATO Allies Not Meeting That 2 Percent Threshold - National Review

France's President Emmanuel Macron addresses members of the media as he leaves from 10 Downing ... [+] Street, central London on December 3, 2019, after meeting with Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson and other heads of State, ahead of the NATO alliance summit. - NATO leaders gather Tuesday for a summit to mark the alliance's 70th anniversary but with leaders feuding and name-calling over money and strategy, the mood is far from festive. (Photo by DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS / various sources / AFP) (Photo by DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS/AFP via Getty Images)

By Ethan Chorin and Dirk Vandewalle

French President Emmanuel Macron struck a raw nerve last weekby calling NATO brain dead and urging its membership not to rely on the United Sates fordirection (which in any case is unlikely to come soon).Macrons comments followed President Trumps sudden and unilateral decision to remove U.S. troops from the Syrian-Turkish border, which allowed Turkey a NATO member to overwhelm Syrian Kurds, key Western allies in the fight against ISIS.

While Turkish actions in Syria are of immediate concern,Libya should be at the forefront of discussions at the current NATO Summit in London.For what happens next in Libya is immediately relevant to core NATO interests including combatting terrorism, addressing Europes migrant crisis, curbing Russianopportunism in the Middle East, and assuring the long-term viability of the Alliance itself.

Libya has been in turmoil since the NATO-led intervention in March 2011 that ousted Libya's nearly 42-year dictator Muammar Gaddafi. In launching Operation Unified Protector, NATO and the U.S. appealed to an aspirational international humanitarian norm, the Responsibly to Protect (R2P).Many then hoped that Libya would be a bright spot among the Arab Revolutions. But the hands-off approach by the U.S. and NATO encouraged states like Turkey and Qatar to steer national elections in Libya in favor of parochial groups and Islamist minorities.This development, once it was apparent, was deeply opposed by most Libyans, who were powerless to stop it.This was the immediate context for the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi that killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, drove the West out of Benghazi, and facilitated the citys takeover by Al Qaeda and then, the Islamic State.

Promising to deliver Benghazi from Islamic extremists, former Gaddafi-era general Khalifa Heftar created the Libyan National Army, which through a bloody war of attrition freed Benghazi from the ISIS-Al Qaeda grip in 2016. Although Heftars actions were popular within large parts of Libya, the international communityhas spurned Heftar as yet another authoritarian strongman and backed a U.N.-built political agreement, which arbitrarily took authority from an elected government and put it in the hands of an unelected, and still unratified body, hoping it would rubber-stamp Western air attacks on the emergent Libyan franchise oftheIslamic State, and solve the migrant issue.It did neither:U.S. strikes were largely ineffective,andthe refugee crisis eased only when Italy paid human traffickers operating in theshadow of the Tripoli government to keep migrants in Libya, under appalling conditions.

More recentlyHeftar and the LNA have taken the fight from Benghazi and Libyas East to Libyas capital of Tripoli, where they are waging another war of attrition to break the militia stranglehold.And here is where the extent of internal NATO discord is most obvious: France is widely seen to back Heftar; Turkey hasramped up efforts to back the Tripoli militias againstHeftar, while the U.N. continues to call for an unconditional cease fire that would allowthe militias toregroup.A number of Arab states, including the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, form a pro-Heftar front. As in Syria, it is unclear where the United States stands, as House Democrats, with some Republican support, have recently put forward a hodgepodge Libya bill that smells more like partisan politics (opposing President Trumps apparent recent nods to Heftar), than coherent policy. Meanwhile, Russia and radical groups continue to exploit the power vacuum to advance their own interests.

The authorswarned at the start of the conflict in 2012 that NATO would have to deal with the Gordian knot of the Libyan militias sooner or later.And while many in the West realize it, few are willing to state the obvious: Heftar has been doing NATOs dirty work.Turning a blind eye to this reality, now as in the past, carries significant risks:if Heftar manages to take control of Libya, the popular assumption will be that this was the Wests preferred outcome all along, and NATO and the West will have limited leverage over what comes next.

Heftar has done his part to keep Libya from one side of the abyss, but Libyans are unlikely to acquiesce to a Sisi-like rule after years of bloody internal conflict. Nor is it clear what exactly Heftars end game is:So far, he has deferred to Libyas elected government-in-exile, and insists that he will hand over control to a civilian government once Libya has been stabilized. He must be held to these commitments.Waiting encourages events on the ground to dictate larger outcomes.

Within this chaos, and assuming NATO is capable of projecting a unified front (indeed, this was the essence of Macron's challenge), NATO has an unconventional opportunity toleverage Heftars momentum to stabilize Libya, address themigrant crisis, and dealwith terrorism and Russian expansionismwithout creating new fissures.

The first step would be to put strong and specific conditions on Heftars advance.NATO could, forexample, offer to broker and enforce a cease-fire that provided combatants on all sides safe passage and immunity from all but war crimes, but in return for immediate disarmament.It should censure Turkey for its destructive actions in both Syria and Libya, and prevent the additional flow of arms and fighters into the country.And it should help Libya form an interim, technocratic government, pending a new nationalelection and in accordance with a provisional constitution (a quasi-internal consensus seems tohave emerged regarding therelevance of the country's 1963 Federalist constitution to alonger term process of national integration and reconciliation).This would have the added benefit of effectively ending, once and for all, the fiction that the United Nations Government of National Accord (GNA) is a viableframework for solving Libya's ills.Further,NATO should help safeguard Libyas oil and gas resources, crucial to both Libyas and Europes economic well-being, and encourage regional states to invest in the diversification of Libya's regional economies intoareas like maritime services, tourism and medical infrastructure.

Collectively, these measures constitute a much-belated application of the Responsibility to Rebuild (R2R), which in original formulations was seen as an indispensable component to any R2P intervention.

Despite its current identity crisis, NATO may be the only organization still able to make this happen, just as it was the only organization judged capable of managing acomplex, multi-partymilitary response to Gaddafi in the first place.And paradoxically, by working through the obstacles to a unified position on Libya, NATO may be reminded of its raison d'tre, while its traditional lead, the United States, works out its own internal divisions.

Ethan Chorin is a former U.S. diplomat posted to Libya and author of Exit the Colonel: The Hidden History of the Libyan Revolution. Dirk Vandewalle is Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College and author of A Modern History of Libya.

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Libya and the Future of NATO - Forbes

Donald Trump arrived in the UK to meet Nato allies who are fearful that he could pose a serious threat to the survival of the alliance if he wins re-election next year.

Days before Wednesdays leaders meeting just outside London to mark Natos 70th anniversary, the US announced it was cutting its contribution to joint Nato projects.

Nato officials say the cut (which reduces the US contribution to equivalence with Germanys) was mutually agreed, but it comes against a backdrop of Trumps longstanding ambivalence about the value of the alliance, and suggestions that US security guarantees to allied nations were dependent on their military spending.

John Bolton, Trumps national security adviser until September, heightened fears among allies about the presidents intentions in a private speech to a hedge fund last month, in which Bolton (according to a NBC report) warned that Trump could go full isolationist if he wins re-election next November, withdrawing from Nato and other international alliances.

Trump has continually complained about the defence spending of European allies who committed less than the agreed 2% to defence, particularly Germany. And he has cast doubt on US commitment to its obligations under article 5 of Natos founding document, the Washington Treaty, under which an attack on one ally is considered an attack on all allies.

What is Nato?

TheNorth Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) is a collective defence alliance between 29 North American and European countries. Founded in 1949, the treaty provides that if one country is attacked, all Nato members would collectively respond. Nato was set up to counter the threat of the Soviet Union.

The 12 founding members were: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, United Kingdom and the United States.

Over the years the organisation has expanded to itscurrent membership of 29. Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, North Macedonia and Ukraine are recognised as states with aspirations to join.

Why is it meeting in London?

This week's summit marks a celebration of the 70th anniversary of the organisation. London was chosen partly because it was the location of the original headquarters of the organisation when it was founded.

What is on the agenda?

During the two-day gathering there will be addresses by the Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, a formal reception at Buckingham Palace hosted by the Queen, and a meeting of the North Atlantic Council attended by heads of state and government. The agenda features discussions about Russia, China and the future of arms control. There will also be a series of bilateral meetings between leaders - the most testing of which are likely to feature Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdoan looking for support for his country's recent incursion into Syria.

What's the context?

Infighting is a major issue. For the third summit in a row, Donald Trump is expected to renew demands that European allies and Canada step up defence spending. He is also unhappy with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, over a tax on American tech giants including Google, Amazon and Facebook.

For his part Macron has lamented Nato's "brain death" due to a lack of US leadership, and said the organisation needs a wake-up call. He insists that strategic questions must be addressed, like improving ties with Russia and how to handle an unpredictable ally like Turkey.

In turn, Erdoan has lashed out at Macron. Their very public argument bodes ill for the summit, which is being hosted by the British prime minister, Boris Johnson. Johnson will want who to smooth things over and downplay any links to Trump, who is unpopular in the UK.

Before leaving Washington on Monday, Trump repeated his complaint about other countries that we protect, that werent paying.

They were delinquent. So well be talking about that, he told reporters, though he noted that allies were now spending $130bn more than before he took office, a development he took credit for.

Tweeting from Air Force One on the way to the UK, Trump declared: In the 3 decades before my election, NATO spending declined by two-thirds, and only 3 other NATO members were meeting their financial obligations. Since I took office, the number of NATO allies fulfilling their obligations more than DOUBLED, and NATO spending increased by $130B!

In fact the number of allies meeting the 2% commitment has tripled to nine since 2016, though some of that increase was already planned and Russian aggression in Ukraine is also an important factor.

Air Force One touched down at London Stansted just before 10pm.

A European diplomat in Washington pointed out that under the Trump administration, the US military presence on the alliances eastern flank has been stepped up, but expressed concern that such reinforcements were driven by other administration officials seeking to compensate for Trumps personal affinity for Vladimir Putin and his denigration of his European allies.

The greatest fear is what he would do in a second term. He would be more free from constraints, the diplomat said, adding that he was under pressure from his capital to assess what a second Trump term would look like. It is impossible to predict, he said.

Trump last year publicly called into question whether the US would intervene in defence of the newest member, Montenegro, under article 5. In an July 2018 interview, Trump described Montenegrins as very aggressive people and expressed concern they would somehow drag the US into a conflict and congratulations, youre in World War III.

The New York Times has reported that Trump has said privately several times that he would like to withdraw from Nato.

I think what Bolton says resonates with people because it is something that has worried people since Trump took office and there is concern that he would feel less constrained in a second term, and could actually do something, said Amanda Sloat, a former senior state department official now at the Brookings Institution.

Given that you have someone who was working very closely with the president over the last year expressing that concern himself, I think it is bringing back to the fore the possibility that this is something that could happen in a Trump second term.

Susan Rice, national security adviser in the Obama administration, said that congressional Republicans would step in to prevent Trump pulling the US out of Nato, but she expressed concern about the long-term draining effect of Trumps ambivalence on Nato cohesion.

I still do think that Congress would throw its body in the way of a move to withdraw from Nato, Rice told the Guardian. But, you know, Congress has surprised me in the recent past, by its inability or unwillingness to challenge Trump. What I think is more likely is this continued erosion of confidence in our leadership within Nato, and more efforts that call into question our commitment, and more signals to the authoritarians within Nato and Russia itself that this whole institution is vulnerable.

Its hard to envision the United States withdrawing from Nato, but I could see it suffering a death by a thousand cuts, Rice said.

Natos secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, has credited the $130bn in increased defence spending by Nato allies to Trump. In a further effort to appease the US president, Stoltenberg has also brokered a deal by which the US contribution the Nato common funding for shared projects, was reduced from 22% of the roughly $2.5bn total to just over 16%, in line with the share paid by Germany, which has a significantly smaller economy.

Other countries are supposed to make up for the consequent shortfall, but France is reportedly refusing to contribute more on grounds that the redistribution represents pandering to Trump.

Its actually a very small budget within the Nato context, said Rachel Ellehuus, deputy director of the Europe programme at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.

So its largely symbolic that the US is cutting its contribution. But the US administration was very clear that we wanted to have our share of common funding more in line with what Germany was paying.

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Trump re-election could sound death knell for Nato, allies fear - The Guardian

Last month, in an interview with the Economist, French President Emmanuel Macron lamented the brain death of NATO. His statement went viral. He was not the first Western leader to comment publicly on the North Atlantic alliances problems, but his questioning of NATOs commitment to collective defensethe cornerstone of the organizationindicated serious trouble. Numerous Western officials were quick to repudiate Macrons words, but the unfolding discussion only emphasized that NATO faces perhaps its most intense challenges since its inception in 1949.

For some observers, NATOs internal turmoil is a dangerous gift to Russia, a country with which the alliance has had a particularly strained relationship since 2014. No wonder that a spokesman from Russias Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maria Zakharova, praised Macrons statement as golden words. Yet both Western condemnation of Macrons remarks and Russias happy reaction neglect a possibly more worrisome future.

Over the last few years, Russia and NATO have been caught in something of a security trap, where neither trusts the others intentions and thus tries to build up more military power to deter its rival. Although both think of their actions as defensive, their enemy sees pure aggressionand the cycle dangerously repeats.

For simple reasons of geography, Eastern Europe, which lies between Russia and NATO, has become the epicenter of this unfolding security dilemma, which has resulted in increasingly dangerous militarization. Russian exercises in the Baltic Sea, for example near the Karlskrona Naval Base in Sweden, are an indicator of Moscows plan to expand its influence over the states of the former Soviet Union and beyond.

Macrons public questioning of the alliances commitment to collective defense will only exacerbate the sense of uncertainty along NATOs eastern flank. Countries there may believe they have no choice but to do more about their own defense. In particular, they may look beyond NATO to Washington. Poland has already done as much in its attempt to secure a Fort Trump, including a permanent U.S. military presence, within its borders. Other countries appear ready to follow suit.

Meanwhile, by mid-2018, NATO and the United States had placed around 4,500 soldiers in the three Baltic states and Poland, as well as several thousand armored troops in Eastern Europe to prevent Russian aggression. That will also raise the stakes for Russia, which would surely see any increased buildup as an act of aggression.

The short- to medium-term repercussions are easy to predict. They will include more tensions inside NATO and inevitable counteractions from Russia. Those will, in turn, prompt ever more Western presence on the ground. No country will be left feeling more secure. Another worry is that a stronger NATO commitment to an ally would make that ally behave more aggressively than it would otherwise. In the longer term, the security dilemma could throw the region and the entire Euro-Atlantic space into danger.

It will be difficult to reverse Eastern Europes security dilemma. Doing so would require the Western countries and Russia sitting down together and striking a grand bargain on numerous issues such as sanctions, an arms control framework, and Ukraine, which currently appear unresolvable. A more realistic solution would be to find ways to make the twists and turns of Eastern European security more predictable. And here, Belarus is key.

For a long time, Belarus has been disregarded in the West as Europes last dictatorship, languishing in Russias geopolitical backyard. Although the countrys domestic politics are troubling, its recent foreign and security policies show a lot of potential for Belarus to play a stabilizing role in Eastern Europe.

In the wake of Russias invasion of Crimea in 2014 and fighting in the Donbass, Belarus took an emphatically neutral stance between Russia and the West. It even became a venue for the peace talks that saw the two Minsk agreements concluded in 2014 and 2015. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europes Trilateral Contact Group (including representatives of the OSCE, Russia, and Ukraine) convenes there every second week. And at a Minsk Dialogue Forum on regional security in October, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko pledged to make the country a success story of European security and asked key global and regional actors for help.

Belarus remains a Russian ally, of course, and in a military conflict, it would side with Moscow. But it is also ready to do everything possible to prevent such a war from starting and alleviate regional tensions. We are on the front line. If we dont survive these years, if we will fail, it means we will have to become part of some other state, or they will simply wipe their feet on us. God forbid they unleash another war, like in Ukraine, Lukashenko said in the summer of 2018.

Because of its desire to head off the fighting, Belarus has refused to host a Russian air base, which Moscow sees as crucial in responding to NATOs growing presence on its western flank. Minsk has also gone a long way in improving relations with both the United States and the European Union, and it has expressed readiness for direct dialogue with NATO.

Most importantly, Belarus has a unique network of bilateral, military-to-military agreements with its neighbors. It has agreements with Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland (all NATO members) for regional confidence and security-building measures. With Ukraine, Minsk has an even stronger agreement on security cooperation.

Such agreements, long dismissed as window dressing, have become uniquely practical tools since 2014. The agreement with Kiev proved highly important in easing Ukrainian concerns that Belarusian territory could be used to launch a Russian attack, and agreements with NATO member states are becoming particularly useful in light of the upcoming Defender Europe 2020 exercises.

On the basis of these documents, Belarus could serve as a geographic cushion between NATO and Russia, protecting the two against miscalculation. As Belarus seeks better relations with the EU and the United States, Western actors should encourage bilateral and multilateral engagement with Minsk. Belaruss willingness to act more independently between East and West has grown, and questions about Belaruss sovereignty are at the heart of this determination.

Belarus will not solve the fundamental problems between Russia and NATO, nor will it ease growing differences inside the North American alliance itself. Yet it could help tame the security dilemmaand given todays climate, anything that prevents escalation would be welcome.

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Tensions Between Russia and NATO Have Militarized Eastern Europe. But Belarus Is Charting a Different Course. - Foreign Policy

UK Secretary of State for Defence Ben Wallace speaks at the NATO Engages event in London, United Kingdom on December 3, 2019. (Sarah Halls)

While international headlines have focused on high-profile disputes within the NATO alliance over a litany of issues including defense spending, trade, Syria, and Brexit, transatlantic leaders stressed on December 3 that these disagreements are dwarfed by the continued success of the seventy-year-old alliance.

Our alliance has always risen to whatever challenge is being thrown at it, UK Secretary of State for Defense Ben Wallace said on December 3, as transatlantic leaders gathered in London to mark seventy years of NATO and chart a new course for the organization. Speaking at the NATO Engages townhall event co-hosted by the Atlantic Council, Wallace highlighted NATOs quick response to Russias illegal annexation of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine as an example of the Alliances ability to meet the new challenges of the 21st century. We have adapted again to reinvigorate our deterrence and our defense, with enhanced forward presence, rapid reaction, and higher readiness, he explained.

Polish President Andrzej Duda agreed, labeling the establishment of NATO presence in the Eastern flank as the most important NATO accomplishment of the last few years. By reacting quickly to Russias aggression in the regionincluding sending more troops to the frontline Baltic states and Poland, and stepping up joint surveillance and monitoring activitiesNATO has shown that it is alive, the Polish president argued. If NATO is really an organization without purpose, as some commentators have suggested, why, Wallace asked, do our adversaries put so much effort in destabilizing our alliance?

NATOs accomplishments have often been overshadowed by significant disagreement within the Alliance over the last few years. US President Donald J. Trump has consistently criticized NATO allies for not spending enough on defense, while Turkey has angered its NATO partners by purchasing an air defense system from Russia and launching a combat operation in northeastern Syria. But Duda, who joined Prime Minister of North Macedonia Zoran Zaev in a session at NATO Engages on December 3, argued that these tensions are only natural because NATO is an alliance of almost thirty countries and there are many interests. Despite the political disagreements, he assured the audience that Europe sees the Euro-Atlantic Alliance [as] one of the crucial elements of our stabilityand our security.

While his country has been primarily focused on the threat from Russia, Duda stressed that Poland is ready to fulfill all our duties and responsibilities as a NATO member, and assist its allies in protecting their citizens security from threats wherever they originate. I believe in 360-degree policy, he maintained. The eastern flankis not the only problem, and NATO should also look at the southern flank to address instability in North Africa and the Middle East which threatens many NATO countries with refugee flows and fuels terrorism. Although member states may debate the priority of these challenges and the best way to meet them, Wallace explained that alliance unity should never be endangered, because our comparative advantage over our competitors has always hinged on our togetherness.

When event moderator Stephen Sackur of BBCs HARDTalk questioned whether all member states still see the Alliance as effective in the 21st century, Zaev argued that the example of his countrywhich is set to become the thirtieth member of the Allianceshows that the power of attraction to NATO remains really big. The fact that his country was willing to change its name as part of a deal with Greece to open the door to NATO accession, Zaev explained, demonstrates that the Alliance is still viewed as a success by its neighbors and that its historical role of preserving peace in Europe and abroad means that temporary disagreements will never cause a member of the family to walk away. Every member country will never forget the reasons for [NATO], he argued. NATO must be prepared for new challenges, he added, but I dont think something big will happen with someone going out of NATO.

Looking ahead

While the Alliance is faster, fitter, and fairer than it has ever been, Wallace said, we will have to keep changing and adapting to tomorrows challenges, which will be the focus of the NATO Leaders Meeting on December 4. Wallace stressed that NATO countries must continue to increase investment in both our conventional forces, which are so important to effective deterrence, and in those new capabilities needed to address the challenges that lie ahead. Allies will also need to innovate, as maintaining our technological edge is the only way we can avoid obsolescence and deliver on our most important pledge: keeping our people safe, Wallace argued. NATO will also need to consistently be on the hunt for the next geopolitical disruptors, such as demographic shifts or climate change or the next technological advancement that changes the rules of the game completely.

NATO leaders will help support these goals on December 4, Wallace reported, by agreeing a plan for NATOs response to emerging and disruptive technologies, recognizing two new operational domains in space and cyberspace, and developing plans to confront and deter hybrid tactics.

Despite the litany of internal disagreements and this growing array of new threats, Duda was confident that NATO will be up to the task in the 21st century, as its history and recent activity have shown it consistently effective in meeting the challenges thrown its way. We have many threats around, Duda said, and we have answered [them].

David A. Wemer is associate director, editorial at the Atlantic Council. Follow him on Twitter @DavidAWemer.

Thu, Nov 14, 2019

Edward Ferguson, minister counsellor for defense at the Embassy of the United Kingdom in the United States, said that the Alliance is setting an ambitious agenda for the summit to show that NATO as a septuagenarian is as fit and virile as ever and to highlight the progress we have made in adapting NATOs deterrence and defense since the 2014 Wales Summit.

New AtlanticistbyDavid A. Wemer

Mon, Aug 26, 2019

While movement towards 2 percent may seem slow, it is clear that NATO allies are making significant changes to their defense spending.

InfographicbyTransatlantic Security Initiative

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NATO is defined by its successnot its tensions - Atlantic Council

When NATO leaders get together, their meetings tend to follow a familiar script and their gathering in a hotel north of London in early December was no different.

The presidents of France, Turkey and the US engaged in ill-tempered exchanges casting Donald Trump, unusually, as NATOs champion. Meanwhile, NATOs unflappable secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, did his best to talk up the alliances accomplishments: recognition of space as an operational domain, greater attention to Chinas military modernisation, and unprecedented increases in defence spending.

The closing London Declaration, true to form, glossed over allied differences in favour of solidarity, unity and cohesion, noting concrete progress on counter-terrorism, burden-sharing and military readiness.

But if we left the serious business of diplomacy to students rather than politicians would they fare any better?

Once the politicians leave town, it is flexibility and focus that matter. NATO has not survived for 70 years for nothing. Its pragmatic functionalism means the organisation can bend to the changing demands of its members and the fluid and sometimes sudden shifts in the international environment be that the end of the Cold War, war in the Balkans, 9/11, the resurgence of Russian power and, conceivably, even the rise of China.

It is often forgotten that NATO has also played a role in disaster management. Its first such mission flood relief in Belgium and the Netherlands was as long ago as 1953. Since 1998, NATO has operated the Euro-Atlantic Disaster Response Coordination Centre (EADRCC). Albania, which suffered an earthquake at the end of November, has just requested assistance from that body.

Albanias earthquake has not preoccupied NATO leaders much this week but NATOs agility in emergencies was tested to the limit in a Model NATO summit organised by the British International Studies Association and supported by NATOs Public Diplomacy Division. In a day-long exercise on December 2, 2019, more than 90 students from 15 UK universities met at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to role-play NATOs response to a disaster of unprecedented scale and consequence.

The participating students had been forewarned. In a briefing circulated some weeks earlier, theyd been alerted to the probability of significant seismic activity and the need to mobilise civil and military resources to cope with the consequences.

The crisis updates circulated on the day took the breath away: a massive earthquake in Turkey resulting in tens of thousands of fatalities, a landslip in the Canary Islands sending a tsunami racing across the Atlantic towards north America, and a massive volcanic eruption on the Italian island of Stromboli.

The students rose to the occasion. Representing all NATOs 29 nations (plus incoming ally, North Macedonia), and working through two specialised NATO bodies the Military Committee and the Civil Emergency Planning Committee they agreed a detailed set of actions. Endorsed in a final declaration by NATOs highest authority, the North Atlantic Council, that involved activating the EADRCC, partnering with the EU, the UN and the Red Cross, and mobilising national and joint NATO military assets for the delivery of humanitarian aid.

Of course, all of this was fiction. But the exercise served an important educational purpose. Having been involved in Model NATO events for over a decade, I can think of no better educational tool than simulations and role play for motivating and enthusing students.

These are highly effective in replicating real world phenomena and so convey to students and instructors alike insights unobtainable in traditional classroom settings. Model UN is perhaps the best known example but the European Union, the Arab League and the African Union are also frequently role-played.

Model NATO, meanwhile, has obtained a permanent presence in the educational calendar with simulations being run in Washington DC, Bologna, The Hague and elsewhere. The benefit of such events is not only educational. Preparation for, and involvement in, a model summit can inspire students to embark upon careers and projects in diplomacy, government, the charitable sector and the armed forces.

Politicians make the headlines, but it is the hard work and commitment of staffers, civil servants and, in NATOs case, the military which keep international organisations on the road. Students become politicians but many more will join the ranks of these important professions.

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We got students to model NATOs reaction to an earthquake in the Mediterranean here's what happened - The Conversation UK

TODAY is the main event of the 2019 Nato summit in Watford.

Here's everything you need to know, including the venue, attendees and road closure information.

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The main event takes place today, Wednesday, December 4.

Politicians from around the world arrived on Tuesday, December 3, for the talks.

2019 marks the 70th anniversary of the alliance's meetings.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato), started out in 1949 with just 12 countries as members.

FULL ITINERARY FOR WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 4

The Nato 2019 summit is being held in Watford, Herts.

Some of the world's most important leaders are meeting at The Grove Hotel at Chandler's Cross.

Nato summits are a periodic opportunity for Heads of State and Heads of Government to meet and evaluate Nato's current strategies, evaluate the alliance's current position and brainstorm strategic direction.

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Donald Trump touched down in the UK on Monday, December 2, ready to attend the summit.

He was met by protesters ahead of an event at Buckingham Palace the following evening where he and other leaders were greeted by the Queen and Prince Charles.

The leaders met at the palace to mark 70 years of the alliance.

FULL LIST OF ATTENDING MEMBER COUNTRIES

The summit's main event is the Nato leader's meeting.

The alliance includes 28 member states,with countries including Germany, Spain, Greece and Turkey joining, andrepresents a population of more than 900 million people.

The organisation isconsidered to be thelargest and most powerful military alliance in history.

Attending the meeting in Hertfordshire will be Donald Trump, who is visiting the UK during the first week of December.

According to the BBC: "President Trump will have separate talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and attend a working lunch with representatives from Estonia, Greece, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Lithuania, Bulgaria, and the United Kingdom."

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The summit will see heightened security, road closures and traffic - with police warning of significant disruption.

Nato, or the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, is an intergovernmental military alliance established in 1949.

It was formed with the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty in 1949 by 12 member states - Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the UK and the US.

Since then it has expanded to 28 member states,with countries including Germany, Spain, Greece and Turkey joining, andrepresents a population of more than 900 million people.

The organisation isconsidered to be thelargest and most powerful military alliance in history.

Heads of government and state have met at 26 Nato summits since 1949 - the one before Watford's was held in Poland.

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Nato summit 2019 Watford where is The Grove Hotel and which member countries are attending? - The Sun

In the face of growing security challenges to Europe, from an antagonistic Russia, to instability in the Middle East, cyberwar, and terrorism, there is a growing recognition that enhanced cooperation between the EU and NATO will be key to an effective response.

Calibrating such cooperation to respond to perceived common threats, however, has never been straightforward. The political context, as well as rivalry between the EU and NATO, have often hampered the capacity of the institutions to work together.

The meeting of NATO leaders in London on December 3-4 offers an occasion to further move that relationship forward. But having tracked EU-NATO relations for over a decade, I wouldnt count on any major strategic or political breakthroughs.

Ever since NATO was created in 1949, with the dual aim of keeping the peace among the Allies and providing a security alliance against the Soviet Union, there has been a tension between whether or not NATO should drive the security agenda in Europe.

Since 1949, a number of European-wide organizations have tried to coordinate European defence policyfrom the failed attempt at a French proposal for an integrated European Defence Community in 1954, to its alternative, the Western European Union (WEU), a military alliance of the UK, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands.

The precursor to the EU, the European Community, didnt really put security matters on its agenda. So it was in the mid-1990s following the Maastrict Treaty that the newly-formed EU began to develop its own common foreign and security policy and the relationship with NATO began to shift.

NATO had already developed a good working relationship with the WEU, but this really became germane in 1996 with attempts to use the WEU as an institutional bridge between the EU and NATO.

As long as the EU remained an organization without a defence component to support its common security policy, and NATO an organization focused strictly on collective defence of its members, the EU had little need to develop military ties with NATO. However, as some EU member sates started to consider an autonomous EU defence and security instrument towards the end of the 1990s, this relationship became unavoidable.

After a 1998 joint summit between the UK and France at Saint Malo, the formal process began towards creating the EUs Security and Defence Policy (ESDPnow termed CSDP). Attention started to focus on an alternative arrangement to the WEU as the bridge between the two institutions.

Once the EU formally adopted the WEUs Petersberg Tasks, which set out the conditions under which militaries could be deployed, the relationship between the EU and NATO changed from one of informal meetings to something more institutionalized. Formal committees and structures began to be mapped out by 1999.

However, cultural and institutional differences between the EU and NATO still had to be reduced before any official arrangements could be finalized. NATO retained a very strict security regime dating back to its Cold War years, while in contrast, the EU was designed as an open and transparent organization. In order to adapt to a stricter security policy, the EU modelled its security framework on NATO. This was also helped by the fact that most EU states have also been NATO member statescurrently 22 are members of both.

By 2000, both the US and France had overcome enough of their initial reservations about the relationship to pursue joint EU-NATO committees, set up to tackle various common security challenges. Formal political exchanges started up between NATO and the EU, such as those between the EUs Political Security Committee (PSC) and NATOs North Atlantic Council (NAC).

The Berlin Plus agreement was then negotiated between 1999 to 2002. This became the framework agreement between the two organizations to allow the EU to access NATO assets and capabilities that it did not possess (and in some cases, still do not) for its own operations such as the EU-led military Operation ALTHEA in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Berlin Plus arrangements also created an EU-NATO security agreement to allow non-NATO members access to classified NATO documents.

The American NATO expert David Yost set out the problems at the heart of the EU-NATO relationship in a 2007 book. As he put it: Difficulties include institutional and national rivalries, the participation problem, and disagreements about the proper scope and purpose of NATO-EU cooperation.

The participation problem is a central impediment to formal EU-NATO relations that stems from the ongoing dispute between Turkey (a NATO-only member) and Cyprus (an EU-only member). This led to Turkey directly blocking formal EU-NATO cooperation in 2004 beyond that of Operation ALTHEA. Formal meetings between the PSC and NAC were suspended as Turkey objected, and still does, to Cyprus sitting in on such meetings without a NATO security agreementwhich Turkey refuses to allow.

Informal meetings do take place but these have been described to me by both PSC and NAC ambassadors during my research as dull, highly scripted, and uninspiring. As a result, there has been a move towards enhancing cooperation at the inter-organizational level to compensate for deficiencies at the formal political level.

As I have argued elsewhere, the reality today is that the EU and NATO cooperate far more outside of the formal Berlin Plus relationship than they do inside it. There has been a renewed impetus to enhance relations since the signing of a EU-NATO Joint Declaration in 2016 but there are still major obstacles to an effective strategic partnership between the two institutions.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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A short history of the EU and NATOs uneasy relationship - Quartz

Russia is not a member of NATO, obviously, and thus Vladimir Putin is not present at the NATO meeting in London on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week.

Nonetheless, the Russian leader got pretty much exactly what he needed from the meeting, thanks in large part to US President Donald Trump.

The context here is "Article 5," the fundamental guiding principle that underpins the US-Europe military alliance, and its role in deterring military aggression from Russia. Article 5 states that if any member of NATO is attacked, then all of NATO will rush to defend that country.

On paper, it's a scary prospect for Moscow: If Russian troops were to attempt maneuvers in even a small country such as Slovakia or Latvia which both used to be part of the Soviet Union then troops from the US, UK and Turkey would rush into war to defend them.

Of course, NATO only works as long as all its 29 countries remain continuously on board with the promise that they will fight even if the war doesn't directly involve them.

This week, Trump said Article 5 was merely a "question."

"I'm going to be discussing that today," he told reporters. "And it's a very interesting question, isn't it?"

Russia's main strategy to deter NATO around its borders is to encourage splits and division within NATO that will paralyze its ability to respond to aggression in a unified way. From Putin's point of view, it doesn't matter that NATO controls up to 3.5 million military service personnel 500,000 more than Russia if the NATO troops are too busy arguing amongst themselves when the tanks start rolling.

This "mindset" is a key difference between the way Putin views the world and the way NATO's leaders do.

Since the end of the Cold War, Europe and the US have enjoyed the "peace dividend." They went into the 21st Century assuming the big global conflicts were over. Future wars would be minor, asymmetric skirmishes that superior firepower would easily quash. The Western mindset, in other words, is that the world would be a largely benign place in which democracy would flourish.

Putin, by contrast, is a creature and a product of the former Soviet Union, the KGB, and its successor agencies. The collapse of the Soviet Union saw many of its former countries and territories cede away from Moscow and ally with Europe.

This wasn't just a blow to Russia's national ego. For the Russian state's national security apparatus, it represented a security threat.

For decades, Russia has officially regarded the growth of NATO as an "encirclement" that threatens Russia, in much the same way that the West's Cold War alliances did.

Its defence against the threat is to make sure it retains as much influence as possible in the countries that line its borders. Failing that, it wants those countries weak and disabled, so that they form a confusing buffer zone around Russia's actual border.

The conflict in Ukraine is a good example of that. Russia has outright invaded Crimea, claiming it for its own. Simultaneously, it is conducting low-level, ongoing guerilla combat operations in Donetsk and Donbass, making it impossible for Ukraine to control its territory, but not explicitly declaring it part of Russia.

Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky. AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky

The strategy is clever. It creates a situation where even if NATO wanted to wade-in full scale to reclaim Ukraine's borders, the mission would be confusing and diffuse. Which place would be the priority Crimea or Donbass? And would NATO be willing to keep troops in both territories, given that the Russian military would be amassed in comfortable readiness, indefinitely, just yards across the border?

NATO, in other words, largely assumes peace is the world's default setting. Russia assumes conflict is the norm.

That false assumption on the NATO side has had disastrous consequences for the UK's military readiness. Military funding has dwindled. The British military is no longer big enough nor capable enough of defending the country against a Russian attack, according to General Sir Richard Barrons, the recently retired chief of the UK's Joint Forces Command.

In a 10-page "private" memo to the UK Ministry of Defence, he warned that Britain no longer had the military management or training to defend the country.

"Neither the UK homeland nor a deployed force let alone both concurrently could be protected from a concerted Russian air effort," he wrote, in a copy of the memo obtained by the Financial Times.

The divisions in NATO don't end there. Internally, as Insider's Mitch Prothero reported in August, NATO officials regard Trump as a national security risk. The president has a famously chummy relationship with Putin, and willingly takes meetings with him that no one else attends.

This makes them afraid to take a hard line against Russia's provocations such as testing nuclear-propelled weapons or tell the president national security information. He might just blurt it out in a conversation with Putin.

Trump has tweeted classified information in the past, including one incident where he published a photo of an Iranian rocket launch site. That gave the US's adversaries a clearer idea of the US's intel-gathering capabilities.

Turkey controls the largest military force in Europe, and the largest force in NATO outside the US. It also occupies the most strategically sensitive area of NATO the border with Syria, Iraq and Iran. Its military is constantly active.

And yet Trump has gone out of his way to annoy Turkey. In 2018, he imposed economic sanctions on the country, beggaring its currency and plunging the nation into a sharp recession.

In response, Turkey made a $2.5 billion arms deal with Russia for a new missile system. That deal will give Russia NATO's main enemy a new microscope into the capability of Europe's most important military force.

Trump is so divisive that UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is afraid to be photographed with him. Last night Johnson hosted drinks for the NATO leaders at Downing Street. According to Politico, "Johnson was so keen not to be photographed with the U.S. president that he did not even greet him at the door when he and wife Melania arrived at No. 10."

Trump with French president Emmanuel Macron. Peter Dejong/AP

This is why French president Emmanuel Macron told The Economist: "What we are currently experiencing is the brain death of NATO." Macron believes Europe stands on "the edge of a precipice."

Trump's actions have helped Russia's strategy to sew confusion inside its rivals. The rot has reached Article 5, the fundamental basis of European defence. Europe cannot fight a war against Russia unless NATO is a functioning institution. Right now, Trump is raising questions about that capability.

Putin could not have hoped for more.

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Putin got exactly what he wants from NATO this week, thanks to Trump - INSIDER

Turning 70 should be a special birthday to celebrate, but for the troubled NATO alliance this week, surviving the party in one piece will be seen as victory enough.

However fractious an anniversary summit it may have been in London, there were actually fewer bodies than expected left on the battlefield.

And if this means the challenge of figuring out NATOs new 21st-century-role will be left to another day, then that appears to be just fine.

After all, many western leaders, like most Americans, seem hopeful that a post-Trump world is on the horizon even though, more ominously, they fear that the Europe-U.S. relationship will never return to the way things were since 1949.

It was 70 years ago that NATO was founded to protect Western Europe from the Soviet Unions Joseph Stalin. But at the London summit, it sometimes appeared that much of NATO now sees Americas Donald Trump as its primary foe.

First, there was that clash between Frances Emmanuel Macron and Trump over the fate of Syrias ISIS fighters.

Then there was the scene at Buckingham Palace where several western leaders, including Canadas Justin Trudeau, appeared to mock the U.S. president.

And then in response to that, Trump abruptly cancelled his final news conference and dismissed Trudeau as being two-faced.

If this sounded like a typical week of global diplomacy in this Trump era, indeed it was although, as the title of a cherished British childrens book once put it, it could have been worse.

There have been increasing fears that Trumps hostility towards NATO will lead to the demise of the alliance, particularly if he is re-elected next year.

John Bolton, Trumps former national security adviser, warned in a private speech last month that Trump could go full isolationist if he is elected again, NBC News reported, pulling the U.S. out of NATO and other international alliances.

This seemed to confirm earlier reports in the New York Times that Trump discussed his desire to withdraw from NATO several times last year.

In spite of this, Trump was actually mildly supportive of NATO as an organization during the London meetings, even as he ranted against individual leaders for not spending enough on their military budgets.

Trumps comments about NATO were part of an attack on Frances president for being nasty and very insulting in recent remarks about the alliance. Emmanuel Macron had been quoted as saying that NATO was suffering brain death in what was widely regarded as criticism of Trumps handling of Turkey, Syria and the Kurds.

Incredibly, Trump responded by saying that NATO was serving a great purpose even though he had earlier ridiculed it for being obsolete. But his annoyance at Macron aside, there is no real evidence that Trump has become a fan of NATO.

Knowing that, Macron seemed determined to trigger a controversial debate inside NATO about the future of the organization, and its reliance on the U.S., in light of Trumps views.

In an interview last month with The Economist, which was criticized by Germanys Angela Merkel, Macron argued that Europe needs to rethink its defence posture in a world with an American president who doesnt share our idea of the European project.

Macron has recently been promoting a new European defence co-ordination project that doesnt include the United States and is separate from NATO.

Even though European leaders are deeply divided about whether any strategy that weakens the Europe-U.S. relationship is realistic, there seems to be a growing consensus that the genie is out of the bottle that, even after Trump, the extraordinary closeness and consistency of the past 70 years between Europe and the United States cannot be recaptured.

What has shocked many Europeans is that Trumps views have been embraced by so many Americans, particularly Republicans but others as well.

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In other words, even if Trump is defeated, how can the United States be trusted again?

As the impeachment process in Washington moves closer to the prospect of swallowing up Trump himself, the forces that led to his presidency will inevitably remain.

And that enduring reality will affect more than Europe.

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NATO survives to fight another day but will that fight be with Trump? - Toronto Star

While most Americans are consumed with the debate over President TrumpDonald John TrumpTrump says Republicans should release their own transcripts in impeachment probe Trump keeps NYT, WaPo apps on his phone despite canceling subscriptions: report The big deception behind tariffs and geopolitics MOREs withdrawal of troops from Syria and ongoing impeachment investigations, their elected leaders are in the process of quietly adding another burden to the long list of U.S. defense obligations.

The Senate voted on Tuesday 91-2 to extend NATO membership to North Macedonia, a small, landlocked nation in southeastern Europe.The only nay votes came from Sens. Mike LeeMichael (Mike) Shumway LeeTrump plans to name DHS undersecretary as agency's acting head: report Admitting North Macedonia to NATO brings more risks than benefits to the US Graham: Trump's ATF nominee 'very problematic' MORE (R-Utah) and Rand PaulRandal (Rand) Howard PaulTrump: Whistleblower 'must come forward' Admitting North Macedonia to NATO brings more risks than benefits to the US Trump's criminal justice reform record fraught with contradiction MORE (R-Ky.), both of who also opposed the previous round of NATO expansion to Montenegro in 2017.

For small countries like Montenegro or North Macedonia, the benefits of joining NATO are obvious. North Macedonia has a population of slightly more than 2 million with the 128th largest GDP in the world. NATOs Article 5 provides for the collective defense of all members, so the North Macedonian government and its estimated 13,000-person military will have the support of significantly larger militaries, including the worlds only superpower, through ascension into the organization.

But for the United States and other member countries, the benefits of expanding NATO are neither obvious nor quantifiable. With the most formidable and technologically advanced military in the world, the U.S. gains essentially nothing from the addition of such a small forceeither peacetime orcrisis.To their credit, the Macedonian military provided military support that served honorably inAfghanistanandIraq, but objectively this had little impact on the outcome of either conflict.

Furthermore, many larger NATO members already fail to take their defense obligations seriously.American policymakers from both sides of the aisle have acknowledged this serious issue for over two decades, but continue to prioritize expansion over concerns about alliance functionality and the commitment of existing members.

Such supportersin the United Stateswillstress the geostrategic importance of the alliance over the actual addition of military support. After all, NATO was conceived as a post-WWII military alliance to prevent the Soviet Union from dominating strategically important but defenseless Europe. It is one of the external forces that helped break the Soviet government.

But North Macedonia occupies a part of Europe with little strategic and even less economic importance to the United States. Its location in the historically volatile Balkans region carries a serious risk for any country with whom it shares a defensive alliance, as we are hardly two decades removed from a major armed conflict in that area. Increased involvement in the Balkans is not something policymakers in the United States consider a strategic imperative, and rightly so.American voters would likely reject the notion, as well.

What other impetus exists for Western leaders to continue such unquestioning support for NATO expansion? Advocates cite countering and deterring Russian aggression as the primary justification. As Sen. Jim RischJames (Jim) Elroy RischMcConnell sends warning shot on Turkey sanctions after House vote Van Hollen urges Senate to take up House-passed Turkey sanctions bill Admitting North Macedonia to NATO brings more risks than benefits to the US MORE (R-Idaho), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who helped steer North Macedonias NATO vote through the full chamberstated afterwards, The Russians hate this sort of thing, they hate an increase in the size of NATO, but we want the Europeans to be encouraged.

Russian frustration with NATO expansion is not a new issue, andit shouldntbe the lynchpin that decides U.S. foreign policy. Soon after the fall of the Soviet Union, NATO members quickly set about on the first round of expansion while Russia was weak andthe post-Soviet government wasmore amenable to integration into the free world.

That expansion did not ingratiate the West to new Russian leaders nor prevent the rise of an authoritarian-style government under Vladimir PutinVladimir Vladimirovich PutinDemocrats feud over health care, Trump strategy in Iowa America's dual foreign policies collide Aramco attacks remind us about 'defense in depth' MORE. The subsequent rounds of expansion into the former Soviet zonesdid not deterRussian aggression in Georgia and Ukraineas Western leaders desired.

As NATO expanded since the end of the Cold War, Russia has become exactly what supporters of NATO expansion claimed they were seeking to prevent:a destabilizing force in the region as it seeks to push back against perceived threats to its interests. The Russians have not been deterred from anything; instead their aggression has been, in their view, justified and necessary.

There is every indication Trump will sign off on the pending membership of North Macedonia into NATO, and their membership, while of little benefit to the United States, does not carry near as much risk as the possible membership of nations like Ukraine or Georgia.But its' membership will do nothing to address NATOs long-standing burden sharing problems and adds one more obligation to an already overcommitted U.S. defense structure.

When considering the possible extension of current defense agreements or creation of new ones, the United States should look primarily at how such agreements will benefit or risk our national security and economic interests, not their appeal for antagonizing geopolitical rivals or whether extension is deserved by strategically unimportant countries. A policy driven by a desire to annoy our only nuclear peer is not a sound basis for defense strategy.

RobertMooreis a public policy advisor for Defense Priorities Foundation. He previously worked for nearly a decade on Capitol Hill, most recently as lead staffer for Senator Mike Lee on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

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Admitting North Macedonia to NATO brings more risks than benefits to the US | TheHill - The Hill

Secretary of Defense Mark T. Esper was recently in Brusselsfor a meeting of NATO defense ministers, with the Turkish incursion and related events in Syriafiguringprominently in the discussions. But Esper hadanotheritem on his agenda that stems from the Trump administrations obsession with confronting Iran: getting the allies to contribute more to the defense of Saudi Arabia. Esper already hadraised at a meeting with his NATO counterparts in June the administrations request for more contributions to meet what it describes as an Iranian threat in the Persian Gulf, and he was met with a lack of enthusiasm for the idea.

NATO is no stranger to out-of-area operations.The purposes of those operations have generally been easy to understand from the alliances point of view, even when they have gone far afield from NATOs original purpose of meeting conventional military threats in Europe.The alliances significant effort in Afghanistan, for example, has been seen as a counterterrorist operation.Another activity aimed at non-state threats that could affect the economic and security interests of member states has been an anti-piracy operation off the Horn of Africa. As for the Persian Gulf region, the U.S.-led operation in 1990-1991 that reversed Iraqs aggression against Kuwait was not conducted under NATO auspices but did include all major members of the alliance.

No such circumstances apply to the current U.S. attempt to get the allies involved in its face-off against Iran.Neither Iran nor any other Persian Gulf state has committed aggression as naked as what Saddam Husseins Iraq did to Kuwait.The European allies see that it was the actions of the United Statesits reneging on the agreement restricting Irans nuclear program, and its initiation of unrestricted economic warfare against Iranthat led directly to this years heightened tensions and risk of war in the Persian Gulf.They see that it was the United States that began a campaign to take oil from the Persian Gulf (i.e., Irans oil) off the market.More broadly, the allies see no reason to take sidesespecially to the extent of weighing in with their own military resourcesin regional quarrels and competitions such as that between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Pressing for greater European involvement in that dispute is thus probably a poor way to spend whatever political chits Esper may be spending with the allies on this subject.The United States also could benefit from learning a lesson or two from the allies, in that rigid side-taking in regional quarrels in the Gulf does not benefit U.S. interests any more than it benefits European interests.

This topic represents a subset of a more general U.S. tendency, not limited to the Trump administration, to assume that other states see threats and lines of conflict the same way the United States does, or to insist that other states see the threats that way and that they respond the way the United States wants to respond. This myopia underlies the current administrations failure to get traction for its idea of a NATO-like alliance of favored Sunni states in the Middle East. Disputes among the Gulf Arabs are a major reason for this failure. The failure is fortunate, in that the division between those who are in or out of the proposed alliance does not correlate with any division between those who are or are not destabilizing the region, and such an alliance would be another instrument for dragging the United States into other peoples quarrels.

This type of myopia also is involved in a contretemps involving the redeployment of U.S. troops being evacuated from northeast Syria.Esperannounced that those troops would be going to western Iraq and would use that as a base for continuing to fight ISIS, but the government of Iraq evidently didnt get the memo.That government, which has sound security and political reasons to minimize any U.S. troop presence on Iraqi soil,stated that the troops can redeploy via Iraq but are not welcome to stay there.This is another example of how U.S. foreign relations would be smoother and more effective if those running it would devote more effort to understanding how other states and other people perceive their problems and perceive the world.

Paul R. Pillar is Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University and Nonresident Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution. He is a contributing editor toThe National Interest.

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Would Trump Really Push NATO to Help Confront Iran? - The National Interest Online

Key point: The magnets worked as intended, but were to impractical for training purposes.

At the height of the Cold War, the Soviet Union had so many hundreds of deadly submarines at sea that Western war planners willing to try almost any possible countermeasure, however goofy sounding.

Some seemingly crazy ideas proved actually worthwhile, such as the underwater Sound Surveillance Systema vast chain of seafloor microphones that patiently listened for Soviet subs and remains in use today.

Other less elegant anti-submarine tools survive only as anecdotes. In his book Hunter Killers, naval writer Iain Ballantyne recalls one of the zanier ideas air-dropped floppy-magnets meant to foul up Soviet undersea boats, making them noisier and easier to detect.

From the late 1940s on, captured German technology boosted Soviet postwar submarine design. Soviet shipyards delivered subs good enough and numerous enough to pose a huge danger to Western shipping.

By the time of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the USSR controlled the largest submarine force in the world some 300 diesel-electric submarines and a handful of nuclear-propelled models. NATO navies couldnt keep up. We simply do not have enough forces, Vice Adm. R.M. Smeeton stated.

NATO war planners feared only nuclear escalation could check the Soviet submarine wolf packs. That is, atomic strikes on sub bases along the Russian coast.

But the nuclear solution was worse than the problem. We can take steps to make sure the enemy is fully aware of where his course of action is leading him without nuclear weapons, Smeeton said, but we cannot go to war that way.

Desperate planners sought ways of making Soviet subs easier to hunt. Any technology that could speed up an undersea search was worth considering. A submarines best defense is of course stealth, remaining quiet and undetected in the ocean deep, Ballantyne notes. Something that could rob the Soviets of that cloak of silence must have seemed irresistible and, at least initially, a stroke of genius.

A Canadian scientist figured some kind of sticky undersea noisemaker would make a Soviet sub more detectable. He designed a simple hinged cluster of magnets that could attach to a submarines metal hull.

Story continues

Movement would cause the flopping magnets to bang against the hull like a loose screen door, giving away the subs location to anyone listening. The simple devices would take time and effort to remove, thus also impairing the Soviet undersea fleets readiness.

At least that was the idea.

Godawful racket

In late 1962, the British Admiralty dispatched the A-class diesel submarine HMS Auriga to Nova Scotia for joint anti-submarine training with the Canadian navy. The British were helping Canada establish a submarine force, s0 Royal Navy subs routinely exercised with Canadian vessels.

Auriga had just returned to the submarine base at Faslane, Scotland after a combat patrol as part of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Other subs of the joint Canadian-British Submarine Squadron Six at Halifax had seen action during the crisis.

The 1945-vintage Auriga spent much of her time in Nova Scotia simulating Soviet diesel subs during hazardous under-ice ASW practice with U.S. and Canadian forces. During a typical three-week exercise, Auriga would be subject to the attentions of surface vessels, aircraft and other subs, including the U.S. Navys new nuke boats.

During one open-ocean exercise, Auriga was given the floppy-magnet treatment. A Canadian patrol plane flew over Aurigas submerged position and dropped a full load of the widgets into the sea.

As weird as it sounded, the magnet concept proved a resounding success. Enough magnets fell on or near Aurigas hull to stick and flop. Banging and clanking with a godawful racket, the magnets gave sonar operators tracking the sub a field day. Then the trouble started.

As Auriga surfaced at the end of the exercise, the magnets made their way into holes and slots in the subs outer hull designed to let water flow. They basically slid down the hull, Ballantyne says of the magnets, and remained firmly fixed inside the casing, on top of the ballast tanks, in various nooks and crannies.

The floppy-magnets couldnt be removed at sea. In fact, they couldnt be removed at all until the submarine dry-docked back in Halifax weeks later.

In the meantime, one of Her Majestys submarines was about as stealthy as a mariachi band. No fighting, no training, no nothing until all those floppy little magnets were dug out of her skin at a cost of time, money and frustration.

The magnets worked on the Soviets with the same maddening results. The crews of several Foxtrots were driven bonkers by the noise and returned to port rather than complete their cruises.

Now, the Soviet navy could afford to furlough a sub or two, but NATO could not. Anti-submarine crews couldnt practice with floppy-magnets attached to their exercise targets.

The floppy-magnets worked exactly as intended, but they were simply too messy to train with to be practical on a large scale. It seems NATO deployed them only a few times.

The submarine-fouling floppy-magnet turned out to be, well, a flop.

This first appeared in WarIsBoring here.

This article first appeared several years ago.

Image: Reuters.

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NATO War Planners Tried Everything To Stop Russia's Deadly Submarines (Even Magnets) - Yahoo News

Large-scale maneuvers of Gelezinis Vilkas 2019 - II with the participation of about 4 thousand troops from 11 NATO member states and over 1 thousand units of military equipment began on Monday in Lithuania, TASS reported.

The purpose of the maneuvers is to develop the interaction of the forces and means for the effective planning and implementation of combat missions, said the command of the Lithuanian Army.

The military personnel of Belgium, UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, the US, Czech Republic and Estonia take part in maneuvers. Some of them are part of the forward-based NATO combined battalion stationed in Lithuania.

The drills will take place at the Lithuanian Army training ground, where the US Armed Forces battalion arrived in October, which included about 500 troops, 30 Abrams tanks and 25 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles. Other military equipment from places of permanent deployment to the training area will be followed by civilian freeways accompanied by military police. The main part of the drills will last until November 18.

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NATO drills being held in Lithuania - Information-Analytic Agency NEWS.am

Bogdan's Su-57 leaps into the air on full afterburner in front of huge crowds at MAKS 2019 on the final day of flying. (All photos: Tom Demerly/TheAviationist)

It couldnt be better even if the late Tom Clancy were to have written it, and we have to believe he is smiling down from the tactical high ground of the afterlife. The latest Russian 5th generation stealth combat aircraft, the Sukhoi Su-57, was assigned an official NATO reporting name this week: FELON

NATO Reporting names provide a convenient and recognizable English language moniker for communicating Russian aircraft types. The names are assigned to equipment including weapons systems, ships, ground vehicles and aircraft by members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). These code names or reporting names are used in radio communication and in common usage among westerners, including enthusiasts.

There is a system to NATO reporting names. If the first letter of a reporting name is an F, or FOXTROT as pronounced in the military phonetic alphabet, this designates the aircraft as a fighter. For instance, the MiG-25 is the FOXBAT, the Su-27 is the FLANKER and the MiG-29 is the FULCRUM. Suffixes are often added to NATO reporting names to denote a significantly different variant of the original aircraft. For instance, the new Su-35, an entirely updated version of the original Su-27, is referred to as the FLANKER-E. You likely recall from Tom Clancys Hunt For Red October references to Russian long-range maritime patrol and strategic bomber, the BEAR-FOXTROT, or BEAR-F for the Tupolev Tu-95.

Officially, in NATO definition from section 1.1 of NATO Reporting Names for Aircraft and Missiles:

Reporting names for aircraft are selected by the ASIC (Air and Space Interoperability Council; renamed in 2005 from ASCC, Air Standardization Coordinating Committee member states are Australia, Canada, New Zealand, USA and UK), but names for missiles (and other systems like radars etc.) are created by other organizations. However, all reporting names are eventually forwarded to NATO in a single list.The specification for reporting names goes on to define that:

Fixed-wing aircraft are designated by reporting names beginning with code letters designating the aircrafts mission. Propeller-driven planes are designated by single-syllabic words (e.g. Bear), and jets by multi-syllabic words (e.g. Backfire). Helicopters and guided missiles are designated similarly, but the length of a word is not defined.

Interestingly, Russians, especially aircraft spotters, tend to not use any of the NATO reporting names in conversation. In our visit to MAKS 2019 earlier this year, Russian aircraft experts, photographers and enthusiasts most commonly referred to the Su-57 by its pre-production designation as two spoken words. The Russians would most commonly identify the new Sukhoi Su-57 as by saying the words Pahk-FAH. They also called the aircraft the Sue-fifty-seven, speaking a word for the acronym Su that stands for Sukhoi in the aircrafts name.

Whoever at NATO ultimately wound-up selecting FELON as the new NATO reporting names for the Su-57 did a great job using what little creative license they are afforded in the process. Its safe to say that aircraft spotters in west will be excited to see and chat about Russias impressive new Sukhoi Su-57 FELON for years to come.

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NATO Code Name FELON: Russian Su-57 Gets Its Reporting Name, And It Couldn't Be Better. - The Aviationist

Cooperation at the level of the military leadership of Ukraines Armed Forces General Staff and the NATO Military Committee is quite active.

"The task of this military unit of the Alliance is to make a plan in case of aggressive hostilities... There is a special headquarters located in Mons where action plans in case of aggression are being planned, including direct aggression. Ukrainian military are not only involved, they serve directly in Mons, there are several people whose task is to bring all the information for the Alliance's military action planning in case of aggression anywhere in the world, but of course, the Ukrainian direction is the priority now," Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Vadym Prystaiko announced at a briefing, an Ukrinform correspondent reported.

According to Vice Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine cannot rely on NATO's direct support in case of open Russian aggression but the Alliance is doing its best to prepare Ukraine for a possible attack.

"If Ukraine were a member of NATO, then Article 5 on collective defense would be used and NATO would defend Ukraine as one of its allies with every means possible. Actually, we are strategically striving for NATO membership. But since we are not a member of NATO yet, the Alliance can only provide assistance to strengthen the security and defense sector of Ukraine. In this regard, we have an absolutely agreed vision with our partners," Kuleba stressed when asked about NATOs stance in case of open Russias aggression against Ukraine.

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Prystaiko: NATO developing action plan in case of Russias military attack on Ukraine - Ukrinform. Ukraine and world news

The Defence Ministers of the North Atlantic Council met on 24-25 October 2019 at NATO Headquarters in Brussels. The meeting gave rise to fierce clashes between Germany, the Benelux countries and France on the one hand, and the United States and Turkey on the other.

The former members of the defunct Warsaw Pact, eager to keep up their guard against Russia, smoothed the waters.

Unlike the 1966 crisis, when France had refused to place its military forces under the orders of a US General and withdrew from the NATO Integrated Command, the current conflict is not about the independence of individual members from the USA, but concerns the survival of the Alliance itself.

Germany, Benelux and France have called for a military intervention in north eastern Syria, both against the armed forces of Syria and Turkey (a NATO member), and in support of YPG Kurdish militias. For their part, the United States and Turkey argued that US forces did not have a mandate to justify their presence in Syria, and that Turkey was legally acting on the basis of its right to counter attacks from terrorists inside Syria.

This situation raises the broader question of what will become of the Alliance now that the United States has decided to step down from its imperial throne, having already taken steps in that direction.

Nature abhorring a vacuum, Germany, Benelux and France are obvious candidates, as a group, to take over the task, though they lack the necessary means. This being said, Germany prefers to remain within the framework of the Alliance,[1] while France envisions this change to take place within the structure of the European Union (that is, without both the United States and the United Kingdom).

As a historical reminder, at the time of the collapse of the USSR, the Warsaw Pact did not survive Moscows recognition of the independence of its member states. The "Brezhnev Doctrine" of 1968 justified a military intervention in member countries of the Pact if the socialist character of the Eastern Bloc was at stake. Consequently, Moscow was able to crush the "Prague Spring." By contrast, in 1990, Mikhail Gorbachev declared that Moscow was no longer in a position to dictate its law to its allies; a principle he facetiously called the "Sinatra Doctrine" (referring to Frank Sinatras song My Way). There was no repression in Hungary and, in the German Democratic Republic, the Berlin Wall came down all of a sudden.

The Atlantic Alliance also has stay-behind secret services,[2] in charge of keeping Member States in line, by resorting, if necessary, to assassination or regime-change methods. Although these services have been dissolved on several occasions, they are still active. However, it had never been anticipated that the problem would be coming from the United States.

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NATO on the brink of implosion - Voltaire Network

The report, titled "How to Defend the Baltic States" (link to PDF)examines opportunities for building up sufficient deterrence in the three Baltic countries, and, in the event that this deterrence fails, organizing the necessary warfare to drive the attacker out of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Thus far, the U.S. has not done enough to strengthen deterrence and defense on NATO's eastern flank or to encourage allies there to strengthen their own defense as called for in the U.S.' nationalsecurity strategy in 2017, report author Richard D. Hooker writes.

Last year, the U.S. allocated three times more financial aid to Rwanda than to any one Baltic country, and practically none of the $15 billion (USD) allocated by the U.S. to the European deterrence initiative reached the Baltic countries. The defense of NATO's eastern flank may be one of the most urgent national security matters, the author of the report finds.

To strengthen the Baltics, the U.S. could, for example, hand over the armored equipment already currently stored there, including M1A1 tanks, similarly to how the U.S. gave 162 tanks to Morocco, Hooker added.

The report also calls on the Baltic states to contribute more to their own defense as well, however.

In case of war, Kaliningrad must be neutralized

According to the conventional warfare scenario described in the report, in which war breaks out following an attack by Russia, Moscow needs seven to ten days to launch an offensive. At the same time, referring to several earlier assessments, it is noted that Russian units only need a few days to capture the three countries.

Nonetheless, in describing the possible defense of Estonia, the report describes how enemy forces approaching from the direction of Narva could be halted by Rakvere, or from the south near Tartu. "Some territory in the east may be lost, but retaining control of the capital is likely," the overview of Estonia notes.

The document stresses the importance of defense and deterrence activities to precede the attack, as well as describes which European-based U.S. units should be relocated to the Baltics.

According to the scenario described in the report, NATO forces should be capable of destroying Russia's Kaliningrad-based anti-aircraft capabilities by the 14th day after the conflict breaks out, following which allies can utilize their air supremacy and begin to more extensively move their units into the region. Polish and U.S. units must enter the Russian exclave as soon as the conflict breaks out, the report stresses.

After taking Kaliningrad, allied troops must also gain superiority on the Baltic Sea, at which point they will be capable of driving the warships of Russia's Baltic Fleet to St. Petersburg.

Deterrence cheaper than strike back

According to the report, the first priority should be to develop the Baltic countries' own respective defense capabilities, but at the same time improve the speed and quality of moving in additional allied forces.

In order to do so, a comprehensive action plan will need to be drawn up and U.S. and NATO support thereof ensured. The cost of necessary preparations for deterrence is not that great, the author of the report finds, especially considering NATO's great wealth, and the fact that the alternative is significantly more ominous.

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Think tank report outlines steps NATO needs to take to defend Baltics - ERR News