“The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all … if such an armed attack occurs, each of them … will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking … action as it deems necessary … to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.”

– Excerpt from the Washington Treaty, Article IV

“The problem is the willingness and the capability of those countries does not necessarily match their ability to spend …”

– Ajbinder Sull, President and Chief Investment Officer, Pacifica Partners Inc.

* * *

The Chicago NATO Summit yielded an important, albeit somewhat imprecise, message regarding NATO’s commitment to Smart Defense: In light of economic turmoil, member countries are dedicated to sharing resources and working together to develop capabilities they could not otherwise achieve.

Already, NATO has implemented a handful of initiatives that fall under the canopy of Smart Defense. In a press conference following the Summit, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen called attention to an agreement between NATO allies in the Baltic States to take turns patrolling that airspace. Doing so, Rasmussen said, allows the countries to contribute additional resources to other areas, such as Special Forces.

During the Summit, NATO members also agreed to what Rasmussen called a “robust package of more than 20 multinational projects” moving forward. The agreements range from acquiring remote-controlled robots that help in clearing bombs, to pooling and sharing boats for patrolling tumultuous areas such as the Horn of Africa.

But the challenge ahead will be whether NATO countries, amid escalating economic turmoil, can make good on their intentions financially. Even as Rasmussen speaks of plans to purchase, acquire and share, NATO members are slashing their defense budgets — the irony, of course, being that some countries may find themselves unable to financially support the programs specifically designed to ease that burden.

For example, Spain presented its 2012 budget in April, and announced a plan to cut €27 billion. Although the defense sector isn’t the hardest hit, the proposed budget nevertheless calls for €6.3 billion in defense cuts.

In February, Italy’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that Italy would reduce its fighter jet order by more than 30 percent, from 131 F-35s to 100 or slightly fewer. The Ministry reported that overall cuts also include personnel cuts: 22,000 soldiers, 7,000 Navy sailors and 10,000 members of the Air Force.

Greece also plans to cut defense spending significantly. Cuts would include a reduction in the purchasing of military material by €300 million, as well as a reduction in other military expenses by at least €100 million.

Speaking of Greece – it’s impossible to mention the deteriorating country without acknowledging the growing skepticism that it may soon exit the eurozone. Martin Edwards, a political scientist and member of the New Rules for Global Finance Coalition, said Greece’s exist from the eurozone would have tremendous global repercussions.

“It’s not because the Greek economy is so big – far from it,” Edwards said. “It’s that the spectrum of that leaving is going to produce all sorts of turmoil in markets, and I don’t think we’re ready for the level of pressure that Spain, Portugal and Italy are going to fall under.”

“Because once Greece leaves,” Edwards continued, “the question is ‘OK, who’s next?’”

In light of widespread budget cuts and the eurozone’s uncertain future, concrete examples of Smart Defense may be harder to define. It is worthwhile, then, to look at a sample of NATO countries in the framework of their niche capabilities, or services they specialize in and contribute to the alliance.

Sally Painter, Chief Operating Officer at Washington-based consultancy Blue Star Strategies and a member of the U.S. Committee on NATO, said a focus on unique capabilities is particularly important when considering NATO’s smaller member countries.

“For instance, smaller countries aren’t going to have a huge military air force,” Painter said. “But they could do other things.” Painter offered Estonia and Latvia as examples. While Estonia specializes in Special Forces and cyber security, Painter said, Latvia specializes in de-mining capabilities.

Poland, another example, specializes in training and deploying armed forces. Poland Armed Forces regularly contribute warships to NATO’s maritime operations, and has helped train Afghan Army and police forces.

“It’s interesting because some of the smaller countries have per capita the largest group of people on the ground,” Painter said. “And so there is recognition that it may not be your dollars, but you’re giving us something even more important – you’re giving us your people.”

But some economists say willingness without spending power might not be enough in times of severe financial turmoil.

“I think the issue it comes down to,” Sull said, “is if other European countries are no longer willing to shoulder their share of the burden, or they aren’t able to, then perhaps NATO will have to shrink its mission, it’s mandate or the number of members.”

BY ALI DURKIN

Leaders of the 28 NATO member countries viewed the 2012 Chicago Summit as an opportunity to put into action plans outlined in the New Strategic Concept of 2010 designed to shape and transform the future of the alliance.

“Lisbon was an ideas summit,” said Mark Jacobson, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund in Washington D.C., who studies NATO. “What you need to follow on from that is an implementation summit.”

The New Strategic Concept— it was adopted in Lisbon in 2010—outlines NATO’s path for the future. It highlights how the alliance must evolve to remain relevant in the face of changing global-security threats.

“It is the blueprint for an alliance even more actively engaged in building international security, and upgraded for modern defense,” said Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen in a 2010 speech in Brussels. “Which is exactly what we need to do to maintain our shared security for the coming decade.”

Discussions in Chicago focused on three major issues and the decisions made in those meetings reflect the vision of the 21^st century alliance outlined in the New Strategic Concept: ending the mission in Afghanistan, improving NATO capabilities to defend against modern day threats and enhancing partnerships.

Before member-country leaders could discuss improving NATO capabilities for the future of the alliance, they had to address a more pressing concern, Afghanistan withdrawal, Jacobson said.

On May 21, the 28 member nations met with 22 partners involved in the International Security Assistance Force mission to establish a plan for implementing the transition from NATO forces to Afghan security forces by 2014, a move decided at the Lisbon Summit.

“Lisbon was about the political resolve to get us into transition and the Chicago summit was setting the political resolve to wrap up transition and provide support to Afghanistan post 2014,” Jacobson said.

During the summit, leaders agreed that by the middle of 2013, Afghan security forces will take over combat operations and “ISAF forces will have shifted from combat to a support role in all parts of the country,” said U.S. President Obama in a press conference.

The Chicago Summit was also an opportunity for NATO to realize the goal outlined in the New Strategic Concept to enhance the alliance’s capabilities against the threats of the 21^st century.

On May 21, alliance members released an agreed-upon Deterrence and Defense Posture Review, an analysis of the NATO’s conventional, nuclear and missile-defense capabilities.

“This posture review confirms that the Alliance is committed to maintaining the deterrence and defense capabilities necessary to ensure its security in an unpredictable world,” the document stated.

In that defense review, the alliance announces “interim capability” for its missile-defense system. This means NATO’s missile-defense system is now capable of providing “real protection for parts of NATO Europe against ballistic missile attack,” said Ambassador Ivo Daalder, Permanent Representative to NATO, in a press briefing.

In Chicago, the alliance also agreed on “NATO Forces 2020,” a document that establishes goals for modernizing and streamlining NATO capabilities over the course of the next eight years.

NATO Forces 2020 establishes “military forces that are strong, flexible and deployable,” Rasmussen said. “Forces that can work alongside each other. And that can cope with the full range of security challenges we might face.”

A third major aspect of the New Strategic Concept that came to life at the Chicago Summit was the alliance’s emphasis on enhancing partnerships between NATO and other countries and organizations.

“The promotion of Euro-Atlantic security is best assured through a wide network of partner relationships with countries and organizations around the globe,” according to the New Strategic Concept. The document highlights the need to improve NATO’s relationships with organizations such as the United Nations, European Union and other outside organizations.

In Chicago, the leaders of the 28 member countries met with 13 partner countries with which NATO has military or political relationships. This meeting was the first of its kind in NATO’s history, demonstrating the importance the alliance is placing on building more and stronger relationships in the future.

Both the mission in Afghanistan, where 50 nations have contributed troops to the ISAF mission, and Libya, where the Arab League of Nations played a vital role, have demonstrated the need for the alliance to operate with outside countries and organizations.

Despite the actions in Chicago, the alliance continues to grapple with how to create a cohesive mission for the 21^st century. NATO no longer faces a common threat, but a multitude of global-security issues.

“What the organization has set out for itself are such broad aims—so it is not like the aims of the Cold War,” said Richard Rupp, author of “NATO after 9/11: An Alliance in Continuing Decline” and professor of political science at Purdue University Calumet.

In the aftermath of the decade-long mission in Afghanistan, the alliance must resist the urge to “retreat behind its European walls and say ‘we are only about collective defense of the geographic borders of the alliance,’” Jacobson said. “It must realize that in order to be relevant it must protect against the threats that face the alliance,” he said.

Those threats, such as cyber security, simply no longer have borders.

The 2012 NATO Summit focused on looking-forward concepts such as the “smart-defense initiative” and unconventional and technological threats, but the Baltic nations remain focused on the alliance’s traditional raison d’être.

Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia continue to feel most seriously threatened by neighboring Russia, and look to NATO for territorial defense.

“The most important message for all three Baltic states is that NATO is committed to collective defense and in particular to Article Five,” said Ramūnas Vilpišauskas, the director of the Institute of International Relations and Political Science at Vilnius University in Lithuania.

Article Five asserts that an attack against one NATO member is equivalent to an attack against al. For the former Soviet members of the organization, proximity to Russia makes the reaffirmation of this original NATO stance all the more important, Vilpišauskas said.

Russian cyber-attacks against Estonia in 2007, though not officially attributed to the government, as well as the five-day Russian war on the former soviet nation of Georgia in 2008, are fresh in the minds of Baltic citizens. All of the Baltic nations in NATO have a higher percentage of Russian nationals than Georgia does, according to the United States Department of State.

These recent conflicts help legitimize the nations’ concern and leave them skeptical of legitimate cooperation between NATO and Russia, said Andres Kasekamp, the director of the Estonian Foreign Policy Institute in Tallinn.

In addition to reiterating traditional defense, the Baltic nations received a formal announcement of an indefinite extension of NATO policing the air space in their region on the first day of the 2012 Summit.

The program, which began when three countries joined NATO in 2004, was extended so the “Baltic allies can focus their resources in other critical areas,” NATO Secretary General Andres Fogh Rasmussen said.

The program also serves as a perceived deterrent to Russian interference, Kasekamp said.

Although air policing was extended, Rasmussen also expressed a desire to collaborate with Russia on arms control and counter-piracy initiatives.

“We will continue our dialogue with Russia, and I hope at a certain stage Russia will realize that it is in our common interest to cooperate on missile defense,” Rasmussen said after the first session of the Summit.

These efforts have yet to bear fruit as Russia seems uninterested in an open dialogue with NATO, an attitude that does not surprise the Baltics, Vilpišauskas and Kasekamp said.

“The further you are from Russia, the more you compromise with Russia. Whereas the countries neighboring Russia have this experience that the Russians generally don’t respect weakness or concessions,” Kasekamp said. “So we go along with these initiatives but fully with the expectation that they will fail because Russia isn’t interested.”

More productive and legitimately friendly relations between NATO and Russia would stand to benefit the Baltic nations most but these relations are not likely in the near future, Vilpišauskas said.

As NATO leaves Chicago, entering a new era with unconventional threats and continuing to reach out to Russia, the Baltics remain wary of the attempts and primarily concerned with traditional defense measures.

Following the attacks of 9-11, the most devastating domestic tragedy in the United States, our leaders created a culture of fear. We have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on “homeland” security. We were told to get behind the War on Terror. More than a decade later, our leaders are still trying to justify that spending. The 2012 NATO summit in Chicago provided an example on how easily this culture of fear can get out of hand and be damaging to an otherwise very peaceful society, and after the summit wrapped up, how overblown it all was. Our governments and even our “free” media pumped up possible threats. We have allowed ourselves to be fearful of the new and unknown, scared of perceived risks and distrustful of our neighbours.

The violence of the 1968 riots that coincided with the Democratic Party National Convention in Chicago seared the minds of people here with the notion of unrestrained demonstrations. Protesters and police faced off on downtown streets during one of the most tumultuous political times for the U.S. At that time, we were adrift in racial disagreement, and our young people were angry about our involvement in the Vietnam War. At that gathering, nearly 600 people were arrested and more than 100 police officers were hurt as a result of the clash.

This year, more than four decades later, the city ramped up the fear factor and herded a lot of people of out town, Andy Thayer, a lead organizer of anti-NATO protests told a Chicago public radio station before the summit. It felt like we were preparing for another ‘68 riot.

The anxiety, fear and curiosity seemed to split Chicago residents into three factions: faceless security, angry protestors and ambivalent – or clueless – residents. For many, it felt like a strange holiday or festival in the city. Local press published NATO summit survival guides, maps of road closures, a “who’s who” lists of foreign officials, online music playlists commemorating the occasion, user-submitted photo galleries and even guides on what to wear (and what not to wear). Some restaurants added NATO-themed dishes to their menus, such as a “Citizens Arrest” burger at a gourmet hamburger restaurant. Another changed its price of a side of French fries to 99 cents, as a nod of solidarity to the “99 percenters” that have been protesting in the Occupy movements. There was such dichotomy in the city: Were we to take this event, and the upwards of 10,000 people travelling to Chicago for it, seriously or not?

In the months before, neither the city of Chicago nor the NATO planning committee had released any information about street or business closings, leaving many to speculate. Would commerce come to a standstill in downtown Chicago? Would residents be forced to leave? Should we tell people to stay away from the city?

We were told that our city police officers were being given special crowd-control training – replete with riot shields and tear gas – if the awaited protesters become violent. How would a redistribution of our police force affect our neighbourhoods? There were no answers.

Indeed, in the days leading up to the summit, it seemed that there were more cops than people downtown. Our CBS television affiliate reported our commuter rail had restricted service and the size of carry-on items during the event. Bosses gave downtown workers a four-day weekend so they wouldn’t need to travel to the city. Officers in SWAT gear patrolled building entrances. The Chicago Tribune reported that F-16 fighter jets and other military aircraft were on alert to secure a temporary flight restriction zone.

In the end, the NATO summit in Chicago proved peaceful. The hype and security seemed completely overblown. About 45 people were arrested and four police officers were slightly injured, according to the Associated Press. The city awarded our police officers for “job well done” with free tickets to a major league baseball game.

The NATO summit, as occasion for discourse and public diplomatic statements, remained just that, whether it happened among international delegates in an air-conditioned meeting room at McCormick Place (named after a long-ago media baron infamous for his isolationism) or whether it was among the demonstrators in the city’s streets and parks. Perhaps the next time Chicago hosts an international event, we can trust each other a bit more.

The G8 summit resulted in a number of statements about energy security, emphasizing diverse energy sources, especially renewables; safety and sustainability; and energy efficiency. It’s promising that G8 countries held energy with enough regard to address it directly following the statements on global economy, but at the end of the day, energy security is still on the back burner for alliances such as the G8 and NATO.  And really, there’s no reason it should be otherwise at this time.

Sure, the price of oil is sky-high compared with a decade ago, and the related issue of climate change serves as a somber backdrop, but energy security simply isn’t square in these alliances’ arena. Let’s look at the G8. For one, none of the G8 countries is experiencing a dire energy-security situation; they all have enough wealth to buy the energy they need, and none of them is completely dependent on one source. There is a lot of sentiment in the media that the U.S. is far too dependent on Middle Eastern oil, which may be true, but the U.S.’s top source of crude oil in 2011 was Canada, followed by Mexico – not exactly antagonistic countries. Compare that to central Eastern European countries that are practically chained to Russia’s oil and natural gas reserves, as a result of proximity and pipelines left over from the Cold War.

“We are an energy island in the E.U. We have, for the moment, limited options in terms of energy sources,” emphasized Audrius Bruzga, director of the Lithuania Energy Security Center. Comparatively, energy security in the G8 countries is far less an issue.

Another reason, sort of the flip side of the coin, why energy security is not hot on the G8’s radar is that even though some of the G8 countries can be net exporters of oil – notably Canada, Russia, and even the U.S. in 2011 (for the first time since 1949) – their economies are diversified. They are not petrostates such as Venezuela (though some find this arguable) and if something drastic happens on the energy front, they have other avenues on which to ride.

“The intent is there” to address energy security, said Kevin Rosner, senior fellow at the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, based in Washington D.C. However, “there’s so many other problems on the front burner.”

NATO plans to increase its role in energy security, and it’s making a sincere effort to do so. It runs workshops and aims at raising visibility of energy efficiency and smart energy, especially in the military. There is a sense that if the “ultra-conservative” military decides energy efficiency and clean energy is the right thing to pursue, it must be a smart, no-frills, no-drippy-feelings move – and the public is more likely to follow along.

“NATO has a legitimate role to play in energy security,” said Michael Rühle, the head of the Energy Security Section at NATO headquarters in Brussels.

But, he added, “energy security is not a military operation issue. NATO should not militarize the subject – it’s a market-centered subject.”

Gal Luft, adviser to the U.S. Energy Security Council, agrees. “I don’t think there are deliverables in NATO.” As he sees it, countries can make all the statements they want, but unless it comes with teeth, nothing gets done. “I think the key issue is what can NATO do to advance energy security – that’s the starting point,” said Luft. “Something you can do – not fluff.”

Ultimately, it’s up to the individual countries to interpret any statements G8 or NATO make. Though the G8 identified energy security as an important issue to tackle, each member country decides on its own how it will deal with the issue. Government programs, budget constraints, and economic outlooks all play into the decisions and actions a country takes. G8 and NATO are doing just about what they can do to address energy security – it’s up to other forces to determine what rest gets done.

In the long-standing marriage of politics and protests, much of the passion has waned. There’s evidence of that detachment even as some 15,000 protestors braved the high wind and heat of Chicago to demonstrate at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit.

While impressive at first glance, the number of activists paled in comparison to the tens of thousands who came out against the First Gulf War during the 1990s and especially to the hundreds of thousands demanding an end to American involvement in Vietnam in the late ’60s and early ’70s.

“Clearly the war protest movement has dwindled,” said Patrick Boylan, a Los Angeles native who is an anti-war activist and humanities professor at the University of Rome.  “It is not, I believe, due to an increasing pro-war attitude.”

If numbers alone told the story, the consistent plotline would be that increasing percentages of the population oppose the recent military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. According to May figures reported by the Associated Press, only 27 percent of the U.S. public now supports the Afghanistan war.

Yet opposition does not imply engagement and it is here that we find a swelling disconnect between the unhappy citizens of the world who can click “I am against this” on a computer screen and an unwillingness to physically partake in protesting as a means to bring about change.

“People aren’t feeling it,” said Sean Kay, a professor of political science and international relations at Ohio Wesleyan University. Kay has travelled the world studying the Eurozone crisis, especially as it relates to problems in Ireland. “There’s more of an indifference to things these days.”

Clearly—the AP results demonstrate this—this detachment does not manifest itself as a total lack of awareness about the unpopular political and military decisions of the day. Just as true is the fact that no single reason or cause can explain exactly what triggered this apparent trend of worldwide nonchalance. Instead, several contributing factors form this dispassionate disagreement and disinclination to take to the streets and speak out.

And as this aversion grows, global disillusionment caused by a perception of government stonewalling certainly plays a key role.

Recalling many Italian demonstration efforts, Boylan reported that, “Several [demonstrators] here in Rome have told us: ‘our protests over the years seem to have served no purpose, the government just doesn’t listen, we feel useless waving signs.”

If would-be protesters perceive their actions as useless against the powerful and ineffectual as tools to generate real results, human rational thinking alone would be enough to dissuade them from participating in demonstration events.

Another cause for ennui is lack of knowledge about protest’s rich past, especially in the United States where it has long been a significant impetus for social change.

“To me one of the problems is that people are disconnected to the history of protests,” said Bucky Halker, folk musician and history PhD who wrote the book, “For Democracy, Works and God: Labor Song-Poems and Labor Protests 1865-95 (Working Class in American History.) “There’s so much amnesia,” he continued, “and people in the last 30 years have been lulled by false economic prosperity into thinking things were going along smoothly.”

For Halker, the recognition that demonstrators are not fighting alone but are protesting just as dissenting citizens have for years, gives them a greater sense of purpose.

Boylan agrees that identifying with the historical continuity of protesting would strengthen activists’ resolve. “You marvel at the contrast between huge Vietnam protests and the dwindled Afghanistan protests,” he observed. “Well, let me say that the servicemen who hurled their medals back at the NATO command in Chicago last Sunday did so with no less fury than their elders did during the Vietnam protest.”

One historical example of the latent power of protest is through a once-thriving entity now pushed to the very back of collective American minds: protest music.

In the 1960s and ’70s, college students listened to Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie protest music on their record players just as university students today listen to top-40 love songs on their iPods.  For Halker, this change in musical predilections from protest to pop isn’t for lack of folk singers trying to spread their word.

The musician and author blames popular music’s inability to promote more autonomous musicians, backed not by corporate record labels but by a home computer and a self-made recording studio, to explain why protest music—almost always an independent endeavor—has not reached critical mass.

“There’s no mid-level people pushing out from the bottom, so it’s hard for young artists to get their music heard,” he lamented.

“People are writing protest songs that are as good as ever, and as many as ever but they won’t get major airplay or attention due to changes in the [entire music] industry,” he argued. “The industry has been in shambles since the 1970s and is dead for all practical purposes except at the highest level.”

Another major motivation killer for young would-be protesters is the lack of a military conscription in the U.S.

“I grew up in a small town and people came home in body bags,” said Halker. “When you have to face the reality that people you know are dying, you face an immediate threat.”

But even though this immediacy sparked an intense brand of activism hard to find in America today, fervent social expression may be starting to re-emerge elsewhere as political and military pressures push other populations to the brink of tolerance.

In fact, protesting may again be on the rise globally, as evidenced by the recent “Arab Spring” protests in the Middle East, the demonstrations against voter fraud in Iran or to those who rallied for the liberation of Tibet from Chinese rule, to name just a few examples.

With “Occupy” protest movements of late sweeping from Rome to Rio and any city that the word can be affixed to, the image of an inactive youth is slowly beginning to crumble.

“They’re being hit on a very personal level,” said Boylan, “just like their elders were in the 1970s.”

As unemployment and college-loan debt weighs down young adults, entangling them in a daunting new world of public policy and politics, this movement may continue to strengthen—much like the passion of the Vietnam War era.

“Many people have wondered where the sudden activism of all the young, educated people in the streets has come from,” Boylan said. “After all, they are not being shipped off to Vietnam but they are being deprived of their future.”

Whether this newly afire passion can be sustained is still unknown, but with apathy eroding and concern taking hold, the marriage of protest and politics may not be doomed for divorce after all.

A recent update on G-8 actions to improve food security left some international organizations calling for more. The Camp David Accountability Report detailed the progress of G-8 members on fulfilling commitments to the L’Aquila Food Security Initiative that began in 2009. The $22 billion program was created to help low-income countries decrease the vulnerability of their food and agricultural systems, as well as to halve hunger and poverty.

Each participating country is at a different stage of fulfilling its commitment before the deadline at the end of 2012, the report said.  And, although L’Aquila donors will commit 99 percent of the funds by then, the report and many organizations such as ActionAid, point out that disbursed funds are a better measure of progress. To have the most significant impact, some argue, the disbursements need to be sped up.

“The disbursed money is money that’s reaching people,” said Katie Campbell, a senior policy analyst at ActionAid. “Governments can commit money but it can take years to get to the field. There’s not necessarily a time frame on that commitment.”