BY KRISTIN KEITH
A hedge against Russia
Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow Charles Kupchan said though he was invited, the decision of President-elect Vladimir Putin not to attend the NATO summit presents an important dilemma for the summit. With Russia’s opposition to NATO’s missile defense system plans, and the history of NATO’s origin as a hedge against Soviet power, tensions with Russia will continue to factor into the agenda. Russia’s past support for Iran’s nuclear program also presents a hurdle for other NATO members who remain nervous about Iran’s weapon capabilities.
“Putin has become a popular leader in Russia by rebuilding the strength of the state and by reclaiming Russia’s status as a great power,” Kupchan said, noting that much of Putin’s absence from the summit stems from his need to assert this status. Kupchan says Russia was brought into the G-8 as a way to make Moscow feel it was a stakeholder, which hasn’t happened with NATO.
It’s a changed world. It’s not the world that NATO was created for.
Many experts agree that NATO has to change in order to preserve its effectiveness as an alliance, especially given a growing list of intervention responsibilities in war zones like Afghanistan. Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has even called upon non-members Russia and China for financial support to security forces in Afghanistan after the scheduled 2014 withdrawal. And NATO has also called upon the international community for a firm response to North Korea’s rocket launch earlier this month.
“On the one hand, the action is no longer in Europe, and the United States has shifted
its strategic priorities to the Middle East and to East Asia, and that pivot is coming at expense of its previous focus on Europe,” Kupchan said. “On the other hand, the rise of China and the increasing sway of other emerging powers may make it more likely that the West hangs together to pursue its interests.”
The issue isn’t who’s attending and who’s not attending.
Kaveh Ehsani, an assistant professor of international studies at DePaul University, expects tensions with Iran over its nuclear program would be high on the NATO agenda, especially given NATO’s past involvement in Afghanistan and Libya.
“There is concern that NATO might be an instrument of military pressure or confrontation with Iran,” Ehsani said, reiterating that the real issue wasn’t who was going to be at the table at NATO, but more on how it reacts to new belligerence from other nations.
They need to think out of the box.
Patricia Werhane, the Wicklander Chair in Business Ethics of the College of Commerce at DePaul University, emphasized the lack of BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) country participation at the G-8 summit would present a real obstacle to how well that summit would be able to accomplish anything meaningful.
“What are they going to do next? How are they going to grow? How are they going to compete in the growing, bubbling markets?” Werhane said, stressing the economic development is happening more in BRIC countries than more developed nations, and that this gave compelling reasons to invite additional countries to join the G-8.
“And that’s why we need more countries at the table,” Werhane said.
