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 21st 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 21st 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 21st 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.
