NATO needs a vision

The Chicago NATO Summit accomplished its main goal of finalizing plans to turn over control of the security situation in Afghanistan to the Afghan security forces by the middle of next year. But in fact that goal had already been accomplished well before the meeting. As David Sanger writes in his new book, Confront and Conceal: Obama's Secret Wars and the Use of American Power, Obama had already conveyed his plans to the leaders of the NATO nations in private. Moreover, the president had announced this to the American people when he traveled to Afghanistan to sign the strategic framework agreement with President Hamid Karzai. The alliance also left Chicago having agreed to acquire some critical equipment, like drones, that it had to borrow from the US military during the Libyan intervention.

But the 28 member states that participated in the summit did not adequately deal with a range of critical issues that will persist long after combat forces are withdrawn from Afghanistan -- namely the thousands of tactical nuclear weapons based in Europe, the Obama administration missile defense plan known as the European Phased Adaptive Approach, the bolstering of political support for the alliance in the United States, and the outline for a strategic vision of operations outside of Europe. These issues, particularly nuclear weapons and missile defense, are important in their own right and will also impact relations between NATO and Russia.

Two decades after the end of the Cold War, there is still an uncertain but excessive number of tactical nuclear weapons remaining in Europe.

Two decades after the end of the Cold War, there is still an uncertain but excessive number of tactical nuclear weapons remaining in Europe. At the last NATO summit in 2010, the alliance committed itself to the goal of creating conditions for a world without nuclear weapons. According to foreign ministers Radoslav Sikorski of Poland and Jonas Gahr Støre of Norway (two countries with significantly different approaches to foreign policy), nobody knows the exact size of the US and Russian tactical nuclear arsenals or the exact locations of the weapons; they also point out that tactical nuclear weapons are not covered by any existing arms control system. As Sikorski and Støre wrote shortly before the summit, "NATO should honor this commitment and seize the opportunity of the upcoming Chicago summit to look at its nuclear policy -- and engage with Russia." The ministers correctly argued that such talks could help improve the tenor of NATO-Russian relations, bring about greater transparency in deployment and verification, and enhance mutual trust between these two entities. Unfortunately, no action was taken on this front; in fact, NATO appears to be committed to upgrading its tactical nuclear weapons. More