NATO summit sees fissures, debate under unity

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NATO summit sees fissures, debate under unity

A joint German and Lithuanian NATO military exercise took place earlier this year in Rukla, Lithuania. The Baltics want more troops stationed close by.

The NATO summit in Madrid could see fissures and debate under a semblance of unity.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, some asked whether NATO had any real reason to exist. Russia's invasion of Ukraine gave new urgency to NATO as a defensive alliance aimed at deterring a bellicose Moscow. At the annual summit in Madrid this week, leaders of the 30 members of NATO are expected to agree on the most significant overhaul of the alliance's defenses since the Cold War. The war in Ukraine has radically altered the security calculus in Europe, presenting the alliance with one of the greatest challenges in decades and alarming jittery allies among NATO countries in East and Central Europe and the Baltics, who are all too familiar with Russian subjugation.

There will be a large increase in the number of troops assigned to defend NATO's eastern flank, closest to Russia and Belarus. There will be a major commitment to position heavy military equipment there, like tanks and artillery, that would bolster an allied response to any Russian threat or aggression.

The Russian invasion has laid out President Vladimir V. Putin's intentions to wind back the clock over the past 30 years and establish a Russian-dominated security zone similar to the power Moscow wielded in Soviet days. Russia's invasion has helped foster unity in the face of Russian aggression, but there are internal debates within the alliance on how long the war will take, how long it will end, and its mounting costs to NATO and European allies. This week, there will be a discussion about how to convince Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president of Turkey, to remove his veto over the applications of Sweden and Finland to join NATO, a matter that will need to involve President Biden. By attempting to join NATO, Sweden and Finland have abandoned decades of neutrality and non-alignment, underlining how the war has helped spur the potential expansion of an alliance that Putin had been trying to tame.

The alliance will approve its first updated mission statement in 12 years, which portrays a world of new threats, not just from Russia but also from China, an American priority, and from new forms of warfare ranging from cyber and artificial intelligence to disinformation and restrictions on energy, food and rare minerals.