NATO’s Warsaw Summit: In Brief

Summary

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO’s) 2016 summit is to be held in Warsaw, Poland, on July 8-9, 2016. This summit will be the second meeting of the alliance’s 28 heads of state and government since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea and began providing large-scale military support to separatist forces fighting in Ukraine. Russia’s actions in Ukraine and Eastern Europe more broadly have upended NATO’s post-Cold War transformation from a military alliance focused solely on deterring Russia to a globally oriented security organization. Over the last two years, NATO has taken major steps to strengthen once again its territorial defense capabilities and to deter Russia.

NATO’s renewed focus on collective defense and deterrence has created tensions within the alliance, particularly between those member states more sensitive to the Russian threat—especially in Eastern Europe—and those, such as Germany, with a long history of close ties to Russia. In addition, heightened fears about instability in the Middle East and North Africa have caused strain between those allies more concerned about security threats from NATO’s south and those that continue to prioritize deterring and managing Russia.

At the Warsaw summit, NATO leaders are expected to seek to balance these concerns by addressing both the threat to NATO’s east and the threat to its south. As such, the summit is expected to focus primarily on two broad themes:

Enhancing deterrence, primarily through forward deployment to Eastern Europe, and

Projecting stability beyond NATO, in particular to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

The Warsaw Summit will take place just two weeks after the United Kingdom (UK) voted to leave the European Union (EU). Prior to the referendum, many allied leaders echoed the sentiments of NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg that a British exit from the EU, referred to as Brexit, would have negative repercussions for regional security. Since the referendum, these leaders have stressed the importance of using NATO as a platform for both transatlantic and European defense cooperation. UK officials have stressed that the country’s commitment to NATO remains steadfast. Along with France, the UK is widely acknowledged to be the most militarily capable European ally.

U.S. officials have said that the key Administration priorities for the summit will be to sustain and enhance NATO collective defense and deterrence initiatives, with an emphasis on securing commitments from a broad group of allies. The United States has also called on its NATO allies to play a greater role in addressing security threats emanating from MENA, including by contributing more to the fight against the Islamic State (IS) terrorist organization. In addition, President Obama is expected to stress the importance of European allies taking on a greater share of the defense burden in the alliance by meeting defense spending and capabilities development commitments made in Wales in 2014.

Afghanistan, Ukraine, Operation Atlantic Resolve, OAR, European Reassurance Initiative, ERI, Istanbul, Paris, Brussels, S.Res. 506, H.Res. 739, H.Res. 56, H.Res. 469, H.Res. 235.