The Foundation for National Progress, All 19 NATO member states and the seven new members to join next year gathered in Colorado Springs over the past two days. It was the largest NATO meeting ever, which is one sign of the changing nature of the alliance. But as ever, the subtext was how to keep the alliance, which was formed to counter Soviet communism, relevant in a world of new threats, new power dynamics, and new enemies — most notably terrorists.
The meeting comes at an interesting time, with the rift between the U.S. and four NATO member states (Germany, France, Belgium, and Luxembourg, famously labeled by Donald Rumsfeld as “Old Europe”) about the U.S.-driven war on Iraq casting a long shadow over the gathering.
MSNBC thinks that the meeting is largely an attempt to find common ground in order to keep together an increasingly fragile alliance:
“American officials are eager to downplay the bitter rift over Iraq, which persists in spite of predictions that it was, like past frictions inside NATO, just a passing storm. But the upbeat characterization Rumsfeld offered to the media ignores problems that continue to bedevil not only the alliance, but also Washington
