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For more recent coverage return to the NATO page.
NATO Heads of State and Government met in Bucharest against a backdrop of strained relations between the US and Russia, particularly concerning missile defence and the siting of US missile defence bases in Poland and the Czech Republic. NATO also faces increasingly difficult conditions in Afghanistan.
NATO Official Pages
NATO Review Special Issue on Bucharest Summit
http://www.nato.int/docu/review/2008/03/EN/index.htm
Audio File of NATO Spokesman James Appathurai on Bucharest Summit
http://www.nato.int/multi/2008/audio.html
NATO Bucharest Summit Web Page
http://www.nato.int/docu/comm/2008/0804-bucharest/index.html
NATO Member States
United States
Press Briefing by US National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/03/20080326-3.html
NATO on the Way to Bucharest 2008, Richard G. Olson, Deputy U.S. Permanent
Representative to NATO
http://nato.usmission.gov/News/Olson_Bucharest_March11.htm
US Mission to NATO Web Page, Various Bucharest Articles
http://nato.usmission.gov/
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing on NATO
http://foreign.senate.gov/hearings/2008/hrg080311p.html
Italy
Interview with Ambassador Stefanini
http://www.nato.int/italy/documenti/interview_ambassador_stefanini.pdf
Non-Governmental Reports
The Heritage Foundation
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Europe/wm1863.cfm
Center for Strategic and International Studies
http://www.csis.org/component/option,com_csis_events/task,view/id,1586/
http://www.csis.org/component/option,com_csis_pubs/
task,view/id,3789/type,1/
France and NATO from Centre for European Reform
http://www.cer.org.uk/pdf/policybrief_eu_nato_26march08.pdf
Towards a Grand Strategy for an Uncertain World (Report by five senior retired
NATO commanders)
http://www.csis.org/media/csis/events/080110_grand_strategy.pdf
The CATO Institute
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8875
Congressional Research Service
http://assets.opencrs.com/rpts/RL34415_20080312.pdf
Royal United Services Institute
http://www.rusi.org/research/studies/european/news/
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
http://www.carnegieendowment.org/events/index.cfm?
fa=eventDetail&id=1113&&prog=zgp&proj=zsa
Foreign Policy in Focus
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5086
The Brookings Institution
http://www.brookings.edu/testimony/2008/0311_nato_gordon.aspx
NATO North Atlantic Council Foreign Ministers' Communiqué, December 7,
2007,
www.nato.int/docu/pr/2007/p07-130e.html
NATO North Atlantic Council Meeting Page, December 7, 2007,
www.nato.int/docu/comm/2007/0712-hq/0712-hq.htm
Statement by Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs Regarding Suspension
by Russian Federation of Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE
Treaty), December 12, 2007,
www.acronym.org.uk/docs/0712/doc10.htm
NATO Statement on Russia's CFE suspension, December 12, 2007,
www.nato.int/docu/pr/2007/p07-131e.html
NATO's Riga summit was held from November 28 - 29, 2006, and attempted to focus on the rather loose concept of NATO transformation. Martin Butcher attended the summit on behalf of the Acronym Institute. Read his reports below.
This Riga summit was orginally intended to conclude the business of transformation, but will now be supplemented by a summit in 2008 at venue yet to be made public. The transformation agenda is controversial, and this debate is likely to continue for some time.
NATO held its last summit in Istanbul in June 2004. The summit was dominated by divisions over Iraq, with the US and Britain pushing for a greater NATO commitment to Iraq, whilst France refused to back plans to train Iraqi forces inside Iraq. These debates have largely subsided, but there is a feeling in many countries that the invasion of Iraq, and subsequent occupation, has meant that the mission led by NATO in Afghanistan has not received either the resources or political priority necessary for it to succeed. 2006 has seen the unprecedented spectacle of a Secretary-General of NATO being forced to beg publicly for troop contributions to strengthen the NATO presence in Afghanistan.
Despite the end of the Cold War the US continues to deploy nuclear weapons in six European countries under the auspices of NATO, including in the UK at RAF Lakenheath. The UK's Trident nuclear system is also assigned to NATO, as is a portion of the US Trident force.
NATO's current Strategic Concept dates from the Washington DC summit of 1999. It maintains territorial defence of the NATO member states in Europe as the core purpose of the Alliance, and continues to describe nuclear weapons as providing the "supreme guarantee" of Alliance security. While some academics, and even national governments, have given some thought to the need for a rewrite of the Strategic Concept to reflect the transformation agenda, there is absolutely no consensus amongst the allies as to the nature of a possible new Strategic Concept – and very strong differences about the continuing role of nuclear weapons in NATO. The last exercise in which the potential use of nuclear weapons was mooted, CMX 2002, collapsed in failure as many nations refused to contemplate the possibility of such use, even in an exercise in which the scenario posited the imminent use of chemical and biological weapons against a NATO nation.
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