Feeling lucky, Putin?A LOT of work goes into preparing for NATO’s biennial summits. So the hope is that next week’s summit in Warsaw is not dominated by Brexit. Nobody will be keener than David Cameron, Britain’s soon-to-be-ex-prime minister, to present a picture of business as usual for the 28-member alliance. And there is plenty to do, most of it about Russia. Since Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea in 2014, relations have grown dramatically more antagonistic.
That year’s summit, in Wales, returned NATO to its cold-war role of territorial defence. The Warsaw summit will, above all, be a progress report on the steps the alliance has since taken, known as the Readiness Action Plan, to reassure its nervous eastern members and re-establish effective deterrence.
There are also security issues in the south: the threat of Islamic State terrorism, and helping the European Union tackle people-traffickers and illegal migrants. But the summit will be dominated by the threat from Russia. NATO is especially worried about its Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad, which borders Poland and Lithuania. Russia is pouring in mechanised...Continue reading
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