No Rest for the Weary: Obama Arrives in Lisbon for the NATO Summit

President Obama touched down in Lisbon Friday morning, barely rested from a scant week in Washington after 10 days in Asia. But the short weekend in Portugal will be no holiday. On the docket are packed days revolving around the NATO summit and the U.S.-European Union meetings that will include a re-evaluation of Afghanistan policy, U.S.-Russia policy, E.U.-Russia relations, a reaffirmation of U.S.-E.U. relations, missile defense, and nuclear disarmament.

Indeed, The Economist called these next two days among the "most crucial" NATO meetings in the history of the organization. They will be focused, ostensibly, on the new "strategic concept" document (the lead piece authored by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright) that goes to the core of NATO's very raison d'etre in the post-Cold War era -- what exactly does an organization created as a bulwark against the Soviet Union mean in the post-Soviet era? At the same time, there will be meetings with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, with built-in side talks to reassure our European allies that the United States remains committed to the trans-Atlantic relationship.

Writing in the International Herald Tribune Thursday, the president underscored that message. "As an alliance of democratic nations, NATO ensures our collective defense and helps strengthen young democracies. Europe and the United States are working together to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, promote peace in the Middle East and confront climate change. And as we have seen in the recent security alert in Europe and the thwarted plot to detonate explosives on trans-Atlantic cargo flights, we cooperate closely every day to prevent terrorist attacks and keep our citizens safe. Put simply, we are each other's closest partners. Neither Europe nor the United States can confront the challenges of our time without the other."

In other words: at a moment when India and China – the "new" New World -- are on the rise, there have been rumbles of concern regarding what "old Europe," as the Bush era once referred to it, has to offer the United States and the world in terms of strategic alliances. At issue is how the United States continues to assuage Europeans that the special relationship remains essential to U.S foreign policy. (An idea that is harder to advance when the president chooses not to attend every E.U.-U.S meeting.) But, even if there were nothing else of import, a third of the troops on the ground in Afghanistan are NATO troops and the United States needs those troops to remain committed, at least through 2014 when the planned transition begins.

Part of the conversation means addressing the fractured needs of the various NATO members. On nuclear disarmament, for example, France and Germany are at polar ends of the spectrum. The Brookings Institution reports that the United States has some 200 tactical nuclear weapons in five NATO countries.

France believes ambiguous deterrence is best. Germany would like total disarmament, leveraging off of Obama's speech in Prague last year on nuclear drawdown in which he said, "The existence of thousands of nuclear weapons is the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War" and promised "America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons." (That peacenik option is unlikely to happen anytime soon, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton underscored in five points earlier this year in Talinn, Estonia on the continued "nuclear" aspect of this nuclear treaty).

It does not help Obama's credibility or relationships in Lisbon that he leaves Washington in the wake of a Republican meltdown over the New START treaty, which was committed to a U.S.-Russia nuclear drawdown.

But nuclear disagreements aside, it will be the future of Afghanistan that will be among the stickiest conversations in Lisbon. No new troops are being offered by NATO, but the future of the engagement – arguably one of the harder-to-prove successes in the history of NATO military operations – is at issue. The Afghans still need a great deal of help before the transition from foreign presence, and NATO will, if the United States has anything to do with it, continue to play a role in training leadership on the ground there.

And then there is the question of Article 5 of NATO's founding treaty – that's the part where it says "the Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all." That alliance has to be reconsidered at a moment when the threat of attack is less likely to be from troops on the ground or from the air than from cyber attacks or terrorism. (Article 5 was, famously, invoked after September 11.)

Talk about a full plate. Did we mention that the economy is on the docket as well? Europe has her hands full trying to rescue Ireland from the debt crisis. Portugal is not much better. Just after landing in Lisbon, the president committed to continue to work with Europe on economic matters.