In a series of official and sideline meetings yesterday at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in Newport, Wales, Obama pressed U.S. allies to bolster their defense capabilities and for commitments to counter Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria. He’ll carry that into a meeting today on the future of NATO.
“This is a summit where NATO really has to
do some reflection of the new realities and adapt,” Doug Lute, the U.S. ambassador to NATO, said in a briefing last night.
The NATO summit has served as an opportunity for Obama and U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron to harden the alliance’s stance in confronting Russia’s incursion into Ukraine, as well as in the new battle with Islamic State extremists. Obama is pushing other NATO members to increase defense spending, which has lagged throughout Europe in recent years, commit to a new rapid response force and to identify ways each can support an international effort against the Islamic State.
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, secretary general of NATO, center, with U.S. President Barack... Read More
Stepping Back
“As that mission winds down, this is a step back, and a reflection and a diagnosis of opportunities for the alliance because it faces new challenges,” Lute said.Obama’s push for international commitments has become a primary focus as he faces criticism from both political parties in Washington that he hasn’t laid out a comprehensive strategy to address international crises. He also is confronted by continued questions about when -- or if -- he will expand U.S. air strikes into Syria from Iraq.
In a meeting yesterday with Cameron, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, French President Francois Hollande, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Obama and the leaders agreed “on the need for Russia to face increased costs for its actions,” according to Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser.
Crimea Seizure
That agreement came the day after Obama, during a speech in Estonia, castigated Putin for his seizure of Crimea and his incursion into eastern Ukraine. As Baltic state leaders made clear their concern about Putin’s actions, Obama used the speech to underscore, in his most robust terms to date, the U.S. commitment to use military force if Russian forces set their sights on other countries in the region.If, Obama said, “you ever ask again, who will come to help, you’ll know the answer -- the NATO alliance, including the armed forces of the United States of America.”
U.S. and U.K. officials have used Putin’s actions to press their NATO counterparts to boost defense spending to 2 percent of gross domestic product, a target only two other nations, Greece and Estonia, met last year.
Obama also worked behind the scenes to create a viable alliance against Islamic State, which has rapidly advanced inside Iraq and Syria and carried out the beheadings of two U.S. journalists.
Working Together
“By working together we are stronger, whether in standing up to Russia or confronting” Islamic State, also known as ISIL, Obama and Cameron said in a joint opinion piece published in the Times of London.Cameron separately is lobbying the leaders of France, Germany and Italy to refrain from paying ransoms to extremists who hold their citizens hostage. The U.S. and U.K. have held firm against paying ransom.
“There is no doubt in my mind that the many tens of millions of dollars that ISIL has raised from ransom payments is going into promoting terrorism,” Cameron told lawmakers in the House of Commons in London Sept. 3.
Obama met with Jordan’s King Abdullah yesterday and, with Cameron, has worked to persuade leaders to support any new U.S. action and to participate on their own. Secretary of State John Kerry, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and Lisa Monaco, Obama’s top counterterrorism and homeland security adviser, are all traveling to meet with leaders in the region.
‘Important Piece’
Rhodes called locking in regional alliances “a very important piece of the puzzle” in dealing with Islamic State and said Obama’s deputies were taking the trips to get a sense of what kind of support each country could provide.There is also an element of streamlining at play, aides said. While countries including France, Canada, Italy and the U.K. have aided in humanitarian air drops or provided weapons to Kurdish and Iraqi security forces fighting the militants, the administration is pushing for a more coordinated approach.
“What we hope to do at the NATO summit is to make sure that we are more systematic about how we do it, that we’re more focused about how we do it,” Obama said during his press conference in Estonia.
Administration officials said they expect some NATO countries to announce concrete commitments related to Islamic State and Ukraine by the end of the summit today. The specifics of those remained in flux after the first day.
While the opening day of meetings set the stage for leaders to discuss the scope of the problems they face, including a Ukraine-specific session and a dinner where Islamic State was expected to be a central topic of conversation, today’s actions will determine how successful Obama’s push has been.
Obama is scheduled to hold a news conference this afternoon before flying back to Washington.
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