NATO’s twin tensions

In early 2013, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said that after its 2014 drawdown from Afghanistan, the strategic posture of the Atlantic Alliance would shift ‘from deployed NATO to prepared NATO’. Following the annexation of Crimea earlier in 2014, Russia’s invasion of other parts of Ukraine sharpened the meaning of Rasmussen’s words, setting a challenging new security context for the NATO leaders who met at a summit in Wales on September 4-5th 2014. However, while the Ukrainian crisis surely dominated the summit proceedings (and developments in Libya, Iraq and Syria may also be discussed), two interrelated tensions – one operational, the other political – will also greatly affect NATO’s future.