英语论文网

从最初的法案来看，这次的最高级会议似乎显得没有意义。但是现在看来，原定于九月四日，五日在威尔士南部的纽波特举行此次会议的重点是在为阿富汗的如何结束作战行为，所召开的北约各盟国的一次会议，并且很有可能此次会议会成为北约成立六十五年来最重要的会议的之一。自从俄罗斯总统普京三月派遣军队进驻克里比亚以来，就拉开了欧洲二战之后第一个以武力解决问题的时刻，北约显然已经回到了它们最初创立的老本行---集体性的防御行为。

当北约的存在首次遭受到质疑时，普京就给其打了一针强心剂。尽管该组织曾经在二零一一年的时候在三大洲进行了六次行动（在阿富汗、科索沃和利比亚的军事行动，在伊拉克的训练行动、在地中海和非洲之角海域的反恐行动），而且每次行动都有所收获，且达到了顶峰。但是现在这些行动大部分已经结束或者即将结束。俄罗斯的军事力量的现代化和在北约组织附近的大规模的军事演习已经让北约以及东部的成员国受到了惊吓。

AS ORIGINALLY billed, the summit looked likely to be a humdrum affair. But a meeting of the NATO alliance in Newport in south Wales on September 4th and 5th, intended to mark the end of combat operations in Afghanistan, now looks likely to be one of the most important gatherings in the organization's 65-year history. From the moment in March when Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, sent his troops into Crimea, thus beginning the first forcible annexation of territory in Europe since the second world war, it has been clear that NATO is back in the business it was created for: collective territorial defence.

Mr Putin has given NATO a shot in the arm just as its relevance was being questioned, and not for the first time. Although the alliance reached a peak of activity in 2011 with six operations in three continents (Afghanistan, Kosovo, Libya, a training mission in Iraq, counter-terrorism operations in the Mediterranean and counter-piracy off the Horn of Africa), most are now over or winding down. Russia's military modernisation and menacing large-scale exercises close to NATO's borders worried the alliance's northern and eastern members. But most Europeans were more concerned about falling living standards than external threats to their security.

Even without the urgency added by Russia's recent actions, NATO's outgoing secretary-general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, a former Danish prime minister, would have argued in Newport for European governments to halt the decline in their defence budgets, and to spend them more efficiently. But similar pleas in the past have fallen mainly on deaf ears. Just four of NATO's European members (Britain, Estonia, France and Greece) come even close to meeting a commitment made in 2006 to spend at least 2% of GDP on defence, and only five have met another, equally important one to spend 20% of their budgets on modern equipment.

After the inconclusive results of 12 years of effort in Afghanistan, the era of large-scale military interventions far from Europe was thought to be over. A small American-led NATO residual force is likely to stay on for a few years to “train, advise and assist” the Afghan army in its continuing struggle against the Taliban (if security agreements can be signed quickly by Afghanistan's new president). But despite the widening arc of instability across the Middle East and north Africa that followed the upheavals of the Arab spring and the rise of the jihadist Islamic State, addressing such complex threats through the creaking consensus-bound structures of NATO has seemed too difficult. The campaign in 2011 to remove Muammar Qaddafi from power in Libya, although successful in its immediate aims, exposed both divisions within the alliance and gaps in capability that fed America's frustration with feeble European military spending. It also left behind an unholy mess.