NATO holds summit with gaze on Russia and China
MADRID: Russia's invasion of Ukraine has shocked NATO back to first principles.
Seven decades after it was founded, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is meeting in Madrid this week with an urgent need to reassert its original mission: preventing Russian aggression against Western allies.
Leaders of the world's most powerful military alliance are aiming to increase support for Ukraine's fight against Russian invasion, boost forces on NATO's eastern flank and set priorities for the coming decade - with a new emphasis on checking China's growing international ambitions.
But the gathering will also showcase the difficulties in keeping 30 nations - from tiny Iceland and Luxembourg to huge Turkey and the United States - aligned in an organisation that must make decisions by consensus.
FOCUS ON UKRAINE Russia is NATO's dominant issue and main adversary, and the Madrid summit will be dominated by how to support Ukraine and bolster defences along the bloc's eastern borders, where countries from Romania to the Baltic states worry they may be next in Russian President Vladimir Putin's sights.
The summit is set to agree to stockpile weapons and equipment in eastern Europe and to dramatically increase the number of troops based in the region or on standby in their own countries as a rapid-reaction force. There will also be more support for Ukraine to upgrade its military, still reliant on Soviet-era equipment, to modern NATO-standard gear.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is scheduled to address the summit by video, but he has acknowledged joining NATO is a distant prospect and is instead focusing on seeking European Union membership. Expansion of the alliance is on the cards, however. Finland and Sweden have both abandoned their nonaligned status and asked to join NATO as protection from Russia.
TURKEY AS SPOILER? But Turkey, which has NATO's second-largest army after the US, is set to play spoiler to the aspirations of Sweden and Finland - at least for now.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has insisted that he will only allow the Nordic pair to enter NATO if they change their stance on Kurdish rebel groups that Turkey considers terrorists.
CHECKING CHINA
With the world in turmoil, the alliance will try to craft a long-term strategy that can stand the test of time. NATO will set out its goals for the coming decade in a new Strategic Concept, the document that identifies its most pressing security concerns and how it will tackle them.
While Russia will remain the top issue, the document will see NATO grapple for the first time with the growing military reach of China. The leaders of Japan, Australia, South Korea and New Zealand have been invited as guests to the summit for the first time.