The unpopular war in Afghanistan may be NATO’s greatest challenge since the end of the Cold War, leading some to question its continued relevance. Does NATO have a future?

In five or 10 years, if we’re lucky and things are handled wisely, we’ll have a vibrant alliance that probably includes a few more European countries. NATO will definitely have a deeper and more global network of relationships. Personally, I would also like to see more of our partners engaging in these difficult military operations.

Why is there so much skepticism about that vision of NATO?

The alliance is struggling in Afghanistan. Of course, no one wants Afghanistan to fall back into the abyss that it was in prior to 2001. But it’s also a credibility challenge for the alliance. Will NATO adapt to the hybrid challenges that the 21st century presents? In the background, the economic crisis is also in play. The crisis has resulted in many of the European countries in NATO, such as the United Kingdom and Germany, deciding to undertake austerity measures that include cuts to defense spending.

Do defense spending cuts hurt the alliance?

Reductions don’t always mean a reduction in capability. Sometimes cuts actually mean an improvement in capabilities. If there are cuts, for instance, to a standing home guard with limited mobility in favor of an expanded force that has greater mobility, that’s a net gain—especially when there are additions made to a force’s expeditionary or communications capabilities. But, in this environment, the biggest challenge for the alliance is to handle this economic crisis in a way that generates more military cooperation and negates the perception, if not the reality, of budget cuts that leave the alliance militarily emasculated.

What’s the background to the upcoming Lisbon summit?

The summit is a big public relations event, especially since the last summit was not a historic high point. At the 60th anniversary summit in Strasbourg, France, in 2009, many alliance members were welcoming the end of the Bush administration era, and the Obama administration officials felt that they could just sweep in and get what they wanted from NATO. It left both sides disillusioned. Lisbon is, in many ways, a makeup summit.

What will you be watching for?

I’ll be looking for a demonstration of commitment on Afghanistan. It’ll be a demonstration of leaders’ willingness to convince their publics that this is a valuable and important mission, and the language that they use will be important. I sometimes fear that words like “transition” are becoming synonymous with withdrawal. If you hear that the Afghans need to take on more responsibility and local control, that’s fine. But it’s unreasonable to think that by 2011 that is going to happen in any decisive way, based on what we see on the ground. For alliance leaders to be emphasizing transition as the central theme of the summit would be a mistake. Commitment will hopefully be an important and core message.

What about shifting the perception of irrelevance?

If you are expending treasure and blood, and the general public doesn’t understand why, then NATO is going to run into problems. Publics in Europe and the United States are questioning why the alliance is important. The reason is that it is the only multilateral organization that has successfully and consistently exercised interoperable military force.

That doesn’t sound like much to lay ears.

Interoperability has to be appreciated by the general public, and NATO does a bad job of selling it. There are three recent examples where it missed the opportunity: the tsunami, the Georgia crisis, and Haiti. It always amazed me that Europeans sent tsunami aid and the United States sent tsunami aid, but NATO didn’t respond. The Georgia crisis is another example. The European Union initiated peace negotiations [between Georgia and Russia], NATO didn’t even meet to discuss the situation, presumably because a NATO meeting would have spooked the Russians. The Haiti earthquake response was another instance where NATO wasn’t used. That wasn’t just a missed political opportunity, but a missed opportunity to deploy assets to those in need. The Europeans were there, the Americans were there, but not NATO. That’s never been explained. [See photos from the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake.]

Yet, NATO has been used to great effect in some cases.

Katrina is an opposite example [where NATO shipped in relief aid]. A well-received response to a natural disaster. NATO has to think along those lines—to see that military assets can be for immediate use in non-military scenarios. One way that this can happen is with closer relations with the European Union. The Europeans, in general, feel that domestic, non-military agencies should be in charge of these relief operations. In reality, that denies the central fact that the military forces are often in place and capable. Use them.

How are NATO-European Union relations?

The Europeans still appreciate the security, but they also chafe at the sense that NATO is used as a means of American leverage over their policies. This, too, reflects the changing landscape in which the alliance operates. This is not the NATO of the 1960s when there was an ever-present threat: Russian tank engines murmuring and military ground forces ready to pour through Germany’s Fulda Gap region. Now, there are no such apparent ever-present threats. But that doesn’t make NATO any less relevant. Indeed, it makes NATO more relevant in many ways to deal with diaphanous threats like terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Also, compared with the post-World War II years, the alliance is now composed of mature democracies that have to get consensus from their people. That’s a positive reality, but it means that NATO must work harder to showcase its successes. In the end, it provides an important military capability that the trans-Atlantic community needs, in addition to its economic arsenal, its political arsenal, and its cultural arsenal.

http://politics.usnews.com/news/articles/2010/07/23/natos-future-involves-more-global-partnerships_print.html

Using the term “contentious” appears to understate just how polarizing the issue of illegal immigration has become. The state of Arizona this spring passed one of the strictest ordinances in the country, criminalizing those living in the state without proper papers and allowing local police to ask about the immigration status of those detained for even minor crimes. Yesterday, the Justice Department sued to stop the law from taking effect. The law has sparked demonstrations and several boycotts of the state from critics who contend that the law will lead to racial profiling. Its supporters argue it was the border state’s only recourse in the face of federal inaction. Obama called Arizona’s foray into what has traditionally been the purview of federal law enforcement “ill-conceived.”

But passage of the Arizona law is only a symptom of the larger national anxiety over the estimated 11 million people living illegally in the country. The stagnant economy and high unemployment, ongoing violence along the border connected with the drug trade, and a surge in domestic right-wing political activism have all helped push immigration forcefully back into the national spotlight. Recent national polling suggests that the public favors some form of comprehensive reform, while disapproving of the government’s current efforts. Polls also show that a large majority of respondents, 60 percent, consider illegal immigration a “very serious problem” and that a similarly large majority, 58 percent, support the Arizona law.

Since comprehensive reform was first made a national priority by the Bush administration in 2006, the federal government has conducted more raids on employers hiring illegal workers and expanded border security efforts. Most likely in anticipation of Republican counter-arguments, Obama pointed out in his speech that the current force along the southern U.S. border is the largest ever. Securing the border has been a persistent precondition for support for comprehensive immigration reform from many Republicans and an increasing number of Democrats.

Inside the beltway, however, the political reality for the Democrats is clear: They need 60 votes in the Senate to overcome Republican filibustering tactics, which the GOP has either threatened or deployed for nearly every piece of major legislation that the Senate has considered since Obama took office. “Reform that brings accountability to our immigration system cannot pass without Republican votes,” Obama said. “That is the political and mathematical reality.” An obstructed Senate and a legislative calendar already booked solid with a slew of big-name legislation on banking and energy portends that immigration reform, like millions of prospective immigrants, may have to wait in a very long line.

Today, when Kagan faces her own confirmation hearing to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens, she will likely have to answer for that characterization. A Democratic staffer on the Senate Judiciary Committee says that, in fact, it may be the first question she receives. But while she’ll likely put those words into context–they came from a 1995 review she wrote of Stephen Carter’s book The Confirmation Mess–many court watchers concur with the thrust of her thesis. “There’s very little incentive for the nominee to say anything more than what is needed to pass the confirmation process,” says Daria Roithmayr, a professor at the University of Southern California Law School. “Since the Robert Bork hearings, the task of the nominee is simply not to say anything disqualifying.”

Bork, a nominee during the Reagan administration, was denied a seat on the court after a scathing confirmation process in which Democratic senators focused on his “originalist” legal philosophy. Indeed, Kagan contrasted the modern confirmation process with Bork’s hearing, which she lauded as “a serious discussion of the meaning of the Constitution, the role of the court, and the views of the nominee; that discussion at once educated the public and allowed it to determine whether the nominee would move the court in the proper direction.”

The public, for its part, appears largely ambivalent about Kagan. In a Pew Research Center poll late last month, 33 percent of those surveyed said that Kagan should be confirmed, 23 percent were opposed, and 43 percent were undecided. As the only recent Supreme Court nominee not to have been a sitting judge, Kagan’s written record sheds little light on how she views controversial issues. So, senators will likely prod her on hot-button topics such as abortion, gun control, and campaign finance legislation. Nominees, however, have recently refused to talk deeply about subjects likely to come before the court, which often rules out debate on controversial issues.

As long as Kagan can avoid a major disqualifying remark, the senators are likely to confirm her, experts predict. “Like Republican senators did with Sonia Sotomayor, they may decide to hold their fire for a more controversial nominee,” says Martin Flaherty, a professor at Fordham Law School, who has known Kagan since they were undergraduate classmates at Princeton University. Republicans on the Judiciary Committee have hinted that this might be the case, given her Ivy-covered résumé and her easy Senate confirmation last year as solicitor general.

In the end, the senators’ most effective approach would be to hold the nominee to her own standard. In the same 1995 article, Kagan criticized questioning by senators who “do not insist that any nominee reveal what kind of justice she would make, by disclosing her views on important legal issues.”