NATO fights new threats and withering from within

Lights hang in front of a NATO logo during the NATO Summit Friday in Lisbon, Portugal.

The most important NATO summit in its 61-year history -- according to NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen -- began Friday in Lisbon, Portugal.
NATO was founded by the United States and 14 other nations after World War II. But it has grown to 28 members, and is now seeking to shed its Cold War identity by adopting a new "strategic concept," framing new threats the alliance faces and the means to combat them. But getting 28 nations on the same page about how to address a range of new evolving threats will not be easy.
The document to be considered this weekend is the product of a set of recommendations from a group of experts led by former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. The last strategic concept was drafted in 1999. The new document reflects new realities for NATO and the world.
The original NATO existed during the Cold War for the collective defense of 15 nations against Soviet aggression. U.S. Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder likes to call that NATO 1.0.
NATO 2.0 marked the period between the end of the Cold War and the present. This stretch saw NATO enter wars in Bosnia and Kosovo and embrace former Soviet republics in Eastern Europe that were looking West.
At Lisbon, NATO hopes to move into what Daalder calls 3.0 status, meant for operating in a globalized world. NATO still has the core mandate to provide collective security for all its members, said Daalder, but now must address new threats to Europe's security -- threats not as much from Russia, but from possible terrorist attacks, cyber attacks, attacks on energy infrastructure and piracy on the high seas.
This new definition of what constitutes a threat calls into question the future of Article Five of the NATO charter, which considers an attack on one member an attack on all. For an alliance whose mantra is "collective security," the provision is the critical binding agent. Article Five was invoked for the first time after September 11, 2001, when all NATO members agreed the attack was a visible threat to the security of the entire alliance. But the definition of what constitutes a threat to all NATO allies is becoming less recognizable, say some experts.

Read More:http://edition.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/11/19/nato.portugal/index.html?hpt=C2