Secretary of State John Kerry arrived Tuesday in this city that has freshly emerged from lockdown to attend a series of NATO meetings about the security threats Europe is facing from Russia to the east and Islamist militants to the south.
A full plate of terrorism-related and geopolitical challenges awaited Kerry and his counterparts from 27 other NATO countries – the fight against the Islamic State in Syria, the group’s spread into Libya, ways to avoid air confrontations after Turkey shot down a Russian plane.
Also facing NATO: A Russian military buildup near NATO borders, the continued military presence in Afghanistan and ongoing tensions over Ukraine.
“We don’t have the luxury of either being focused or addressing the challenges to the east or the challenges to the south, we have to do both at the same time,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters.
The two-day NATO meeting is being held in the shadow of the Nov. 13 assaults on Paris restaurants, a concert hall and a soccer stadium, in which all the known participants were French or Belgian nationals.
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Belgium, with a relatively large concentration of Muslims, has become a hotbed of disaffected radicals. Brussels effectively went into lockdown after the Paris attacks as police searched for alleged accomplices, and the threat level was reduced only on Monday.
A senior State Department official told reporters that Kerry will be urging countries that are part of the NATO alliance to offer more help with the military campaign in Syria and a multinational effort started in Vienna to start a political transition that could eventually ease President Bashar Assad from power.
“The secretary will make the case that we need even more, and he’ll obviously update folks on what the U.S. is doing militarily and on his strong efforts through the Vienna process to bring together a political process and a political settlement,” said the official, speaking anonymously under State Department rules for briefing reporters.
The official said Washington believes more countries within NATO could transfer weapons, offer military training or conduct airstrikes, but declined to name any of the governments that are perceived to be lagging.
Kerry often describes the forces arrayed against Islamic State in Syria as a coalition of 65 nations. However, most of the airstrikes are being conducted by the United States.
France stepped up its airstrikes in the wake of the Paris attacks, and Russia has dropped more bombs on militant targets since a Russian commercial airliner was shot down over Sinai by a group claiming allegiance to Islamic State.
NATO leaders, however, have complained that the bulk of Russia’s military campaign in Syria hits opponents of the Syrian government, not the Islamic State.
Further complicating matters, many of the Islamic State leaders are believed to have relocated to Libya, where there is effectively no government and they can operate more freely. That positions them just a few hundred miles by sea from Italy or Greece.
One meeting planned by Kerry – with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov – encapsulates most of the issues facing NATO as a whole.
Kerry plans to seek Moscow’s support for managing a political transition in Syria involving the government in Damascus and the opposition. They will talk about the shootdown of the Russian airliner over Sinai and the downing of its warplane by Turkey, both aimed at ensuring a fatal mishap is avoided in the future. And they will talk about increasing tension in Ukraine between Russian separatists in the east and the government in Kiev.
The NATO diplomats are also expected to discuss continuing the training mission in Afghanistan. NATO aims to keep about 12,000 troops in the country next year, about half of them U.S. forces. The exact number has not been determined.
They also are expected to decide whether to invite the small Balkan country of Montenegro to join NATO. It would be the alliance’s first addition since Albania and Croatia were added in 2009. The official invitation would not come until a NATO meeting in Warsaw in the summer.
The Washington Post