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Good morning everyone and welcome to this Council on Foreign Relations media call on the upcoming NATO 60th anniversary Summit.  The meetings on April 3rd and 4th come right after the Group of 20 summit in London on the global financial crisis and that could suck some of the oxygen from the summitry in Strasburg and Kehl, but at the same time there are existential questions building for the alliance -- in particular, what is its role going to be in Afghanistan?

I'm Robert McMahon, Deputy Editor of cfr.org, and I will be guiding today's discussion with two council experts.  Charles Kupchan is CFR's Senior Fellow for Europe Studies and one of the foremost authorities on transatlantic and international relations.  And we are also joined by Jeffrey Mankoff, CFR's Adjunct Fellow for Russia Studies and author of a new and very well received book on Russian foreign policy.

We will proceed in the following manner:  Charles will make an opening statement laying out what's at stake this spring for NATO; Jeffrey will follow up with a statement focusing on the relationship between Russia and the alliance and prospects for change there.  I will have a follow-up exchange with both of them before opening up the call to your questions.

Charles, why don't you kick it off?

CHARLES A. KUPCHAN:  Okay, thanks.

I think that there's an irony to the upcoming trip in the following sense: that the backdrop, the atmospherics, the stage could not be better set in that the Europeans are delighted to have Obama in office and the Obama administration is more solicitous of Europe, more interested in working with Europe on many different fronts than any American administration in a long time, arguably since the end of the Cold War.  And I think the challenge is how to turn those atmospherics, in the sense that the two sides of the Atlantic are coming back together, into deliverables, into concrete policies of cooperation so that the Obama administration and its counterparts in Europe can actually say, "This is what we've accomplished to stabilize the international economy; this is what we've done to advance the ball in Afghanistan; this is what we've done to improve relations with Russia."

And I think when it comes to those deliverables, the scenario becomes a little bit more sobering.  And I think that the -- if there were to be a kind of theme for the trip -- and here I'd say both for the G-20 and for NATO -- it will be how to disagree respectfully about those issues where we don't have common ground and how to make the most of those issues where we do have common ground.  Because I think that there is a certain parallel.  In the case of the G-20, the Europeans are generally heading in the direction of a regulatory framework; the U.S., a stimulus package.  And similarly in Afghanistan, the Obama administration to some extent owns that war because it's been saying Iraq, wrong war; Afghanistan, right war; we need to prevail; but the Europeans remain unconvinced and are unlikely to put forward the greater number of troops that Obama had originally hoped for, at least when he was a candidate.

So let me drill down a little bit on this theme of disagreeing respectfully and then making the most of those areas where there is agreement.  Afghanistan, as I mentioned, will dominate the summit, and that's obviously because there's a war going on there and the trend lines have been getting worse, not better.  And I think that the Obama administration has lowered its expectations for additional European contributions in terms of troops.  The narrative, the talking points that have been coming out of the administration clearly have shifted toward a division of labor, toward the Europeans doing more on fronts other than a major increase in troop levels -- and that would include police training, economic assistance, humanitarian assistance and reconstruction, helping with rule of law -- in other words, the softer side of the agenda -- and the United States will take the lion's share of the responsibility for increasing troop levels.

There may be some European members of NATO that step up to the plate and do increase their contributions, but I don't think we're talking about a large number of troops.  And it also may be that some of the European members do loosen the caveats on their troops, but, again, I would not hold my breath on any substantial change in that respect.  And this is partly because the European publics by and large do not see the war in Afghanistan with the same urgency and priority that the American public and the American government do.  And I don't think that gap in perceptions will be closing any time soon, if ever.  So the key is, how do we work around this issue and, as I said before, make the most of those areas where we do agree?

I do think that while there will be an emphasis on forging a broad strategic consensus on strategy in Afghanistan, on what kinds of improvements can be made on command structures, on integrating the humanitarian counterinsurgency and counterterrorist aspects of the war, and in trying to figure out exactly how the increase in troop levels will work with a new political strategy which may involve trying to peel away so-called moderate elements of the Taliban and building, community by community, relations between the international forces and the international civilian groups and local communities.

Let me just briefly touch on a few other issues that I think will come up at the summit.  One is the selection of a new secretary general, and it appears that the Danish candidate, Mr. Rasmussen is the favored candidate and that Radek Sikorski, the foreign minister of Poland and Mr. MacKay, of Canada appear to be trailing behind, but we don't yet know exactly what the outcome will be.

France is in the midst of reintegrating into NATO's command structure -- its integrated military structure.  That is not, as the French might say, -- (inaudible) -- the French have participated in military missions in Bosnia and in Kosovo; they are in Afghanistan.  So they will have a greater presence at SHAPE; they will have a greater presence in Norfolk and in Lisbon, various NATO commands.

And I think the biggest implication over the long run may be a diminution if not disappearance of the historic anti-American currents in the French foreign policy establishment and that in reciprocation the U.S. suspicion of the French motives will also, I think, dissipate over time.  And also as a result, I would expect that this long running battle about EU versus NATO will quiet down and that from a European perspective a strong NATO will be seen as in the EU's interests, and from NATO's perspective, a strong EU in NATO's interest.  So hopefully this sort of silly spat that's been going on since France withdrew from the military structure will disappear.

A couple other quick points -- I don't know that the strategic concept that will be called for will deal with this issue, but there is growing concern in NATO about the relationship between its size -- it's 26 and counting -- and its reliance on consensus to make decisions.  I think there's a view that over the long run, expect on fundamental questions of war and peace, a different model of decision making may be needed so that the individual members of NATO will not be able to exercise a veto on important decisions as they now do.

My colleague, Jeff Mankoff, is going to talk about Russia in a second.  I would just make a few brief comments:  I think that the question here is, what does it mean to push the reset button?  What concrete steps can be taken to try to pull Russia into a better relationship with NATO?  And I think the trick here will be to push to the side those areas where we will continue to disagree -- and there I would point to Kosovo, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, NATO enlargement -- to try to clear the air and produce consensus on those areas where there may be a meeting of the minds -- nuclear arms control, conventional arms control, possibly missile defense, possibly increasing the negotiating pressure on Iran.

But I do think that there is a looming debate within NATO about the role of Russia in European security; the Russians want that debate to take place.  I think it's too soon to consider Russia's potential membership in NATO, but not too soon to take up the call from Moscow to have a broader debate about a new European security architecture which might in the end find a way of anchoring Russia in the post-war settlement thereby taking the teeth out of NATO's continuing enlargement.

Finally, just a quick word about the so-called global NATO debate:  This is a debate that has largely been taking place in the United States -- and by global NATO, I mean NATO becoming an alliance of democracies, reaching out to countries like Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Israel.  There isn't much enthusiasm for a global NATO within Europe, and I think that the Obama administration hasn't really come out in any way on this issue.  But my own view is that NATO is having a tough time making it through the day in Afghanistan and that at this point to talk about NATO going further afield -- the possibility of dispatching troops to Gaza or to Kashmir -- is simply a bridge too far.  And so I would expect that this debate, even if it doesn't come up at the summit next month, will probably die a quiet death over the course of the coming year.

I think I'll leave it at that.

MCMAHON:  Thanks, Charlie.  Lots of great subjects to plumb there, but I want to have Jeffrey take up where you left off on Russia, which will in a lot of cases be the elephant in the room during some of the talks on the 3rd and 4th.

Jeffrey, could you go ahead?

JEFFREY MANKOFF:  Yeah, thanks.

As has often been the case, NATO discussions will have Russia sort of looming in the background as a specter, and I think compared to the last time that NATO heads of state got together, the atmospherics are a lot better this time around.  And that's not necessarily because of -- because the fundamental approach to -- that Russia's fundamental approach to NATO has changed.  I think it's because of a realization on the part of many of the NATO states that the way that they had been dealing with Russia up to the past year has created a lot of problems.  And I think the most salient example of this of course was the war in Georgia last summer.

And so I think it's especially notable that for the first time in a while, NATO is going to be getting together and one of the things that's not going to be explicitly discussed is expansion.  The question of bringing Georgia and Ukraine in particular into the alliance is pretty much off the table right now.  The commitment that was made at the last NATO summit in December, that these two countries would be eventually admitted to NATO and in the meantime that the alliance would undertake a process of building up their capacity to help them meet NATO's political and technical standards, I think has taken the sting out of that particular debate right now.  And certainly the Obama administration, I think compared to its predecessor, has taken a much warier approach about this issue of expansion of membership action plans and of timetables for bringing Ukraine and Georgia into NATO.  And I think that in and of itself is going to make dealing with Moscow a lot easier.

In terms of the most really pressing issue that's going to come up that involves Russia right now, that would of course be Russia's role vis-a-vis the NATO operations in Afghanistan.  Moscow is pursuing what perhaps may be two incompatible ends in their dealings with the alliance on Afghanistan.  On the one hand, they have an interest in seeing the defeat of the Taliban.  This is because of their fears about the spread of Islamic radicalism into Central Asia and into Russia itself with its fairly substantial Muslim population in the South.  And, at the same time, though, Moscow is very worried about its loss of influence in Central Asia, and this is connected both to the securities fear and to the economics fear in areas like energy.  And so it seems pretty clear that Russia played a fairly strong role in the decision on the part of the Kyrgyz government a couple of months ago to vote on the closure of the U.S. military base in Kyrgyzstan, which was being used to ferry supplies to the Afghan war.  Of course in the aftermath of the decision by Bishkek to close the base, Moscow offered the U.S. and NATO the use of its own airspace and infrastructure to deliver nonlethal goods to Afghanistan.

And I think what this points to is a desire on the part of the Russian government to make itself an indispensible part of NATO's strategy for dealing with the Taliban upsurge, for dealing with the conflict in Afghanistan.  And I think they're still trying to -- there's still a lot of debate within NATO about how exactly to approach this.  I mean, certainly it is in the interest of the United States; it's in the interest of NATO allies to have a Russia that is working with NATO at common purposes to defeat the Taliban.  But the problem seems to be that Russia has its own set of interests that it's trying to pursue side by side with the operations in Afghanistan and that these are causing some problems for the United States and for NATO.

It's interesting, too, that one of Moscow's aims has long been to reduce the salience of NATO as an actor in European security and, more broadly, since NATO is operating outside of Europe, in Afghanistan.  And there's going to be a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the SCO, coming up in about a week.  And interestingly, the United States was actually invited to send a delegation to this summit.  One of things that's going to be discussed, of course, is the situation in Afghanistan.  And what this strikes me as being is a statement on the part of the Russian leadership that they want to -- they want to find other means of pursuing the common interest in defeating the Taliban.  They don't want NATO to be playing the central role in this, and certainly not if it means that NATO is going to be establishing the presence in Central Asia, either the alliance as a whole or the United States.

And I think, you know, this is also part of this Russian proposal for revamping the European security architecture.  It's a way, certainly, of anchoring Russia in discussions of European security.  It's also a way of reducing the centrality of NATO and reducing what Russia sees as this, kind of -- the term they use a lot is "bloc mentality" -- that Europe, despite the end of the Cold War, still remains very much divided into political and military blocks, one of which is represented by NATO; one of which is represented by Russia and its allies.

And so, I think, you know, the decision to try and increase the role of the SCO to allow -- to bring the United States into discussions of the context of the SCO about operations in Afghanistan is part of this same attempt to kind of sideline NATO as the central actor in European security.

In terms of the upcoming summit, I think I would also like to just touch on a couple of things that Charlie already mentioned.  One has to do with the reintegration of France into NATO's command structure.  In the longer term I think this is going to be relatively important in terms of relations with Russia in part because of something that Charlie brought up, which is the growing rapprochement between NATO and the EU.  For much of the past two decades Russia has had separate approaches to dealing with NATO and to dealing with the EU.  And if NATO has been a problem and a challenge to be balanced against, then in many ways the EU has been the obverse of that; it's been one of Russia's major economic partners, and because of its relatively small role in hard security, it's been an organization that Russia has found it easier to cooperate with.

I think Charlie's right, though, that, particularly with French reintegration into the military command, you're going to see greater overlap between not only the membership but also the interest and the way of functioning on the part of the EU and NATO.  And for this reason Russia may find itself less enamored with the EU and find that relations between the European Union and Moscow are going to be more complicated.

You probably saw in the last couple of days Russia expressed -- you know, a really kind of almost viscerally angry response to a fairly small-scale deal between the EU and Ukraine over EU investment and upgrading the Ukrainian pipeline network.  And so, I think, you know, you're going to see more of this; you're going to see more tension in the relations between Moscow and the European Union.

The debate about NATO's new strategic concept, which is going to be taken up at the summit as well, I would argue conversely holds out an opportunity for maybe ameliorating some of the tensions with Russia.  Going back to the 1990s, Russian leaders have said on a number of occasions that they would be willing to have closer relations with NATO, that they would be willing to work more collaboratively with it if NATO ceased to be what it had been during the Cold War, which is to say a military alliance whose basic purpose was the containment of Russian power.

And, you know, this is a debate that is going to take a long time to play out.  I don't think NATO's looking at publishing a strategic -- the actual strategic concept for over a year from now, but I think to the extent that the concept can really lay out a more -- a broader purpose for NATO operations and can take in the more expeditionary role that NATO has undertaken -- for example, in Afghanistan -- I think that offers a way of dealing with some of the Russian concerns about NATO's lingering role as a kind of hard projector of military power, particularly around Russian borders.

I also think that the summit is a good opportunity to at least begin discussions on Medvedev's proposal about completely overhauling the European security architecture, or at least signing a new treaty on European security.  A number of the Europeans have been wary of this proposal.  President Sarkozy suggested holding discussions on it in the context of the OSCE later this summer, and the response among particularly the smaller European states, has been relatively lukewarm to that.  And I think really it's going to take American leadership on this issue because I think only the Americans can offer the kind of reassurances, the kind of security guarantees that a number of these countries would be looking for in order to reach out to Russia and try and, you know, actually hold discussions with Moscow on this proposal.

And so, I think, again, it's going to be incumbent on Obama and on the American administration more broadly to try and reassure some of the nervousness in the European capitals and to really take the lead in shaping European opinion in favor of a broader process of engagement with Russia.

And I think I can probably stop there and leave it open to questions.

MCMAHON:  Great.  Thank you, Jeffrey.

For those joining this call, this is a Council on Foreign Relations media call on the upcoming 60th anniversary summit of NATO, and we're speaking with CFR experts Charles Kupchan and Jeffrey Mankoff.

I want to know one quick -- maybe follow up with you, Jeffrey, and then I will open it up since we do have a number of people waiting to ask questions -- which is this issue of the -- what's become sort of a parlor game about, you know, who is calling the shots in Russia and how much we should really pay attention to this issue of, you know, Medvedev versus Putin or some other elements within the Kremlin vying for power and how much that might be reflected in some of these sort of mixed bag of statements we've seen, sort of this swing between, you know, reconciliatory statements on the one hand and sort of pledges for large scale military buildups and things like that, and also this policy you mentioned -- the policy of cross purposes on Afghanistan.  I'm just wondering whether this is a product of a Kremlin that's still sort of sorting itself out maybe in terms of power structures or whether this is part of a bigger design on Russia's part.

MANKOFF:  I think it's probably more the former than the latter.  There has -- you know, if you look closely at the Russian press over the last couple of months, it does seem that there's more spaces opened up between different camps in the Kremlin, particularly those around Putin and his allies and the security services and then some of the technocrats and economic liberals and people around Medvedev.  And in part I think the space between the two camps has been opened up by the economic crisis.  And Russia's been hit harder than many other states in Europe by the economic crisis.  And I think that the Kremlin leadership is still trying to figure out what the impact of that is going to be on their foreign policy.

On the one hand, you know, I think there's a strong case to be made for a more restrained foreign policy, one that costs less and holds out less risk of further instability.  And I think that a lot of the economic liberals -- people like Shuvalov and Dvorkovich and Nabiullina -- have been making this argument.

At the same time, you know, I think there's another element that's keen to blame all of the economic troubles in Russia on the West, that's looking to use the downturn in the Russian economy as a way to kind of pull back from the economic integration that's taken place in Russia over the last decade or so.

MCMAHON:  (Inaudible.)

MANKOFF:  And so I think that's a debate that's still very much unresolved in Moscow.  But I don't know that that's necessarily a debate that the Western powers can have a lot of influence over.

MCMAHON:  That's right.  Yeah.  Understood.  Okay.

Well, let's -- why don't we -- operator, why don't we open it up for any questions we have right now.

OPERATOR:  Ladies and gentlemen, at this time the floor has been opened for questions.  If you would like to ask a question, please press the "star" key followed by the "1" key on your touch-tone phone now.  Questions will be taken in the order in which they are received, and if at any point you need to remove yourself from the questioning queue, press star-2.  Again, to ask a question, press star-1 on your touch-tone phone now.

Our first question comes from James Kitfield with the National Journal magazine.  Please go ahead.

QUESTIONER:  Gentlemen, thanks for the briefing on the trip.  I'm just curious whether there's a sense in Europe that they need to do something to sort of meet Obama's outstretched hand.  When I hear that there's not going to be a lot more troops offered up, you know, it seems to me that there's a danger here that Obama is seen as reaching out and Europe's not willing to step up to the plate.  And I'm just curious whether you think there's a danger of that perception from the summit.

MCMAHON:  Charles, you want to take that?

KUPCHAN:  Yeah.  I mean, I think that there is a danger that, at least for some, Obama's expectations will not be met and that despite the outpouring of enthusiasm for his arrival in the White House, it hasn't led to the concrete support for American effort in Afghanistan that many had hoped for.  And I think that's why to some extent the talking points have changed over the recent weeks and that there is less focus on getting more troops on the ground because it simply doesn't look like there will be many countries stepping forward.

But I do think that what they will try to do is to create a broader package where both sides are giving and both sides are getting.  And not just in the NATO equation, but for example I would throw in climate change; I would throw in the detainee issue.  Those are issues on which the Europeans are particularly passionate.  And we're right now in the midst of a delegate negotiation over Europeans taking some prisoners from Guantanamo, and I think that that will to some extent be seen as the Europeans doing their side of the bargain to help repair the relationship.

And I also think, as I said before, that the focus during the summit and after the summit and in the follow-up with the press will be on the importance of different nations doing what they do best, so that the United States, because it has the troops, will be sending in 17,000 more, and other nations will be doing what they do best, which may be working toward improving the civilian situation, reconstruction, political stability.  And this is something that obviously the European nations have a lot of experience and success in doing.

Whether the administration is able to sort of pass that off as the success that they would like to claim I think remains to be seen.

MCMAHON:  Thanks very much for the question.

Operator, do we have another question?

OPERATOR:  Our next question comes from Sean Sullivan (sp) with NHK.  Please go ahead.

QUESTIONER:  Hi.  Thanks, guys, for doing the call.  Just sort of a broad question -- I guess, what would be the ideal outcome for the Obama administration?  It sounds like they're not going to get a lot in the way of combat reinforcements, but in terms of going into the summit and coming out of it, what are they expecting to have this a success?  Is it sort of an endorsement of the policy in Afghanistan that they're going to announce, or how would they grade this conference a success?

MCMAHON:  Charlie, you want to give the deliverables there?

KUPCHAN:  You know, I'd say that the -- that the key here is to set up a list of deliverables and not focus on any particular issue.  So it's not going to be how many warm bodies are European members of NATO sending; it will be a sort of tasting menu, if you will.  Some -- you may get some small increment in troops; it's possible you'll get some troops that are already there expanding their remit.  And then you'll add to that police training; you'll add to that economic assistance; you'll add to that expansion of PRTs.

And then I think that once you step back from the discreet deliverables, the most important objective at the kind of abstract level would be a clear statement of solidarity about NATO's willingness to see the conflict through and a willingness to come together to arrive at a joint coordinated strategy for doing so.  Because I think beneath the surface there is a political and a kind of military hodgepodge in Afghanistan with different countries and different organizations working separately and in some cases at cross-purposes.  You can't fix that at the NATO summit, but what you can do is begin to move down the road of creating a sense of solidarity and a willingness to work together to try to give overall coherence to the effort.

And so I think the kind of wording that I would be looking for is unity of command and unity of concept, that they -- that the parties are coming together and sort of mapping out a plan for getting from here to there.  And that plan will segue and intersect with the (AFPAC ?) review that is taking place within the Obama administration itself.

MCMAHON:  Thanks for that question.

Operator, do we have another question?

OPERATOR:  Our next question comes from Hans Nichols with Bloomberg News.  Please go ahead.

QUESTIONER:  Yeah.  Thanks, guys.  I'm just curious to what extent, in terms of the optics of Obama's first trip abroad, what he needs to send -- what motions and moves he needs to make, and is it -- or is it just simply a matter of him not being George Bush and so expectations are pretty low?

MCMAHON:  Charles and Jeffrey, why don't you both take that one?

KUPCHAN:  You know, I think that the -- that Obama enjoys a kind of remarkable status in Europe.  During the campaign the numbers were dramatically asymmetric -- much stronger pro-Obama sentiment in Europe than in the United States, and in general those numbers have remained fairly firm.  And I think part of his popularity stems from being not Bush and from relief that the United States is now governed by a more centrist set of individuals.

But I'd say just two other thoughts on this question:  One is that one of the interesting parts of this tableau is that during Bush's second term there was a major repair of the Atlantic relationship, and I think we ought to give President Bush credit for reaching out to the Europeans in his second term and bringing to two sides of the Atlantic back together to a certain degree.  But elite opinion in Europe ran far ahead of public opinion.  The public remained quite skeptical of Bush.

Now in some ways you have a different set of circumstances where public opinion is running ahead of elite opinion in the sense that there's an enormous amount of support for Obama, admiration of Obama, but that doesn't necessarily translate into a huge amount of room for maneuver among European elites, especially when it comes to Afghanistan.

And then the other point of this -- I think there's a certain vicarious sentiment in Europe that Obama is so popular in part because they see the United States as enjoying a multiculturalism that they don't have and won't have for a long time.  Someone who comes from a multicultural, multiethnic, multiracial background has become the president of the United States.  Europeans still struggle with these issues, have done a much less impressive job of integrating minorities into the social mainstream.  And I think that gives Obama enormous appeal, just as an individual, as a human being, and I expect that we will see that outpouring when he is in Europe.

MCMAHON:  Jeffrey, much was made of the Bush-Putin personal relationship and what that was worth in the end.  How about the Medvedev-Obama relationship?  How important is that -- the optics of that, at least?

MANKOFF:  Yeah.  I think there's been a problem in U.S.-Russian relations -- and this goes back really to the end of the Cold War -- that they have become, in many cases, over-personalized.  You remember Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin got along famously, and at least initially so too did George Bush and Vladimir Putin.  And I think that created, on both sides, some unrealistic hopes for where the relationship could go.

Obama presents an interesting challenge for the Russians because on the one hand, he has already indicated that he is willing to go a lot further than Bush was -- certainly Bush in his second term was -- towards meeting Russian objections on issues like missile defense, on issues like NATO expansion.  And so that really puts the Russian leadership in a quandary because as long as they could hold out Bush as being this kind of bogeyman, this person who was not going to take Russian interests seriously, it made it easier for them to pursue this kind of hostile approach towards the United States.

I think now it's going to be incumbent on the Russian leadership to really make a choice.  They have to decide if they can continue that line of foreign policy towards the U.S. with a new president who is much more interested in reaching out to Russia and dealing with some of the specific issues that poisoned the relationship over the last several years.  It's going to be much more difficult for Moscow if they want to continue to pursue a kind of anti-U.S. foreign policy in a number of areas because they're not going to have George Bush up there to kick around anymore.

Just in terms of the way Obama is perceived in Russia -- I think it's actually quite different from how he's perceived in Europe in that before the election, at least looking at public opinion data, there was not this overwhelming surge of support for Obama like you saw in Europe.  In general he tended to be favored over John McCain in large part because John McCain made some very provocative statements about what U.S. policy towards Russia would be.  And I think this was true at the elite level as well as the mass level in Russia.  But there was not the same kind of overwhelming outpouring of support for Obama in Russia that you saw in Europe, and so I don't think that the expectations for the Obama administration are necessarily as high.  That said, the major issue is going to be how do you deal with a president who really wants to talk about the issues that you've been talking about all of these years, and can you really continue to be obstructionist when you have a new administration in Washington that's interested in reaching out?

KUPCHAN:  Let me just add a quick point, because I think Jeff made an important point here, and that is that there's a very strong element of public diplomacy to the Obama administration, much more than we've seen in the last eight years.  Obviously we see it here in the United States.  Obama is on television almost every night in one venue or another, but the -- with the Europeans -- and also I would say with the Iranians -- he is making a direct appeal to publics.  You may recall the video that was released not long ago to the Iranians.  That was meant to appeal to the public and to affect domestic politics inside the country.

I think the same thing is happening in Russia.  Jeff is very -- is right to point that Russia is an outlier here.  Most of Europe was gaga about Obama and watching intently the American election.  In Russia the American election got almost no attention, and the Putin government -- and Medvedev followed in his footsteps -- has kind of been running on a nationalist rhetoric of the country's surrounded by enemies and enemy number one is America.  And if we are going to get the Russian leadership to move away from that mantra, Obama in some ways has to help that leadership by appealing to the Russian public, by telling the Russians that we are a friend; we want to work with you.  And so there is, I think, a very strong public diplomacy component to Obama's upcoming trip.

MCMAHON:  Very interesting.  Thanks for that question.

Operator, do we have another question?

OPERATOR:  Yes.  We've got four questions left in the queue, and this question comes from Christopher Dickey with Newsweek magazine.  Please go ahead.

QUESTIONER:  Yeah, hi.  Thank you very much for this.  It's been very interesting.  I came a little bit late, so I apologize if I'm tracking over something that somebody's already said, but the British defense minister recently said that he would propose a -- what he called an Alliance Standing -- or, Solidarity Force -- ASF -- of about 3,000 people that NATO would deploy if any of various NATO countries felt threatened.  It was a fairly specific effort to reassure the Baltic States, I think.  There hasn't been a lot of enthusiasm for that in Brussels, and I would think there's much less than no enthusiasm for that in Moscow.  So my first question is whether that is a dead initiative or it might continue.

Secondly I would just observe that I think there's not much interest in sending more troops to Afghanistan partly because there's a growing conviction that what the Obama administration wants to do is negotiate with the Taliban, and a lot of Europeans are not sure why they should spend the money to send more troops at this time if that's the end game.

And finally, I would just ask if it's your impression that anybody in NATO is thinking about the implications of the financial meltdown in security terms -- not just in terms of cutbacks in military expenditures but as the source of potential unrest in the way that was very, very broadly and vaguely outlined by the director of national intelligence, Dennis Blair, about a month ago.

MCMAHON:  Okay.  So, Charles, on the Alliance Standby Force, and also --

KUPCHAN:  Solidarity Force, I think.

MCMAHON:  Sorry, Solidarity Force.  And also the knock-on effect of the financial crisis on stability and security, which has been touched on actually beyond U.S. intelligence here, I think, as well.

KUPCHAN:  Christopher, on the first issue, I saw this -- or, see it, mainly as an effort to appeal to the growing unease in Central Europe that emerged in the wake of the war in Georgia.  And as you know, there were very different reactions to the war in Western Europe and in Central Europe, with the Central Europeans saying, "Hey, we told you so; the Russian bear is back and we need to pull NATO back to its traditional mission of territorial defense and start worrying about the frontier countries."  And my sense is that the British proposal was in some ways a way to say to the Central Europeans, "Hey, we hear you; we are going to do something about it."  But I don't think it's a real serious proposal that has legs.

On the contrary, I would say that the general thrust of both EU and NATO policy is to make this a moment when we reach out to the Russians.  The EU has taken the lead in restoring its partnership talks with Russia and in getting the NATO-Russia Council up and running again.  So I think that this is -- maybe the ASF was a compensation for that thrust, that direction of policy, but I don't see it as a fundamental reorientation.

And I don't -- I haven't heard anything from perm reps or NATO folks about thinking through the broader implications of the financial crisis.  They may need to in the sense that it's completely possible that you could see violence and instability somewhere in Central Europe and certainly in -- Ukraine comes to mind.  Whether NATO would in any way deal with that, I have serious doubts.  But I would think that in some ways the more immediate implication for Europe was your first point -- or for NATO was your first point, and that is, is the financial crisis making people skittish about contributing troops to Afghanistan because people are thinking that the political appetite for force projection is diminishing in lean times and that the clock is running out on the mission in Afghanistan, so why should we start putting in a lot of troops when the financial crisis creates this backdrop of diminishing resources?

MCMAHON:  Jeffrey, if you could just add quickly on the financial crisis instability in Russia's near abroad, and then I want to get to our final questions.

MANKOFF:  Yeah.  I think -- you know, the post-Soviet space as a whole has been hit very hard by the financial crisis, and I think one of the worries is that there's going to be political instability resulting from that.  Already the Latvian government has fallen.  There have been some governments actually in Europe that are in a lot of trouble.  But I think if this kind of political ferment spreads into the post-Soviet space, beyond the Baltics, then that could be a real flashpoint in terms of relations between Russia and the Western powers, as it's been many times in the past, with the colored revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine most notably.

Ukraine has elections coming up later this year and I think right now the Russian approach is to sort of sit back and wait because they are operating under the impression that their favored candidate, Yulia Tymoshenko, is going to probably triumph in these elections without any kind of overt intervention, and so they're happy to just let the process go ahead.

I think if the economy gets worse and it breeds real political instability -- whether in Ukraine or in Georgia or elsewhere in the post-Soviet space -- and that leads to a kind of precipitant political change, then you could see a kind of stepped up Russian involvement.  And I think that, as it has many times in the past, would set off a new round of hostile rhetoric flying between Moscow and Brussels/between Moscow and Washington and it could derail some of these attempts at reconciliation that the Obama administration is pursuing and that NATO as a whole is pursuing at the summit.

MCMAHON:  Christopher thank you for those questions.

Operator, do we have another question, please?

OPERATOR:  Yes.  Our next question comes from Chris Warnicki (sp) with South German Times.

Please go ahead.

QUESTIONER:  Yeah.  Thanks for taking my call.

I'd like to follow up on Afghanistan and pose a question for Charles Kupchan.

This kind of job sharing that, Charlie, that you kind of described that may emerge from the summit, isn't that in the long run a sort of danger for the unity of NATO?  I mean, the U.S. doing the fighting and the dirty job while the Europeans kind lean back a little bit and do the kind of part of the good cop and doing civil reconstruction and maybe police advisory?

What does that -- what kind of effect does that have on NATO unity in the long run?  Thank you.

KUPCHAN:  Thanks for the question.  I think it's very much to the point.

I'm going to give you two answers that are contradictory.  The first answer is that, you know, we now live in a world in which to expect NATO unity is probably unrealistic.  And that's simply because the Cold War has ended.  The threat that led to solidarity within the alliance is gone, and now NATO is engaged in Afghanistan and different countries have different priorities, different interests and different capabilities with respect to that war.  And so it doesn't surprise me that we are seeing a division of labor, that we are seeing caveats, that we are seeing something less than NATO unity.

And I'm afraid that that's going to be the pattern of the future.  And that the task, in my mind, is not how to restore unity to NATO, but how to make sure that NATO functions smoothly and effectively in a world in which it no longer enjoys unity.  And I think we see significant differences of opinion not just about Afghanistan, but about Russia; about NATO enlargement -- with the Europeans standing in the way, at least for now, of Ukraine and Georgia coming in; and about other issues.

So I think that's where we're headed and in my mind, let's make the most of a partnership that is going to be more contingent than it used to be.

The answer I'll give you -- and this is a contradiction -- is that yes, I do think that in the long run this kind of division of labor is corrosive.  And therefore, I would encourage the European Union and its member states to really get serious about a more robust foreign and security policy, including getting their act together on procurement policy and on defense policy.

I don't think it's going to happen any time soon, but I do believe that the stronger Europe is and the more assets that Europe has to bring to the table -- both hard and soft -- the better the transatlantic relationship is going to be in the long run, simply because in the aftermath of Iraq and Afghanistan in the midst of the financial crisis, the United States desperately needs help in the world and it will continue to look primarily to Europe to get that help.

MCMAHON:  Thank you for that question.

Operator -- another question, please.

OPERATOR:  Our next question comes from Yen Woo (sp) with People's Daily.

Please go ahead.

QUESTIONER:  Hello.  Thank you for giving me the chance to ask this question.

So my question, first, is with the concept mentioned by the two gentlemen.  The two gentlemen mentioned a new strategic concept.  My question is:  Compared with previous strategic concept, in what areas will the new strategic concept new?

The other question is:  What is the new administration's policy towards NATO?  And what direction does the administration want NATO to be involved?

And my last question is:  When I worked in Brussels, I witnessed the contact from China between NATO from no contact to limited contact.  So my question is, how do the two experts foresee the NATO-China contact following the NATO summit in April?

MCMAHON:  Okay.  Well, let's -- actually, let's start with the last question first -- the NATO-China contacts.

Charlie, do you want to give that one a crack?

KUPCHAN:  No.  (Laughs.)  I mean, it's not a subject that I've spent much time thinking about.  I don't know that NATO has really dealt much with the whole question of its relationship to China.

The only thing that's coming to mind is that if in fact NATO does pick up on this Russian proposal for a broader or a new European security architecture, obviously that means that China somehow comes into play because of its position -- its long border with Russia in the Far East.

Just on the other questions:  The strategic concept, I just -- we don't know.  It's still in a very early stage in the sense that it will be asked for.  And I will guess that it will try to deal with the full range of issues:  What should NATO's priorities be in the new world?  What are the priorities vis-a-vis territorial defense, vis-a-vis terrorism, vis-a-vis power projection, vis-a-vis partnerships in the Mediterranean, vis-a-vis partnerships in the Far East?  And so I would say that the sky is the limit.

And Obama and NATO -- I see the administration putting a great deal of emphasis on NATO in part, as I said, because the U.S. is in help mode.  And the alliance that can offer the United States the most help in its various tasks around the world remains the Atlantic Alliance.

MCMAHON:  Just to follow up with Jeff on the China angle.  And the one angle, I can see, perhaps, is a little bit of a foothold through discussing Afghanistan in the context, maybe, of the SCO -- the meetings coming up that you mentioned.  The U.S. is invited to it trying to rationalize some sort of regional cooperation.

China has some investments in Afghanistan, but in terms of any sort of a security role, is that realistic to think of that?

MANKOFF:  I would say probably not.  I'm certainly not an expert on China.  But you know, my sense of it is that the Chinese have been reluctant to give the SCO a more assertive military role -- in part, they're worried about how doing that would impact relations with the United States.  And while they're more interested -- as I understand it -- in trying to use it as a way to kind of leverage their influence in Central Asia -- provide them a kind of entre into that region and to manage their relationship with Russia.

One of the reasons that the SCO has not really stirred up a lot of opposition in the West -- particularly in the United States -- is precisely because it hasn't really had much of a military role.  It's held some relatively limited joint exercises over the past couple of years, but nothing on any kind of substantive scale.

And you know, this is in contrast to the other big Russian security organization the CSTO -- Collective Security Treaty Organization -- which is trying to build up a kind of centralized military command -- something more along the lines that NATO has.  And I think there would be a lot of wariness on the part of Beijing about trying to turn the SCO into something like that or to institutionalizing any kind of on-the-ground operations in Afghanistan.

MCMAHON:  Thanks very much.

Operator, do we have another question we can fit in?

OPERATOR:  Our next question and final question in the queue is from Margaret Warner with "Newshour."

Please go ahead, ma'am.

QUESTIONER:  Hi, Charles.  This is -- well, I guess this is for both of you.  It has to do with missile defense.

Do you expect any movement on missile defense, given the Europeans' unhappiness with the sort of bilateral approach Bush had taken vis-a-vis Poland and the Czech Republic?

KUPCHAN:  I don't think that there'll be any concrete policy decisions on missile defense, Margaret, because I think the issue is still getting worked through in the United States.  And a lot depends on what happens with Iran:  Does the engagement with Iran work?  What do we know about the enrichment process?  Are they going ahead with missile technology -- all these kinds of questions.

And I think in the meantime, what you'll see is that the program essentially is put on hold.  It is not canceled; it is simply reconsidered and slowed down.  And that will provide an opportunity for two things.  You know, one is to work this issue within the NATO context.  And even though NATO allies gave a green light to the program, there is still, I think, a lot of heartache about it throughout many countries in the region.  And secondly, is to try to work this issue with the Russians.

What that means remains to be seen.  But as you know, there were proposals floating around about Russian participation using some radar installations that the Russians would help us with -- in other words, making Russia a stakeholder in the program rather than an object of the program.  And that's one of the sort -- the concrete areas of strategic cooperation that I think would make pushing the reset button come to life.

I think this is an issue that will play itself out over the course of this year and we won't see much of a concrete nature in Kehl or Strasbourg.

And you know, the one final thought is:  Does it leave the Poles and the Czechs in a somewhat awkward position?  Yes, it does.  And that's because, you know, the Bush administration twisted arms.  Those governments went out of their way to sell these programs to skeptical publics and now they are in an awkward position.

And I think it helps that Obama's going to Prague -- partly for this issue, but even more so, because it demonstrates that the United States takes seriously the European Union.  And it seems to me that's a very important message to send as we hope to do whatever we can to breathe life into the process of European integration and encourage the EU to move forward to be the more capable union that I think the Obama administration is opening for.

MCMAHON:  Thanks, Charles.

Jeffrey, can you wrap us up then with the Russian perspective on where things stand on missile defense?

MANKOFF:  Yeah.  As you know, this was one of the really sensitive issues in U.S.-Russia relations going back several years.  And the Russians did make a number of attempts to ameliorate some of the problems, while still allowing the U.S. to go ahead with it.  The most notable was the one that Charlie mentioned about using Russian facilities and a radar facility in Azerbaijan that's controlled by the Russians as an alternative to putting these missile defense facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic.

I think that the Obama administration is skeptical of the feasibility of the whole missile defense concept in the first place.  And that is one reason why they've been much less enthusiastic about going forward with it.  And the other, of course, has to do with their interest in resetting relations with Russia.  And you know, for that reason I don't think there's going to be any attempt to really rush any sort of decision on deploying the missile defense.

I don't think it makes sense for the administration to say that it's never going to happen -- to pullback completely -- without at least some kind of a broader agreement with Russia and then what to do about the nuclear and missile programs in Iran.

And one of the first things Obama did in terms of his outreach to Moscow was suggesting precisely this:  That if Russia emits a more cooperative attitude toward the Iran missile and nuclear programs, then he would be willing to reconsider U.S. support for missile defense in Eastern Europe entirely.  You know, I think that's the opening gambit in what's going to be a fairly drawn out process of negotiating with the Russians over how to deal with the Iranian threat and, you know, what the ultimate future of missile defense is.

All the caveats that have been put forward by the Obama administration that have to be met before they say they would be willing to go forward with the missile defense I think means that there's not going to be a lot of movement towards deployment in the near future.

And the other thing, of course, is that the political environment in Europe, I think, is changing somewhat.  Public support for missile defense in both Poland and the Czech Republic is somewhat lukewarm.  I saw recently the Czechs decided to put off a vote on the missile defense issue, because they thought they couldn't get it through Parliament.

And so you know, dealing with this kind of -- dealing with growing public skepticism about the efficacy of missile defense I think is another issue that's going to be causing the administration to want to go slowly on this.  There are a number of questions, I think, that haven't been answered yet about how it's going to work; about how to reassure the Russians; how to address their concerns; and really whether it would be effective in dealing with the Iranian threat.

Certainly, if you believe the timetable that Iran is within a couple of years of having a deployable nuclear weapons system and long-range missiles, then I think the timetables for the Iranians' ability to deploy weapons and the ability to deploy a workable missile defense system in Europe are just simply not in sync and it doesn't make sense to think of this as the way to deal with the threat emanating from Iran.

So I think for all of these reasons there is a conscious attempt on the part of the Obama administration to pull back from the commitment to deploying missile defense in Europe, while at the same time, not trying to portray it as an instance of giving into Russian pressure and not getting anything in return.  That's why I think it's going to be part of this broader, drawn out process of negotiating over Russia's place in European security and dealing with Iran.

MCMAHON:  Thank you, Jeffrey.

A great deal to consider in these upcoming summits that are going to pan out over the next couple of weeks.

Thank you to Jeffrey Mankoff and Charles Kupchan of the Council on Foreign Relations for this media call.  And thanks to the journalists who've called into this.

This concludes this media call.  Thank you.

.STX

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