Ukraine crisis may solve NATO's 'identity crisis'

WASHINGTON - World leaders, diplomats, and experts have often fretted about the future of NATO and whether the end of its mission in Afghanistan would also be the end of its relevance.

But as leaders, including President Obama, converge on Cardiff, Wales, this week for a NATO summit, the uncertainty seems more than a little premature. The politicians and diplomats have no shortage of world crises crowding their agenda, so many that the drawdown of troops from Afghanistan, once a top priority, has slipped down the list of most pressing.

Instead, the 28-nation alliance is being called on to counter Russia's incursion in Ukraine, a jolting reminder that threats to sovereignty in Europe are not necessarily a thing of the past. While the leaders will be looking for new ways to punish Russia, they also will be repositioning troops, pledging more money for military spending, and recommitting to collective defense.

"In some ways, NATO should thank Vladimir Putin. It was really searching for its purpose . . . and it was having a fairly significant identity crisis," said Heather Conley, director of the Europe program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. "And it has now not only been repurposed, it's been reinvigorated."

Obama has also added another task to the agenda. He says he will try to corral leaders to work toward a strategy to defeat the rapidly rising Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria.

The president faces considerable challenges in rallying his war-weary allies to sign on to a military response, particularly one that crosses the border from Iraq into Syria, officials acknowledge. But Obama, who inartfully declared "we have no strategy" for defeating the extremists, is under pressure to show he is leading the world toward finding one.

Western officials have set modest expectations for breakthroughs on either Ukraine or Islamic State discussions at the summit. The chief punishment in the pipeline for what Ukraine labeled a Russian invasion is additional economic sanctions.

And U.S. officials noted that Obama's key targets for cooperation on Islamic State were not necessarily NATO members.

Meanwhile, NATO members are expected to sign a pledge in Cardiff agreeing to increase spending in support of their collective defense agreement. The details were still under discussion late last week. U.S. officials have persistently complained of other nations falling short of their funding targets.