WARSAW, Poland _ President Barack Obama's final NATO summit wrapped up Saturday as a testament to stalled progress on two fronts since his first alliance meeting seven years ago: a bolstered commitment to Afghanistan to allow the U.S. to wind down its role there, and the pursuit of "a constructive relationship with Russia," as he put it in 2009.
Instead, NATO is preparing for a mission in Afghanistan that will continue into a third decade, and its leaders Saturday detailed an increased military presence in Eastern Europe in an attempt to thwart Russian aggression. A day earlier, the U.S. announced that 1,000 American troops would be stationed in Poland as soldiers from NATO allies deploy to three Baltic states. Officials called it the largest deployment of military personnel by the alliance since the end of the Cold War.
"If Russia continues this pattern of aggressive behavior, there will be a response and there will be a greater presence in Eastern Europe," White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said. "We will not be in any way deterred from fulfilling our commitments by anything that Russia says or does."
The ongoing political and civil unrest in Ukraine has been the most obvious example of how Russian President Vladimir Putin has pushed what was first a Cold War alliance to return to its roots, even as it seeks to reorient itself to take on 21st century threats. Obama and other NATO leaders met Saturday with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko not only to demonstrate a united front, the White House said, but also to encourage the Russian government to continue implementing its obligations under the 2015 Minsk agreement that called for an end to war in Ukraine.
NATO is also close to declaring that it has a working missile defense system in Eastern Europe, seven years after Obama scrapped plans for a separate system that would have been stationed in Poland and the Czech Republic.
The latter was emblematic of how the U.S. and other Western nations "were caught surprised" by Russia's actions, said Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio).
"The United States was pursuing the reset plan while Putin was pursuing a reset of the Soviet bloc," said Turner, who attended the summit as president of NATO's parliamentary assembly. "It took too long for the leadership of NATO to realize that they had a real adversary and they needed to respond."
That turnaround came, however, and with it a commitment pushed by the president at the previous NATO summit in Wales in 2014 for its partners to increase their collective spending on defense to meet the new challenges.
On Afghanistan, Obama's decision this past week to scale back planned reductions in U.S. troop levels helped lock in commitments to sustain the NATO-led military effort there through 2020. Afghan security forces will carry on fighting against the Taliban, Islamic State and other groups with the support of the international community's train, advise and assist mission.
The president acknowledged that history will record him as the first to serve two full terms with the nation at war.
But because U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have shifted from combat to training and assisting local forces against militant groups, they are "fundamentally different" than when he took office, Obama said.
He acknowledged that against terrorist groups, the end of a conflict might not be as discrete as it once was, citing the example of Gen. Douglas MacArthur meeting with Japanese Emperor Hirohito at the end of World War II.
"Because they're nonstate actors, it's very hard for us ever to get the satisfaction of MacArthur and the emperor meeting and a war officially being over," Obama said.
The president reiterated to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani that the U.S. was open to reconciliation talks with the Taliban, should the group open to returning to the negotiating table.
''It was a clear message for the militants to lay down arms and join the peace process. Otherwise, the international community is committed to fighting them,'' said Gen. Dawlat Waziri, spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Defense.
The support for the Afghan government would potentially affect the Taliban's operational leadership. Waziri added, "The Taliban are losing hope as they learn that we are capable of fighting them.''
The reality on the ground belied his optimism. The Taliban controls more territory in the country than it has since the U.S. invasion 15 years ago, according to United Nations. estimates. And more than 5,500 Afghan troops were killed last year in combat with the Taliban that revealed significant shortcomings among Afghan security forces.
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(Special correspondent Sultan Faizy in Kabul, Afghanistan, contributed to this report.)
