WARSAW, Poland �� NATO leaders pledged Sunday to bolster Europe's defenses in the face of an "arc of insecurity and instability" from Moscow to North Africa.
Heads of the alliance's 28 countries asserted their determination to remain united against challenges from an aggressive Russia under President Vladimir Putin and Islamic State terrorism, according to their final declaration. With President Barack Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron soon to be out of office and elections next year in France and Germany, the world's precarious future was a dominant theme of the two-day summit.
"What we see are more unpredictabilities, more uncertainties and we see a more aggressive Russia," Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said. "In an unpredictable world, with challenges from the south and the east, NATO remains an essential source of stability."
The outcome of the meeting encapsulated leaders' concerns that they're under attack on more than one front: they fleshed out a plan to deploy troops in eastern Europe to counter Russia, agreed to step up work to thwart human smuggling in the Mediterranean and decided to increase training of Iraqis to fight Islamic State. Adding to a sense of crisis, they were forced away from the agenda to confront Britain's exit from the EU, EU-Turkey relations, and violence in the U.S. in which five Dallas police officers died.
The alliance faces a range of security threats "both from the east and from the south; from state and non-state actors; from military forces and from terrorist, cyber, or hybrid attacks," leaders said in their declaration. "Russia's aggressive actions, including provocative military activities" are a source of instability, they said, while "security is also deeply affected" by events in the Middle East and North Africa.
In an effort to head off accusations of warmongering, Stoltenberg and the national leaders underlined that all the steps they were taking were defensive and that NATO wants a "constructive relationship" with Russia.
Russia expressed dismay at the summit's decisions, with Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov signaling that Russia didn't share NATO's view that its measures were defensive only.
His remarks were echoed on Saturday by former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who said the decisions showed NATO was "preparing a real war," according to the Interfax news agency.
