Opinion: NATO’s Warsaw Summit: Is the rhetoric masking the resolve?

Derek Burney was Canada's ambassador to the U.S. from 1989-1993. He was directly involved in concluding negotiations of the free-trade agreement with the U.S. Fen Osler Hampson is a distinguished fellow and director of Global Security at the Centre for International Governance Innovation and Chancellor's Professor at Carleton University. They are the authors of Brave New Canada: Meeting the Challenge of a Changing World

The NATO Summit just concluded in Warsaw was said to have been the most important in the past quarter century but the true value will be gauged by the degree to which the rhetoric in the turgid, but solemn, 32-page communiqué is matched by resolve. The track record to date is not encouraging. Whether in the Middle East, Afghanistan or in Eastern Europe, the Western alliance is on its back foot.

President Obama's failure to act on his now-infamous red line on Syria empowered both al-Qaeda and Islamic State forces in the region and permanently weakened the prospects for a moderate post-Assad regime.

By declaring, when U.S. troops were abruptly withdrawn from Iraq, that the war had ended, he conflated leaving with winning the war. Instead, this action led to the revival of several offshoots of al-Qaeda and the emergence of the Islamic State caliphate in Iraq.

It also created an easy vacuum that Russia and Iran aggressively filled. They have a shared view on who they oppose and who they support in the region. Russia took the lead, co-ordinating air raids at three to four times the ratio of western forays while Iranian commanders co-ordinated the ground offensive but their target was seldom IS.

Meanwhile, the U.S.-led coalition was consistently hampered by internal rivalries in the Iraq government, sectarian strife and by self-imposed restrictions on active combat.

IS may have yielded some territory recently in Iraq but is has metastasized into a global terrorist threat initiating attacks directly or indirectly in North and East Africa, Western Europe, Asia and the U.S.

In Afghanistan, combined incursions by IS and al-Qaeda have shaken any notion of stability in that beleaguered nation and prompted a reluctant Obama to increase rather than reduce, as he had announced, America's deployment in this now the longest war against terror.

As the Australian counter insurgency expert, David Kilcullen has written in Blood Year; Islamic State and the Failures of the War on Terror, Washington's long-term strategic goals against terrorism have been undercut by short-term, tactical timidity.

The "light footprint" approach has obvious appeal on the home front for Americans who are tired and frustrated by protracted, inconclusive military engagements. But, by trying to be "half-in, half-out," and by signalling each of its strategic moves openly, the U.S.-led alliance's focus and effort have lacked resolve and failed to gain respect, let alone victory.

Nowhere is this most evident than in the feeble effort to counter Russia's blatant violations of international law – the invasion of Crimea, open military support for so-called separatist lunges in Eastern Ukraine and, most recently, military manoeuvres that threaten vulnerable Baltic states.

Does anyone believe that a direct violation of the NATO charter would prompt more serious retaliation from the west than what Russia has seen to date?

Instead, we see a communiqué with a laboured message of solidarity and confidence – building measures, along with a soothing offer of dialogue with Russia.

The words mask yet another "light footprint" strategy in which troop commitments to shore up the West's defenses in the Baltic region against Russia from the two North American members (the U.S. and Canada) are equal to those from two more directly affected European members. That distinction will not be lost on Vladimir Putin who is eagerly waiting for the European Union, which has gone even more wobbly with the Brexit vote in the U.K., to lift sanctions. He sees Western Europe in disarray and America awaiting a changing of the guard.

Angela Merkel asserted at the beginning of the NATO Summit that "deterrence and dialogue must go hand in hand." But, as the Manchester Guardian observed, "a show of strength has to come before the outstretched hand."

Mr. Putin is not likely to regard the Warsaw communiqué as much of a threat or a show of strength. He is deliberately pursuing a "divide and conquer" strategy with Europe, offering inducements to those who tacitly, if not overtly, support his objectives.

More likely he will see the state of the lumpy alliance as an opportunity to continue to exploit, as was the mess in Syria. After all, Mr. Putin knows better than most that a strategic vision without the resolve to achieve it is little more than empty rhetoric.