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Bucharest NATO Summit

Between 2 and 4 April 2008, the next NATO Summit will be held in Bucharest.  In accordance with some assessments, the Summit should represent one of the bigger political challenges, it should bring the beginning of a new NATO era and the linked outline of a new strategic concept, which is supposed to be less comprehensive as the strategic concept from 1999 and more comprehensive than the adopted NATO Comprehensive Political Guidance (CPG) adopted at the last NATO Summit in Riga. The fundamental message of the CPG is that the Alliance needs more forces possessing the capability and equipment for rapid reaction within the entire range of Alliance's missions, from intensive combat activity, stability operations, and reconstruction assistance, to humanitarian operations. The Alliance has to be capable of conducting such operations in parallel or as various phases of one operation. The analysis of the CPG strategic environment shows that the main threats to the Alliance in the next 15 years will be global terrorism and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

The Bucharest NATO Summit will bring a series of challenges, one of the most important being – with respect to the commitments from the last Riga Summit in November 2006 – the enlargement of the Alliance. Slovenia will endeavour for the Summit to bring NATO enlargement with all three membership candidates, Albania, Croatia and Macedonia.

Slovenia also holds the position that NATO open door policy should be maintained. Thus, all NATO aspirant countries should be given green light for launching NATO Membership Action Plan at the Summit.  

Despite the fact that the topics of the Summit meeting have not been determined yet, we expect the most important themes – in addition to the foreseen formulation of a new strategic concept and enlargement of the Alliance – to be NATO cooperation with Russia and Ukraine, enhanced cooperation with the Black Sea region and Central Asia and defence transformation of the Alliance (missile defense, NATO Reaction Force, Reserve Forces, Strategic Airlift, etc.).