Get ready for NATO 3.0

When 29 countries meet in Lisbon for the NATO summit on Nov. 19, the goal will be to define what the future of the alliance — built to fight the Cold War — will be, in the less defined but arguably more dangerous world of the 21st century.

"We’re launching NATO 3.0," Ivo Daalder, the U.S. ambassador to NATO, told a group of foreign policy wonks Friday morning at the New America Foundation. (Version 1.0 began after World War II; version 2.0 spanned from the end of the Cold War until today, apparently.) "It is no longer just about Europe… It’s not a global alliance but it is a global actor."

In addition to unveiling the new "strategic concept," which will include new focuses on missile defense and cyber security, the summit will tackle thorny issues such as NATO’s relationships with rising world powers, and how the alliance should conclude its current non-Europe mission, the war in Afghanistan.

"We need to look for opportunities to work with countries we haven’t worked with before, like India, China, and Brazil," Daalder said. "The question of whether NATO will be operating globally is solved. It’s done. We’re there."

With the recent announcement that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will attend the summit, the focus on Russia will be front and center. There will be some kind of an announcement of NATO’s intention to resume cooperation with Russia on missile defense that was scuttled after the 2008 Russia-Georgia war.

There’s no decision yet whether that will be a formal agreement with detailed plans for cooperation, but there will be definitely be a separate announcement that NATO will institutionalize and expand its missile defense activities on its own, Daalder said.

"NATO will be in the business of defending its territory from ballistic missile attack," he said.

Of course, reports today note that Turkey is standing in the way of that agreement, but that’s one of the things the summit is meant to address.

Daalder was optimistic about the progress of the war in Afghanistan, saying that although the formal evaluation of the current strategy is forthcoming, he already sees great progress in battling the Taliban and in the training of the Afghan security forces. He expects the transfer of provinces to Afghan control to begin in the first half of 2011.

"We are seeing the corner and we can peek around it. The strategy we have embarked upon… that’s beginning to work," he said. "The Taliban has been hurt significantly by the introduction of 30,000 additional troops… We’ve been quite successful in hitting them quite hard… We see a beginning of a change in the fight in most places."

As for NATO expansion, an administration official said that NATO’s position on adding new countries has not changed, meaning that the door is still open for Macedonia and Georgia, although the official didn’t identify any signs that there would be movement on those applications. Ukraine, which had wanted to become a member, no longer seeks to join NATO.

The official said the sessions will also address the issue of whether to keep some 200 nuclear weapons stationed in Europe, a debate that is not yet resolved.

"Stay tuned. This will be an issue that will be discussed up until the last minute," the official said.