NATO declines in importance as military alliance
The NATO Summit takes place in a context where the situation within and around NATO shows the alliance's declining importance on the international stage.
According to RT, the annual NATO Summit is where leaders of member states and representatives of partners gather. This year, the event will take place in The Hague on June 24-25.
However, before the summit took place, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba refused to go to the Netherlands. Instead, the Japanese Foreign Minister will attend the conference. The head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will attend the summit instead.
Explaining this decision, Japanese media believe that the reason is the worsening situation in the Middle East, including US airstrikes on Iran, as well as uncertainty about President Donald Trump's presence at the event.
In addition, new South Korean President Lee Jae-myung also canceled his participation in the summit in The Hague, although he was invited as a representative of a NATO partner country. Previously, his administration explained that it was due to "many issues that need to be resolved after the inauguration" as well as "the unstable situation in the Middle East".
It should be noted that this is the first time in three years that the Japanese Prime Minister will be absent from the NATO Summit. The bloc's event in Madrid in 2022 is the first meeting that the alliance's partner countries, Australia, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand, will officially participate.
In addition, at the 2023 Summit in Vilnius, Japan signed a roadmap for cooperation with the bloc for the period 2023-2026. In addition, there were previously plans to open a NATO Office in Tokyo, which would be the alliance's first office in Asia.
Meanwhile, Western media noted that NATO is approaching the Summit in The Hague in a state of instability and tension, the reason being Donald Trump's policies.
Der Spiegel said that the bloc has never "experienced such pressure from both outside and inside". The newspaper noted that NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, trying to turn this year's summit into a demonstration of unity and cohesion, has completely adjusted the event to the US leader's schedule. It is believed that Mr. Rutte wants to hold the summit in "accelerated mode", gathering only the heads of state for a closed meeting of the NATO Council, lasting no more than 2 hours. The final communique must also be brief.
According to The Times, the program cuts will help make the event more exciting.
"This is done to ensure discussions at the summit are focused, brief and to the point. President Trump can be impatient and, as he has said himself, his attention span is short. So the shorter the agenda, the better," said a diplomatic source at The Times.
The Times stressed that Secretary General Mark Rutte intended to focus the attention of summit attendees solely on increasing NATO defense spending by 5%.
The spending decision will be seen as a personal victory for Mr Trump, given all the guidance US presidents have given to European allies over the decades, the paper asserted.
Politico offered a similar assessment, noting that the event's agenda was shortened and built around a defense spending pledge, "to give the US president a chance to showcase success."
“While NATO allies disagree on the details of their planned security commitments, they broadly agree on this: The most important thing is to please Mr. Trump and present a united front in The Hague now that the conflict in Ukraine is far from over and the focus of U.S. foreign policy is increasingly shifting toward Asia and the Middle East,” Politico stressed.
NATO, long considered the main security guarantor in the Western world, is now facing a systemic crisis, experts told RT. The alliance’s political weight and military potential are being questioned both by individual members and its closest partners. Analysts are skeptical about NATO’s overall position on the international stage and its relevance.
Valery Kistanov, Director of the Center for Japanese Studies at the Institute of Modern China and Asia of the Russian Academy of Sciences, noted the fact that NATO's importance has significantly weakened, especially given America's new global priorities.
"NATO's importance in the international arena as a military bloc - one of the poles of power - has declined sharply due to divisions within the bloc, after Mr. Trump returned to the White House. The head of the Washington administration seems to have lost interest in Europe," the expert explained.
