The North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO's) 2016 summit is to be held in Warsaw, Poland, on July 8-9, 2016. This summit will be the second meeting of the alliance's 28 heads of state and government since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea and began providing large-scale military support to separatist forces fighting in Ukraine. NATO's renewed focus on collective defense and deterrence has created some tensions within the alliance, particularly between those member states more sensitive to the Russian threat, especially in Eastern Europe, and those, such as Germany, with a long history of close ties to Russia. In addition, heightened fears about instability in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have caused strain between those allies more concerned about security threats from NATO's south and those that continue to prioritize deterring and managing Russia. At the Warsaw summit, NATO leaders are expected to seek to balance these concerns by addressing both the threat to NATO's east and the threat to its south. As such, the summit is expected to focus primarily on two broad themes: Enhancing deterrence, primarily through forward deployment to Eastern Europe, and Projecting stability beyond NATO, in particular to the MENA region. |