Looking At NATO's Future Some More

There's a deep analysis of NATO's future going on right now.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is heading to a meeting of NATO ministers in Estonia at a time when the 61-year-old organization is suffering from a kind of mid-life crisis.

Almost 20 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the 28-member North Atlantic Treaty Organization is in the midst of an intense self-examination, trying to rethink its basic purpose.

NATO was founded to blunt the long-extinct threat of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe.

Now it finds itself divided on many fronts: doubts among some members about its combat mission in Afghanistan, unease with the continuing presence of U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe, prickly relations with Moscow and concerns about the wisdom of expanding NATO deeper into Russia's backyard.

Clinton and 27 of her NATO counterparts will gather Thursday in Tallinn, capital of the former Soviet state of Estonia, where they're expected to take stock of the alliance and the challenges it faces.

Among the most difficult issues on the agenda are NATO's outlook for success in Afghanistan and the prospects for putting the Balkan nation of Bosnia on track toward NATO membership.

The foreign ministers also are expected to debate the future of the U.S. nuclear umbrella for Europe, which boils down to a question of whether to withdraw the remaining Cold War-era U.S. nuclear weapons there.

The Tallinn meeting, in fact, could split over the question of whether it's time to remove an estimated 200 U.S. nuclear bombs that remain at six air bases in five NATO countries.

By: Brant