Austerity to strain transatlantic ties at NATO Chicago summit

"There is definitely going to be an effort to present things in the best light possible, but the fact remains that as soon as we are talking about more ambitious forms of defence cooperation, which require large budgetary investments, it's really hard to progress and it's going to remain so for the foreseeable future," said Clara O'Donnell of the CER. ... O'Donnell said that, given its own budget woes, Washington wants to rely more on allies to take responsibility for their regions so the United States can reduce its involvement. "What they are seeing instead is European capabilities dwindling even further," she said. ... "In theory, NATO's scale of ambitions hasn't changed but in practice it has," said Tomas Valasek, director of foreign policy and defence at the CER. "I suspect we would not be willing and able to do the operations we conducted over the last 15 years because we have cut too much from our defence budgets."