More than Meets the Eye

Posted: July 12th, 2016

By Jeff Lightfoot

Jeff Lightfoot is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council's Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security. He specializes in transatlantic security, European politics, France, and Middle East security. Lightfoot is a senior associate at the Jones Group International, an international business advisory firm founded by General James L. Jones specializing in trade promotion, market access, and strategic leadership. Prior to joining the Jones Group International in 2014, Lightfoot worked for six and a half years at the Atlantic Council, rising to the level of deputy director at the Brent Scowcroft Center. While at the Council, Lightfoot served as project rapporteur or report author for numerous, high-level Atlantic Council studies on the most pressing issues for US foreign policy, including US-Pakistan relations, US-Central Asian relations after Afghanistan, NATO, US-Russia relations, and American security assistance to Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia. Lightfoot has authored op-eds and articles for Defense News, CNN, the Boston Globe, the National Interest, the Fletcher Forum, the German Council on Foreign Relations, and La Revue International et Strategique, among others. He is a member of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung's Global Atlanticists network. Lightfoot received his BA and BS from Indiana University Bloomington and earned his MA from the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. He has studied overseas at Sciences Po, Paris and the Rouen Business School and speaks French.

The NATO summit in Warsaw this past weekend provided a modest but important boost to a Europe in crisis. Allies demonstrated cohesion and unity in the face of diverse threats to their security. They took steps to bolster NATO’s deterrence and resilience that would have once been unthinkable. These steps will strengthen America’s most important allies and enhance the stability of a Europe critical to U.S. interests.

At first glance, the major deliverables of the summit are all fairly modest. But the three major deliverables below reveal important progress. They show an alliance moving in a positive direction and gradually adjusting to the realities of a new security environment marked by long-term strategic challenges.

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