For more than a year, the 28-nation alliance has been in the throes of a major makeover, largely in response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and support for a pro-Russia separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine, but also to better meet the new types of security threat represented by Islamic State and other armed extremist Muslim organizations active in the Middle East and North Africa.
“The last time NATO regularly held exercises of this magnitude, we were in the midst of the Cold War, facing the Soviet threat,” Alexander Vershbow, Stoltenberg’s deputy and the ranking American civilian at NATO, said at last …read more
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
