Analysis: What future for NATO?
By CNN European Political Editor Robin Oakley
 |  NATO is an alliance of 26 countries from North America to Europe. |
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BRUSSELS, Belgium (CNN) -- Leopards it seems, can change their spots.
Not so long ago, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was angering European allies by dividing them into "Old Europe" and "New Europe."
"New Europe," of course, was the part which lined up with the U.S. on Iraq.
Now, the U.S. and EU are keen to put their divisions behind them. So in Germany last weekend, he turned that into a joke against himself, saying: "Oh, that was the Old Rumsfeld."
But are either the Europeans or the U.S. getting what they want from NATO? The U.S. has been disappointed NATO has not done more to help in Iraq.
Mark Joyce, of the Royal United Services Institute, said: "The position NATO took was that they would perform the minimum possible role in Iraq for which they could get some form of political consensus within the alliance. That turned out to be the training of Iraqi forces. Now what that has amounted to in practice has been very little."
But America is reluctant to let go of NATO and see the Europeans create an alternative.
What the Americans fear is that the Europeans will develop a weapons capability that operates independent of NATO and could eventually emerge as a competitor to the United States," Joyce said.
So it would not have helped the new conciliatory mood that last weekend Germany's Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said in a speech, read out for him because he had the flu, that NATO was outdated and needed to be revamped.
It is, he said, "no longer the primary venue where transatlantic partners discuss and co-ordinate strategies."
Victor Bulmer-Thomas, of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, said: "In one sense Chancellor Schroeder was absolutely right. Everybody knows that there's a big problem with NATO.
But he added: "His timing was awful. His failure to warn the Americans in advance, let alone his European partners, that he was going to do this wasn't good."
Analysts agree NATO is not currently the right place to discuss transatlantic differences on Iran, on Syria, on the EU ending the arms embargo on China. But no-one seems quite sure of the best way to address these issues.
The U.S. these days patently prefers to trust "coalitions of the willing," and Europeans feel they are only offered partnership in an agenda already set by the U.S.
But in that case, what is the Alliance's future? His fellow leaders will be eager to hear the president's answer.
