This week’s NATO summit will shape Bush legacy

President Bush is traveling roughly 100,000 miles on eight trips overseas this year, wrestling with the intractable issues of the Middle East and a relationship with China that has grown increasingly troubled at the end of his tenure.

But perhaps none of the diplomatic meetings involving Bush will carry greater weight in setting a course lasting well beyond his presidency than when he sits this week with some of the United States’ closest allies.

Bush will seek to persuade NATO allies at a summit in Bucharest, Romania, to maintain their commitment to the war in Afghanistan and to expand the alliance further into territory of the former Soviet Union.

The president arrived here Monday night at the outset of a trip that will also take him to Croatia and, on the weekend, to the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi for what is likely to be his final meeting with Vladimir Putin before the Russian president leaves office May 7.

The U.S. plan to build a missile defense network based in Poland and the Czech Republic, Washington’s sponsorship and embrace of independence for Kosovo, and the potential NATO expansion have riled Russia.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, created as a post-World War II balance to the Soviet Union, is grappling with issues that go to the heart of Bush’s agenda: the conflict in Afghanistan and the effort to spread democracy. Taken with the war in Iraq, they make up the tightly woven elements at the center of his foreign policy legacy.

There is no unanimity on the issues facing the alliance, suggesting that the next U.S. administration will face many of the same problems soon after inauguration day – with another summit, marking the 60th anniversary of NATO, closing in on a new foreign policy team.

In Western Europe in particular, government leaders are facing political skepticism about their nations’ military contributions in Afghanistan and are raising questions about whether the fight can be won, all feeding into broader questions about the alliance’s overall mission.

Some allies also have raised questions about how far and fast to expand the alliance eastward.

As for the Europeans’ role in Afghanistan, “They are not doing enough, they’re not spending enough,” Stephen J. Hadley, Bush’s national security advisor, said Monday aboard Air Force One.

Against that backdrop, said Julianne Smith, a Europe expert at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, the administration is ready to order up more global missions and put on NATO’s plate “new threats, new challenges.”

But, she said, France and others believe that “the alliance should step back, focus on its traditional mission of collective defense and security in the Euro-Atlantic area, and not get ahead of itself and be too ambitious with its vision and in crafting … where it’s going to go in the next 10 to 20 years.”

“This is a debate we’ve seen inside the alliance for the last couple of years,” she added, “but it’s really coming to a head over Afghanistan because part of the alliance feels that Afghanistan should be a precedent for future missions and part of the alliance feels like it should be an exception, perhaps never to be repeated again.”

The issues have caused friction between Washington and other capitals. Bush says he is too busy juggling current problems to focus on his legacy. However, Smith said, NATO’s reaching out to eventually invite Ukraine and Georgia, and others once in the Soviet orbit, to join the alliance fits “his broader agenda of bringing these countries into Western institutions.”

For his part, Bush has set only a vague public marker for the NATO summit Thursday and Friday.

“The definition of success is to make sure NATO stays relevant,” he told European reporters at the White House last week.

james.gerstenzang

@latimes.com

Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson in Rome contributed to this report.