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 Officials at the U.S.-led alliance are still smarting from
Russia's weekend incursions into Turkey's airspace near northern
Syria and NATO defense ministers are meeting in Brussels with the
agenda likely to be dominated by the Syria crisis.
"NATO is ready and able to defend all allies, including Turkey
against any threats," NATO's Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told
reporters as he arrived for the meeting.
"NATO has already responded by increasing our capacity, our ability,
our preparedness to deploy forces including to the south, including
in Turkey," he said, noting that Russia's air and cruise missile
strikes were "reasons for concern".
As Russian and U.S. planes fly combat missions over the same country
for the first time since World War Two, NATO is eager to avoid any
international escalation of the Syrian conflict that has
unexpectedly turned the alliance's attention away from Ukraine
following Russia's annexation of Crimea last year.
 The incursions of two Russian fighters in Turkish airspace on
Saturday and Sunday has brought the Syria conflict right up to
NATO's borders, testing the alliance's ability to deter a newly
assertive Russia without seeking direct confrontation.
While the United States has ruled out military cooperation with
Russia in Syria, NATO defense ministers will discuss how to
encourage Russia to help resolve the crisis, betting that Moscow
also wants to avoid being bogged down in a long conflict.
"There has to be a political solution, a transition," Stoltenberg
said.
"Russia is making a very serious situation in Syria much more
dangerous," Britain's defense minister, Michael Fallon said, calling
on Moscow to use its influence on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad
to stop bombing civilians.
For 40 years, NATO's central task was deterring Russia in the east
during the Cold War, but now, after a decade-long involvement in
Afghanistan, the alliance is facing a reality-check close to home,
with multiple threats near its borders.
Divisions between eastern NATO members, who want to keep the focus
on the Ukraine crisis, and others who fret about Islamic State
militants, risk hampering a unified response from the 28-nation
North Atlantic alliance.
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France and Britain, NATO's two main European powers, are understood
to be willing to see the alliance use its new 5,000-strong rapid
reaction force beyond NATO borders, potentially helping stabilize
post-conflict governments in Libya or Syria.
"We need to agree a long-term approach to Russia. But NATO needs a
strategy to its south," Britain's envoy to NATO, Adam Thomson, said
on the eve of the defense ministers meeting.
"The world is changing and NATO needs to develop the ability to
react to many things at once," he said.
Others nations, including Poland and the Baltics, want a permanent
NATO presence on their territory to act as a credible deterrent to
any further effort by Russian President Vladimir Putin to gain
influence in former Soviet states.
Fallon underscored the balancing act, saying that Britain would send
some troops to Poland and the Baltics for training, as NATO opens
small new command posts in eastern Europe.
"That is part of our policy of more persistent presence on the
eastern side of NATO to respond to any further Russian provocation
and aggression," he said.
(Additional reporting by Sabine Siebold in Brussels and Kate Holton
in London; Editing by Louise Ireland)
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