Does NATO summit signal a return to the Cold War?

It smells cold war. At the NATO summit in Wales early this month, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko sat next to US President Barack Obama, their fingers pointing at Russia. The leaders of the 28 member countries pledged financial and military support to Ukraine. They also reaffirmed their collective resolve and commitment.

It seems Russia's taking over of Crimea and the conflict in eastern Ukraine have helped resolve a problem plaguing NATO for long: the loss of momentum, if not direction. The Warsaw Pact is gone. Without such a counterweight, the expansion of an already colossal NATO cannot be justified no matter how hard the alliance tries.

But NATO faces a dilemma: The larger it becomes, the more disintegrated it will be. This explains why in 2012, among the 28 NATO members only the United States, the United Kingdom, Estonia and Greece spent the required 2 percent of their respective GDP on defense. Since early 2011 NATO has been following a "Smart Defense Initiative", a thinly veiled campaign of cutting defense expenditure.