NATO is currently preparing for its summit meeting in Chicago in May 2012. This event was originally planned as a sort of "routine meeting“ which should primarily assess the progress made in implementing all the taskings NATO's Heads of States and governments had issued last year at the historical Lisbon summit. However, recent developments in the Arab world and the international financial crisis have changed the agenda for the Chicago meeting.

Currently, there are six core topics scheduled for Chicago - four "old" ones (stemming from the Lisbon summit) and two new ones.

The old ones are Afghanistan, NATO-Russia, Missile Defense and the Deterrence and Defense Posture Review (DDPR) - the new ones being Libya/Arab-Spring and Smart Defense.
Each of them is highly complex and it will be difficult to find consensus or summit "deliverables“.

The new Research paper of the NATO Defense College analyzes the Chicago summit agenda, pointing to the difficulties in all of the six agenda items.