Threats to the post-war order are fueling a European malaise

BRUSSELS, Belgium — The city that calls itself the capital of Europe is abuzz with talk of change at the top of the international organizations that have underpinned the continent's post-war order.

Both NATO and the European Union are getting new leadership at their Brussels headquarters.

Jens Stoltenberg, a former Norwegian prime minister, took over Wednesday as secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Donald Tusk just stepped down as prime minister of Poland to start as chairman of the European Council, which groups leaders of the 28 EU nations.

Italian Foreign Minister Federica Mogherini is poised to become the EU's top diplomat.

Nominees to run the European Commission — the EU's executive branch — are currently enduring parliamentary hearings to confirm who is fit to oversee free trade talks with the United States, run the world's most-powerful antitrust authority, defend the stability of the euro currency and manage a vast range of other policy areas for the union's more than 500 million citizens.

No pressure.

"We have an exceptional opportunity, but also an obligation, to make a fresh start," Jean-Claude Juncker, the commission's incoming president, said as he announced his new team.

A long-serving prime minister of Luxembourg, Juncker pledged the EU head office would "get down to work to address the very difficult geopolitical situation, to strengthen economic recovery and to build a united Europe that delivers jobs and growth for its citizens."

But for all the talk of new eras and fresh initiatives, a deep unease is permeating the cluster of glass-and-steel EU buildings around the commission's X-shaped headquarters and the low-rise sprawl of NATO offices across town.

Europe is facing a confluence of internal and external crises that threatens to undermine that post-war order.

A bellicose Russia is growling across NATO's eastern borders while the Islamic State's rampage through Syria and Iraq could unleash a bloodthirsty homecoming for hundreds of its fighters born and bred in Europe.

Domestically, radical new political groups are threatening to overturn the old political order as they feed off voter discontent over prolonged economic stagnation.

"We face serious challenges," Stoltenberg told reporters during his opening news conference, with typical Nordic understatement. "Our democracies must continue to rise to each and every challenge."

After months of dithering over how to respond to Russia's military interference in Ukraine, NATO leaders last month agreed to draw a line in the sand.

They warned President Vladimir Putin that any attack on the alliance's eastern members would be met with a response from all 28 allies, and announced the formation of a "spearhead" rapid reaction force to thwart any Russian designs on Poland or the Baltic states.

However, doubts quickly emerged about the alliance's ability to follow through on its tough words.

Years of defense cuts have left many European allies struggling to muster a credible armed deterrent.

This week, a series of embarrassing military mishaps forced Germany to acknowledge it can't meet NATO readiness targets. Technical failures on a plane carrying instructors to train Kurdish fighters in Iraq stranded them in Bulgaria. Similar problems saw German medical supplies destined for Ebola-stricken West Africa stuck in Spain's Canary Islands. Most of the aging air force is grounded.

Other allies face similar problems.

At a meeting in Lithuania last month, several military commanders from NATO countries — including the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey — raised questions about the alliance's ability to deploy thousands of troops within 48 hours as foreseen in the spearhead force plan, the German magazine Der Spiegel reported.

NATO officials in Brussels confirmed the doubts and acknowledged it could be months before the force takes shape as the plan is bounced between various committees.

Although they recognized weaknesses in the alliance's eastern defenses, they dismissed a reported boast by Putin that Russian forces could take Warsaw or Baltic state capitals within days.

"He puts out more bullshit than we do," said one official at alliance HQ. "NATO does have the capabilities and, if push came to shove, there are allies with the forces that can do the job — the Americans, the French, the Brits."

The official pointed to the imminent deployment of US battle tanks to Poland and the Baltic states and other reinforcements in the region as evidence NATO is standing by its eastern neighbors.

At his news conference on Wednesday, Stoltenberg also stressed that NATO is prepared to go to Turkey's aid should it face attack from IS forces over the border in Syria and Iraq.

"Collective defense … is something which is also going to be applied if Turkey is in any way attacked," he said.

Although several NATO allies have joined the US-led airstrike campaign against IS in Iraq, the alliance itself is not involved. It has deployed anti-missile units in southern Turkey, however.

The heightened international tension may actually strengthen NATO by giving a new sense of purpose to an alliance forged during the Cold War.

For the European Union, the wildfires on its eastern and southern flank have broken out when the bloc is still facing a deep internal crisis.

Europeans' faith in the integration project launched to tie former enemies together after World War II has been shaken by the euro zone debt crisis, which plunged several countries into deep recession, triggered record unemployment and drove a rift between northern and southern EU members.

In response, voters have turned to new parties virulently opposed to further EU integration. Recent elections have seen major gains for anti-EU parties from Britain to Greece and Sweden to Italy.

Latest polls show nationalist leader Marine Le Pen — who rails against the EU and has backed Putin in Ukraine — could come first in France's presidential elections scheduled for 2017, although she'd probably be defeated if moderate voters on the left and right were to gang up in a second-round run-off.

In Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron has seen two of his Conservative lawmakers defect in recent days to the anti-EU upstart UK Independence Party.

Under pressure from euroskeptics, Cameron says he'll hold a referendum on Britain leaving the EU in 2017 if he's still in power then. Polls suggest the vote would be close.

For many in Brussels, the prospect of a British exit, or Brexit, would be fraught with danger, leaving Europe's strongest military power isolated from its neighbors, weakening links between Europe and the United States and creating a precedent for a wider EU breakup.

"A Brexit would be terribly destabilizing," said one senior EU official who spoke on condition of anonymity, adding that the new EU team faces three priorities: the stagnating economy, the mess in the neighborhood — Russia, IS, Turkey and the Kurds — and the Brexit.

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The new team is a compromise. Mogherini is a Middle East specialist who’s been criticized for being soft on Russia. Tusk's Polish government was among the most hawkish on the need to stand up to Putin.

Juncker has sought to overhaul the 28-member European Commission by creating a potentially powerful inner group of vice presidents he hopes can make the EU more effective and ultimately recover public support.

But they will have to cope with competing demands from member governments as the French and Italians seek to relax budget discipline rules in the face of German resistance, Cameron strives to claw back power from Brussels, and richer nations wrangle with poorer ones over funding and the free movement of labor.

"Normally new leaders get 100 days to prove themselves," says Piotr Kaczynski, associate research fellow at the Europeum institute for European policy in Prague. "Here they will have to be ready on day one. This will be something different from what we have seen before."