Editor's note: Peter Bergen is CNN's national security analyst and the author of "Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for bin Laden, from 9/11 to Abbottabad."

(CNN) -- It's the diplomatic equivalent of hosting both the World Cup and the World Series in the same country on the same weekend.

On Saturday President Obama welcomes the leaders of the world's most powerful countries to the G8 conference at his country retreat at Camp David in Maryland. And the next day he hosts some two dozen NATO heads of state in Chicago.

The challenges of this Diplopaloozaa include some complicated logistics: How do you get eight world leaders and their delegations comfortably situated in the rustic wood chalets that make up Camp David, and which has never hosted this many heads of state before?

And the challenges, of course, also involve trying to resolve some very knotty problems:

-- In a time of contracting budgets, what kinds of commitments are plausible for NATO countries to make to Afghanistan after the alliance withdraws all its combat troops from the country in 2014?

-- What to do about the civil war in Syria?

NATO has invited Pakistan President Asif Zardari to attend its summit, an important and symbolic development, given that its principal focus will be the future of Afghanistan. A discussion without the participation of its much larger neighbor, Pakistan, is a bit like trying to stage "Hamlet" without having Hamlet ever appear on the stage.

Read more on the NATO invitation

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http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/15/opinion/bergen-nato-g8-pakistan/index.html?hpt=hp_t2