NEXT week's NATO summit in Lisbon is likely to be one of the most
crucial in the 61-year history of the military alliance. Officially, the
28 members are meeting mostly to approve a new “strategic concept” that
frames the threats NATO faces and the ways in which it should defend
against them over the next decade.
It is 11 years since the last such concept was adopted. In that
period, both the world and NATO itself have changed greatly. But
attention will focus on more immediate worries: above all, the prospects
for the long war in Afghanistan, the response to Iran's nuclear
ambitions and the need to “reset” NATO's ambiguous relations with its
old enemy, Russia, after the chill caused by the invasion of Georgia in
2008. All this comes at a time of tumbling European defence spending and
fears that America, preoccupied by strategic competition with China and
by global terrorism, sees NATO as less vital to its security than in
the past.
The new strategic concept itself should be easy to agree to. It is a
sensible document, the result of a report drafted by a “group of
experts” led by a former American secretary of state, Madeleine
Albright. Last month NATO officials were claiming that it was “98%
there”, and although members continue to differ on some issues, such as
the alliance's future nuclear posture (of which more later), those will
be papered over in Lisbon.
At the heart of the document is a restatement of NATO's core
commitment to collective defence, enshrined in Article 5 of the North
Atlantic Treaty. However, it recognises that there is little likelihood
of an orthodox military assault across the alliance's borders. Most of
the threats NATO faces are of the unconventional kind: from terrorism,
rogue states with weapons of mass destruction, disruption of global
supply lines, or cyber attacks on critical infrastructure such as power
grids.
It is particularly hard for the alliance to decide when threats of
this kind reach a level of seriousness that warrants an Article 5
response. NATO's bullish secretary-general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen,
formerly prime minister of Denmark, says there is nothing wrong with a
bit of “constructive ambiguity”. Others say that NATO will know the
moment when it sees it, as happened when Article 5 was invoked for the
first time after the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001. But what
about a big cyber-assault? At least at first, it may be impossible to
tell who the instigators are.
The alliance will want to show its determination to press ahead with a
territorial shield against ballistic missiles. Mr Rasmussen thinks this
should convince members' sometimes sceptical publics that NATO can
protect them against new threats. In the past, ballistic-missile defence
(BMD) has been bedevilled by uncertainty over the technology, arguments
about where the radars and interceptors should be put and the fear in
some countries (most of all in Germany) of upsetting Russia, which still
insists that the ultimate aim of a BMD system in Europe is to undermine
its nuclear deterrent.
The Bush administration angered the Kremlin by planning to place
long-range interceptors in Poland. By contrast, Barack Obama's
administration has proposed the Phased Adaptive Approach, which will
deploy tried and tested theatre-of-war systems as territorial defences,
starting with the sea-based Aegis and moving on to land-based SM-3
missiles a few years later.
As well as being cheaper—Mr Rasmussen reckons that the cost will not
exceed $300m over ten years—the new approach is clearly designed to deal
with a potential Iranian missile threat, rather than bother the
Russians. Mr Rasmussen would like NATO to say explicitly that defending
against an attack from Iran is “an essential military mission”. But that
could cause problems for Turkey, which has been asked to be one of the
first hosts for the BMD system's powerful X-band radars, but does not
want to jeopardise its growing regional influence or its increasing
bilateral trade and energy ties with Iran.
Rather than see BMD as an obstacle to getting on better with Russia,
NATO now thinks it can become something positive. With support from the
Americans, the alliance has extended a hand to Russia, suggesting it
could collaborate in the system. The technical and political
difficulties are formidable, but co-operation is now seen as not just a
way to soothe Russian prickliness, but a means of transforming the
relationship from mutual suspicion and occasional crises into genuine
long-term partnership.
To Russia with love
There is some excitement that Russia's president, Dmitry Medvedev,
after his meeting in Deauville last month with France's Nicolas Sarkozy
and Germany's Angela Merkel, has accepted an invitation to come to
Lisbon. There he will attend the first meeting of the NATO-Russia
Council, which was created in 2002, since the row over Georgia.
Nobody is expecting Mr Medvedev to sign up to BMD just yet. But given
the range of common interests that NATO and Russia have—from slowing
the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to preventing conflicts
in the Eurasian region and fighting terrorism, maritime piracy and the
illegal drugs trade—there is hope that something constructive can be
forged. In particular, Russia may agree to be more helpful in
Afghanistan, providing helicopters, training for the Afghan army and
secure supply routes for NATO's military equipment. Although NATO will
maintain its “open door” policy for new members, it will be a long time
before Georgia can meet the requirements of membership, while Ukraine
remains uncertain whether it even wants to join: thus removing, at least
for the foreseeable future, one source of tension with Russia.
In a recent report for the International Institute for Strategic
Studies, Igor Yurgens and Oksana Antonenko argue that there is also,
from Russia's point of view, much to be gained from a new accommodation
with NATO. It would advance the cause of domestic reform and accelerate
the much-needed modernisation of Russia's armed forces by allowing more
technology sharing with the West. It would also allow resources to be
applied to real and emerging threats, rather than to imaginary old ones.
A recent poll carried out by the Pew Research Centre found that 40% of
Russians had a favourable view of NATO, compared with only 24% last
year. That said, deeply embedded suspicions of NATO within Russia's
military establishment, as well as the populist nationalism of Vladimir
Putin, the prime minister, will make for stuttering progress.
Alternatives to nuclear?
Assuming that the BMD plan goes ahead, it may further complicate one
very tricky issue for the alliance—the rumbling argument over its
nuclear posture. NATO insiders say that some member countries have begun
to see BMD as an alternative to nuclear deterrence, not as a complement
to it.
The trouble started in Germany after the election last year, when
the strongly anti-nuclear Free Democrats (FDP) drove a hard bargain
before entering the coalition government led by Mrs Merkel. Emboldened
by Mr Obama's Prague speech in April 2009 that talked of a world
eventually free of nuclear weapons, Guido Westerwelle, the FDP's leader
and Germany's foreign minister, committed his government to the
unilateral removal of all nuclear weapons from German soil. Mr
Westerwelle wilfully ignored the president's rider that the conditions
for “global zero” were unlikely to occur in his lifetime, and that
America would continue to need a “safe, secure and effective arsenal” to
maintain nuclear deterrence.
The German démarche creates all sorts of problems. NATO has
cut the number of tactical nuclear weapons it deploys by more than 85%
since the early 1990s, and now has only about 200 aircraft-delivered
gravity (ie, non-guided) bombs left in Europe, stationed with American
and allied air crews in Germany, Holland, Belgium, Italy and Turkey.
Although of doubtful utility, these weapons are still considered by most
of the alliance—especially the new members from eastern Europe and the
Baltic, alarmed by the aggressiveness of recent Russian exercises—to
symbolise the umbilical coupling of America's strategic nuclear forces
to the defence of Europe.
In a paper published earlier this year by the Centre for European
Reform, a think-tank in London, George Robertson (a former NATO
secretary-general), Franklin Miller and Kori Schake (defence policy
experts who served in the Bush administration) argued that Germany was
opening a Pandora's box by trying to provoke a debate on matters that
had long been considered settled. They also accused Germany both of
morally unacceptable free-riding (it is happy to be protected by
America's nuclear umbrella, but unwilling to share any responsibility)
and of forcing other allies either to follow suit or to make the
difficult political case for nuclear deterrence to voters.
The authors noted that in contrast to NATO's deep reductions in its
tactical nuclear arsenal, Russia, according to the Federation of
American Scientists, has 5,400 tactical nuclear weapons, of which
roughly 2,000 are deployed and can be dispatched in various ways.
Moreover, Russia has not only resisted all NATO's efforts to start
discussing the imbalance in their arsenals, but has recently elevated
the importance of nuclear weapons in its military doctrine as a response
to the weakness of its conventional forces.
The row over nuclear issues will be put off, however, to another day.
The five principles drawn up by Hillary Clinton, America's secretary of
state, at a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Tallinn earlier this
year appear to have been accepted for now. These are that NATO remains a
nuclear alliance; as a nuclear alliance, member states share risks and
responsibilities; NATO should reduce the role and number of nuclear
weapons; the allies should pursue territorial missile defence; and NATO
should draw up plans for future arms-control talks with the Russians.
The nuclear issue, however, will not go away. The Luftwaffe's Tornado
strike aircraft, which can carry either a conventional or a nuclear
payload, are due to retire from service by 2015, and Germany appears to
have no intention of equipping the Typhoons that will replace them with
the avionics that would give them the same dual capability.
Hard pounding
Once the new strategic concept is adopted, the summit will turn to
the alliance's most pressing problem—the uncertain prospects of the
campaign in Afghanistan and the lessons so far drawn from it. Although
America is undertaking its own progress review next month, it is
unlikely to draw very different conclusions from those the summit
reaches in Lisbon. The emphasis will be on the regained military
momentum of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), as the
American troop surge begins to have an impact on the ground. There will
also be an upbeat account of the timetable for handing responsibility to
Afghan forces, as an increased supply of trainers supposedly builds up
their capabilities and numbers.
Among the lessons learned will be the need for NATO to develop what
it calls “the comprehensive approach” to crisis management—bringing
together military and civil resources by working more closely with
partner countries (more than 20 are contributing troops to ISAF), other
international bodies (such as the United Nations and the European
Union), NGOs and local authorities. In particular, there is now a
feeling that as the ferocity of the insurgency in Afghanistan grew, NATO
did not provide the security necessary for civilians with experience in
economic development, governance, judicial institutions and police
training to go on doing their work.
To many in NATO, Afghanistan is a crucible for the alliance. This
year the NATO-led coalition has suffered over 600 deaths, the highest
number since the American invasion in 2001 and part of a steadily
mounting trend since 2003. Nobody talks of victory any longer, but of
what General David Petraeus, the commander of ISAF, calls “Afghanistan
good enough”. Views on how NATO has performed there are decidedly mixed.
On the negative side, the Americans (and those like the British, the
Canadians and the Danes who have taken disproportionately heavy
casualties) have been frustrated by the reluctance of some countries to
put their forces in harm's way and by the maddening caveats that dictate
their rules of engagement. One NATO insider observes that such problems
arise not always because those allies “are chicken, but because they
don't have the right equipment for war-fighting conditions”. That is no
less damning a criticism, reflecting the toll on the alliance's fighting
capability of inadequate or poorly conceived defence spending by too
many of its members (see table). The war is also becoming increasingly
Americanised, partly because of Mr Obama's surge, but also because a few
NATO members, notably the Dutch and the Canadians, are bringing home
their combat troops (while still, it seems, contributing trainers).
According to almost every opinion poll, public support for staying in
the fight is dwindling across Europe.
More positively, NATO is still in Afghanistan after nine long years,
many of them characterised by America's neglect of the campaign while it
was bogged down in Iraq. Even today, nearly a third of the forces in
Afghanistan are non-American, most of them from Europe. Mr Rasmussen has
also been more successful than expected in persuading members to meet
Mr Obama's request last year for 10,000 additional troops. At every
bilateral meeting he has banged the drum for more.
It remains an open question whether NATO can or should mount another
such mission out of area. It is still a regional, not a global,
organisation, but threats to its members can come from anywhere in the
world. That said, it is hard to imagine NATO wanting to tackle anything
as tough or as complex as Afghanistan again.
NATO's record there provides ammunition for both sides of the debate
about its future. Many (possibly including Robert Gates, America's
defence secretary) agreed with an article by Fred Kaplan, a commentator,
in Slate, an online magazine, last February suggesting that,
although America had gained from having fighting allies in Afghanistan,
it had been wrong to let NATO lead the mission. Dragging in member
countries that would rather not be there, he wrote, served nobody's
interests.
Eric Edelman, an undersecretary of defence for policy in the Bush
administration, says that Afghanistan has shown the limits of what NATO
can do. In “Understanding America's Contested Primacy”, a pamphlet for
the Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington-based
think-tank, he argues that although NATO still has value as a regional
alliance, for demographic, economic and cultural reasons it will be
increasingly hard pressed “to generate substantial useful military
capability”. He recommends developing partnerships with countries such
as India, Brazil and Australia, which may be willing and able to do more
than America's traditional allies, and which are in parts of the world
that reflect today's security preoccupations.
Others see it differently. America's ambassador to the alliance, Ivo
Daalder, believes that there is little support within the organisation
for NATO “narrowing its ambition”. He also says that there is no “either
or” between America's commitment to NATO and its search for other
partners round the world. Mr Daalder adds: “This administration believes
in strengthening alliances and partnerships—including NATO. You don't
tackle things like Iran, climate change, proliferation, BMD or
cyber-threats on your own.”
In the 20 years since the end of the cold war NATO's obituary has
been written many times, so far always prematurely. In a world of fewer
dragons but a great many more snakes, it can look clumsy. Yet it carries
on, attempting, as next week, to reinvent itself a little every decade
or so. NATO has more members than ever and other countries wish to join
it. Even the most critical Americans admit they would miss it if it was
not there. And whatever its failings, most of NATO's members still see
it as the cornerstone of their security and the irreplaceable bond that
joins America to Europe. After 61 years, the alliance shows signs of
wear and tear, but it endures.
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