#13
Defense News
17-23 December 2001
Keep NATO Relevant for the 21st Century
By Sean Kay and Joshua Spero
Sean Kay is assistant professor of politics and government at Ohio Wesleyan
University, Delaware, Ohio. Joshua Spero, a visiting assistant professor of
political science at Merrimack College, North Andover, Mass., served as senior
civilian strategic planner for European-NATO issues in the Joint Chiefs of Staff
from 1994-2000.
America and its European allies may be witnessing the functional end of NATO. This stark reality concerns the serious political disjunction over U.S.-allied warfighting strategy and NATO’s long-term military purpose.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell’s meeting with NATO foreign ministers on Dec. 6-7 in Brussels neither confronted these hard issues nor set a firm focus to strengthen allied military capabilities for the foreseeable future. This makes U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s visit to NATO headquarters on Dec. 18-19 all the more urgent for allied defense ministers to determine a long-term military strategy that uses NATO’s military capabilities much more effectively.
Resolution in Washington and alliance capitals this month must yield a coherent NATO strategy to unveil at its November 2002 Prague Summit to preserve NATO’s unique, integrated command and control capabilities to mobilize future coalitions against terrorism and other sources of regional instability.
Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the subsequent U.S.-led international coalition against terrorism in Afghanistan, it has become more critical to resolve mounting trans-Atlantic planning and warfighting divergences. After NATO’s first collective defense invocation on Sept. 12, America proceeded alone militarily, employing British and other forces sparingly.
Better use of multilateral NATO troop and equipment contributions, rather than bilateral efforts to generate international coalitions of the willing, may have alleviated today’s scrambling to plan combat, humanitarian and peace operations in Afghanistan and beyond. Washington need not have worried about NATO slowing military planning. Rather, America could have requested immediate and separate NATO contributions for combat, humanitarian and peace operations, while also building additional non-NATO coalitions.
Such a strategy would have put institutional resources and assets at America’s disposal more quickly from NATO, NATO-Partnership for Peace and NATO-Mediterranean Dialogue nations, averting intergovernmental and allied disputes like those seen in NATO’s 1999 Kosovo operation.
As the United States puts more focus on Asia, U.S. and European leaders still need to coordinate closely via NATO’s 50 year-old linkages. NATO defines the key multilateral trans-Atlantic security link with the only integrated politico-military command and control structures in the world for collective defense, operational planning and efficient training —reformed and enlarged for cooperative security during the 1990s. NATO now needs to serve as the pool to supply well-equipped, well-trained forces for future coalitions in and out of Europe.
If European governments want to continue playing significant international coalition roles, they must seriously modernize forces to project them to different parts of the world, reinforce U.S.-led operations or take the lead. Lessons from Afghanistan and the NATO-led operations in the Balkans show that aging European equipment cannot substitute for rapid collective defense commitments to deploy in coalitions of the willing, NATO-led or not.
Some NATO and non-NATO partner nations possess counter-terror experience that remains integral to future coalitions. What, then, should be done to augment NATO’s strengths to make the 2002 Czech-hosted summit a genuine watershed?
** Advance NATO-European Union politico-military planning and force contributions via a NATO-EU Partnership Coordination Cell. Synchronizing NATO-EU coalition-building enhances America’s global antiterrorist campaign and may reduce proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, ethnic conflict and narcotics trafficking.
Most importantly, NATO soon must establish clear requirements that future NATO members must meet to prove not only their collective defense contributions, but also their counter-terror capabilities.
** NATO-Russian relations must broaden more than politically, as the United States and European allies consider what kind of consultative mechanism they really want to implement for a Russia-North Atlantic Council.
Originally initiated by British Prime Minister Tony Blair and tacitly supported by Washington, the United States curtailed the consultation notion in Brussels on Dec. 6. Russia and NATO actually can do much more pragmatically and militarily. Naturally, America and European allies must maintain NATO’s military cohesiveness. However, by exploring a NATO-Russia contingency command headquarters concept in several locations, including Russia, and inclusive of NATO, EU, and non-NATO Partnership for Peace and Mediterranean Dialogue nations, NATO will confront more functionally global terrorism and other threats.
** NATO and America must advance cooperative planning that laid the critical groundwork for Afghanistan operations. Now, we need Partnership for Peace’s backbone extended more concertedly toward NATO-Mediterranean Dialogue nations, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Israel and Jordan.
Future international counter-terror missions comprising military and non-military components may not always involve Europeans. Yet, we must build on the cooperative lessons learned in Balkan enforcement operations and in Afghanistan.
These missions still involve NATO and non-NATO countries, including integral contributions from Latin American, African, Middle Eastern, and Asian Muslim and non-Muslim nations, providing important political and operational models necessary for 21st century challenges.
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