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NATO at a crossroads.

Article Excerpt
NATO stands at a crossroads: the 26-member alliance is simultaneously engaged in the most difficult military mission it has ever undertaken--its first ever ground war--while also undergoing pressure to transform itself in an uncertain world. In particular, NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan is being widely held up as the ultimate test of the Alliance in its post-Cold War incarnation. Success in Afghanistan, it is claimed, will also secure the future of the alliance, while failure could lead to a muted 60th anniversary next year and even an end to NATO itself.

Anti-communism was the foundation of the Cold War and the rationale for NATO. In the post-Cold War environment NATO has expanded its ambit and developed a body of standards, structures, knowledge, and protocols for complex multinational military coalitions that is unrivalled in history. But the alliance continues to operate within a strategic concept that is stuck in the last century, and has so far failed to articulate a truly convincing rationale and coherent strategy for this century. By choosing the right path now, NATO has the potential to be an agent for change that benefits human security both inside and outside the alliance.

Changes Needed

Changes to the strategy in Afghanistan and a new Strategic Concept are both urgently needed if NATO is retain its credibility and legitimacy, within the eyes of the wider world and citizens in member states.

It's important to stress that this is not the first time that NATO finds its tanks parked at a crossroads. Similar debates over NATO's role and structure have arisen in the past over issues such as the Vietnam War, Pershing missiles in Europe, the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, Kosovo, and most recently the response to 9/11 and the original decisions to intervene in Iraq and Afghanistan. Other, long-running NATO debates have until now been more like exit-less roundabouts than forks in the road. They include:

* Transatlantic burden sharing--the debate about which countries are pulling their weight is one of the longest running in the alliance. The debate is now widening beyond defense spending to include contributions to non-military international public goods (such as aid to developing countries and reducing emissions of climate-damaging pollutants). European countries tend to be better at the latter, while the United States military budget continues to dwarf those in Europe.

* Interoperability--a corollary to the burden-sharing debate is the "capabilities gap" between the United States and its allies. This U.S. lead in military technology makes working together difficult for deployed forces, especially in today's complex and difficult missions;

* Enlargement--the process of enlargement (discussed further below) was designed to project stability to central Europe and also led to a number of important new cooperative initiatives aimed at strengthening ties with former adversaries. However, enlargement was controversial in the 1990s, and many foresaw the risk that it might eventually destabilize relations with Russia, something that is now happening with the proposed deployment of US. missile defense architecture in Poland and the Czech Republic;

* Out-of area versus collective defense--with NATO's involvement in Afghanistan--and previously in Bosnia and Kosovo--NATO is very much now "out of area," but again this was not inevitable during the debates that raged in the 1990s; and

* The role of France (in or...

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