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NATO:
Marching to Irrelevance?
Nikolas
K. Gvosdev
For
the first time in its history, the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization has rebuffed the request of one of its
members for assistance.
Invoking Article 4 of the Washington Treaty ("The
Parties will consult together whenever, in the opinion
of any of them, the territorial integrity, political
independence or security of any of the Parties is
threatened"), Turkey asked its allies to begin
defensive preparations in the event that war breaks out
in Iraq. This
request was eminently reasonable.
No matter whether NATO members are prepared to
support military action against Iraq, Turkey is a
front-line state, likely to be directly affected by any
spillover from the Iraqi maelstrom.
In the aftermath of Secretary Powell's
presentation at the United Nations, it is clear that a
desperate Saddam Hussein might use his remaining
biological and chemical weapons to target his neighbors.
Moreover, the emergence of any power vacuum in
Iraq could easily destabilize Turkey's southeastern
frontier, especially if accompanied by large refugee
flows across the border.
Yet three NATO members, comfortably located far
to the west from any potential crisis, decided that
Ankara's concerns did not need to be addressed, for fear
that accommodating Turkey's request might be interpreted
as support for a potential armed assault against
Baghdad.
NATO's
only raison d'ętre is to provide security for its
members. This commitment needs to be absolute. A dangerous precedent is being set whereby states that
themselves perceive no threat choose to ignore or
downplay the very real concerns of their fellow allies.
U. S. Ambassador to NATO Nicholas Burns is
correct to term this a "crisis of credibility"
for the alliance. One
can foresee a future where Denmark or Latvia, for
example, might decide that instability in the Maghreb—transnational
terrorism or illegal immigrant flows—that threatens
Spain or Italy did not require a concerted response from
the alliance as a whole.
Moreover, the implications for the new members of
NATO must be unsettling.
If some members of the alliance balk at providing
assistance to a fellow ally who feels itself to be under
threat, in this case from Iraq, are the Article 4 and 5
guarantees really worth the parchment on which they are
written? The
whole fabric of the alliance could easily unravel if
collective security is understood to be a salad bar,
with each ally picking and choosing when to render aid
and assistance. It
also sends a clear warning to other aspirant countries
located in troubled neighborhoods on the European
periphery (e. g., the Caucasus) that NATO is interested
in new members that will not
make any substantive demands on the alliance's
resources.
In
the end, France, Germany and Belgium may reverse their
stand and honor their obligations to take Turkey's
request seriously, but the damage has already been done.
To ensure Turkey's security, the United States
and other countries are prepared
to work "outside of NATO if necessary" in a
coalition of the willing.
Yet this calls into question the very necessity
of the alliance. NATO
is not just an excuse for a
bureaucracy; it must serve some practical function.
When
I was in college, and unsure of my postgraduate career
path, a number of well-meaning individuals counseled me
to attend law school, even though I had no interest in
practicing law. "It
doesn't matter," they replied.
"You can use a law degree in so many
different fields--you can teach, write, work for the
government…" In my mind, however, that missed the
point. The
primary purpose of attending law school is to prepare
one to practice law, no matter what the subsidiary
benefits may be. So
I am worried when people try to find new justifications
for NATO if its primary rationale for existence is no
longer clear, by citing the (very real) benefits of
interoperability and joint training and the
possibilities for creating "coalitions of the
willing." (An
argument put forth by my colleague John Hulsman in the
virtual pages of this magazine some months ago, at http://www.inthenationalinterest.com/Articles/Vol1Issue12/Vol1Issue12Huslman.html.)
However,
as I observed last June:
The recent Afghan campaign … convincingly demonstrated the degree
to which NATO has become irrelevant as a traditional
military alliance. The United States did not need to
turn to other NATO members to provide technologies or
capabilities that it lacked in order to successfully
carry out its operations. At the same time, neither
Kyrgyzstan nor Uzbekistan needed to be admitted into
NATO in order for the U.S. to obtain bases. Indeed,
America's bilateral ties — especially with Turkey and
Great Britain — are much more critical to U.S.
security interests than the multilateral alliance. (http://www.nationalreview.com/script/printpage.asp?ref=/comment/comment-gvosdev061202.asp)
Despite
the grandiose vision sketched at Prague, of a
"new" NATO dealing with out-of-area threats,
it is clear that NATO is continuing to evolve into a
more robust version of the OSCE.
That is not necessarily a negative development;
Europe still needs U.S. involvement to ensure its own
internal peace and security, and it remains in the
American interest to stabilize the European continent
and to facilitate Russia's ongoing integration into the
Euro-Atlantic community, so NATO does still have an
important role to play.
It is also clear, however, that NATO, as NATO,
cannot complement the United States as a partner for
dealing with global challenges to international
security. "Coalitions
of the willing" within NATO only go so far, and
potentially exclude non-European powers that might also
play a constructive role.
NATO cannot be indefinitely expanded and
commandeered to play a role that not all of its existing
members are comfortable assuming.
Indeed, the time may be arriving when we must
consider moving beyond the strictures of this Cold War
relic, building upon existing bilateral security
relationships (such as with Turkey and the United
Kingdom) and exploring new possibilities (such as with
India).
The
events of the past few days demonstrate that NATO cannot
be "reinvented."
Let it continue to safeguard the internal peace
of Europe. In
the meantime, let's use the "coalition of the
willing" now coalescing around aid to Turkey as the
foundation for a new security arrangement.
Nikolas
K. Gvosdev is editor of In
the National Interest.
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