Global NATO
Ivo Daalder
and James Goldgeier
From Foreign Affairs,
September/October 2006
Summary: The advent of a new global politics after the
Cold War has led NATO to expand its geographic reach and the range of its
operations. Now, NATO must extend its membership to any democratic state that
can help it fulfill its new responsibilities. Only a
truly global alliance can address the global challenges of the day.
Ivo Daalder
is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. James Goldgeier
is Professor of Political Science at George
Washington University
and an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
REACHING OUT
With little fanfare -- and even less
notice -- the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has gone global. Created to
protect postwar Western Europe from the Soviet Union, the alliance is now seeking to bring
stability to other parts of the world. In the process, it is extending both its
geographic reach and the range of its operations. In recent years, it has
played peacekeeper in Afghanistan,
trained security forces in Iraq,
and given logistical support to the African Union's mission in Darfur. It assisted the tsunami
relief effort in Indonesia
and ferried supplies to victims of Hurricane Katrina in the United States and to those of a massive
earthquake in Pakistan.
Nato's expanded ambit is a result of the
new global politics that emerged after the Cold War. Today,
terrorists born in Riyadh and trained in Kandahar hatch deadly plots in Hamburg to fly airplanes into buildings in New York. Such
interconnection means that developments in one place affect the security,
prosperity, and well-being of citizens everywhere. Nato has recognized that the best (and at times the
only) defense against such remote dangers is to
tackle them at their source. Such forward defense
often requires a global military reach: helicopters to deliver supplies to
disaster zones and evacuate the injured; command, control, and reconnaissance
capabilities to sustain peacekeeping missions; and experienced military
officers to train local security forces. As the world's premier multinational
military organization, comprising many prosperous nations with a vested
interest in maintaining global stability, NATO is uniquely suited to meeting
such demands.
At the same time, with U.S. forces
stretched thin in Iraq and European states failing to invest enough to
participate significantly in operations far away from home, NATO is struggling
to fulfill even its current commitments. And while
the alliance has increasingly recognized the necessity of operating far from Europe -- or "out of area," in NATO parlance --
it has been limited by the requirement that its member states be North American
or European.
Nato leaders are expected to address
this problem at a summit in Riga,
Latvia, in
November. They will consider a proposal to redefine the alliance's role by
deepening relations with countries beyond the transatlantic community, starting
with partners such as Australia,
Japan, and New Zealand. A
key part of this effort is the proposal by the United
States and the United Kingdom to forge a
"global partnership" between NATO and non-European states that will
provide a forum for expanded dialogue with other major democratic countries.
Although this initiative is a good
first step, it does not go far enough. Nato's next
move must be to open its membership to any democratic state in the world that
is willing and able to contribute to the fulfillment
of NATO's new responsibilities. Only a truly global alliance can address the
global challenges of the day.
FOR EURO EYES
ONLY
The central strategic objective of U.S. foreign policy during the twentieth century
was to prevent any one power from dominating Europe.
That was the reason the United
States fought two world wars on the continent
and stayed engaged with it throughout the Cold War.
Nato, created in 1949, when communism
threatened the security and stability of Europe,
was an essential part of that effort. The signing of its founding North
Atlantic Treaty represented both a direct commitment by the United States to come to Europe's defense if the Soviet Union
ever advanced across the continent and a way to persuade fragile European
governments to resist the spread of communist ideology at home. The treaty's
European focus was underscored by Article 10, which opened the door to future
NATO membership only to European countries, and Article 6, which limited the
alliance's geographic reach to being "on the territory of any of the
Parties in Europe or North America, on the Algerian Departments of France, on
the territory of or on the Islands under the jurisdiction of any of the Parties
in the North Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer," and to
"forces, vessels and aircraft" of the member states operating within these
geographic perimeters. The treaty produced a strictly transatlantic community;
collective defense commitments were not to extend to
any colonial possessions or other affiliated territory beyond the immediate North Atlantic area. During the Cold War, the alliance
expanded from 12 to 16 members -- with Greece,
Turkey, and West Germany joining in the 1950s and Spain in 1982.
Some 40 years after NATO's founding,
the Iron Curtain that had divided Europe fell,
and the continent began to be reunited. Nato
was essential to this consolidation. It incorporated the unified Germany, helped
put an end to a brutal war in the Balkans, and opened its doors to former foes
from the Warsaw Pact. The alliance's ranks grew to 19 members when the Czech Republic,
Hungary, and Poland
joined in 1999 and to 26 members five years later with the addition of seven
new democracies from central and eastern Europe. As it
expanded, NATO helped the historically fractious Europe
become a peaceful, united, and democratic continent.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
With the emergence of a Europe whole
and free in the 1990s, the strategic purpose of the United States' European engagement
was essentially fulfilled. And so the United States spent much of the
decade struggling to define how to use its power. Washington
debated its role in preventing ethnic conflict and genocide and wondered
whether the U.S.
military should henceforth be used primarily for humanitarian intervention and postconflict stabilization. The attacks of September 11,
2001, put an abrupt end to that discussion; the global nature of the challenges
confronting the United
States had become obvious to its leaders and
the public.
This new reality transformed not
only U.S.
foreign policy but also the role of history's most successful alliance. On
September 12, 2001, NATO members took the unprecedented step of invoking the
North Atlantic Treaty's collective defense
provisions, under which an attack against one alliance member is deemed to be
an attack against all of them. At first, the Bush administration rejected any
direct NATO involvement in military operations in Afghanistan. But it later realized
that such involvement was necessary to help it meet the challenges of the
global age, particularly because the deployment of forces to Iraq left the United
States needing more help in securing and rebuilding Afghanistan.
In August 2003, NATO formally took
charge of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which is tasked
with helping to provide security in post-Taliban Afghanistan. Although the ISAF
initially operated in the relative safety of the capital and its environs, the force has steadily expanded its responsibility and reach
throughout Afghanistan,
including into the dangerous southern section of the country. Nato's presence in the country has consequently grown from
5,000 troops at the beginning of operations to 9,000 troops today, and plans
call for further expansion to 15,000 troops by the end of 2006.
Nato's command of the operation in Afghanistan is by no means the only example of
its current involvement outside of Europe.
Despite divisions within the alliance over the war in Iraq, NATO forces have trained 1,500 Iraqi
military officers and coordinated the delivery of much-needed military
equipment to Iraq's
security forces. Nato
airlifted 5,000 African Union troops into Darfur and helped rotate the forces that are
stationed there. It has provided training to au officers and contributed
technical assistance to the au mission at its headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
The United States and its
European allies "now find that our entire agenda is pivoting from an
inward focus on Europe to an outward focus," Nicholas Burns, the U.S.
undersecretary of state for political affairs, said last December.
"U.S.-European relations are increasingly a function of events in the
Middle East, Asia and Africa."
As NATO's geographic range has
expanded, so has the scope of its operations; the alliance now takes on jobs
that are no longer strictly related to territorial integrity and security but
pertain to international stability more broadly. Last year, for example, NATO
airlifted 3,500 tons of supplies donated by alliance members and other
countries into the earthquake-stricken region of Kashmir
and provided medical and other relief. It also responded to the tsunami in Indonesia by donating material that was used in
the construction of four new bridges, and it supplied relief items, such as
food, water-purification units, generators, and helicopters, to the victims of
Hurricane Katrina in the United
States.
GROWING PAINS
Clearly, NATO is changing. But is it
changing enough? If the point of the alliance is no longer territorial defense but bringing together countries with similar values
and interests to combat global problems, then NATO no longer needs to have an
exclusively transatlantic character. Other democratic countries share NATO's
values and many common interests -- including Australia, Brazil, Japan, India,
New Zealand, South Africa, and South Korea -- and all of them can greatly
contribute to NATO's efforts by providing additional military forces or
logistical support to respond to global threats and needs. Nato operations in the Balkans and Afghanistan have benefited greatly
from contributions made by non-NATO members. Australia,
Japan, and South Korea have sent substantial numbers of
troops to Iraq
in support of efforts by NATO members to stabilize the country. Together with
other non-NATO democracies, such as Brazil,
India, and South Africa,
they have also contributed significantly to peacekeeping operations around the
globe.
Nato has begun to recognize the need for
strengthening and formalizing its relations with countries beyond the
transatlantic community. Nato
leaders began to discuss how to relate to nonmember
countries at the alliance's meeting of foreign ministers in April. "Since
NATO is having its operations over a strategic distance, it means that there is
also the need for a dialogue with other interested nations," NATO
Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer
declared. He suggested that NATO become "an alliance with global
partners."
These remarks are a welcome sign
that NATO recognizes the need to go global. But partners are not the same as
allies, and dialogue is not the same as multinational planning, exercises, and
operations. Nato should see
these global partnerships not as a final objective but as a first step toward
formal membership. The alliance adopted a similarly staggered approach in the
mid-1990s when it began to work with former Warsaw Pact countries through its
Partnership for Peace, which started out by allowing those countries'
militaries to participate in training exercises and certain peacekeeping
operations with alliance members. Although initially some saw the partnership
as an alternative to NATO membership, it soon became a means to joining NATO. Nato's new global-partnership project should play a similar
role by preparing the alliance to transform itself from a transatlantic entity
into a global one. Nato need
not decide in advance which countries it would invite to join its ranks; it
need only decide that membership should in principle be open to non-European
countries.
Broadening membership is preferable
to creating ad hoc coalitions. For one thing, European militaries are stretched
thin by the many new missions they are called on to perform in Afghanistan and in Sudan,
Congo, and other parts of Africa. They would benefit from having more -- and more
capable -- allies to share the increasing demand for military forces. For
another, formal membership would strengthen the ability of countries to work
together in joint military operations. It is precisely NATO's interoperability
-- the result of joint planning, training, and fighting -- that allows its
members to interact smoothly and efficiently when a crisis erupts. The United States has a huge technological advantage
over its allies, but the potential of U.S. troops is maximized when they
are involved in operations with other troops with whom they have trained on a
regular basis.
In an expanded NATO, a U.S. general would
continue to serve as the supreme allied commander, and a non-American, and
perhaps in the future a non-European, would serve as secretary-general. To help
make future enlargement possible, NATO should take intermediate steps, akin to
those it took prior to welcoming new members from eastern
Europe. These could include the proposed global partnership; the establishment
of formal military liaisons between partner countries and the Supreme
Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, in Mons, Belgium;
and the creation of the NATO Global Partnership Council, which would be similar
to the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, a forum for regular dialogue between
NATO members and 20 partner countries from Europe and Central Asia.
In considering how to enlarge NATO
globally, there is no need to change the basic parameters of the structure that
has served the allies so well for so many years. But the North Atlantic Treaty
must be amended, particularly Article 10, which currently limits new membership
in NATO to European countries. As of now, a number of countries with a
questionable commitment to democracy and human rights, such as Belarus, are covered by Article 10, while
stalwart democracies, such as Australia
and Japan,
are not. Yet a shared commitment to shared values should be a more relevant
determinant of membership than geography. Any like-minded country that
subscribes to NATO's goals should be able to apply for membership in the
alliance -- just as central and eastern European countries have been doing
since the collapse of communism.
Some people fear that an enlarged
NATO with a broader reach would struggle to reach a consensus about when and
how to act. There may be some truth to this, but the difficulty should not be
exaggerated. The addition of ten new members over the past decade has not
affected NATO's ability to act, even though skeptics
feared that it would. Part of the reason enlargement has not bred irresolution
is that NATO has developed a decision-making process that allows for the
emergence of consensus without agreement: rather than blocking a decision,
dissenting member states may append a footnote to it or abstain from
contributing to whatever operation may ensue. Such practices would continue and
likely expand if the alliance's membership were to become larger and more
global. The search for consensus can also be enhanced if the major countries,
starting with the United
States, invest the time and energy necessary
to reach agreement. Leaders must try, and try again, to bring alliance members
together rather than abandon the process and go it alone.
CORE COMPETENCIES
Besides raising questions of
efficacy, changes in NATO's composition and scope will also raise questions
about the alliance's core purpose. As was true when NATO expanded eastward, in
the 1990s, the most controversial aspect of any effort to enlarge the
alliance's membership will be how such enlargement might affect the security
guarantee in Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty.
Some current NATO members,
particularly some of the newer ones, might worry that geographic enlargement
will weaken the existing collective defense
commitments of the alliance. However, no NATO member currently faces a military
threat from another country, much less the type of threat that led to NATO's
establishment in 1949. In
the unlikely event that such a threat did materialize, nothing about NATO's
enhanced reach would in any way weaken its collective defense
commitments.
The principle enshrined in Article
5, that an attack on one is an attack on all, must remain at the core of the
alliance. For the United States,
this may not be much of an issue, perhaps even less so than was its undertaking
to defend Latvia and Poland, countries that prior to joining NATO were not covered by
the U.S.
security umbrella. After all, whether formally or informally,
the United States already
guarantees the security of countries such as Australia,
Israel, Japan, New Zealand,
and South Korea.
But would Spain or Estonia want to make such a commitment to, say, Australia or Japan? Perhaps
not. Then again, perhaps so. Even though
Article 5 considers an attack on one member to be an attack on all members,
each member is required only to take "such action as it deems
necessary" -- a provision that effectively ensures that the use of force is
never automatic. In fact, Article 5 has only been invoked once -- following
9/11 -- and only a handful of NATO members participated in the subsequent
military action (which was conducted under U.S. rather than NATO command).
Article 5 is designed to apply only in exceptional circumstances -- when an
ally is attacked militarily -- and one would hope that any NATO member would
come to the assistance of a friendly country under attack, whether it was a
formal ally or not. After all, in August 1990, all NATO countries contributed
to the grand coalition that responded to Iraq's
invasion of Kuwait,
a state that is not even a democracy.
And enlarged NATO would not
undermine the United Nations or the European Union, neither of which has the
kind of military capacity that NATO possesses. Because NATO essentially is a
military alliance -- albeit one with a democratic political foundation -- even
an enlarged alliance would not become another un.
Rather, NATO would become a more capable and legitimate adjunct to the un by helping to implement and enforce its decisions. If, as
in the case of Kosovo in 1999, the un is unwilling to
authorize action against a threat to international peace and security, NATO
might have to act anyway. In such an event, a more global NATO, backed by the
world's leading democracies, would enjoy greater legitimacy, and that should
allay the fears of those committed to a strong international order. Nor is
there any reason to worry that the expansion of NATO's operations and
membership would undermine the eu's increasing global
engagement. Not only does the eu lack the kind of
military capacity that it needs to operate far from Europe,
but much of its work in postconflict reconstruction
and policing would complement rather than compete with a global NATO.
Creating a global NATO is not about
saving the alliance from obsolescence. The issue is not whether NATO goes out
of area or out of business. The issue is how the world's premier international
military organization should adapt to the demands of the times in a way that
advances the interests not just of the transatlantic community but of a global
community of democracies dependent on global stability. Global threats cannot
be tackled by a regional organization. Nato
has worked well in the past because its founding treaty demands that members be
committed both to the political and economic principles underpinning democracy
and to the common security challenges faced by the alliance. It would be
foolish not to welcome into the alliance other countries that can make the same
commitments and help confront new global challenges.