The Future Of NATO: The Next 60 Years
While attention is focused on the G-20 summit taking place in London, another summit marking NATO’s 60th anniversary will take place in Strasbourg at the end of this week. At the age of 60, most human beings would be considering retiring (notwithstanding the ‘60 is the new 40’ paradigm). Naturally, the NATO summit begs the question of what the alliance is actually for.
NATO’s first secretary-general, Lord Ismay, stated that its purpose was ‘to keep the Americans in [Europe], the Russians out, and the Germans down’. More broadly, during the Cold War, NATO served as the main institutional Trans-Atlantic link, thereby cementing a Western alliance against the Soviet Union. Its main plank, Article 5, which stipulated that an attack on one member was an attack on all, helped keep the peace in Europe. This was a tremendous success, but after the Cold War, many questioned NATO’s raison d’etre.
NATO transformed itself into an offensive alliance when it launched attacks against the Bosnian Serbs in 1994-95, and against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (later Serbia and Montenegro) in 1999 to halt Belgrade’s military crackdown on the ethnic Albanians of Kosovo. But that war created great tensions within the alliance. NATO was thus conspicuously absent during the Iraq War, as the US largely chose to go it alone with a looser ‘coalition of the willing’. NATO has since found a new role in stabilising Afghanistan, but question marks linger over its future.
Below, I discuss the key questions facing the alliance:
What Is NATO For?
NATO still serves as the main Trans-Atlantic link. However, its perceived purpose differs from member to member. For the Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians, Poles and Balts, it is to prevent Russia from ever dominating them again. That said, the eastern Europeans have also seen NATO membership as a first step to EU membership, and a symbol of them rejoining the West. By comparison, older members of NATO now seem less worried about Russia. From this point of view, several roles for NATO are emerging:
• Fighting Islamic radicals/terrorists.
• Stabilising Afghanistan (and potentially other failed states, as seen in Bosnia and Kosovo).
• Combating piracy in the Indian Ocean.
• Providing international disaster relief (à la the Thunderbirds).
Of the above, the last three points are probably the most realistic for a military alliance. The first goal depends more on international intelligence and police co-operation. NATO planes are hardly going to bomb suspected terrorist safe-houses in suburban London.
How Far Should NATO Expand?
This is perhaps the biggest question. Within Greater Europe, Albania and Croatia have just been admitted, while Macedonia, Georgia and Ukraine are candidates. Of these, the last two are less likely to join. Indeed, the Russian war against Georgia last summer demonstrated the limits of Moscow’s tolerance of a pro-Western government in Tbilisi. However, the ultimate question is whether NATO should expand beyond Europe to become a truly global alliance.
To this end, there have been suggestions that Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Japan, India, Israel, New Zealand, South Africa, and South Korea could join.(see Foreign Affairs, September/October 2006). Several of these countries are already ‘Major Non-NATO Allies’ of the US, and integrating them would be rather straightforward.
However, there are drawbacks to a bigger, global NATO:
• The bigger NATO is, the more unwieldy it is, and the harder it will be to find consensus. Protecting sensitive military information among so many governments would also be more difficult (During the Kosovo conflict in 1999, there were suspicions that renegade French elements were leaking information to the Serbs). NATO would thus become a political rather than a military organisation.
• The bigger NATO is, the less the sense of shared threats. Japan and South Korea are very concerned about North Korea, but not concerned about instability in the Maghreb – a key concern of Spain and Italy. The eastern Europeans are most concerned about Russia, but not Iraq, a key focus of Turkey. Also, would Palestinian terror attacks against Israel-in-NATO be seen as an attack on NATO as a whole?
• The bigger NATO is, the more likely the formation of de facto regional NATOs-within-NATO, thereby defeating the whole point of creating a global alliance.
Should Russia Be Admitted To NATO?
Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski has suggested that Russia itself could join NATO under certain conditions. It is not clear how serious he is (some say he is toning down his well-known anti-Russian views to boost his chances of becoming secretary-general), but let us assume that Russia joins one day. This would have the following implications:
• Russia would have a veto over NATO decisions (something which no-one wants).
• Russian membership would also pave the way for Georgia and Ukraine to join, and cement the notion of a Greater Europe from Vancouver to Vladivostok. However, those excluded could interpret the new NATO to be a ‘white world alliance’ of the developed northern hemisphere. This could reinforce global North-South divisions.
• Russia would probably have to host NATO bases. However, if Russia continues to weaken militarily due to demographic decline, then this might not be so unpalatable.
• NATO expansion that included Russia but not China could be interpreted by Beijing as being aimed at containing itself – especially if Japan, South Korea, and India joined.
• Russia’s admission to NATO would probably mean the end of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), which is a Sino-Russian dominated Eurasian counterpart to NATO.
Should Non-Democracies Be Allowed To Join NATO?
They already have. Portugal was a founder member of NATO despite being under the dictatorship of Antonio Salazar. Periods of military rule in Turkey and Greece did not lead to their expulsion from NATO. Thus, the fact that Russia is considered insufficiently democratic and China completely undemocratic should not necessarily preclude their membership of NATO.
Indeed, in 60 years time, perhaps NATO will have merged with the EU, NAFTA, ASEAN and Mercosur into a single all-powerful global organisation, for better or for worse.
April 1st, 2009 at 6:58 pm
The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is another pointless, powerless international bureaucratic w**kfest. It exists purely to employ superfluous Russian and Chinese bureaucrats and anyone who seriously thinks it is a counterpart to NATO is a fantasist.
Secondly, Russia is a great and powerful country that will weaken and destroy NATO from the inside should membership ever be granted. For that reason it will not be granted.
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:45 pm
Shanghai Corporation organization still mainly is political organisation, more like NATO. Shanghai org lack power these days, but enough to keep west out. Big question is if SCO intervene in central Asia to protect regime of Karimov, Nazarbayiev, etc. Also Iran want to join in case US attack nuclear plants. Russia still is not strong enoughh to challenge west or China independantly.