Pessimism About NATO's Relevance

By Steve Hynd

James Joyner reports on a conference about "NATO Beyong Afghanistan" held yesterday at the Atlantic Council in which the gloom was pervasive:

Yesterday's gathering of scholars and policymakers, most of them Atlanticists from way back, were mostly at a loss for how to reignite NATO in the wake of Afghanistan.  Indeed, it was as pessimistic a gathering as I've seen on the subject.   How gloomy was it?    Luncheon speaker Bob Kagan, who eight summers ago told us "It is time to stop pretending that Europeans and Americans share a common view of the world, or even that they occupy the same world," was among the most optimistic voices.

None of the panelists in the Political Will discussion had any illusion that there actually was any political will in NATO.  At least, not in the publics of Western Europe.   Kurt Volker, a career diplomat who served as President George W. Bush's ambassador to NATO, said that "It is hard to overstate NATO's lack of unified commitment and vision." 

...Volker observed that the new Strategic Concept, to be unveiled in Lisbon November 19-20, was supposed to answer these questions.   But the combination of the global economic collapse and the worsening of the situation in Afghanistan has likely killed that ambition.  Most likely, we'll end up kicking the can down the road a bit, agreeing in the meantime on some vague platitudes about mutual cooperation.

Well, I did try to tell James that he was being overly-optimistic about European zeal for out-of-area adventurism just so that American presidents can look tough at home. When even neoconservatives like Britain's Liam Fox are saying stuff like "The fat needs to be trimmed away, because we're not in NATO as a job creation project. We are there to ensure that it delivers what we need in terms of our combined security," at the same time as he's telling his Prime Minister in deliberately leaked letters that he won't stand for cuts to the British armed forces, then NATO is on a European back-burner.

Despite blackmail from the US general in charge of the effort to (fail to) train Afghan troops, there's no enthusiasm in Europe for escalating their troop commitments there or for getting involved in more out-of-area experiences like Iraq and Afghanistan. Ever since the Dutch proved that Article Five comes with a small-print caveat: "We'll all come when called but we each alone will decide when we're done," NATO has been a lame duck organisation. Expanding the organisation's remit into cyberwar or out-of-area security isn't going to fly - although repurposing as a disaster relief force just might. Sarkozy has already proposed such a force for the European Union and many Europeans are already looking afresh at the EDF as an "in-area" security force to replace NATO, though.

For decades, NATO has largely been what the US has wanted it to be. If it is to repurpose itself for the future, however, I suspect it's going to end up looking far more like something Europeans want and America can live with in the name of preserving the ties the organisation has built up over those decades.