NATO’s summit last week in Riga went fairly unnoticed, apart from brief mentions of the difficult task facing the alliance’s soldiers in Afghanistan. The summit in Latvia was significant for more than that important discussion however – it was another milestone on the transformation of NATO from a Cold War buffer, to a potential force for liberal intervention.
NATO was one of the first organisations to institute the principle of collective security – the famous maxim codified in Article V that an attack on one member state is an attack on all of them. As such, it was originally meant as a defence against Soviet ambitions in Europe.
Interestingly, NATO didn’t actually commit any military forces during the whole of the Cold War. With the deterrent of mutually assured nuclear destruction, followed by détente, there were no conflicts in which the alliance was directly involved. In fact, the only time NATO’s famous treaty has been invoked was on 12 September 2001, in the immediate aftermath of the attacks in America.
The alliance did, however, boost Europe’s defences against the USSR by stationing cruise and pershing nuclear missiles aimed at Russia. The US is currently trying to persuade NATO members to update such a defences – by proposing that they will fund a missile defence system along the lines of ‘star wars’ that would defend Europe against nuclear threats from say, Iran.
The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Warsaw Pact in the early 1990s ended NATO’s principle raison d’être. The immediate result of the fall of the Berlin Wall was the expansion of NATO into eastern Europe, but the long-term effects are still being felt. The process of revaluating NATO’s strategic purpose which began after the Cold War, continues to this day.
In many ways, the threats to NATO members are more visible, more numerous and less contained than they were during the days of the Cold War. Transglobal terrorism, internecine civil war, humanitarian emergencies are major causes of insecurity, and are now seen as the bread and butter of NATO’s agenda. As such, NATO’s structures have been updated with a rapid response force (the NRF) with a standing army of 25,000 to respond to evacuation, intervention or counter-terrorism needs.
The alliance finally saw its first intervention in the 1990s in the Balkans, with bombing campaigns against Serbia in 1995 and 1999. These air strikes cemented the principle, advocated by the Americans that NATO can carry out military action without prior approval by the UN.
Having approved the initial US led air strikes on Afghanistan in 2001, NATO agreed to take command of the ISAF in spring 2003, with troops operating in Southern and Eastern Afghanistan, two of the countries most troubled regions.
The immediate concern for the leaders meeting in Riga was to agree a strategy for the embattled troops in Afghanistan. As such, the countries not participating in the force – Germany, France, Spain, and Italy – agreed that in an emergency their forces would come to the rescue of other forces (mainly British and Canadian). They also pledged more soldiers and equipment and the easing of restrictions on troops on the ground. The success of the mission on Afghanistan will be a watershed moment, to determine NATO’s role as an interventionist force – ‘we cannot afford to fail the test’, as NATO’s secretary general puts it.
But NATO needs to think bigger than this pressing problem. It needs a new strategy to encompass the arc of insecurity stretching from the Horn of Africa through the Middle East to Central Asia. It also needs to support European countries in securing their energy supplies from Russia and elsewhere. Partnership agreements with Russia, China and India will be needed to protect the interests of member states. One of the stumbling blocks to such a strategy is divisions between leading members – between those such as the UK and the US who favour a transatlantic order and France and Spain, who favour a multipolar approach. A key problem is that many members are not prepared to send their troops to fight on behalf of NATO. It is unacceptable if members want the benefits of NATO, but are not prepared to pay the costs.
In order to promote this new security agenda, NATO leaders must be prepared to intervene when the UN or regional powers are unwilling or unable. One of the priority areas should be the Horn of Africa – where conflicts in Darfur and Somalia are jeopardising not only human rights and regional security, but risk fuelling terrorism, human trafficking, illegal arms sales which will affect Europe as well. Intervening in this area will be extremely difficult – but NATO is best placed, as the most organised and well led military force, especially when compared with forces such as the AU.
NATO has an exemplary record of intervention as the world’s strongest military force. With the post Cold War world no more secure, the alliance must use this potential to its full extent.