NATO has lived in a permanent state of paradox over the last few years: on the one hand it is doing more than anyone could ever have imagined; but at the same time this frenetic activity has not prevented doubters from questioning its meaning time and again. The institutional hyperactivity and ongoing operations coexist with doubts about whether NATO will survive the strategic challenges of the 21^st century.

 

This paradox has also led to the discussion over the present and future of the Alliance becoming clearly schizophrenic: official complacency regarding everything that has been achieved clashes with criticism regarding everything that has not and possibly cannot be achieved.

 

My position is that the ongoing debate regarding the future of the Alliance that has been held over the past few years takes in so many levels and issues that the result is more confusion rather than clarity. If the subject of the debate is not clearly defined it will continue to lead to optimism and pessimism in equal measures.

 

As I see it, the debate tends to encompass five problems at the same time:

 

- NATO’s surprising capacity for transformation since the end of the Cold War;

 

- the growing demand for NATO operations;

 

- the problems associated with the permanent lack of adequate military capabilities among allies;

 

- the confusion regarding the strategic objective of the Alliance as a collective arangement; and

 

- the quality of the relations between its members.

 

The failure to explain what is being referred to at each point of the debate leads to confusion and masks NATO’s real ability to effectively confront its internal and external problems.

 

 

It is an evident fact that the rosiest and most optimistic vision on the evolution and future of the Alliance tends to take the continued existence of the organization as a starting point.

 

It is usually argued that following the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Eastern Bloc and the subsequent disappearance of the Soviet Union, NATO lost its raison d’être, namely, that of being a system of deterrence and defence against the Eastern threat. But it is also argued that following an initial stage where the political leaders decided to preserve the Alliance as an insurance against the residual capabilities of Moscow, the progressive involvement of NATO in the Balkans helped the organization to find a new purpose for its continued existence.

 

What is more, the need to provide an adequate response to the challenges arising from the violent break up of the Yugoslav Republic forced NATO into making substantial changes to its strategic concept, military capabilities and internal structures. As a result of the Balkan conflict the Alliance changed from being a “virtual” institution that looked to the East and only envisaged a defence on the terrain of its member states to engagement in actual combat out- of- area, and not as a result of its members being attacked but in order to impose peace between third-party states.

 

Having said that, NATO will accept, among other things:

 

- having to act outside of the area set out in article 6 of its founding treaty;

 

- having to act without the invocation of its principal collective clause, article 5 of the Washington Treaty;

 

- reorientation from collective defence to peacekeeping missions;

 

- transformation of its planning mechanisms and of the armed forces of its members, from territorial defence to the deployment of missions outside of the area of responsibility , even if such missions were for the moment on the European periphery of NATO.

 

With the Balkans, NATO changed its objective from containing and confronting an existential enemy, namely the USSR of the Cold War, to becoming an institution at the service of peace and stability beyond its frontiers.

 

This transformation was faithfully reflected in the Strategic Concept of 1999 which replaced that of 1991. This document served to codify both the strategic changes of the early 1990s and the practice of the Alliance in the second half of that decade. From 1997 the organization was referred to as the new NATO due to a series of changes that included:

 

- functional change to enable the carrying out of missions outside of the scope of article 5, crisis management and peacekeeping;

 

- geographical change to enable engagement beyond the limits set out in article 6, or the Euro-Atlantic zone;

 

- internal change of the military structures to enable the more efficient execution of earlier missions and to encompass a growing European identity;

 

- change of the political structure to enable the Alliance to enlarge, to generate a new framework for future expansion, such as the PfP [Partnership for Peace] or the different cooperation councils for close cooperation with specific nations, like Russia and Ukraine;

 

- change in its membership, in continuous expansion since the Madrid Summit of July 1997.

 

Those who consider NATO’s ability to adapt as its best asset usually go on to mention its evolution after the Balkans. Above all since the Al Qaeda attacks of 2001. On the one hand the NATO forces continue to expand their geographical area of action as far as Afghanistan; and, on the other, the allies take steps to provide a collective response to the new threats, from global terrorism to the proliferation of systems of mass destruction.

 

And although it should be acknowledged that the Alliance invoked its article 5 for the first time after September 11, that it initiated actions such as Active Endeavour, and that since 2003 it has been at the command of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, this stage of its evolution is far more controversial and is far from being considered an asset among its members. The role of NATO and its members in the so-called GWOT (Global War On Terror), and the profound internal divisions caused by the Iraq intervention in 2003, prevent the depiction of an altogether rosy panorama. The Alliance was undoubtedly able to evolve in the 1990s, but at this point in time it is far from being able to seriously consider where it is headed in the next few years and to continue to be the western world’s most important security system.

 

In other words, NATO’s success in restructuring itself in the 1990s does not automatically mean that it knows how to or is able to once again restructure itself to face the new global circumstances.

 

 

A second self-justifying reason for important role of the Atlantic Alliance is usually given as the growing demand for NATO operations. And, above all, due to the external cause of many of such operations. UN requests military intervention from NATO allies while consumers of security, such as the African Union, also do the same.

 

In other words, this thesis is defended due to NATO having the right product for the needs of certain clients.

 

The list of operations is long and the tasks carried out in the past few years is of the widest possible range, from logistical and transport support, to planning and support following natural catastrophes, such as the contingent sent to Pakistan after the 2005 earthquake.

 

However, not everything is clear-cut in this terrain. On the one hand NATO has given the impression of looking for organizations that require its assistance. The example of the African Union is evident. The appearance is that after having assimilated that the best thing that could have occurred to the Alliance in the 1990s was its participation in the Balkans, the aim was to attempt to continue following this example. But the impression has been a kind of the taxi syndrome. NATO willing to provide a service to the first one to raise a hand.

 

On the other hand, the difficulties of members in providing forces for these missions has caused the political and public credit of the organisation to wane, leading to an impression of division and weakness.

 

Even worse, it does not seem to matter how many missions NATO is successfully participating in when one of the most important ones, that of Afghanistan, is far from reaching a brilliant conclusion. In fact the news coming from that theatre as depicted by the media is clearly negative.

 

To a certain extent it could be said that Afghanistan has brought the best and the worst out of the Alliance: on the one hand it is acting in a hostile environment, far from its bases; but, on the other, it has evidenced the lack of solidarity among its members, with clear mutual recriminations that while some fight, pay and die, others do hardly anything, shielded by a suffocating myriad of national caveats.

 

Whether or not Afghanistan is a symptom of NATO’s deepest internal problems, the future of the organisation is being played out on the Afghan terrain. It is not that the victory is at stake – which could happen while NATO is out there – but the internal cost and the frictions that would need to be suffered to avoid a possible defeat could mark the future of the Alliance.

 

In fact, in view of the problems encountered, it could be said that the expansive stage of NATO operations has reached its zenith and that from now on the member states will be far more cautious when it comes to collectively committing to new missions.

 

 

This may be the area which has prompted the most negative opinions on the continued existence of NATO. In any case it should be said that the difference between the military capabilities of the United States and the rest of the allies has always been an issue. The main difference is that it has now become untenable. Above all due to its politico-strategic implications.

 

What is more, it is also far more visible. For over four decades the asymmetric nature of the military capabilities was not as relevant as it is today because NATO was, in practical terms, a “virtual” defensive system, more theoretical than real. European states had no wish to improve their armies beyond a certain point in order to sustain rapid escalation, the transatlantic link and, paradoxically, with a view to reinforcing the deterrence policy. But as the Alliance abandoned its passive defence in favour of missions further and further away from its frontiers, the issue of military capabilities became increasingly important.

 

Although it may be a very basic consideration, it is worthwhile remembering that capabilities and force levels are two very different things. On paper European armies exceed the U.S. army in size, but in practice the number of troops that are genuinely deployable are reduced to near sarcastic levels.

 

NATO has done all it can to improve the Allies’ capabilities via various initiatives. But the result has been poor and, today, the gap between the United States and Europe is bigger than ever and, what is worse, the gap between European armed forces also gets deeper and deeper.

 

In fact, the ultimate causes of the differences in capabilities are basically down to:

 

- different levels of military spending;

 

- differences in the composition of military spending;

 

- disparity in military R+D spending;

 

- different priorities in material acquisitions;

 

- different structures of the armed forces, above all where conscription is still in force.

 

A review of the amount spent on defence in the past few years leaves little scope for optimism. At least on this side of the Atlantic.

 

The inability to make even the smallest amount of headway on this issue has led to many giving fairly negative opinions when discussing the future of the Alliance. The strategic implications are the gradual devaluation of the Alliance as the primary system for the defence of its members.

 

In other words, if a future lack of capabilities were to become a lack of interoperability on the ground, this would lead to the U.S. having to assume a disproportionate burden. If there are casualties, domestic pressure would undoubtedly cause a repeat of what occurred in the 1999 campaign in Kosovo: refusal to wage a war via committee and an exacerbation of the unilateral tendencies of the United States. When the cost and the risk are very disproportionate, it is unfair that everyone should have the same weight at decision time. The situation is clear. NATO would stop serving as a decision-making forum among supposed equals and the coalitions of the willing would in turn grow to the extent possible.

 

 

That the Alliance today operates with the 1999 strategic concept, which was oriented toward what the organization was doing in the mid-1990s, serves to highlight first, that NATO does not require a good theoretical justification in order to act; secondly, that the internal divisions are still deep enough to prevent the draft and adoption of a new strategic concept.

 

The recent debates, still far from  being closed, on matters such as a global NATO, anti-missile defence systems, the role of the Alliance in the war on terror or in relations with Russia, to name just a few, have highlighted the disparity in national responses and the discrepancies among the allies.

 

As a result, three categories of members could be said to exist depending on what they consider the Alliance gives them:

 

-     those who believe that NATO contributes much to their security. This group includes nearly all the central European countries where the new NATO has less standing than the old NATO, that is to say, collective defence versus the threat of Moscow;

 

-     those who believe that NATO contributes something, as the case may be, to their security. This group could, for different reasons, include those with strong national capabilities and clear international commitments. Namely, the United States, the United Kingdom and France. It could also include all those smaller states which do not consider that their interests are under threat but which see in the Alliance a good forum in which to air their points of view;

 

-     those who believe that NATO contributes nothing, but who consider that leaving it would be very costly in political terms. This could be the case of the government of Rodríguez Zapatero.

 

In any case, the relevant point here is that the principal unifying factor, the Soviet threat, has disappeared, so the member states now have more room for manoeuvre in terms of fitting in their strategic options and priorities. And at the same time it should be acknowledged that in the current strategic scenario a strong cohesive factor such as the threat of the USSR during the Cold War is unlikely to arise. Islamist terrorism could have been this factor, but discrepancies among Americans and Europeans as to the nature of the phenomenon and the best way to confront it has preventing it from being so.

 

The clearest proof of this is the anxiety  currently caused by article 5 of the Washington treaty, which is crying out for reinterpretation in view of the new strategic circumstances. But this is the subject of another paper.

 

 

 

And this brings me to the last of the five factors mentioned in the introduction. Just as a marriage cannot be judged simply by the children it produces, but above all by the quality of the relationship between the members of the family, the future of NATO will undoubtedly face the same type of examination, the quality of the relations between its members.

 

It is impossible to forget what was undoubtedly the lowest point in transatlantic relations, when the North Atlantic Council (NAC) was paralysed for days and incapable of forging even the most basic consensus on how to deal with the petition of one of its members, Turkey, for permission to take some collective measures against a potential Iraqi attack in February 2003. It is similarly impossible to forget the row that broke out at the time between Washington and the 10 + 8 on one side and the astonishing Paris-Berlin-Moscow-Peking axis on the other.

 

That particular moment passed and the incident is officially considered closed. Although it remains to be seen whether that is indeed the case. Because the critics of the 2003 intervention still consider that it was all a huge error and those who were convinced that it was the right thing to do still maintain their position.

 

In any case, the main thing is to clarify whether it was all simply a question of personalities (i.e. now that the Chiracs and Schröders are no longer around all will go smoothly), or whether there are deeper factors at play that will continue to distance both shores of the Atlantic. Time will tell.