Stanley R. Sloan
examines the crisis of confidence and capabilities facing
NATO in the wake of 11 September.
During the Cold
War, NATO survived several "crises". In 1966, France
withdrew from the Alliance's integrated military
structure. In 1979, the Allies were divided over how to
respond to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In the
early 1980s, deployment of intermediate-range nuclear
missiles in Europe intensified transatlantic tensions.
Today, the Alliance faces the first crisis of the
post-Cold War era - a crisis brought on by the 11
September terrorist attacks on the United States.
 Responding to 11 September: The war against terrorism will likely remain the most important challenge for
many years
(© NATO) |
The earlier events were essentially
crises of confidence in the Alliance. Today's is a
crisis of confidence and capabilities. The United States did not
have sufficient confidence in the Alliance to give it a
major role in response to the terrorist attacks, even
though the Allies decided immediately to invoke Article
5, the collective-defence provision, of the Washington
Treaty. The European Allies, in spite of the United
Kingdom's involvement in Afghan operations and offers of
assistance from many others, did not have the
capabilities to make a serious contribution to the
high-tech, high-altitude bombing campaign that the
United States used to help defeat the Taliban regime in
Afghanistan.
How the
Alliance recovers from the perception of irrelevance
that has grown since the terrorist attacks of 11
September will depend on responses to two questions. The
first is whether or not the United States is willing and
able to lead the Allies toward further adaptation of
NATO's mission to make it more relevant to the terrorist
challenge. The second is whether the European Allies
recognise the need for such an adaptation and put up the
resources to improve their ability to contribute to
future counter-terror operations.
Although NATO's invocation of Article
5 was appreciated in Washington, the United States decided
to conduct military operations itself and not to seek
to use NATO's integrated command structure. Had the
United States asked to use NATO's integrated command
structure, such a request would likely have created
serious political dilemmas for many Allies. The discussion
of NATO's area of operation had basically been put aside
since the debates leading up to the 1999 Strategic Concept,
the document setting out the Alliance's strategy for
addressing security challenges, and there was no enthusiasm
for re-opening the issue in the middle of this crisis.
Furthermore, the United States obviously preferred to
keep tight control of any military operations.
NATO support
Nonetheless, NATO was asked to provide
a number of services on behalf of the war against terrorism.
On 4 October, NATO Allies agreed to enhance bilateral
and NATO intelligence sharing, assist Allies that face
terrorist threats because of the counter-terror campaign,
grant blanket overflight clearances for US and other
Allied aircraft involved in counter-terror operations,
and make airfields and ports available to support operations
against terror. In addition, the North Atlantic Council
agreed that the Alliance deploy elements of its Standing
Naval Forces to the Eastern Mediterranean in order to
provide a NATO presence and demonstrate resolve. On
8 October, NATO announced that Allied AWACS aircraft
would be deployed to the United States to help patrol
US airspace. The move freed up US assets for use in
the air war against Taliban forces in Afghanistan -
the first time NATO assets had been used in direct support
of the continental United States.
NATO's response was
applauded and appreciated by US officials. Two months
after the attacks, US Ambassador to NATO Nicholas Burns
argued in the International Herald Tribune
that NATO had responded strongly to the terrorist
challenge, and that the response demonstrated NATO's
continuing relevance. "With the battle against
terrorism now engaged, it is difficult to imagine a
future without the Alliance at the core of efforts to
defend our civilisation," he concluded.
The terrorist attack and the actions
required to respond militarily demonstrated in many
ways the wisdom of the adaptation of the Alliance that
had been underway since the early 1990s. NATO never
abandoned the critical Article 5 commitment, but began
preparing for the new kind of security challenges Alliance
members thought were likely in the 21st century. The
implications for force structure were clear: NATO needed
more forces capable of being moved quickly to conflicts
beyond national borders and prepared to fight in a variety
of topographic and climatic conditions using a mix of
conventional and high-tech weaponry.
Even though the 11
September attacks constituted a case for invocation of
Article 5, the response required the kinds of forces and
philosophies that the Allies had been seeking to develop
for so-called "non-Article 5 contingencies". NATO
formally acknowledged this reality in December when
Allied defence ministers observed that NATO, through the
Defence Capabilities Initiative, had improved its
ability to respond to terrorism, but that "...a great
deal more needs to be done... particularly in the areas
of survivability; deployability; combat identification;
and intelligence, surveillance, and target
acquisition...."
Preparing for and conducting operations
in Afghanistan, the US administration sought help from
the Allies mainly through bilateral channels. In the
weeks following the attacks, some Pentagon officials
privately dismissed NATO's formal invocation of
theprovision and complained that the Alliance was not
relevant to the new challenges posed by the
counter-terror campaign. Alliance's mutual defence
provision and complained that
the Alliance was not relevant to the new challenges
posed by the counter-terror campaign. Meanwhile, some
NATO Allies were led to believe that the United States
did not value or want contributions that they might
make in the battle against terrorism. Although many
Allies, including Germany, pledged forces to the counter-terrorist
campaign, these important national contributions did
not produce any direct role for the Alliance in the
affair.
Differing perspectives among NATO members are based on fundamentally
different historical experiences, political and military traditions, and available power and
military capabilities |
NATO's initial reaction therefore left
many questions unanswered about the future of the Allied
response to the terrorist challenge and to the other
issues that remained on the Alliance platter. Would
NATO countries follow up their Article 5 commitment
with resources that would be helpful in the conduct
of a far-reaching and long-running campaign against
international terrorism? Would the NATO cooperative
framework prove helpful or would the United States see
it as inappropriate and unhelpful for the kinds of operations
required by the war on terror? How would the new framework
created by the terrorist attacks and their aftermath
affect other key issues for the Alliance, including
NATO's future role in the Balkans, coordination of US,
Allied and NATO approaches to ballistic missile defence,
relations with Russia, continuation of the enlargement
process, and future development of the Common European
Security and Defence Policy?
Few would question how important it
will be to ensure that the members of the Atlantic Community
stay united and strong against the insidious threat
of terrorism which struck at America's heart on 11 September,
and which will strike again if given the opportunity
to do so. NATO's initial response to the attacks was
impressive and appropriate, but may also reflect some
limitations of the Alliance that will influence its
future role.
First, it is obvious that the Allies
must conduct a "war" against terrorism in
ways that deal effectively with terrorist threats while
not undermining fundamental democratic liberties or
the potential for future cooperation among Alliance
members. The Alliance, after all, would lose much of
its meaning if it sacrificed the commitment to the values
articulated in the Washington Treaty. The extreme nature
of the attacks and the threat of more horrors to come
have so far helped surmount domestic resistance to counter-terrorist
measures. However, each NATO country has its own approach
to protecting individual liberties and, down the road,
the enhanced intrusion of intelligence and security
services in the daily lives of citizens in NATO countries
could become a source of friction and controversy.
In addition, most observers of transatlantic
security issues remember the debates in the 1990s in
which the United States imagined a NATO mandate without
artificial geographic limitations, while many European
countries wanted to prevent the appearance of an "open-ended"
role for the Alliance in dealing with future security
challenges. The 11 September events demonstrated that
the United States had been right concerning the nature
of future threats to transatlantic security, namely
that most of them have roots outside Europe and must
be dealt with well beyond NATO's borders.
Differing perspectives
However, the differing perspectives
among NATO members concerning the best instruments to
employ against disparate threats have not disappeared.
They are based on fundamentally different historical
experiences, political and military traditions, and
available power and military capabilities. France and
the United Kingdom have force projection philosophies
and global strategic perspectives. But Germany's concepts
and perspectives will continue to inhibit the Federal
Republic's military role beyond its borders, in spite
of the dramatic progress Berlin has made in breaking
out of outdated constraints on the use of its forces
since the end of the Cold War. Differing roles and perceptions
will, on occasion, complicate both consensus formation
and cooperation.
In the aftermath of
the terrorist attacks, Charles Grant of the London-based
Center for European Reform wrote in The
Independent
that the US choice not
to use NATO to run the military operations against terrorist
targets in Afghanistan meant that: "It's unlikely
the Americans will ever again wish to use NATO to manage
a major shooting war." This judgement may or may
not be accurate. Washington presumably did not ask that
NATO run the military actions in Afghanistan because
it did not want to repeat the Kosovo experience, where
US management of the conflict was complicated by Allied
criticism of US targeting strategy. Concerns of Pentagon
officials about NATO's limited utility were apparently
taken on board in Washington without the United States
even asking the Allies to give the Alliance a more substantial
role.
On the European side, Allied officials
complained that, after showing their support and willingness
to contribute, the United States largely proceeded with
a strategy focusing on dividing, not sharing, responsibilities.
According to press reports, the situation irritated
European leaders who, having given their strong political
support, felt embarrassed about invoking Article 5 and
then being left on the sidelines.
To some extent, the situation can be
attributed to factors for which the Europeans themselves
are to blame. First, they did not, for the most part,
have significant military assets to contribute to the
first phase of the Afghan campaign, which relied heavily
on air-delivered, precision-guided munitions. Second,
US officials were fully aware of past opposition of
certain NATO members to involving the Alliance in military
operations beyond their borders, to say nothing of beyond
Europe.
On the other hand, the United States
may have missed an opportunity to move the NATO consensus
beyond the 1999 Strategic Concept following the 11 September
attacks. Given invocation of Article 5 and the explicit
willingness of many NATO Allies to contribute military
capabilities to the war against terrorism, a political
consensus existed that could have been used to expand
NATO's horizons and establish a mechanism for NATO contributions
in the future. This still could happen. But the politics
of moving NATO more decisively into counter-terrorist
operations have become even more difficult as time has
passed and the horror, compassion and sense of community
engendered by 11 September has faded.
If, however, the war against international
terrorism remains for some years the main focus of US
security policy, NATO's ability to be part of the solution
could exert a major influence on US perceptions of the
Alliance's utility. Dealing with this challenge — NATO's
first true "crisis" of the 21st century —
will require sophisticated political management on both
sides of the Atlantic. The United States will have to
be careful to ask Allies to do things that they are
capable of doing. At the same time, the NATO Allies
must avoid the perception that they do not support the
United States in responding to the terrorist threat.
For NATO, not doing enough risks losing
US interest in the Alliance. The disarray among members
of the European Union, apparent at the European Council's
December summit, and the failure of most EU members
to commit additional resources to defence are interpreted
in Washington as a lack of serious intent as well as
effort. On the other hand, US attempts to push the Alliance
beyond the political consensus concerning NATO's mission
could create splits among the Allies and even domestic
unrest in some Allied countries. In any case, the war
against international terrorism will likely remain for
many years the most important part of the political
and strategic environment in which the NATO nations
deal with every issue they face as Allies.
Stanley R. Sloan is director of the Atlantic Community
Initiative, visiting scholar at Middlebury College,
Vermont, and author of the forthcoming book NATO, the
European Union and the Atlantic Community: The Transatlantic
Bargain Reconsidered (Rowman and Littlefield).
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