– NATO...Are Its Final Days Just Ahead

NATO Faces Fundamental Issues at Bucharest Summit
By Douglas Barrie and Joris Janssen Lok

As the April NATO summit approaches, political frailty and the growing gulf in defense expenditures may threaten the very future of the alliance.

The British Parliament's Defense Committee is cautioning that the NATO alliance needs to quickly address issues that will otherwise gnaw at its well-being - and eventually risk its existence.

"The biggest shortfall in NATO's capabilities... is a lack of political will," the committee comments in its report titled The Future of NATO and European Defense. "This is most manifest in the large and growing gap in defense spending between the United States and the European members of NATO."

Discussing the report, one British defense industry analyst says, "They're pointing out the elephant in the room when it comes to the alliance." He adds that, concerning Afghanistan, the report also shows how "the whole alliance is put under stress when it has to deal with an ambiguous area of operations."

While NATO has a long-standing - if informal - target of member nations spending a minimum of 2% of gross domestic product on defense, only six of the 26 countries meet this.

"There is no detectable appetite in Europe for increasing spending on defense," the committee notes in its Mar. 20 document. "We are concerned that an Alliance containing such large disparities in defense spending will prove unsustainable in the long-term."

Spending, or rather the lack thereof, is of particular concern to the committee with regard to the signal it sends to Washington. "United States support for NATO is fundamental.... Without it, NATO would become redundant."

Dana Allin, senior fellow for transatlantic affairs at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, says, "There's always been a problem about defense spending and about free-riders." However, Allin, who gave evidence to the committee, suggests that while the funding disparity will remain a cause of tension, the main alliance partners will likely continue to grudgingly accept this, since the alternative is even less palatable.

Published in the run-up to NATO's Bucharest summit on Apr. 2-4, the report also argues for a "new Strategic Concept" that would include defining "a global role" for the alliance. The committee members admit that "the possibility of a global NATO... remains deeply contentious within the Alliance," but they argue that were NATO to limit "itself to a regional role in defense of the North Atlantic area alone, its value will be diminished, particularly to the United States."

Allin is skeptical of the notion of a "global NATO." He says there is little talk any more of a "confined NATO area," and cautions that a global alliance raises the question of its missions.

Trying to agree on a new strategic concept for NATO, Allin contends, "could do more harm than good" by further exposing rifts among alliance partners.

NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer says Bucharest will be "a very visible demonstration of NATO's continuing transformation - our adaptation to the complex, global security challenges of the 21st century - and our determination to tackle those challenges together with the rest of the international community."

The parliamentary report also appears to be attempting to focus the British government's attention on what the committee considers critical questions that the summit should deal with.

It does not want to see NATO's role in Afghanistan, despite its immediate importance, swamp other issues at the meeting.

"NATO faces far broader questions about its role and relevance in the 21st century, the answers to which will ultimately decide the future of the Alliance," note the parliamentarians.

The committee is also concerned the Bucharest event proves more valuable than the Riga Summit in 2006. "Riga was a disappointment, and... the forthcoming Summit at Bucharest needs to set a clear path to achieving far more."

Moreover, the report bluntly discusses what the committee views as the poor state of affairs between the alliance and the European Union. "A close relationship... is essential. The lack of it is inexcusable given the importance of NATO to EU security. [The relationship] is plagued by mistrust and unhealthy competition."

While warning that the summit needs to look at more than just Afghanistan, the report says: "Succeeding in Afghanistan is, and must remain, at the top of NATO's agenda.... Failure [there] would be deeply damaging for the people of that country. It would have serious implications for the Alliance's cohesion and credibility." But it adds that NATO would not collapse were it to fail in this mission.

Avoiding failure in Afghanistan is self-evidently desirable, and the committee wants the summit to provide a platform to better address the issue of force generation for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

The summit includes the largest meeting on Afghanistan organized by the Alliance so far. All 40 troop-contributing nations in the ISAF will be represented - 41 if Ukraine has joined by the beginning of April.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai will also be in Bucharest, as will U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, EU foreign and security policy chief Javier Solana and World Bank President Robert Zoellick, says NATO Deputy Spokesperson Carmen Romero.

"We're keen to show that the international community is committed to Afghanistan and that we need to coordinate our efforts - military and other - better," Romero says.

Ambassador Herman Schaper, the permanent representative of the Netherlands to NATO, said on Mar. 17 that the Alliance is at the limits of its operational capacity with 290,000 of the 300,000 personnel available for expeditionary operations committed in one way or another to ongoing NATO, EU or U.N. missions.

Speaking in The Hague, Schaper said that in Afghanistan, the alliance is facing a shortage of two provincial reconstruction teams, border surveillance capacity, training teams for the Afghan National Army and rotary-wing aviation assets.

NATO countries have hundreds of helicopters in the inventory, but some are not properly equipped and will have to be upgraded, Schaper said (see p. 26).

Romero admits that public support for the mission is waning in NATO member states, adding that a new political/military plan is to be agreed in Bucharest to "chart out the way we want to continue on in our efforts in Afghanistan and also to help us explain to our public what we are doing there."

According to other NATO officials, there will be two versions of the plan: A classified document and a public paper. The former originally was 14 pages long but has now been condensed to seven. It details exactly what NATO is responsible for in the context of Afghanistan, the officials say.

The public paper, not yet released, is two pages long and explains in clear terms why NATO is in Afghanistan, what has been achieved and what the objectives for the next years will be, according to the officials.

Both documents have been written by NATO's International Staff, but the officials say the real discussion has only just started - with the summit just a couple of weeks away.

"It is not clear even for the internal document if the political/military plan should include specific timelines or deadlines," NATO headquarters officials in Brussels note.

Meanwhile, NATO officials are hopeful that Canadian demands will be met for additional troops to strengthen ISAF in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan.

France, in particular, is expected to come forward at the summit with a "significant extra commitment," either a battalion-sized unit for Kandahar or units to be used elsewhere in Afghanistan to free up troops for redeployment to Kandahar.

By the time of the summit, NATO officials say ISAF strength will be "approaching 50,000." The figure was 43,250 as of February.

One British military official contends that for ISAF, force generation "is not the main problem - the real issues are governance, the narcotics problem and what's happening across the border in Pakistan. What is needed is a credible Afghan police force, a credible government. When governance, development and security are actually lined up, people are willing to come over, because the Taliban are not offering an alternative government system."

Progress is being made, he says, but "how does progress really take root in the most difficult areas, which [are] in the south?" the official asks. "Quietly, calmly we're doing okay. Last year, 70% of all the incidents took place in just 40 of Afghanistan's 398 districts, which is where just 6% of the population lives. So it's not like the whole country is going to hell in a hand-basket," he adds.

Alongside Afghanistan and other ongoing operations, NATO enlargement, and additional security and defense issues will also be on the agenda for the summit. Albania and Croatia will likely be invited to become NATO members at the summit, and so will Macedonia, provided it changes its name to something that's acceptable to Greece.

Bosnia and Montenegro (but not Serbia) are in line for an individual partnership action plan, but there is as yet "no consensus" over allowing Georgia and Ukraine to join NATO's membership action plan (a route-map for aspiring member states), military sources indicate. However, the "door to NATO will stay open" to both nations, whatever is decided at this time.

The Bucharest summit will also see the attendance of Russian President Vladimir Putin. NATO headquarters officials expect Putin to "make a lot of waves" over enlargement, the U.S. missile defense effort and on the Conventional Forces in Europe arms control treaty, but they point out that "real progress has been made in NATO-Russian relations in many areas."