Nato is supposed to be reinvented in Prague over the next two days. Seven new countries will join; the alliance will address new threats; and a new 20,000-strong rapid response force will be created. Yet all the grand talk about “transformation” smacks of leaders protesting too much to convince themselves that Nato still has a role. When you have to strain so hard to tell each other you matter, there is something wrong.
But Nato should not yet be consigned to Cold War history. It has a role, but it is more political than military, as the alliance has expanded from 16 to 26 in the past three years, all but one of the newcomers formerly being part of the Warsaw Pact. Nato membership amounts to an international seal of approval for former Soviet bloc countries, requiring them to meet certain democratic as well as military requirements. And there are links with many other countries, notably Russia. Such a political association, overlapping with the list of the new and aspiring members of the European Union, is worthwhile in itself.
Keeping in touch is fine, but it does not win, or even deter, wars. The moment of truth for Nato as a military alliance came after the September 11 attacks. With remarkable alacrity, George Robertson, Nato’s Secretary-General, organised the first invocation of the alliance’s central “one for all and all for one” article 5 on collective defence. But nothing happened. The Pentagon did not return the call. The United States obtained some selective military help from allies such as Britain and France in Afghanistan. But Nato’s collective role was limited to helping elsewhere, deploying Awacs early warning aircraft and ships in the Mediterranean. Washington’s indifference hurt in Europe.
The US could manage on its own without European help. The rapid growth of American defence spending and its high- technology weaponry — such as laser-guided missiles and pilotless aircraft — have left European countries struggling to keep in touch. This first became apparent during the Kosovo conflict in 1999 and was underlined last year in Afghanistan.
This capabilities gap has reinforced a growing difference in strategic thinking. America’s reliance on air power, and the absence of sizeable casualties, have produced both a greater willingness to use force and a reluctance to commit ground troops. A risk or casualty-averse attitude has led to complaints from British and other European generals in the Balkans about American troops being concerned primarily with defending themselves, force protection, rather than peacekeeping.
In Afghanistan, the combination of overwhelming air power and bribing the warlords with wads of dollars (as vividly told in Bob Woodward’s new book, Bush at War) rapidly removed the Taleban and disrupted al-Qaeda, but a highly unstable country has been left outside Kabul. There has been a tenfold increase in the poppy crop this year, providing more money for the war lords to buy more arms, and hence greater instability.
By contrast, the Europeans believe in being more engaged on the ground and more involved in later peacekeeping. The European members of Nato have been active in the Balkans, especially in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and Nato may have a role next year in helping to run the international force in Kabul.
Hence the suggestion heard in policy seminars — though only occasionally from indiscreet officials — that the Americans, with all their advanced technology, do the hard stuff, and the Europeans do the clearing up afterwards.
The Kosovo experience, the only time that Nato has formally gone to war, has also put many in the Pentagon off the alliance’s collective, and occasionally leaky, decision-making. So the Bush Administration’s mantra has been that the mission decides the coalition, the coalition does not decide the mission.
In Washington’s eyes, Nato is still worth preserving, however, both for its broader political role and because member forces are used to operating together on the ground. So Nato is seen less as a central decision-making structure than a tool kit, a group of military units capable of joining US-led operations.
Washington decides what it wants to do, and picks and chooses what help it needs, as now in asking allies, including Britain, about possible support in the event of any action against Iraq. That approach also explains Donald Rumsfeld’s proposal for a Nato response force which would be quickly deployable around the world for military action alongside US forces. This would complement, rather than than compete with, the proposed EU rapid reaction force, which would mainly be involved in peacekeeping, despite the endless and largely irrelevant squabbles about relations between the two bodies.
The Europeans worry that they have little influence on American decisions, feeding charges about unilateralism. The practice, as opposed to the rhetoric, is more complex, as shown by the negotiations leading to the recent UN resolution. The Bush Administration has wanted allies, but on its own terms.
The choice for Europe is simple. It cannot compete militarily on the same scale, or technical sophistication, as the US, and will always be more interested in “soft power”, peacekeeping and development aid. But unless European countries spend more and develop rapidly deployable forces, they will not be listened to in Washington. That is why the French Defence Minister received a warm hearing there earlier this month after announcing a rise in spending — and this is also the basis of the clout that Tony Blair has in the United States.
Forget arguments about structures. What matters, as Lord Robertson of Port Ellen argues repeatedly, is capabilities. As Stalin said, how many divisions has the Pope?
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