The NATO secretary-general launched the strategic concept’s review process last year, and he established a “Wise Men” Committee under the presidency of former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. This committee’s aim is to prepare a draft that will constitute the basis of the new strategic concept. Following several meetings and seminars, the “wise men” will present their comprehensive report in May, and then official negotiations between NATO member countries will start. The final version of the text will be adopted and declared during the Lisbon Summit on Nov. 19-20, 2010.The present strategic concept was developed in 1999, and since then, many critical developments, such as international terrorism, the war in Georgia, the rise of cyber crime and growing piracy on the high seas, have made this strategic concept insufficient in responding adequately to new risks and threats. The concept’s deficiencies have also created several disagreements between member countries. Besides, any concept about security must take into account environment and energy security issues nowadays. Hence, NATO has to review its perception of the world, its areas of activity and its decision-making procedures. The new strategic concept will help define NATO’s role for the next decade, and in a way, that means shaping the entire international system.
There are naturally many challenges ahead. The North Atlantic Treaty’s Article 5 stipulates that an armed attack against one NATO member shall be considered an attack against all members, but this doesn’t mean an automatic common response by military means. The ambiguity about the application of the “one for all, all for one” rule creates serious and practical disagreements between members, damaging NATO’s efficiency and credibility. The newest members of the alliance in particular want to put this article at the core of the entire system, while the oldest members discuss ways to go far beyond this article. There is also some controversy about the priority list of the threats and also about the methods to deal with them, without mentioning the deeply rooted debate over sharing the financial burden. It reminds us of some of the EU countries that are on the brink of bankruptcy and which ask for the EU’s help without promising any structural modification in the way of managing this assistance. Asking to benefit from NATO’s protection without contributing to anything is obviously a difficult position to defend. If we consider that all Balkan countries may join NATO in the next 15 years, the seriousness of the threat priority list and the financing issues will be easier to imagine.
Anyway, NATO doesn’t lack recommendations about the alliance’s future and the general framework of the new concept. First, NATO believes that while writing down the new concept, one should always keep the global economic crisis in mind and also take into account the growing role of the private sector. In the future, NATO intends to work closely with international firms in the informatics, weapons manufacturing and insurance sectors. This is a reasonable approach if one thinks that today security is not only about military measures, but this new approach necessitates a higher level of transparency. In brief, NATO’s new concept has to emphasize democracy, pluralism and transparency more than the previous concepts.
