A tale of one summit: NATO’s new Strategic Concept
by
GÜLNUR AYBET*

Strategic concepts are documents that lay down the military and political guidelines for the alliance. During the Cold War, NATO strategic concepts had predominantly been military documents which were classified and out of the public sphere. Since 1991, all strategic concepts have been made public, and are predominantly a tool of public diplomacy.

While the strategic concepts of 1991 and 1999 were largely “reactive” documents, affirming the changes rapidly taking place in the international security environment, the urgency to revise this became inevitable after Sept. 11. NATO’s public diplomacy division has been presenting this transformation in the alliance as the three versions of NATO, much like a computer operating system. Version 1.0 refers to the NATO of the Cold War, when the core function was collective defense against a tangible enemy, the Soviet Union. Version 2.0 refers to the 1990s, when NATO acted more as a collective security organization, intervening to put “humanitarian crises” right, and expanding and building partnerships to absorb the post-communist space into its transatlantic norms of democratic governance, free market economies and human rights. But dealing with the break-up of Yugoslavia, however, proved to be a steep learning curve.

The big challenge for NATO in moving from v.2.0 to v.3.0 has been its response to a post-Sept. 11 world. Afghanistan is not a humanitarian intervention to uphold norms as in the 1990s, but is a collective defense operation. But deploying far beyond the Atlantic treaty area to combat insurgents to create a stable country that will no longer be a breeding ground for terrorists is one thing, defending your actual territory when you have an overwhelming number of Soviet tanks poised on your border is another. Afghanistan and this new “borderless collective defense” have become a very hard sell for NATO.

When tangible threats are replaced by emerging threats, there is bound to be a gap in threat perceptions among allies. This was clearly illustrated in the recent crisis over the NATO missile defense shield and Turkey’s objections to naming a specific threat such as Iran. While that issue was papered over in the summit, NATO nevertheless, as a defense organization, has to deal with emerging threats to provide protection to its members. But, like missile defense, most deployments have to be in place before the threat emerges, not after. This makes it tricky to get the required consensus.

Despite these challenges, this has overall been a successful summit. If we sum up the milestones that have come out of it:

i) The NATO-Russia partnership will enter a new robust relationship based on two tangible areas of cooperation: theater missile defense and Afghanistan. While the NATO-Russia Council working group of missile defense will be resumed, Russia will aid NATO by keeping open land supply routes for non-lethal materials and assistance with helicopters to the Afghan security forces.

ii) NATO will turn over its mission to Afghan security forces by 2014 but retain a supportive role. The problem with this move is that the transition from peace enforcement that involves a combination of peace-building and combat operations to a support role is not going to be as smooth as the transition from IFOR (Implementation Force) to SFOR (Stabilization Force) in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

iii) NATO can build capabilities to help keep open sea routes, airspace and energy supply routes vital for international trade should they become disrupted by state or non-state actors. It can also build capacity to deal with environmental disasters that can lead to resource constraints such as water scarcity, health risks and, again, energy supply. All of these possible scenarios directly affect the security of NATO member states. Therefore, there is nothing spectacular about NATO “going global” with a multitude of new tasks if this means safeguarding the security of its members by being prepared for these contingencies.

iv) The one thing that was reiterated over and over again in the summit was partnerships -- particularly NATO’s global operational partnerships. Today there are 18 non-NATO countries participating in ISAF in Afghanistan and they are not there for symbolic purposes but actually performing key tasks within the alliance’s integrated military structure.

It would seem that NATO is poised to “go global” when necessary, working with partners around the world in joint civil and military operations. The fact that it still remains relevant in its sixth decade is no mean achievement. But, once created, institutions are far costlier to dismantle. And who would want to give up the biggest insurance policy in the world?