NATO: Deep Divisions in the Alliance

The summit at NATO’s 60th anniversary being held this weekend in Strasburg, Baden-Baden and Kehl will have to be more than just a birthday celebration and proud recounting of NATO’s past accomplishments.

The North-Atlantic Alliance has come to a fork in the road and now faces questions about its future for which there are no easy answers. In the first four decades of its existence – during the Cold War that brought it into existence in 1949 – NATO never really had very much to do operationally.

Lately, it’s been active in no less than five separate theaters between Macedonia and Afghanistan, and at the same time, it has been looking for a new identity. Cracks in the alliance have become quite apparent.

Consultations on both banks of the Rhine

The American and European visions for NATO are miles apart: engage globally or limit participation to the alliance nations? There are differing approaches to the subjects of raw materials, foreign trade, non-proliferation, intervention, narcotics and environmental policy. An alliance that’s been in Afghanistan for eight years and still hasn’t defeated what’s essentially a peasant uprising is now supposed to burden itself with far more complex assignments?

Because strategies and battle orders no longer quite fit the new mission requirements, consultations about changes must be initiated on both sides of the Rhine. Neither will it suffice just to decide changes are necessary and set up meaningless planning committees.

At its founding 60 years ago, everything seemed so clear-cut. Lord Ismay, the first NATO Secretary General, spelled out clearly what he saw as NATO’s mission: to keep the Americans in, to keep the Russians out and to keep the Germans subdued.

Accelerating the collapse of the Soviet Union

Because in 1945, unlike the period following World War I, the United States chose to maintain a presence in Europe as a bridgehead to Eurasia, and to deter the Soviet Union from further westward encroachment. NATO was a credible deterrent to the escalation of the East-West conflict through the decades. It helped accelerate the collapse of the Soviet Union as a world power and sped the dissolution of its military alliances.

Because that also made German reunification possible, Germany’s membership in NATO was worthwhile. Forgotten was the fact that if the alliance had failed, Germany would have ceased to exist.

As far as the Germans were concerned, it wasn’t just a matter of a geopolitical wrestling match between Russia and the United States, or as President Truman put it, the battle between “the forces of freedom and tyranny.” It was an existential question of “red or dead” due to Germany’s exposed position on the East-West front between the two giants.

The alliance seeks new meaning

Few people dared peer into the never-never land of a nuclear war fought between the Oder and Rhine rivers on German soil. The dissention that erupted at NATO headquarters between America’s General Rogers and Germany’s General Kiessling over the planned stationing of tactical nuclear weapons in Germany is part of that history as much as British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s casual remark at the time that Germany just happened to be NATO’s nuclear firewall.

But by 1989, everything had worked out well. The military threat to the European and North Atlantic regions had been overcome and was past history. For the first time in modern history, North America, Europe and Russia ceased to be threatened by hostile differences. As a Western defense alliance, NATO had fulfilled its mission.

Freed from the East-West conflict, the alliance has been struggling to find a new purpose ever since. To be or not to be? Discontinued model or still an indispensable alliance for perhaps even greater tasks? American Senator Richard Lugar hit the nail on the head when he said NATO had to either “go out of area or go out of business.”

The new category of “humanitarian intervention”

Just as NATO was created by and bore the hallmarks of United States’ interests throughout the world, it’s not by chance that American Presidents influence its new direction and further development. With Bill Clinton’s Kosovo war against Serbia, for the first time in its history, NATO attacked a sovereign nation that had not committed aggression against a neighbor.

For this new concept of war, using the idea of a breach of inner peace, a new category had to be invented – the “humanitarian intervention” under NATO command structure. This new direction was formulated as official alliance strategy at later summits and envisions do-it-yourself mandates for waging war anywhere in the world.

Contradictory challenges

The current performance test in Afghanistan and the question of admitting former parts of the Soviet Union as NATO members, plus the resulting new tensions with Russia certain to be caused by that, raise an entire catalog of questions.

Is NATO up to its contradictory challenges or will they cause it to founder? In view of the European-American split caused by disagreements over the Iraq war, can it ever become an instrument of transatlantic partnership again? How can new confrontations with Russia be avoided and how do emerging powers like China and India fit into the calculation? These and other pressing questions need to be addressed in Strasburg and Kehl this weekend.