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NATO's transformation and
Asia
By Ninan Koshy
(Posted
with permission from Foreign Policy in Focus)
NATO's first summit in Eastern Europe was held
in the same city where the Warsaw Pact was buried.
"Prague, once the victim of the Warsaw Pact, became the
city where the Warsaw Pact met its end as an instrument
of the cold war," Czech President Vaclav Havel proudly
claimed in 1991. "The international community is likely
to face bad weather and it is necessary to build a
certain security ark on the model of the Biblical Noah's
ark," Secretary General Lord Robertson stated in October
in Brussels.
Allowing the entry of new species
into NATO's ark was the easy bit at the summit. Seven
more nations were saved from the impending flood. But
Prague could not give any clear direction or sense of
purpose to the alliance.
Since the end of the
Cold War, NATO has been a military alliance groping for
a cause, an army in search of an enemy. When the Soviet
Union collapsed, NATO lost its raison d'etre. When it
met for the 50th anniversary celebrations in 1999, it
reinvented itself with a "new strategic concept",
ascribing to itself the right to intervene militarily in
any part of the world.
The alliance in search of
an enemy appeared to find one on September 11, 2001. For
the first time it invoked Article V of its charter and
enthusiastically supported America's war on terror. But
America, driving fast along a unilateralist path, had
little use for NATO in its war against Afghanistan.
Still the secretary general claimed after the Prague
summit, "A transformed and modernized NATO is at the
very heart of the free world's response to terrorists
and their backers, the failed states in which they
flourish, and proliferating weapons of mass
destruction."
Historically, NATO has followed
America's military policies and security doctrines. In
the context of the war on terror, the US has adopted
fundamentally new security and military doctrines. These
doctrines now "transform and modernize" NATO.
The classified Nuclear Posture Review has
redefined the role of nuclear weapons as fundamental to
US defense policy. It places new emphasis on the utility
of nuclear weapons in US military doctrine and strategy.
It changes the very concept of deterrence. "First use"
and "first strike" are writ large on the nuclear agenda
of the US. The Pentagon has already asked NATO to review
its nuclear posture.
The perennial problem of
NATO members' violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty
is compounded by the expansion of NATO. No matter
whether NATO deploys nuclear assets in the new member
states or not, the expansion will increase the number of
states relying on nuclear weapons and nuclear
deterrence. It will extend the NATO system of nuclear
sharing arrangements to more nonnuclear weapon states.
Full membership status includes the right to ask for the
deployment of nuclear weapons as well as an obligation
to accept that nuclear weapons can be deployed - at
least during wartime. As the war on terror is not
limited in time, any time is war time. The result of
NATO expansion is proliferation of nuclear weapons by
the US, which contemplates nuclear strikes in the face
of "surprising developments", even against nonnuclear
weapon states.
The Quadrennial Defense Review
2001 shows that there is a reorientation of America's
military presence in Europe. Although US forces will
remain in Europe in large numbers, these will serve
mainly a political function - substantiating US
leadership of NATO - while being made available for
actual operational use outside Europe. One critical
difference is that the new review puts a distinctive
emphasis on war-fighting capabilities, "At the direction
of the president, US forces will be capable of
decisively defeating an adversary in the theaters in
which the US forces are conducting major combat
operations by imposing America's will and removing any
future threat it could pose. This capability will
include the ability to occupy territory or set the
conditions for a regime change."
The new US
doctrine of preemption - or rather hot preemption - will
also be decisive in the transformation of NATO. The
National Security Strategy of the US says that while
Washington will seek allies in the battle against
terrorism, "we will not hesitate to act alone, if
necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense by
acting preemptively". These doctrines provide the script
for the drama of US war plans against Iraq. No wonder
Iraq - though not officially on the agenda at Prague -
was the main topic of discussion there.
If the
new rationale for NATO is the war on terror, and if its
rapid response force is directed to territories outside
the region of its member states, then NATO's
transformation has serious implications for Asia. The
war on terror is a war in and about Asia. It was started
with a high-tech war against Afghanistan in Central
Asia. Two war fronts in West Asia were officially
incorporated into the war on terror. One was against the
Palestinian nation by Israeli Prime Minister Sharon
anticipating and receiving full support from Washington.
The other was against Iraq, marking a new stage in the
continuing military and political campaign to topple
Saddam Hussein.
As the war against Afghanistan
entered its third month, the Bush administration moved
to open up what was officially called the "second front"
- Southeast Asia. The axis of evil included another
Asian state, North Korea. The US made a major shift in
geographic emphasis toward Asia generally, and within
this a dramatic expansion of military presence and
engagement in Central, South, and Southeast Asia.
It was only natural that at the summit after
agreeing to expand their alliance deep into the former
Soviet bloc, NATO leaders reached out to the Central
Asian nations whose assistance was vital in the US-led
war against Afghanistan.
One senior alliance
diplomat called the countries of Central Asia and the
Caucuses "NATO's next frontier". Over a year ago China
was at the center of diplomatic momentum to increase the
clout of the Shanghai Five (now the Shanghai Cooperation
organization) - a regional cooperation group comprised
of its Central Asian neighbors. The massive presence of
US troops in Central Asia has caused a significant shift
in the military and power equation in the region,
prompting Beijing to approach NATO for a "strategic
dialogue" on common threats and an understanding of its
role in Central Asia.
Meanwhile, Australia is
again apparently pushing for an Asia-Pacific alliance,
reviving speculation about a "mini-NATO", first
mentioned after the July 2001 ministerial meeting
between the US and Australia. The suggestion then was to
bring the US, Australia, Japan and South Korea together.
The US seems not to be averse to the idea, as it knows
that the Philippines will be keen to join such an
alliance and probably hopes Indonesia can also be pushed
into it.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, in his book The
Grand Chessboard, defines the North Atlantic
alliance as part of an integrated, comprehensive, and
long-term strategy for all of Eurasia in which NATO
would eventually reach Asia, where another military
alliance would connect Pacific and Southeast Asian
states. The prediction is coming true.
It may be
useful to recall here that "the forward-looking
strategy" for the defense of Western Europe was decided
upon by NATO ministers in September 1950 because of the
international situation created by the Korean war. The
militarization of the containment policy in Europe and
the transformation of NATO strategy were the result of
the Cold War becoming a shooting war in Asia. It is
again a war in Asia - the war on terror - that is
transforming NATO.
Dr Ninan Koshy
is a political commentator based in
Trivandrum, Kerala, India, author of The War on
Terror: Reordering the World (DAGA Press, 2002) and a
regular analyst for Foreign Policy in
Focus.
(Posted with permission from Foreign Policy in
Focus)
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