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COMMENTARY
The (US) case for
NATO
By Stephen Blank
Four
years ago I wrote that NATO would ultimately have to
intervene in wars in the Transcaucasus and/or Central
Asia in order to pacify these areas and regulate their
conflicts. Naturally, a chorus of critics immediately
denounced this idea as another sign of US imperialism.
But today this forecast has been validated.
Indeed, despite the divisions now tearing at it, there
is no organization in the world capable of mounting a
long-term peace support operation in Afghanistan other
than the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Neither the
United Nations, nor the European Union, itself a
seriously divided organization, nor the Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe, nor any conceivable
regional organization could even begin to assume this
responsibility. And the fact that NATO is now moving
formally to assume this responsibility is an encouraging
sign based on its success in ending the fighting in
Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia.
These facts tell
us many things of crucial importance in today's world.
First, they remind us of NATO's abiding superiority as a
conflict manager and conductor of peace operations
abroad. Its mandate to end fighting and demilitarize
troubled states has proven successful in the former
Yugoslavia, and hopefully will do so in Afghanistan.
Second, they show us that NATO, as well as the other
European security agencies, has once and for all given
up the idea that so called "out of area operations" must
be forsworn.
The war on terrorism shows all too
clearly that failing states in Central Asia can spawn
monstrous threats to the vital interests of Western
states. Although commentators and European public
opinion like to profess that terrorism is no threat to
Europe or that the events of September 11, 2001 and the
ensuing war against al-Qaeda originated in quarrels
unrelated to Europe, eg the Israel-Palestinian conflict,
NATO's assumption of responsibility here shows that it
and its member governments know better than that. The
strikes of September 11 were aimed at America and thus
at Western civilization, not Israel, and thus NATO was
correct to invoke its Article V clause of mutual defense
immediately following those attacks. So, too, is it
right to assume this task now.
Third, NATO's new
mission confirms the fact that there is no regional
agency capable of shouldering the burden of providing
for an internally-managed pacification of Central Asia.
The various Central Asian attempts from within, Russia's
many and continuing efforts to put together a security
organization modeled after the Warsaw Pact down to the
idea of an indissoluble union, ie one that curtails
Central Asian sovereignty, were and are all
unsustainable. They are unsustainable because the
rivalries within Central Asia and between those states
and Moscow inhibit effective collective military action
along these lines. Likewise, Moscow cannot commit either
sufficient or effective military resources to those
tasks, as it well knows. Hence its promises and threats
have remained all too often empty ones.
So, too,
the Shanghai Cooperative Organization - grouping China,
Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and
Uzbekistan - has proved itself to be utterly useless as
an effective provider of security. Central Asian
governments, not without reason, distrusted Russia and
China's hegemonic pretensions in Central Asia and had
already begun to make their own deals with Washington
before September 11. Likewise, China’s response, calling
for the UN to mandate American self-defense and
demanding compensation in advance showed Russia that it
could not rely on Chinese support for effective
prosecution of the war it felt had to be fought against
terrorism.
Thus, not only are there no other
capable European security organizations, there are no
other effective Asian ones either. And as for the UN,
the less said about its ability to mount military
operations the better for its record in this field is
disastrous, as Bosnia and Rwanda both show us.
But this conclusion leads us to a fourth
observation. NATO today faces some of the most intense
divisions ever recorded in its history, partly due to
America's determination to use it to counter what it
believes, along with 15 other members, to be clear and
present treats of proliferation in Iraq. France, Germany
and Belgium have obstructed this process because they
either disbelieve in the reality or the urgency of the
threat, or not least because France and Germany are
among Iraq's biggest suppliers, or because they oppose
the exercise of American power even though they know
full well exactly what kind of proliferation threat Iraq
poses. France also clearly believes that it should
dominate the EU and has chastised other members and
candidates for opposing it on this issue and asserting
that France does not speak for Europe.
Whatever
the merits of the Franco-German-Belgian case, a program
of action that aims to destroy NATO's effectiveness to
gratify France's interests or obsession with somehow
leading Europe through the EU is a call to international
anarchy. As countless studies have shown, virtually no
European country is capable of or willing to spend on
defense the sums needed to make NATO an effective
provider of security. And the EU is light years behind
NATO in this regard. This is not only a question of
defense spending, but also, and more crucially,
political will. France, as President Jacques Chirac
points out, is by no means a pacifist, yet it will not
act to support NATO and instead, as has been observed,
Chirac would destroy NATO, the UN and EU in the name of
the chimera of multilateral action. Unfortunately, in
this world multilateral action has to be organized by
someone and only America has the resources and the will
to do so. And in that case, who then, would effectively
provide security to Europe and areas beyond it?
When he was chief of staff of the US armed
forces, now Secretary of State Colin Powell observed
that America did not aspire to be the world’s policeman,
yet when crimes were committed, everyone came to it
demanding action. That observation is no less pertinent
today. It is because of the United States' leadership in
NATO that it, and no other organization, has the
capability and vision to commit resources to provide
security in faraway theaters of operations. To raise the
notion of some other agency like the EU or the UN to do
so is, in today’s world, so patently absurd as to
preclude anyone from even posing the question. Indeed,
nobody is calling for those organizations to provide the
military resources needed in Afghanistan. Therefore, to
undermine NATO's ability to respond to such calls in the
name of restraining America, especially when nobody can
or will supplant its role, is essentially a call to
return to the laws of the jungle.
American
policy is hardly immune to criticism and should not be.
But we must remember the lessons of Afghanistan here,
for if not for NATO's presence there, international
anarchy and violence would be the outcome. And the
failure to act here would inevitably bring about other
wars as other potential troublemakers would then rightly
conclude that nobody would stop them in their violent
plans. And that should lead us to a fifth conclusion or
lesson from Afghanistan.
Namely, if not NATO,
who? If not NATO, who will deal with the threats of
Iraqi and Iranian proliferation and of international
terrorism conducted as a war against Western
civilization? If Europe shirks its obligations once
again and by doing so prevents America from exercising
its power abroad responsibly, will the result be one of
greater peace and democracy, the broad trend of the past
two generations, or will it be a return to the world and
the wars of the past?
Stephen Blank is
an analyst of international security affairs residing in
Harrisburg, PA.
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co,
Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contactcontent@atimes.com for
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