SPEAKING
FREELY NATO dilemma: Turkey and Article
5 By Riccardo Dugulin
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A wind of crisis is
blowing along the Turkish border with Syria.
Tensions between the two neighbors have been on
the rise since the Turkish village of Akcakale was
shelled by Syrian artillery on October 5.
Following a parliamentary vote, the Turkish
government now has the political legitimacy to
intervene in cross-border operations to protect
its citizens, while Syrian artillery units have
maintained sporadic fire on Turkish territory and
combat helicopters have waged demonstrative raids
over Turkey’s border villages.
It remains
highly unlikely that any of the two governments will
unilaterally push for an
escalation in violence since neither Turkey nor
Syria has any long-term interest in entering a
full-scale military conflict. Ankara may find it
difficult to prevail over the Syrian Arab Army and
would be inevitably dragged into a civil war, on
the other hand Damascus is currently using the
best and most experienced units of its armed
forces in the attempt to squash the 18 months old
rebellion. If a full blown military confrontation
involving Turkey and Syria may, for the moment, be
off the table, the place of the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization in the current equation is
more problematic.
As a member of the
alliance, Turkey has provided NATO with a clear
strategic added value during the Cold War and an
unparalleled foothold in the Middle East ever
since. Faced with the current border crisis, NATO
is struggling as never before with a major
identity crisis. The core objective of the
alliance has been since its inception to deter its
adversaries in order to effectively prevent any
aggression on member states.
As for the
longest time in its history the block was
virtually challenged only by a single threat,
implementation of Article 5 - which states that
any armed attack against one member of the
alliance is an attack against them all - of its
charter was relatively feasible. The
multiplication of threats and the addition of
transnational and non-national actors have created
a complex environment in which strategic
conventional deterrence may be hard to apply. On
an article in the National Interest, Doug Bandow
recently argued that the current Syrian crisis and
the lack of NATO political will to intervene
against an armed breach to one of its member's
sovereignty marks a major blow to the alliance's
protection capabilities.
Following the
9/11 terrorist attacks, for the first time in
history, NATO member states proposed to use
Article 5 to protect the United States and
effectively go after its enemies. Why then isn't
it the case now, after a sovereign member state
has seen its territory shelled by foreign military
forces? If mortar shells fired by Warsaw Pact
troops would have killed five civilians in Western
Germany, would the reaction have been the same?
In a changing security environment the
question of proportionality is becoming essential,
and NATO surely understands it. Engaging the
alliance into an already chaotic regional conflict
would make little strategic sense and would
certainly not help in the path to the resolution
of Syrian civil war. A second point is that the
threat posed to Western Europe during the Cold War
was in a sense existential. A single attack by
Soviet troops may have resulted in a full blown
nuclear conflict and the mutual destruction of all
belligerent. This is not the case today as neither
Turkey nor Syria represents a vital threat to its
rival. It is certain that Turkish implication into
its neighbor civil war may bring to the fall of
Bashar Al Assad, but not to the end of Syria as a
state.
Furthermore, the evolution of the
Syrian civil conflict makes it difficult for the
NATO leadership to effectively recognize a single
adversary. There are no doubts that the direct
military target in the event of increased
aggression on the Turkish territory would be the
command and control structure of the Syrian
regular army, yet any strike on this structure
would create a set of new issues. The Syrian
response be may regional, if not international,
and would likely take an irregular and asymmetric
nature. Hezbollah may use its foreign assets to
destabilize NATO members' security.
In
addition to these operational risks, the question
of who would a NATO strike over Syria favor
remains extremely relevant. On October 12, rebel
units stormed a Syrian air defense base and
subsequently took control of it. During this
operation, sources identified the implication of
elements of Jabhat al-Nusra - an al-Qaeda offshoot
- as a key factor in the battle against government
forces. Any NATO strike against Syrian military
forces would without any doubt to some extent
favor jihadists which are in no way to be
considered strategic assets for NATO member
states.
In addition to these issues
directly linked to the nature of the conflict, a
more sensible question regards NATO current
capabilities. Member states are in fact focused on
the withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan while
the United States are struggling to maintain
combat readiness in the Gulf and are at the same
time shifting their focus toward the Asian theater
of operations. If the Libyan operation has been
tactically and logistically quick to coordinate
and carry out, a Syrian one would require a major
implication of all willing member states. To
successfully counter an aggression on Turkey, NATO
would need to wage a full spectrum operation. The
lack of political appetite and its overstretched
strategic posture coupled with the European
ongoing budget crises make the use of article 5
about tensions over the Turkish and Syrian border
an extremely sensible matter.
It may also
be highlighted that the low intensity of fighting
may not justify a full blown military
intervention, which in turn will be necessary if
Syria commits a widespread and durable violation
of the Turkish sovereignty.
The current
Syrian conflict is presenting NATO with a dilemma.
Either it attempts to conduct a conventional
deterrence, against its members states' political
will, and remains blocked in a Cold War structure
which is no longer efficient or it takes the
present situation as a unique opportunity to
reform the meaning of the Article 5 and 6 of its
charter and add dynamism and flexibility to its
configuration. The response which the alliance
will give to the current Syrian aggressions
against Turkey will be instrumental in defining
the NATO long-term attitude. An evolution of
NATO's defensive strengths can only be done via a
highly unlikely strategic debate over the posture
and role member states want to give to the
alliance. As the recent Chicago Summit proved,
operational changes are on their way but an
overall rethinking of the NATO deterrence doctrine
may still be a path to follow in the future.
Riccardo Dugulin holds a Master
degree from the Paris School of International
Affairs (Sciences Po) and is specialized in
International Security. He is currently working in
Paris for a Medical and Security Assistance
company. He has worked for a number of leading
think tanks in Washington DC, Dubai and Beirut.
Dugulin's website is www.riccardodugulin.com
Speaking Freely is an Asia
Times Online feature that allows guest writers to
have their say.Please
click hereif you are interested in
contributing. Articles submitted for this section
allow our readers to express their opinions and do
not necessarily meet the same editorial standards
of Asia Times Online's regular contributors.
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