#9
Financial Times (UK)
August 8, 2002
Nato's new role
By Charles Grant
The writer is director of the Centre for European Reform

Since September 11, Nato has plunged into something of an existential crisis. The US chose to fight the Afghan war largely on its own, rather than through Nato or with European allies. Some officials in the Bush administration have done little to hide their disdain for the alliance. The imminent enlargement of Nato - up to seven central European states will be invited to join in November - will reduce its military cohesion. And the recent deal to establish a Nato-Russia council has reinforced the perception that the alliance is becoming a largely political body rather than a serious military organisation.

George Robertson, Nato's secretary-general, has called for Nato to develop a new role in fighting terrorism. But that struggle requires intelligence-sharing among the minimum number of parties, great secrecy and the ability to move speedily. It is hard to think of a body less well suited than Nato - for all its merits, a large, sometimes leaky, multinational bureaucracy - to leading the war against terrorism.

So what should Nato do? It should provide a forum for North Americans, Europeans and Russians to talk about matters of common concern, such as proliferation, missile defence, the Balkans and the modernisation of Russia's armed forces. There is no other body that can keep the US directly involved in European affairs. And no other organisation is so well suited to engaging Russia's security establishment. In the long run, if Russia becomes a more westernised country, and if the European Union's common foreign and security policy becomes more solid, Nato's political organisation is likely to rest on three pillars: the US, the EU and Russia.

However, Nato should maintain its military organisation, for it encourages "inter-operability" among the armed forces of Nato members and partners: they can work alongside each other more easily, whether peacekeeping or fighting. Nato's achievements in this area leave much to be desired but it has promoted common operating procedures, technical standards and rules of engagement. Coalitions as diverse as the US-led army that fought the Gulf war in 1991 and the European peacekeeping force in Kabul in 2002 - though neither was a Nato mission - could not have been so effective if Nato had not fostered the habit of working together.

Nato needs its military organisation for three reasons. First, Nato's skills as an experienced and proficient provider of peacekeeping are still required. The EU may soon take over the peacekeeping mission in Macedonia, and in the longer run in Bosnia. But the fraught situation in Kosovo requires the involvement of Nato and thus, implicitly, of the US.

Second, the embryonic European security and defence policy (ESDP) will achieve very little without practical support from Nato's military organisation. Almost any conceivable EU military mission will need to draw on Nato assets such as the expertise of its military planners. Some commentators suppose that Nato and the ESDP are in competition with each other. The truth is the contrary: they will sink or swim together. If the Europeans succeed in boosting their military capabilities, that is good for Nato and good for the ESDP. If they fail, both will suffer.

Third, Nato should develop a new military role, to provide a European strike force that could fight alongside US troops in a high-intensity conflict such as that in Afghanistan. The point would be to encourage US commanders to take up European offers of assistance: they would probably be more willing to do so if such forces - including, for example, bombers and elite troops - were packaged and vetted by Nato rather than offered directly by governments. In practice, only some European countries could contribute to such a strike force, and it would not be feasible unless some defence budgets rose substantially. But if Nato could help the US not only with peacekeeping but also with fighting in distant places, American respect for Nato would grow.

Apart from its political and military role, Nato should do much more than it does to promote a single market in armaments and defence technology. On both sides of the Atlantic, the leading defence companies understand that the long-term trend is for transatlantic alliances in the defence industry. But worries about national security, as well as pork-barrel politics, have prevented the creation of a common market, even among the EU countries.

If Nato could establish common rules on export controls and technology transfer, the allies would be more likely to trust each other and open their markets.

As Russia moves closer to the alliance, and gradually wins the confidence of Nato governments, some of its defence industries could become integrated with those of Europe and America. A single armaments market would make it easier for Nato forces to use common equipment and thus work together more effectively.

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