An Analysis of NATO’s Chicago Summit: Has NATO Lost Its Way?
Response: Anthony Quainton
A quick look at the NATO website in mid-August was quite a surprise. The featured
video shows that NATO is active in creating the first national rugby team in Afghanistan
and the lead photo is about the training of Kabul’s passport office manager. For those
looking ahead to the 2016 Olympic Games where rugby will be a competitive sport for
the first time or those considering travel to Afghanistan these are reassuring stories, but
to me they suggest that NATO has lost its way. These are not the real priorities of the
NATO mission in Kabul nor will they contribute very significantly to European and North
Atlantic security which NATO was created to defend. To be sure the website contains
links to solemn and high-sounding statements and speeches by the NATO Secretary
General and to the declarations of the Chicago summit, but the principal impression that
a casual viewer/reader comes away with is that NATO, far from focusing on its
traditional security mission, has signed on to the nation-building enthusiasms of the
United States derived from an embrace of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine
and the derivative responsibility to fix (R2F). Underlying these doctrines is a core set of
Christian values involving the protection of life and human freedom, but they also imply
a highly intrusive approach by western powers into the affairs of other societies. This is
a set of issues on which CCADD needs to reflect.
The Chicago summit produced a 65 paragraph declaration coving the full range of
NATO interests and a long separate declaration on Afghanistan. Both make clear that
NATO is in the nation-building business for the long haul after its combat mission comes
to an end in 2014. The Alliance is now committed to stabilization and reconstruction in
general (Chicago 18) and has also signed on to a potentially highly intrusive social
agenda advocated by the United States which includes a focus on the protection of the
rights of women and children. The declaration underscores that “gender perspectives”
are to be integrated into all Alliance activities. (Chicago 16) Paragraph 9 of the
Declaration also makes clear that this is already the case of Afghanistan. All of these
are worthy causes, no doubt, but is the Alliance the place for these activities to be
located given the existence of an array of multinational and multilateral structures and
institutions designed to achieve some of the same ends. Is there a danger of NATO
becoming yet another arm of the great Western (Christian?) colonial mission so often
decried when 19th and 20th century imperial history is examined? Does the White
Man’s Burden still live and is the French mission civilizatrice still in play?
In reading the Chicago Declaration one is truck by the steadily expanding global role of
the alliance. NATO’s cooperation with Australia is noted (Chicago 22). Anti-piracy
measures in the Horn of Africa are praised as is cooperation with the African Union.
(Chicago 15) The Chicago Declaration speaks of engaging with “partners across the
globe” who can contribute to security including, would you believe it, NATO’s most
recent partner Mongolia!! Other existing partners include Japan, Korea, Morocco, New
Zealand, Qatar and the UAE in addition to more obvious European partners, Austria,
Finland, Sweden and Switzerland. NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen
similarly emphasized NATO’s global role in a speech at Chatham House in London in
July, stating “We cannot deal with today’s security challenges from a purely European
perspective. What matters is being engaged wherever our security matters. That
means here in Europe. Across the Euro-Atlantic area and around the globe.” In short
the world is now NATO’s oyster.
Of course, the overall focus of the Alliance remains Europe, paragraph after paragraph
of the Chicago Declaration speaks to the Alliance’s desire to expand. The underlying
principle seems to be that bigger is better. The Alliance is to be open to all European
democracies. Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Georgia are
already on the list of potential candidate. Serbia and Ukraine, whose democracies are
more fragile, are urged to cooperate more closely although their internal policies are
subject to alliance exhortation or criticism. The Serbs and Kosovars, Armenians and
Azerbaijanis, Moldovans and Transdnistrians s are encouraged to resolve their
differences. NATO seems to have a gift for exhortation, but is rather short on solutions
to what are obviously difficult and complex issues with long and deep-seated historical
roots.
When it comes to security policy NATO’s concerns fall into two distinct, if interrelated,
concerns: ballistic missile defense and nuclear non-proliferation. The language on both
Iran and North Korea is strong and closely parallels United States official policy on
these issues. The Alliance demands changes in the policies of these governments and
condemns many of their activities. There is little sense that the Alliance has anything
which might be called a negotiating strategy beyond endorsement of the P5+ 1 talks
with Iran. The Alliance remains firm in its commitment to create a ballistic missile shield
in Eastern Europe, the purpose being to “provide full coverage and protection for “all
NATO European populations, territory and forces”
None of this is particularly surprising and builds on many previous declarations and
policy initiatives. But one might well ask against whom is NATO defending its member
states. To be sure NATO members share a common need and desire to protect
themselves against international terrorism and the dangers inherent in the possibility of
a nuclear exchange among and between non-Nato countries. However if one were
sitting in Moscow one might conclude that this array of policies and commitments has
but one purpose to contain a rising Russian Federation. Cold War rhetoric has gone
from NATO’s lexicon, but actions speak louder than words. The Alliance is taking
increasingly active positions on issues which involve parts of the former Soviet Union,
not to speak of areas of Russian influence beyond the Soviet Union’s former borders.
One might well think that containment lives, not only in terms of the ballistic missile
shield, but as the partnerships grow around the periphery of Russia from Mongolia to
Central Asia to the Caucasus, the Black Sea and the Baltic. Oblique references to the
promotion of energy security surely reflects a concern about Europe’s dependence on
Russian gas and oil.
The Secretary General tried to disarm Russian criticism in his Chatham House speech
by asserting that NATO’s Open Door policy is really in Russia’s interest since it will
provide stability on Russia’s western border. The Alliance, he insisted, is not a threat to
Russia and did not believe that Russia was a threat to it. He called for both sides to
seek opportunities to work more closely together in the future and asserted that missile
defense is such an area. It all sounds good to our ears, but has a much more
discordant sound in Moscow.
Overall what is most striking about NATO’s agenda is how little reference there is to
either defense or disarmament issues, CCADD’s central concerns, except when it
comes to the Ballistic Missile Shield and the efforts to thwart Iranian and North Korean
nuclear ambitions. Proliferation in south Asia is ignored. Future reductions in nuclear
armaments beyond START II are not spoken of. Instead NATO’s remit has become
ever more broad. Leaving the Western hemisphere aside, in deference one supposes to
American sensitivities, there is really no corner o f the world to which NATO’s policies
and programs do not reach. To a lapsed diplomat like myself, with memories of the
Cold War and the strategy of containment, this new agenda seems dangerously
ambitious, presupposing a political willingness throughout Europe( and in the United
States) to commit resources both human and financial to solving the world’s problems.
Whether that will exists in an environment of steadily shrinking defense budgets and
deep concerns about economic stability remains to be seen. Global mission creep is not
the answer. A return to a sharply focused defense and security agenda would seem to
be a more appropriate response to the challenges which the Alliance will face in the
next decade.