Visit our website: HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------------------------- NATO Enlargement and its Changing Missions Tomas Valasek, Senior Analyst, [EMAIL PROTECTED] As NATO's 2002 Prague summit approaches, alliance members are beginning to stake out their positions on enlargement. NATO is expected to decide in Prague whether it accepts new members, which countries will be selected, and in what time frame. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder ruffled feathers in NATO when he suggested that Russia might be accepted, albeit not in the near term. More recently, French President Jacques Chirac made a pitch for the three Baltic states - Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia - to be accepted to NATO in 2002. But what is missing from these statements is a rationale for enlargement; a clear definition of what NATO does and how new members would contribute to its missions. The NATO enlargement issue cannot be divorced from the larger question of NATO's purpose. Only in the context of NATO's future missions can one examine whether new members would add to or detract from the alliance's ability to carry out its goals. NATO's purpose is by no means immutable or even clearly defined - the alliance's guiding document, the Strategic Concept, has been revised twice in the past decade. With the exception of most recent entrants, few NATO members today think of the alliance as exclusively - or even primarily - a mutual defense organization. The alliance is engaged in missions that its founders never would have contemplated. NATO today is first and foremost a regional security organization. In simplified terms, its work in the past six years has consisted of enforcing internationally accepted norms of behavior, in both interstate as well as intrastate conflicts (albeit at the cost of violating some of these norms itself, as discussed below). It launched air strikes against Bosnian Serb targets in 1995 to keep one ethnic group from massacring another. It fought again in Kosovo in 1999 to stop the Yugoslav security apparatus from using indiscriminate force and terror in quelling unrest by the country's Albanian minority. At the time of writing this essay, the alliance stands ready to launch another mission, in Macedonia, to enforce a potential peace agreement between the Macedonian government and ethnic Albanian militants. Is NATO the right organization to assume the regional security responsibilities in Europe? It is not Europe's only security organization, not even its largest one. One alternative to NATO is Europe's largest collective security group, the 55-member Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Unlike the OSCE, NATO is an exclusive organization involving less than half of Europe's states. The alliance's selective nature inevitably raises questions about its legitimacy. By what right does a group of 19 states enforce order among Europe's 45 countries? NATO's Bosnia mission was launched on the request of the United Nations' Security Council. But the Kosovo war received no such endorsement. NATO acted on the basis of a vote in the North Atlantic Council, the alliance's own highest decision-making body. NATO's unilateral action appeared to violate, if not the letter, then the spirit, of the U.N. Charter. NATO is, in effect, a self-appointed private security force. It is benevolent in that it seeks to enforce, in the allies' best interpretation, a universally accepted set of rules, modeled after the U.N. Charter. This benevolence is a part of the reason why no fewer than nine European countries seek NATO membership rather than fear its power. But NATO remains a self-appointed interpreter and enforcer of these rules, and it is willing to enforce them with military might, and as such in inevitably arouses suspicions among some neighbors. Russia's objections to NATO's Kosovo operation focused not as much on the tactical issues as they did on the fact that the alliance launched the air war without a U.N. Security Council authorization. Even more worrisome to Moscow, nothing theoretically prevents the alliance from launching a similar operation against Russia itself. In polls conducted in April 1999, in the midst of the Kosovo war, 70 percent to 73 percent of Russians said they considered the NATO military operation in Yugoslavia a direct threat to Russia's security. Fears that NATO may potentially abuse its military might have translated into tensions and insecurity as countries such as Russia seek to form alliances implicitly aimed against NATO. The president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, justified the union between Russia and Belarus as a response to NATO's aggression against Yugoslavia. So, would Europe be better off with a collective security organization instead of NATO? Could the enforcer be causing more damage than good through the methods it uses to enforce otherwise sound principles? Not necessarily. NATO's exclusivity is also one of its strengths. By keeping its membership relatively limited, NATO has preserved its ability to act -- it is far easier to reach consensus among 19 nations that among 34. Also, a smaller, more cohesive membership has allowed NATO to preserve its core values. As expressed in the Membership Action Plans -- guideline documents for NATO applicants -- these values are: market economy, freedom of expression, peaceful resolution of domestic and international conflicts, transparency, and a market economy relatively free of corruption. This basket of norms accepted by NATO members is crucial to its existence - promotion and enforcement of these values has, in effect, become NATO's central mission. If the alliance lost consensus on what principles it stands and fights for, it would find itself without a purpose. The OSCE does provide an alternative to NATO but lacks the ability to enforce its decisions. The flip side of collective security arrangements is that the same voluntary principle that is at the heart of OSCE's mandate makes the organization unequipped for situations when a member state refuses to abide by its principles. In the past few years, OSCE's instructions to Russia to vacate its bases in Moldova and Georgia have gone partially or completely unheeded. The OSCE's only tool to punish Yugoslavia for its behavior in Bosnia and Kosovo was suspension of the country's membership. But with Belgrade outside the organization, the OSCE lost all leverage over events in the Balkan country. NATO is not the perfect answer but it is better than the alternatives. A Europe without a security organization would be a far more dangerous place. As proposed earlier, Balkan conflicts would most likely still be burning out of control. For better or worse, Europe will rely on NATO for the foreseeable future to provide peace and security to the continent. Does NATO's changing role mean that applicants should be judged by different criteria than in the past? For example, should the applicant's ability to defend itself dominate the list of criteria when most NATO military plans and exercises are geared for humanitarian crises and peacekeeping? Is the proximity of the applicant countries to areas of conflict, such as the former Yugoslavia, a liability or an asset? And would enlargement help or aggravate NATO's legitimacy problem? All these questions will need to be explored before the alliance can make a confident decision on enlargement in 2002. (This article is an excerpt from an upcoming CDI book on NATO enlargement, to be released this fall). The Center for Defense Information The Weekly Defense Monitor 1779 Massachusetts Ave., NW * Washington, DC 20036 (202)332-0600 * Fax (202)462-4559 * www.cdi.org ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ---- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------- ------------------------------------------------- This Discussion List is the follow-up for the old stopnato @listbot.com that has been shut down ==^================================================================ EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://TOPICA.COM/u/?a84x2u.a9spWA Or send an email To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] This email was sent to: archive@jab.org T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
