What Next For NATO?

Even before 1966, when Charles de Gaulle pulled his country out of NATO’s integrated military command structure, France had a complex relationship with the Atlantic alliance. Since then, it retains a seat at the table in diplomatic and political terms, but doesn’t take part in defense planning. President Jacques Chirac demonstrated France’s diffident stance in 1999 by intervening in the setting of targets during the NATO air campaign against Serbia, and again last year by leading efforts to block the dispatch of air-defense systems to Turkey before the invasion of Iraq. So there was an inevitable whiff of irony around French Defense Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie’s tour earlier this month of Kosovo and Afghanistan, two hot spots where the alliance is currently active, to affirm France’s abiding commitment to NATO.

But underneath the irony is real iron: the Minister has solid military facts to flaunt. In Pristina, she attended the formal handover of command of Kosovo’s more than 18,000 NATO peacekeepers to French Lieut. General Yves de Kermabon. Then she flew to Kabul to meet troops under French Lieut. General Jean-Louis Py, who last month took charge of NATO’s 10,000-strong peacekeeping mission there. Now there are roughly twice as many European troops deployed outside the E.U. and NATO countries as there were 10 years ago, according to Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform in London. Most of them are doing peacekeeping work under the NATO banner. “We think it’s better to have NATO than ephemeral coalitions,” Alliot-Marie told TIME on the way home from her visit. “NATO has a habit of working together, and because we believe in it we want to see it continue.”

But continue to what end? Alliot-Marie correctly notes that “crises are going to multiply,” but France and the U.S. remain on a collision course over American-led efforts to give the alliance a direct role in Iraq. Putting NATO troops into the raging insurgency there, says one French diplomat, “isn’t good for NATO or for Iraq.” But supporters of NATO involvement insist an Iraq mission is crucial for both Iraq’s and the alliance’s future. “What kind of military organization would we be if we shied away from the central security challenges of our time?” says U.S. ambassador to NATO Nicholas Burns.

The question came to a head last week in Brussels, when ambassadors from NATO’s 26 members discussed a report from the 40-member NATO Training Implementation Mission that’s been in Iraq since August to assess how best to train the nascent Iraqi army. If they agree to expand the mission, up to 300 training instructors could be sent to Iraq to join the U.S. operation currently rebuilding the 260,000-strong Iraqi military force. But as the death toll mounts and the chaos widens, the prospect of NATO troops in Iraq makes many European governments blanch. On Friday, France and Belgium refused to sign off on that enlarged mission, setting the stage for more talks this week.

Some argue that the alliance already has its hands full. The Afghanistan mission, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), is trying to counter increased violence in the run-up to the Oct. 9 presidential election. Afghan President Hamid Karzai canceled a rally last week after a rocket was fired at his helicopter. The rocket missed, and his chopper flew back to Kabul. Nongovernmental organizations complain that NATO is too thin on the ground to provide security. “The NATO Secretary-General said the alliance was ready” for an Iraq mission, says a top French Defense Ministry official. “But between Kosovo and Afghanistan, we have plenty to do.” Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer argues passionately for an alliance presence. “All the allies realize that the international community cannot afford to lose Iraq,” he says. “We can’t let that country develop into a failed state.”

The E.U.-U.S. relationship is also being tested over NATO involvement in Iraq. Even before the Iraq war, Europe’s attention was divided between NATO and the effort to build the E.U.’s own security and defense identity. For its part, the Pentagon has preferred ad hoc coalitions in both Afghanistan and Iraq to enlisting NATO’s help. Last week, a report by a group of independent defense experts called for the creation of a 15,000-strong E.U. security force that could be rapidly deployed. But Continental governments still seem more willing to commit troops to peacekeeping efforts than to engage in reinvigorating NATO itself. “Germany’s interest in NATO has diminished,” says Christian Hacke, an expert on German foreign relations at the University of Bonn. “Europe is concentrating on itself.”

But neither the Europeans nor the Americans are ready to give up on NATO. De Hoop Scheffer says “the U.S. is engaged with and committed to the alliance.” And however inadvertently, the E.U. itself provided the best argument for NATO’s survival in its 2003 European Security Strategy, a kind of blueprint for an E.U. defense force: “In almost every major intervention, military efficiency has been followed by civilian chaos.” That’s an apt description of Iraq, but also applies to places like Kosovo and Afghanistan. Right now, only NATO has the planning capacity and military means to tackle situations like these.

The Europeans are doing their duty in the Balkans and Afghanistan, but being so heavily pressured to follow the Americans into Iraq rankles now as much as ever. Alliot-Marie likes to talk of the “complementary” nature of the E.U. and NATO. Ongoing efforts to improve the capability of European armies will help both institutions. Yet when it comes to actually deploying forces, the E.U. and the U.S. still have a few battles to fight.