What’s NATO For?

Keep the Russians out, the Germans down and the Americans in.” During the Cold War, that simple slogan pretty much summed up NATO’s purpose as far as Europe was concerned. Those days are long gone. This week the leaders of the 19 North Atlantic Treaty Organization member countries gather in Prague to embark on what’s meant to be the alliance’s most ambitious enlargement yet: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia — all armed with more will than power — are expected to get invitations to join. But with more terrorist attacks and a war against Iraq on the horizon, the top priority for NATO isn’t enlargement, but transformation: in the post-Sept. 11 world, what exactly is NATO for?

Last year’s terror attacks inspired the alliance to invoke for the first time Article 5 of the NATO treaty, the clause mandating common defense. But the air went out of that historic gesture when the Bush Administration all but ignored it, steering well clear of NATO command structures for its attack on Afghanistan. The U.S. has waged the military war on terror largely on its own, and shows every sign of doing the same in Iraq. If it comes to war against Baghdad, America will doubtless have key allies at its side, but NATO itself is not likely to be central to the endeavor. “NATO as a war-fighting machine is dead,” says French defense analyst Franois Heisbourg. “It would do well to stop pretending that’s what it is.” As George W. Bush and U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld travel to Prague this week, those who still believe in the alliance are trying to figure out not just how NATO can get back in the game, but what that game might be.

The Balkan wars showed how ill equipped the Europeans were to fight a war, even one in their own backyard. Things haven’t improved much since then. Currently the U.S. spends $376 billion on defense — 3.5% of its gdp — while all the other allies together spend some $140 billion — an average of less than 2% each. “The Americans are already too advanced to work with many Continental forces,” says Julian Lindley-French, senior fellow at the E.U. Center for Security Studies in Paris. Only four other countries — France, Norway, the U.K. and (marginally) Portugal — have upped their defense budgets this year, according to a senior NATO official. The French have done so not because the Americans want it, but to keep up with the British.

While it’s true that the alliance no longer needs to fight the wars of old, it may not yet be ready to address the newest dangers. “NATO needs to pivot from an inward focus to an outward one, because the greatest threats we face are no longer from within Europe, but from the region stretching from North Africa to Central Asia,” says Nicholas Burns, the U.S. ambassador to NATO. “The big threat is the nexus of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.”

In Prague, NATO will commit to transforming itself into an alliance that can respond rapidly to that threat. It needs fewer tank brigades and more special forces; fewer regional air bases and more long-range aircraft; a leaner command structure with fewer static commanders and more mobile ones. Last May, alliance foreign ministers quietly lifted the taboo on “out of area” tasks; from now on, NATO would, if necessary, meet its enemies outside Europe — but it still lacks the means to do so. NATO Secretary-General George Robertson has been cajoling members to pony up the military hardware needed to put the relevance question to rest.

The alliance has already lost most of its credibility with the U.S. Starting in Kosovo in 1999, America chose not to hamper its strength by leashing it to NATO’s creaky war-by-committee procedures. At the same time, many Europeans harbor concerns that a bulked-up NATO would stymie the E.U.’s attempts to act independently of Washington on security and foreign policy issues.

Before that can be a problem, however, NATO would have to bulk up — and it’s not so clear that it is serious about doing so. The question is a familiar one. The centerpiece of the last NATO summit, in Washington in April 1999, was the “defense capabilities initiative,” which set out 59 areas — from field hospitals to tankers — where nations should beef up their arsenals. While most goals were achieved, “they picked the low-hanging fruit,” admits a NATO official. The crucial big-ticket items remain: protection against nuclear, biological and chemical weapons; better equipment for command, control, communication and intelligence; better combat support; and the hardware to deploy European soldiers quickly and effectively. It’s no coincidence that these are exactly the things the Europeans need for their own E.U. Rapid Reaction Force: 60,000 men, deployable within 60 days and sustainable for a year, to take on general peacekeeping and humanitarian tasks.

This time, NATO has given specific wish lists to member states. The Germans have agreed to take the lead in putting together a consortium of European countries to lease large transport planes before Europe’s own Airbus A400M can be deployed around 2009. At present, according to NATO figures, the U.S. has a fleet of 340 planes for strategic airlift; European allies own 11, and rental agreements on a further 25 are due to expire at the end of the year. Fixing the problem fell to Berlin, say NATO officials, in part because its capability needs to be bolstered: the Bundeswehr had to rent Ukrainian Antonovs to get cargo to Afghanistan last spring, and the Schröder government, pleading budget problems, has already reduced its order for the A400M from a promised 73 planes to just 40. NATO officials hope Berlin will pull together enough allies to commit to the long-term lease of eight to 10 such planes.

The Dutch have been tasked with heading a similar consortium to bolster Europe’s capability to use precision-guided munitions, especially for countries that fly American-made F-16s. Procuring such smart bombs, many Europeans complain, has been hampered in the past by tight American export controls. American officials say that they’re reviewing those controls and have provided technological fixes to iron out some of the problems. NATO officials hope the Spanish will demonstrate progress at Prague in improving the meager capacity of European allies to refuel their planes in flight.

The allies got a further spur in September, when Rumsfeld formally proposed a combat force of up to 20,000 troops that can be deployed within a week and stay at least a month. This “NATO response force” — which bears more than a passing resemblance to the E.U.’s Rapid Reaction Force — is expected to be approved in Prague and calls for earmarking certain units so that NATO can pull together at short notice a force tailored to a specific mission. Niche capabilities are encouraged: the Norwegians are concentrating on special forces, for example, and the Czechs on chemical-warfare protection.

But is it a NATO force or an E.U. force? Well, most of the equipment shortfalls plaguing the E.U. are the same ones NATO has identified. “Getting airlift helps both the E.U. and NATO,” says a European diplomat at NATO. “The concepts are complementary.” Others aren’t quite so sure. Though the NATO force is geared for actual combat rather than the lower-intensity peacekeeping missions the E.U. envisions, says Rob de Wijk, a security expert at the Clingendael Institute in the Hague, Washington’s proposal is “a clear attempt to prevent Europe from going its own way” by committing its resources to the alliance.

A similar conflict surfaced last week when NATO said it would renew its mandate, due to expire Dec. 15, to command a peacekeeping force in Macedonia — a task the E.U. was eager to take on to prove its mettle in the security field. The E.U. can’t begin the job until NATO member Turkey accepts an agreement that would allow the E.U. access to NATO assets. But Turkey doesn’t want to say yes or no until it gets word in December on its prospects for launching negotiations to one day join the E.U.

Such squabbles demonstrate the slight air of distrust among some Europeans about the U.S. push for NATO transformation. Capabilities are all well and good — if they materialize. But there are still nagging questions about the specific missions a transformed NATO will be called on to perform. More war-fighting prowess might assure NATO a role in the international security-assistance force in Afghanistan. NATO European command in Mons, Belgium, is already tasked with providing much of the planning for the joint German-Dutch command of that force slated to begin early next year, and the next mission there may be an explicitly NATO one. Far harder to imagine is a specific role for NATO in an Iraq war. “At Prague, we’re looking for a vigorous statement of political unity about Iraq,” says U.S. Ambassador Burns. But in operational terms, Iraq is the elephant in the conference room.

Let’s assume the Europeans make good on their promises to give NATO the power to act in distant theaters. That doesn’t mean they’ll actually want to fight those battles. As the Iraq debate has shown, it’s one thing to have compatible militaries, quite another to have compatible foreign policies.