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Analysis: What now for NATO?
By CNN's European Political Editor, Robin Oakley
BRUSSELS, Belgium (CNN) -- Even before it has started, President George W. Bush's threatened war against Iraq has caused political casualties. It has soured relations between Washington and Gerhard Schroder's Berlin. It has made a nonsense of any notions of a coherent European security and defence policy. And it has raised a serious question mark over the future of NATO. France, Belgium and Germany refused to agree despite three weeks of pressure to do so that NATO should begin planning for assistance to Turkey in the event of an Iraqi war, with AWACS surveillance planes, Patriot anti-missile defences and protection units against chemical and biological warfare. Their refusal has led Henry Kissinger to declare that the crisis is "the gravest in the Atlantic alliance since it was formed." America's ambassador to NATO, Nicholas Burns, has insisted that NATO faces "a crisis of credibility." And there are rumbles in the Pentagon undergrowth suggesting that this could be the beginning of the end for NATO. Will it be? Certainly there is great anger among the other 16 NATO members about the conduct of the three. NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson threw away the diplomatic rule book and revealed that the internal debates had been "heated." But interestingly even the testy Donald Rumsfeld, the U.S. Secretary of Defense, has been quick to point out that NATO has faced crises before and survived. And the row over the assistance for Turkey has to be seen in context. A matter of timing, not principleLord Robertson, the Turkish Foreign Minister Yasar Yakis and the three hold-out countries all agree that the argument is one of timing, not of principle. The three do not want NATO committed to a "mindset of war" while they are still pushing for diplomatic solutions to the Iraq crisis. They all agree that if Turkey were to face a real threat they would be among the first at their fellow NATO member's side. But the question is whether NATO, after its recent roller coaster history, can survive such a high profile public spat and whether it is going to retain any relevance if and when an Iraqi war begins. Robertson has worked hard to lift NATO's political profile at a time when many despaired that the initials were coming to stand for "Now Almost Totally Obsolete." He worked hard to re-awaken Washington's interest after NATO had been sidelined post September 11, 2001. The NATO summit in Prague in November had been predicted to be a disaster. But instead it saw the alliance emerge with seven more eastern European members to add to the existing 19. The NATO member governments, whom Lord Robertson and the U.S. have long been chivvying to beef up their defence spending, promised to step up capabilities. And NATO agreed to create a 20,000-strong Rapid Response Force, described by Robertson as "a very sharp new tool in the NATO toolbox, able to go very quickly and to hit very hard where there is a security interest." But now with the prospect of an Iraq conflict looming, the NATO roller coaster seems ready for another downward plunge. The popular and effective Lord Robertson has announced that he will not be taking the extra year which many would like him to, but will quit his post in December. Cash-strapped European governments seem already to have forgotten their Prague promises and are once again raiding their defence budgets. And European military money is still not well spent. Robertson last year condemned the $150 billion European defence budget as a "waste of money," saying: "There are two million troops in uniform in Europe, half a million more than the Americans, but only a fraction are deployable." New fears and challenges emergeOnce again, as George Bush and Tony Blair seek to prod a largely reluctant world into an assault on Saddam Hussein, questions are being raised about what NATO's role should be or whether it really has a meaningful one at all. Its problem is that in the new world, the threat is not the fear of Soviet tanks rolling across Europe. It comes instead from insecure borders, ethnic and religious conflicts, terrorism and weapons proliferation. Individual NATO members have played their part in the war against al Qaeda and the Taliban since September 11 2001. But NATO as such has been little involved apart from the supply of AWACS spy planes to patrol U.S. skies while U.S. military assets were in use elsewhere. And it looks like being a similar story over Iraq. So the question for Tony Blair, Gerhard Schroder, Jacques Chirac and the other leaders in Europe is: Just what is NATO to become? In Prague the alliance seemed finally to shed all its old inhibitions about being a defence force confined to a traditional area. It seemed ready to take on an "out of area" worldwide role fighting terrorists or coping with failed states seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction. It has committed to a role in Afghanistan supporting ISAF -- the international security assistance force. And yet all the old uncertainties about what it is for seem to be creeping back. Will NATO develop that new dimension or from a military alliance for fighting wars? Will it turn itself into a political organisation for the propagation of democracy and market economics and the extension eastward of western-style democracy? As they squabble over the best way of coping with Saddam Hussein's weapons programme Chirac, Blair and Schroder have to decide, because the key question is whether the European nations in NATO will be willing to find and fund the special troops, the smart weapons and the heavy lift capacity which will be required to make the new multinational rapid response force a reality over the next two years. Many doubt if they can do that at the same time as launching the new 60,000 strong rapid reaction force which the European Union has been trying to put together. Shortage of political willThere is an obvious shortage of political will. The United States is becoming increasingly frustrated with European defence spending levels. The Europeans who used to see NATO as a useful means of keeping the U.S. involved in the defence of their continent are becoming steadily less enamoured of a U.S. administration under Bush. They see his White House as unilateralist and too much inclined to throw its weight around in the world. Part of the motivation for the row in NATO over Turkey and the Franco-German efforts to postpone a war against Iraq stem from the refusal of "Old Europe" to have the timetable of action dictated to them by Washington. It does raise questions over NATO's future. But the alliance has survived past rows over Suez, over the deployment of U.S. missiles and over France's withdrawal in 1966 from the integrated military command. It will probably survive the latest one too. But if NATO is to have a future, the initiative may have to be provided partly by those from Eastern Europe who have recently joined the alliance and those who are still queuing up to do so. They perhaps are the last remaining enthusiasts for an old-style NATO which, with their political history, they see as an essential protection. But have they enough clout to do much about it?
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