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In search of a role

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) came into being in Washington on April 4, 1949 as a body dedicated to providing mutual and collective defence to any member attacked by an external party. Such defence includes military force only if that is deemed necessary. Until 2001, when NATO sent the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to Afghanistan, the alliance was limited to acting in Europe and North America. It has always generated strong opinions from su pporters and critics. Claims that it kept the peace in Europe during the Cold War have been countered with statements that it exacerbated global tensions. For example, NATO rejected the Soviet Union’s application to join in 1954 but admitted West Germany in 1955; that led directly to the creation of the socialist bloc’s counter-body, the Warsaw Treaty Organisation. Other criticisms are that, despite NATO’s constitutional requirement that member states should be democracies, the Catholic-fundamentalist and brutal dictatorship of Portugal was included as a founder-member, and that in the 1970s the western-alliance-aided military dictatorships in Turkey, which had joined in 1952. In the 1990s, NATO action in the Balkans was highly controversial, and was seen by many as intended to help dismember Yugoslavia. More recently, the organisation’s moves to locate missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic, as well as discussions on the possible accession of Georgia and Ukraine, have triggered justified Russian accusations of encirclement and provocation. Indeed, had Georgia been a full NATO member in 2008, the alliance would probably have had to engage Russian forces during the Georgian-provoked battles that year.

Inevitably, a body whose members account for 70 per cent of a global military expenditure of $1,473 trillion constitutes a powerful lobby. U.S. dominance also makes NATO a de facto agent of its foreign policy. Insiders now talk of unlimited expansion, which would include India, Japan, and Israel. That, however, ignores NATO’s problems. First, its commanders say they cannot win in Afghanistan, where their involvement has gone far beyond the support originally envisaged for the Afghan interim government in 2001, and where serious differences have emerged among members over the extent of participation. Failure in Afghanistan, as the outgoing secretary-general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, has said, will severely damage the organisation’s credibility. The second, equally intractable, problem is that the end of the Soviet Union means that NATO now has to justify its own existence. That it cannot do that without exaggerating threats to world peace itself becomes a major source of international insecurity.

Corrections and Clarifiations

The second paragraph of "In search of a role" (Editorial, April 11, 2009) was "Inevitably, a body whose members account for 70 per cent of a global military expenditure of $1,473 trillion constitutes a powerful lobby." The figure is "$1,473 billion".

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