The alliance tries to strike back

Date: 14/06/03

Putting NATO together again after Iraq

WHEN the cold war ended, NATO looked like an alliance in need of a mission. Since then, even its best opportunities to define one have come and gone. The Kosovo episode persuaded many in Washington that “war by committee” was inadvisable. An offer of support to America after September 11th was largely snubbed. An upbeat summit in Prague last year seemed to galvanise the alliance - until the debacle over Iraq, a “near-death experience” for NATO, according to America's ambassador to it. A meeting of defence ministers in Brussels this week (their foreign counterparts convened in Madrid last week) may help to revive some of the springiness of Prague.

A decision made there by the 19 existing members to open NATO's doors to seven new countries made all the headlines. Just as important, they promised to procure bits of military kit, either individually or in groups. Failure to fulfil previous vows to do so has contributed to the yawning technological gap between America's armed forces and those of its European allies (though the gap within Europe is also glaring), making it ever tougher for them to fight together. The Prague commitments are, according to some, a last chance for many Europeans to prove their military seriousness and secure the concomitant influence in Washington. Emyr Jones Parry, Britain's man at NATO, says that if the pledges are broken, those “who prefer to avoid a multilateral solution will say, 'I told you so'. “

Since Prague, there has been some action but also a lot of the usual talk. Still, the effort to make the alliance into a modern war-fighting outfit was given a small fillip by agreement on the shape of its NATO response force (NRF). The force is an American idea, partly designed to concentrate European minds on their military shortfalls. It will be smaller and sharper than the EU's similar-sounding outfit, able to deploy more quickly and fight more aggressively. The EU force will act when NATO chooses not to; missions to Africa are an obvious example. The two are thus supposed to complement each other, though they may end up calling on the same assets. An initial version of the NRF may be up and running later this year.

Will NATO'S members ever agree on what to do with it? Debate about Iraq may not rage as it once did, but it still rumbles on. There have been smaller squabbles over a plan to streamline the alliance's old military command structure, making it more nimble and stripping out several of the current HQs, to the chagrin of some of the host countries, such as Spain and Greece. A new “command transformation” in Virginia is designed to help close that technological gap.

The strange thing is that, even amid rumours of its slow demise, NATO is as active as ever. This summer it will undertake its first operation outside Europe, when it assumes control of the international force in Afghanistan. It will also help Poland with its peacekeeping job in Iraq (and many other NATO countries will have boots on Mesopotamian soil). It is still busy in the Balkans. Yet none of this will silence those voices who argue that NATO is too unwieldy to fight global terrorism; or that it will one day be eclipsed by the EU's nascent security effort; or that it is destined to remain America's cleaning lady.

Article discusses putting NATO together again after the Iraq War.

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