CHRISTINA MACKENZIE / PARIS
Alliance prepares to ditch Cold War structure and reorganise to cope with geographic expansion and modern threats
NATO hopes to start shedding its cumbersome Cold War apparel and emerge sleeker and speedier to face new, hidden threats from terrorism and rogue states after its summit this week. Member heads of state and government will meet on 21-22 November to determine the future transformation of the organisation. Ironically, the meeting will be in Prague, the capital city of one of their former Warsaw Pact adversaries, the Czech Republic.
The new-look NATO will not immediately emerge, butterfly-like. It will have to spend time in a cocoon during which its 19 members will move towards meeting a new strategy to replace the Defence Capabilities Initiative (DCI) adopted at the 15th NATO summit in Washington DC in 1999.
"We need more widebodied aircraft and fewer tanks, more precision-guided weapons, deployable logistic support troops, ground surveillance systems, and protection against chemical and biological weapons. We need forces that are slimmer, tougher and faster; forces that reach further, and can stay in the field longer," NATO secretary general Lord George Robertson says. This requires "sufficient investment in defence". He stresses that "military capability is the crucial underpinning of our safety and security".
Although the new initiative is being prepared by the same team that produced the DCI, under the chairmanship of NATO deputy secretary general Alessandro Minuto Rizzo, it will have three major differences which diplomats hope will make it more practicable. Firstly, it will be much more focused, concentrating on four issues:
defending members against chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear attacks; ensuring members have command, communication and information superiority; improving interoperability of deployed forces and key aspects of combat effectiveness; ensuring rapid deployment and sustainment of its forces.The second difference is that there will be a much tougher form of national commitment. The DCI involved a collective pledge to pursue capability improvements with no clear guidelines, but its successor will require each ally to commit individually to specific capability improvements.
There will also be a much greater emphasis on multinational co-operation. Robertson says this could take the form of "role specialisation for smaller countries, joint procurement projects, or pooling of assets we will see to it that our efforts tie in with the European Union's efforts to bolster its capabilities".
The NATO rapid reaction force, of about 21,000 soldiers, would be formed by "niche contributions" from whichever NATO nations were willing. These troops would be dedicated to a new NATO command and would be on call for six months at a time, ready during their "duty period" to go into action at short notice for up to a month.
But the French defence ministry says the idea of creating this force through niche contributions is "a little simplistic". It adds: "No government is going to agree to be limited to one area of speciality. The Czechs have specialists in biological and chemical warfare, but does this mean that other countries should not work towards having such a capability? It's a question of maintaining sovereignty."
France does, however, welcome the idea of a force working beyond NATO's traditional boundaries. NATO was created to meet a single, unambiguous threat: an invasion of Europe from the Soviet Union. This is no longer relevant. Today's threats come from rogue states, terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. "We are emerging from a geographical logic of NATO to one centred on areas of capacity. But we think that the decision to create an ad hoc force to meet a given threat must be taken by the North Atlantic Council. In other words, we think it must be decided at governmental level," French officials say.
UK diplomats say they are expecting no delays to implementing a new NATO at the Prague summit. "It will be something of a rubber-stamping exercise with most of the negotiations having been completed beforehand," officials say, while welcoming "this opportunity to transform NATO".
The Prague summit will not only see radical transformation of NATO's mandate, but also its structure. Seven nations are likely to be invited to join from a list of 10 in NATO's membership action plan - Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.
Those invited will not become new members immediately. They will have to make improvements to meet NATO standards while the accession and ratification processes move forward. Once this process is complete the invitees will become full members, together, as a group. Robertson expects this to happen "in about two years".
This enlargement in both members and remit means that NATO's internal structures must be adapted. "It is simply unrealistic to believe that we could just continue with the same working methods in an alliance of 20-plus," Robertson says. This means "leaner management, a reduced number of committees and more streamlining of decision-making".
NATO must also address the question of its relationship with the European Union "where momentum is lacking - and has been for some time", Robertson says. The problem is centred on institutional ties between the two - "finding the right balance between 'assured access' to NATO assets for the EU-members and 'assured participation' in the EU political-military decision process for non-EU allies" - in other words, Turkey, Robertson says.
He adds: "I think this goal is within reach, even if some of our member countries still have to walk the extra mile to achieve it."
Source: Flight International