Nato puts brakes on enlargement

• Just like the European Union, it seems that Nato is also suffering from enlargement fatigue (Photo: Nato)

By Matthew Turner

BRATISLAVA, 16. Jul 2014, 08:32

Nato announced earlier this July that it is shelving plans to welcome any new members during its forthcoming Wales summit.

The hopes of four countries - Bosnia, Macedonia, Georgia and Montenegro – which were expecting to deepen their co-operation with Nato, are now all but dashed, as senior Nato officials have hit the pause button on future enlargement.

Dear EUobserver reader

 

Just like the European Union, it seems that Nato is also suffering from enlargement fatigue.

Unlike the Union though, Nato is shying away from even awarding the equivalent of the EU’s association agreement, namely the Membership Action Plan (MAP), to Georgia, over fears of provoking Moscow’s ire.

For all the aggressive rhetoric deployed during the Ukraine crisis, Nato seems to refuse to walk the walk.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, its outgoing secretary general, said recently that Russia is no longer a reliable partner for the West. But, apparently, nor is the West for its allies most exposed to Russia’s whims.

On top of that, France shows no signs of backing down on plans to deliver two Mistral-class frigates to Russia and (potentially) its Black Sea Fleet.

The €1.2 billion contract will endow Moscow with substantial firepower, as one Mistral can single-handedly overpower the navies of Romania or Georgia.

Admiral Vysotsky, the commander in chief of the Russian navy, even boasted that if Russia had had one such frigate at the time, the Georgian war would have ended in 40 minutes instead of 26 hours.

After Nato’s Bucharest summit of 2008, when Georgia was promised full membership within an unspecified timeframe, Georgia has been a faithful ally of the West, committing, for example, the largest non-Nato contingent to the ISAF mission in Afghanistan.

Instead of the long-sought MAP, it will in Wales receive a “substantial package”, including training programmes and advice along with a “detailed checklist” of what the country should do to gain membership.

In Bosnia’s case, the alliance said that it is waiting for the country “to make progress in the process of becoming an Alliance member”, even though Ole-Asbjorn Fauske, a deputy commander at Nato’s Sarajevo headquarters has said that “almost all conditions for activating the MAP” have been fulfilled.

The official invoked the country’s lack of “registration of military property in state institutions” as the main obstacle.

In Macedonia’s case, its foreign minister told the Associated Press that the Nato decision “was a step backward”, although prospects for full membership are unclear, given Greece’s long-standing name dispute with its neighbour.

The situation is different in the Baltic states. On top of a tripling of the number of Nato fighters deployed there, a new airbase just opened in Estonia, which will be used for Nato exercises and training.

In a festive 4 July atmosphere, the US ambassador to Estonia declared that “in the last four months, we have had boots on the ground, planes in the air and ships at sea”.

His comments almost overshadowed statements by Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaite that Russia has offered to reduce oil and gas prices for the Baltic countries if they terminated their Nato membership.

In this ambivalent context, it should come as no surprise to the West to witness a decline in pro-Nato sentiment in the four aspirant countries in the Balkans and South Caucasus, who sided with the West only to receive empty words in exchange.

Ever since the end of the Cold War, Nato has looked to find a new strategic imperative.

As Europeans turned their focus inwards, defence spending and defence capabilities decreased dramatically.

Germany’s experience in Afghanistan, where it couldn’t deploy its much-needed helicopters because they were lacking sand filters, has become one ancedote among many of European underperformance. Calls to disband Nato, unthinkable in the past, have multiplied.

When Russia annexed Crimea, Nato failed to make itself heard, as heads of state chose either the European Union or their national platforms to express their views.

Despite all this, Nato is still a symbol of the West.

Unlike the Warsaw Pact, it has weathered the 1989 moment and has deployed an increasing number of missions, albeit with modest results.

But looking at events cynically, perhaps the four aspirant countries would be better off without membership.

With the West’s failure to stop Russian action in Crimea, or for that matter in Georgia in 2008, what makes us believe that Nato would jump to the rescue in the event of a new Russia-Georgia war?

In the end, Nato membership could very well be more of a cost than a benefit in 2014.

NATO Tested on Both Sides of the Atlantic

November 17, 2016

Theodoros Papadopoulos

 

With Donald Trump slated to take over the reins from Barack Obama in January 2017, the still incumbent president embarked on his final visit to Europe. On his first stop in Greece, Obama expressed his opinion that Trump would in fact stick with NATO, despite the fact that the president-elect had threatened to abandon the alliance over unfulfilled financial contributions. But no matter how much hope Obama tries to instill on this side of the Atlantic, Trump’s wild cognitive dissonance, lack of experience and transactional worldview could deal the death blow to an already embattled and weakened NATO.

As things stand, Trump’s official policy towards NATO can be found on his Twitter feed: NATO is “obsolete” and “disproportionately too expensive (and unfair) for the U.S.” because alliance members fail to “PAY THEIR BILLS”. It’s true that many major NATO countries such as France and Germany have repeatedly failed to spend the 2 percent of GDP on defense as stipulated by NATO guidelines, and only Greece, the UK, Estonia and Poland met the target. But the president-elect’s demand that European allies pay their fair share goes beyond the mere adherence to NATO’s spending guidelines. What Trump is really demanding is for Europe to pay a significant share of Washington’s own defense spending by covering the costs associated with maintaining American bases and troops in Europe.

And while this demand might sound sensible to an accountant’s mind, simply looking at defense spending misses the greater picture that has been underpinning US-European relations for decades: Europe’s contributions are worth a lot more than financial statements would reveal. NATO members are a central pillar upholding US global leadership. The Western security alliance bundles two-thirds of global GDP and two-thirds of global military spending, a testimony to the degree of commitment to each other’s safety, unprecedented in world history. But by calling America’s alliances into question, Trump did not stand up for fiscal fairness – he articulated his conviction that the US has no inherent strategic self-interest in Europe.

This is not to say that NATO is a perfect organization and Trump is unnecessarily rocking the boat. The true test of the organization’s continued existence won’t be found in the size of defense budgets. Instead, the organization needs a renewed purpose other than the Cold War era relic of perpetually countering Russia. In its current form, NATO is poorly equipped to deal with asymmetric threats (such as terrorism or cyberthreats) or to deploy humanitarian missions. When European defense ministers met for the very first time after Trump’s election, the main topic was not how to cobble together more cash for the military, but to sign a EU-wide defense plan. German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen talked about “building a common security and defense organization” which could, for example, stem the refugee flow by stabilizing African and Middle East countries.

The defense plan allows the EU to send “rapid response forces” abroad for the very first time, improving civilian response to non-conventional threats (such as terrorism and organized crime) and invest more funds into developing European drones and fighter jets. A seldom-mentioned institution, the European Defense Agency, is expected to assume a wider-mandate and oversee the public procurement effort for defense materials. And while EU leaders went out of their way to stress that NATO remains the “centerpiece” of European security, the renewed push is a painful reminder of the transatlantic organization’s shortfalls.

Secondly, Trump’s attacks on NATO unfold at a time when the organization is trying to integrate its newest members and temper their unruly tendencies. Much like the EU, NATO has grown rapidly since the late 1990s, adding 12 more members from the former Soviet bloc. But that breakneck expansion left some officials red-faced. Albania, who joined in 2009, is one of Europe’s biggest producers of marijuana as well as a major safe haven for the heroin and cocaine trade across the continent. Organized crime is rife, as the country has one of the highest rates of illegal gun ownership in the world, a fact that even sparked the interest of ISIS. The Caliphate has been aggressively recruiting followers in Albania and there are even unconfirmed reports of ISIS training camps operational on the Kosovar side of the border.

Similarly, Montenegro, which was invited to join NATO but has yet to ratify, has made headlines after long-time president Milo Djukanovic failed to win an outright majority following the country’s October elections and stepped down – but not before accusing Russian nationalists of plotting a coup. Fears are now running high that NATO could be drawn into a conflict with Moscow over the fate of the former Yugoslav republic. The only problem with that assessment is that Djukanovic, in power since the early 1990s, has a long history of cronyism and is perhaps the only head of state to battle accusations of creating an international cigarette smuggling empire in partnership with the Italian mafia. It’s not surprising that some analysts have argued that the coup could have easily been organized to ensure Djukanovic wins the election – and they have even pointed to a close associate, Radoitza Rajo Bozovic, as the main organizer.

Given Djukanovic’s own propensity for criminal activity and Albania’s burgeoning drug empire, it’s no surprise that security experts argue that it is nonsensical to extend the US nuclear umbrella to countries with a long history of corruption that could bring about major conflict. It is clear that NATO will have to reform, but Trump’s transactional worldview fails to grasp the real scale of the challenge. The US has itself benefitted tremendously from the alliance’s “absolutely unconditioned” activities in the fight against terrorism, but Donald Trump’s outlook on European defense is throwing all support out of the window.

NATO steps up efforts to project stability and strengthen partners

• 09 Jul. 2016 -

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• Ukrainian

 

NATO leaders on Saturday (9 July) agreed a set of decisions to project stability beyond the Alliance’s borders, including starting a new training and capacity building effort in Iraq and the use of AWACS surveillance aircraft to support the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL.

 

“To the south we see failed and failing states. And millions left homeless and hopeless by terrorist groups like ISIL.” NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg told a news conference on day two of the NATO Summit. “This instability has a direct impact on our societies. The scale of the challenge demands that we take action”.

Mr Stoltenberg said that NATO will soon deploy a team to Baghdad to start planning for the new training effort in Iraq and to provide strategic advice to Iraqi Ministries. The Secretary General also announced plans to establish a new intelligence ‘Fusion Centre’ in Tunisia and begin providing support for Tunisian Special Operations Forces. NATO leaders also agreed to launch a new maritime security operation in the Mediterranean Sea. Operation Sea Guardian will have a broad scope, including providing situational awareness, countering trafficking and terrorism, upholding freedom of navigation and contributing to regional capacity building.  "We intend to work closely with the European Union's Operation Sophia in the Central Mediterranean, building on our swift and effective cooperation with the EU to cut lines of international human trafficking in the Aegean", Mr. Stoltenberg said.

Earlier on Saturday, Allied leaders underscored NATO’s continued support for Afghanistan, including a continuation of the Resolute Support mission into 2017 and continued funding of the Afghan forces until 2020.

The Secretary General also announced that the next NATO Summit will be held at the new NATO headquarters in Brussels in 2017.

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NATO stands resolute towards a secure and stable Afghanistan

• 09 Jul. 2016 -

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NATO leaders, joined today (9 July 2016) by leaders from Resolute Support partner countries at the Warsaw Summit, have reaffirmed their commitment to the long-term security and stability of Afghanistan. Together with Afghanistan’s President Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah, they discussed the security situation in Afghanistan and the reform process carried out by the Afghan National Unity Government. They also took stock of the performance of the Afghan National Defence and Security Forces, and laid out the way ahead for their continued support for Afghanistan.

NATO leaders bolster collective deterrence and defence

• 08 Jul. 2016 -

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NATO’s 28 leaders took decisions to bolster the Alliance’s deterrence and defence at the first working session of the Warsaw Summit on Friday (8 July 2016). The leaders decided to send more forces to the eastern part of the Alliance, declared a milestone for Ballistic Missile Defence, and decided to recognise cyberspace as an operational domain. Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg welcomed the result, saying “the decisions we have taken today will help keep our nations safe in a more dangerous world.”

 

The leaders agreed to enhance NATO’s military presence in the east, with four battalions in Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania on a rotational basis – to be in place starting next year. The Secretary General welcomed that Canada will lead the battalion for Latvia, Germany will lead in Lithuania, the United Kingdom will lead in Estonia, and the United States will lead in Poland. He also commended other Allies for announcing contributions to these battalions, and thanked the host nations for their support. Allies further agreed to develop a tailored forward presence in the south-eastern part of the Alliance.

Leaders also decided to declare Initial Operational Capability of NATO’s Ballistic Missile Defence. “This means that the US ships based in Spain, the radar in Turkey, and the interceptor site in Romania are now able to work together under NATO command and NATO control,” said Mr. Stoltenberg.

Leaders pledged to strengthen their own cyber defences, and recognised cyberspace as a new operational domain. “This means better protecting our networks and our missions and operations, with more focus on cyber training and planning,” the Secretary General said.

Leaders also reviewed and reconfirmed the importance of spending more and spending better on defence. The Secretary General welcomed that 2015 was the first year in many with a small increase in defence spending, and that estimates for 2016 show a further increase of 3%, or US $8 billion.  “We still have a long way to go, but I believe that we have turned a corner,” he said.

The Secretary General stressed that “NATO poses no threat to any country,” and continues to seek constructive dialogue with Russia. Calling the NATO-Russia Council “an important tool to manage our relationship,” Mr Stoltenberg recalled that a new meeting of the NATO-Russia Council will be held at ambassadorial level in Brussels on 13 July.

NATO leaders will further discuss current security challenges this evening, joined by their counterparts from Finland and Sweden, and the Presidents of the European Council and the European Commission.

 US Defence Secretary Ash Carter has accused Russia of "nuclear sabre-rattling" and of being intent on eroding international order.He said he regretted strained relations with Moscow but said the US had to "prioritise deterrence" on Nato's eastern flank.US-Russian ties have been strained by the Ukraine crisis and recent military encounters in the Baltic Sea.Russia has accused Nato of threatening its national security.Suggested from Windows Store FlipboardYour personal magazine of latest news (12,434 Reviews)Flipboard is your personal magazine. It is the most popular way to catch up on the news you care about, read stories…Get the app Speaking during a ceremony at the US European Command Headquarters in Germany, Mr Carter said Russia was "going backwards in time".But Mr Carter said: "We do not seek a cold, let alone a hot war with Russia."Nuclear threats: Analysis by Jonathan Marcus, BBC defence correspondentMr Carter's warning about Russia's nuclear sabre-rattling is a measure of how poor relations are between Nato and Moscow. At root is Russia's annexation of the Crimea and its military operations in eastern Ukraine. But Moscow sees Nato's response - a whole series of reinforced exercises in Poland and the Baltic republics along with additional US armour stock-piled in Europe - as yet another expansion of the alliance's activities towards its own borders. Russia has explicitly warned Denmark that its warships could become the target of nuclear strikes if it joins Nato's ballistic missile defence system and similar threats have been made to Norway and Poland. Russia is significantly modernising its nuclear arsenal. It has also deployed Iskander-M nuclear capable missiles to its Kaliningrad enclave. This, along with increasingly aggressive Russian air patrols, is only encouraging Nato to enhance its own deterrent capability. "We do not seek to make Russia an enemy. But make no mistake, we will defend our allies, the rules-based international order, and the positive future it affords us."He added: "Moscow's nuclear sabre-rattling raises troubling questions about Russia's leaders' commitment to strategic stability, their respect for norms against the use of nuclear weapons, and whether they respect the profound caution that nuclear-age leaders showed with regard to brandishing nuclear weapons."Mr Carter outlined plans to deploy a third US Army combat brigade in Europe in the coming year.He said it was part of a $3.4bn (£2.3bn) initiative to reassure Nato allies of US commitment to their security and to deter Russian aggression."We haven't had to prioritise deterrence on Nato's eastern flank for the past 25 years, but while I wish it were otherwise, now we have to," he said.NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Wednesday (6 April) that the “strength and unity” of NATO is key to addressing current security challenges, including in the fight against extremism. In a speech at the Atlantic Council of the United States in Washington, the Secretary General said “to protect our territory, we must be willing to project stability beyond our borders”. He highlighted the importance of using forces to train others to fight as an important lesson from past operations. “In the fight against terrorism, building local capacity is one of the best weapons we have”, he noted. He stressed that “while NATO has to remain an expeditionary alliance, able to deploy forces outside our territory, NATO must also become a more effective training Alliance”.In his speech, Mr. Stoltenberg proposed three ways that NATO could upgrade its training and capacity building efforts and advance cooperation with regional partners.First, he said, “We need to make training a core capability for the Alliance. We need a more robust approach. A responsive, ready-to-go capability, so that we can plan, coordinate and deploy advisory support and training missions faster.”Second, Mr. Stoltenberg proposed stepping up NATO’s support for Iraq. “The ability of an inclusive Iraqi government to restore security is critical to the stability of the whole region. And a stable Iraq is key in the battle against ISIL. Last week, NATO started training Iraqi officers in Jordan. We should further reinforce these efforts”, he said. His third proposal was to take NATO cooperation with regional partners and international organisations to a new level, “complementing bilateral efforts and strengthening the capacity of regional organisations”.Referring to the importance of the transatlantic bond, Mr Stoltenberg said, “I know that I can count on the continued leadership of the United States. I also know that the mutual interests of Europe and the United States are best served by a strong North Atlantic Alliance. Because the security of Europe and North America is indivisible. And only by standing together will we remain safe and secure”.On Wednesday, Mr. Stoltenberg also met with members of the Senate Armed Services Committee and from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Capitol Hill. Earlier this week, the Secretary General also met with President Obama and other senior US officials, and paid a visit to Fort Bragg in North Carolina, home of the US Army airborne forces and Special Forces.

NATO EXPANSION

Failure to Communicate

Recently, NATO extended an offer of membership to Montenegro. The announcement was couched in the usual tagline of offering “assurance” to Western Balkan states concerned with possible security issues (Russian assertiveness) and “reassurance” to current NATO members in the neighborhood. With the utmost respect to Montenegrins and other newer NATO entrants, it seems that they are not expected to reciprocate and offer assurance or reassurance to NATO in turn, which really means the United States. Yet, reciprocity is one of the hallmarks of any successful alliance. The idea that the U.S. considers Montenegro an ally worth risking further deterioration of US-Russian relations in the wake of Ukraine, Syria, the Sinai air disaster, the Paris bombings, and recent Turkish actions is quite idiotic.

Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014 should have taught NATO the possible dangers of over-extension. The latter episode in particular should have been quite instructive (to NATO as well as the EU) as to the need for dialogue between major powers before actions to be taken which might be perceived as infringing upon the security interests of other involved parties. Relentless expansion of one’s own sphere of influence while denying a corresponding sphere of influence and concomitant security interests to one’s counterpart reeks of hubris, stupidity, and miscalculation, the usual tragic precursors to war in the past.

 

Security Architecture and Infrastructure Crumbling

Two hundred years ago at the Congress of Vienna, the major powers of the day agreed to form an equilibrium of sorts which was intended to reduce the chance of a major European war re-occurring. In the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, Austria, Prussia, Russia, Great Britain, and France came to an understanding which in essence stated that if any one of the powers took actions which infringed upon the security interests of another state, it would potentially face consequences from the remaining powers as well. With the exception of the Crimean War, this model served as the basis for peace on the European continent for almost a hundred years, until the outbreak of World War I. Following the Treaty of Versailles, there were attempts to replicate the Congress of Vienna model with the formation of the League of Nations. The League ultimately proved unsustainable because of the non-participation of the United States.

The model was replicated once more in the wake of World War II with the creation of the United Nations’ Security Council, whose permanent members also numbered five, akin to the original Congress. In his infamous New York Times op-ed piece, President Putin warned explicitly that the Security Council was in danger of becoming obsolete if certain members, namely the U.S., kept taking actions which violated its norms. Members of the Security Council have the not unrealistic expectation that their interests will be taken into account. If not, the entire international security architecture becomes imminently more unstable.

 

Wisdom and Alternatives Needed

 

In addition to hurting US-Russia relations and ultimately undermining the US position in the international community vis-a-vis the United Nations, constant NATO expansion lends credence to the argument for alternative security structures. One such structure is China’s Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA). Among CICA’s tenets is the belief that alliances reflect a Cold War mentality, evident in the expansion to Montenegro and the populace’s subsequent division as result of common Orthodox ties with Russia. Another more fundamental CICA platform is that ultimate, “perfect” security for one party cannot be obtained without inevitably diminishing the security concerns of other parties.

 

Summarily, two post-World War II events are worthy of discussion here. However militarily feasible (if at all), it was considered politically infeasible to attack our ally, the Former Soviet Union, following the defeat of Nazi Germany. This suggestion by General Patton, in addition to other decisions taken, led to his eventual dismissal by General Eisenhower. Shortly afterwards, during the Korean War, General MacArthur talked about expanding the war to include China and actually advanced to the Sino-Korean border, which provoked a response from China, pushing the General’s troops toward the sea. MacArthur was eventually relieved by President Truman. The combined suggestion from the two popular generals was that there could be no ultimate security for the United States while both the Former Soviet Union and Communist China continued to exist. More wisdom and forethought in the likes of Truman and Eisenhower is desperately needed now.

February 2016

Defence Ministers to agree to enhance our forward presence in the eastern part of our Alliance.This will send a clear signal. NATO will respond as one to any aggression against any Ally. We have already significantly enhanced our presence and readiness of our forces. Allies have committed the assets we need for air policing, maritime patrols and exercises. The first six small headquarters or NATO Force Integration Units have been activated. And we are setting up two more in the near future. At the end of last year, we agreed assurance measures for Turkey – with AWACS surveillance planes, air policing, an increased naval presence in the Mediterranean and in the Black Sea and we decided to continue the deployment of our Patriot batteries to augment the air defences of Turkey.Europe needs less soldiers – but more European ones

 

NATO’s European Allies don’t need to make defence budget commitments that they can’t live up to, argues Stefan Soesanto. What they really need is to make difficult personnel cuts and start mixed nationality defence practices.

 

Let’s start with the good news first. Last year’s NATO summit in Newport, Wales was a positive milestone in the evolution of Europe's defence posture. To recap, the crisis-hit European states recommitted themselves to reverse the trend of declining defence budgets within the next decade, by raising their military expenditures to 2% of GDP with 20% dedicated to R&D and major equipment acquisition.

The Alliance also adopted a Readiness Action Plan (RAP) to safeguard its Eastern flank with the increase of military exercises and deployment of additional rotational NATO forces to Eastern and Central Europe. And consensus was reached on the creation of a 4000-5000 strong Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF), capable of deploying within a few days' notice by early 2015.

The disappointing part of the Wales Summit outcome is that larger defence budgets, closer military cooperation, and increased force readiness, are not going to fix the Alliance’s underlying problem of financially inefficient, politically fragmented, and strategically incoherent European allies.

 

First, the continuous drawdown of US military forces from Europe, from a high of 440,000 in 1957 to an all-time low of around 67,000 in 2015, has created substantial political fragmentation on the continent. This is negatively affecting Alliance cohesion and strategic decision-making to the point of mere status quo maintenance.

As a result, Moscow’s clear violation of the 1997 Helsinki Final Act, which forbids the “demand for, or act of, seizure and usurpation of part or all of the territory of any participating State”, has not prompted a drastic turnaround in Europe’s position towards the NATO-Russia Founding Act. Instead, the Alliance merely chose to reinforce its restrained security commitments towards its Eastern members, despite the dramatic changes in the continent’s overall security environment.

Second, in the absence of permanently stationed forces across NATO’s Eastern flank, the Alliance’s collective self-defence posture and long-term quest for force interoperability is being increasingly defined in political terms rather than sound deterrence strategy. True, NATO has put forward suggested increased military exercises, additional rotational forces, and the formation of a rapid response battalion. These temporarily circumvent the notion of inadequate territorial defence of NATO’s Eastern members, but do little to address the widening shortfalls of Alliance solidarity, defence commitments, and military cohesion within NATO itself.

 

If the dictum of ‘Vigilia Pretium Libertatis’ ought to apply to the Alliance in the 21st century, the 26 European members must adopt a holistic approach towards territorial defence rather than merely trying to compensate for the defensive weaknesses of its peripheral members in the context of possible Russian aggression.

 

A holistic approach to reform the Alliance would entail first and foremost the reconfiguration of NATO’s deployment strategy within Europe itself. In the same manner as the right to free movement and residence has strengthened European citizenry and the Union’s political integration, NATO needs to enhance national diversity among the armies of its member states and increase military dependencies to pivot away from a strategy based on defending its parts, towards a strategy of defending the whole.

 

The numbers speak for themselves. Some 25 per cent of NATO members do not have an air force, 30 per cent have no naval force or maintain a navy with less than 600 sailors, and 50 per cent are fielding an active army of less than 20,000 soldiers. NATO is an Alliance of unequals, but it does not have to be.

 

The first step to solve NATO’s underlying problem is to recognise that the continuous failure to create and deploy NATO’s Response Forces (NRF) and the EU Battlegroups is political in nature. Both rapid-response forces, as well as the current Framework Nations Concept advocated by Berlin, struggle with the uneven distribution of political risks, due to their internal rotational setup, unequal financial burden-sharing, and the issue of reacting to a military crisis rather than preventing one in the first place.

To achieve permanent political change within multilateral institutions, in which national interests reign supreme, it is prudent to use existing structures rather than creating new ones. What Europe needs are not new forces on permanent operational stand-by, as envisioned by the North Atlantic Council and the EU Commission. What the Alliance needs is to pick up where the European Union and the nation states have seemingly failed.

Creating European soldiers, and in the long-run hopefully full-fledged European citizens, is the tactical way forward to build sustainable structures of cooperation, strengthen the foundations of the Alliance, and interweave European security interests across the entire continent. Only when the European Allies are heavily invested in each other’s territorial defence, while maintaining national sovereignty and budget authority, will their parliaments and citizens be inclined to live up to NATO security commitments and the continuous pursuit of Alliance cohesion.

 

Netherlands has so far been the only NATO country that has embraced the idea to fully integrate elements of its military into the force structure of another state. It signed the Dutch-German Declaration of Intent (DoI) in May 2013. While this DoI is not based on reciprocity nor includes changes in basing venue for the troops concerned, it does present a basic blueprint on how to foster integrated operational cooperation, while counter-intuitively expanding national sovereignty at the same time.

 

If reciprocity and a change in basing venues were to apply in the Dutch-German DoI case, the Dutch would have a “lost” a brigade and “gained” a German one in return. Troop levels within the Netherlands and Germany would have roughly remained the same, while national sovereignty would have visibly expanded on both sides due to their brigades abroad and unchanged troop levels at home.

 

Yet instead of lingering in their barracks on Dutch soil, as the current DoI stipulates, the 11th Airmobile Brigade would have enhanced “interoperability and common planning, preparations and pre-deployment training” in Germany. It would serve as a permanent national contact point for overall military cooperation between Den Haag and Berlin and would be used as a trip-wire force to defend its neighbour to the East.

 

If such a DoI were to be implemented by all the European members within NATO, to the extent that 10-25 per cent of the armed forces were to comprise soldiers from other NATO members, the continent could turn itself into the proverbial fortress of Europe, and be able to naturally create the building blocks for multinational divisions, brigades, and battalions, to emerge under NATO command.

 

While this strategy of “trip-wiring” Europe may be interpreted by some as a violation of the NATO-Russia Founding Act, it would not necessarily prompt Moscow to embark on a troop buildup across NATO’s Eastern flank. Under the strategy outlined, troop levels in the Baltic States would remain the same. Their national composition, however, would significantly change - and with it their power to deter.

 

However, for the strategy of “trip-wiring” to translate into a workable concept, the continent has to re-learn the basic lessons of strategic decision making. None of the European NATO members is a superpower. Few, if any, can singlehandedly embark on a global mission to tackle threats as diffuse as international terrorism, or as comprehensive as stabilising failed states. And none of them can solely focus on defending its national borders while free-riding on Article 5.

 

NATO cannot be solely held together by the ink in the Washington treaty. It must be backed up by the military force necessary to visibly underscore Europe’s unwavering security commitments. In the absence of a coherent strategic culture on the continent, as exemplified by the cacophony of European defence papers and work-around initiatives such as the pooling and sharing concept, it is necessary for the Alliance to return to its basics again.

 

 

The Turkish Tail Wags the NATO Dog

November 27, 2015

Robert Shines

As NATO has expanded eastward towards Russia, there has been an ever-present risk that its easternmost members would adopt a significantly more hawkish policy towards Russia than its original founding members. Some have seen this in Poland, possibly using the current Ukrainian crisis (and NATO in turn) to re-establish its former preeminence in Eastern Europe under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. That’s why Poland has focused on possible Russian moves into the Baltic states, further possible Russian incursions into Ukraine, and leveraged possible division between Belarus and Russia.

Turkey’s recent downing of a Russian Su-24 warplane over the Turkey-Syria border has seriously raised the stakes in the Syrian Civil War. Even more telling was Turkey’s action afterwards, namely to seek common cause and solidarity with its NATO allies, before communicating with the Russians. Despite recent economic, specifically energy-related endeavors, the NATO consultation merely follows a pattern in which the Turks have sought assistance from distant Western Europe to counterbalance their proximate historical rival, Russia. Lastly, Turkey may be using its NATO allies’ fear and suspicion of Russia to re-establish the sphere of influence it once enjoyed under the Ottoman Empire.

 Constantinople’s Fall and The Charge of the Light Brigade

Shortly after the Ottomans smashed the remnants of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, Turkey started to assert a major role in European security affairs, specifically in the Balkans and Southeastern Europe. Already one of the world’s most economically-developed cities, Constantinople retained its strategic position as the literal crosspoint of Europe and Asia. The Turkish capital’s terrain significance was further enhanced by its position as a gateway between the Black and Mediterranean Seas.

With the onset of the Crimean War exactly four hundred years after the Byzantines’ destruction, Turkey was the actual focal point of the war itself. Ostensibly concerned by the access its Orthodox Christian pilgrims would have to sites in the Holy Lands controlled by the Seljuks’ successors, the Ottomans, Russia sensed Turkish weakness, attacked Turkish positions along the Black Sea in its bid for year-round warm water naval ports, and some within the Russian Emperor’s inner circle even pressed him to take Constantinople itself. More importantly, the Crimean War was really about the West’s (specifically the U.K.’s) desire to preserve the Ottomans as a balancer against Russian ambition and to prevent Russia from devouring that period’s “Sick Man of Europe.”

 Montreux Convention and the Ukraine Crisis

The Montreux Convention of 1936 details Turkey’s control over the Bosporus Straits and the Dardanelles, as well as the regulation of warship traffic to and from the Black Sea. The treaty’s critical point is that it restricts access to the Black Sea to states which actually border the Black Sea. During the Cold War, Turkey allowed itself to be used (through the Convention) by its NATO allies as a spoiler to any Russian plans for expanded influence in the Mediterranean Sea.

Presently, the Ukraine Crisis has put the Convention under review yet again as the U.S. has recently pressed for more access to the Black Sea in order to exert pressure on Russia in the wake of Russia’s seizure of Crimea. Legally, NATO members Romania and Bulgaria actually have the right to have warships in the Black Sea as they actually border the Sea. That is why the U.S. is pressing for more military exercises in the Black Sea with these states specifically. Summarily, because of Turkey’s strategic position and control of the nearby straits, it was in a position to affect Western designs on the former Soviet Union in the past as well as on Russia in the present.

 Energy, Western Solidarity, and the “Turkic World”

Before the downing of the Russian warplane, Turkey was positioning itself as the major transit point between resource-abundant countries such as Russia, Azerbaijan, and Iran, and resource-hungry states in Europe. Perennially denied access to the E.U., Turkey has had to rethink its relationship with Europe and reformulate its usefulness to it. Subsequently, Turkey was taking steps to become an energy powerhouse and supplier in its own right to potential European customers. These moves were set to accelerate as relations between the West and Russia seemed to remain at an overall standstill.

However, in the wake of the recent downing of a Russian airliner over the Sinai and, even more importantly, the recent Paris bombings, there had been talk of a common cause being formed by the West and Russia against ISIS. This would-be alliance might’ve been perceived by Turkey to threaten its interests insofar as it was positioning itself to be geostrategically and geo-economically more important to Europe than Russia. Taking a page out of Russia’s “Russkiy Mir” (Russian World) playbook in Ukraine, Turkey had been making noises about defending the “Turkic World” and its Turkmen “compatriots” (presumably Turkish-backed rebels) against Russian airstrikes next door in Syria. Summarily, these sentiments, combined with Russian annexation of Crimea, a territory seized from the Turks even before the Crimean War, serve to make the European security architecture unstable and NATO decision-making even more unenviable than it already is.