CQ HOMELAND SECURITY
April 2, 2009 – 8:22 p.m.
NATO at 60: The Hazy Future of the Atlantic Alliance
By Matthew M. Johnson, CQ Staff
As President Obama prepares for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s summit this weekend, the 60-year-old strategic alliance finds itself at a crossroads.
Despite pleas from U.S. presidents and howls of outrage from members of Congress, the United States is not likely to get all the manpower and resources it seeks from NATO allies for the military and civil campaign it is conducting in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
That has left some analysts wondering: What’s the point of having an alliance when the allies don’t help each other out?
“If there is not an equitable share of the burdens, I think a lot of people in the United States are going to ask why we are still carrying them,” said John R. Bolton, a former U.S. representative to the United Nations and now a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “I don’t think that we jeopardize the partnership if they don’t contribute. I think they are jeopardizing it.”
Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, agreed that more troops aren’t likely to come from non-U.S. NATO partners, which could undermine American public support for the alliance and the overall mission in Afghanistan.
“I don’t expect a great deal from the allies and I don’t think President Obama expects a great deal from the allies,” Kagan said at a Foreign Policy Initiative conference this week. “I suspect we are not going to press the allies for more troops.”
Even Obama has suggested that the entire basis of the Atlantic alliance could be in question.
“What’s at stake now is not just our own security — it is the very idea that free nations can come together on behalf of our common security,” Obama said March 27. “That was the founding cause of NATO six decades ago.”
Lack of Resources
The question has gone beyond what the Europeans are willing to do in terms of combat. Aside from seeking more troops and military and police trainers, they are being asked to provide logistical support for upcoming Afghan elections, agricultural specialists, educators, engineers and lawyers.
The head of the British army said last week that another 2,000 troops have been “earmarked for Afghanistan,” according to a report in The Guardian. The Brits already make up the largest non-U.S. contingent in Afghanistan.
No such promises have come from any other European allies.
And even increased civil support personnel from other countries are in doubt.
Des Browne, a member of Parliament who previously served as the United Kingdom’s secretary of State for defense, said appropriate resources aren’t there to be had in NATO countries.
“I am not aware of any announcements by any of our allies of any increased military assets of any description to Afghanistan,” Browne said. “I may be wrong about that, but if I am wrong, then they are such small numbers that they are not of any great significance. That frankly doesn’t surprise me because my own view is that those countries . . . are probably already committing what they can.”
Browne said that’s more a reflection of a lack of resources than will.
“The smart power aspects, as they have become known, there is no lack of political willingness for people to do this. The issue there is finding the necessary resources,” Browne said. “It is finding the necessary resources of people who are trained to be deployed into a semi-secure environment.”
The news might be better for Obama outside of Europe.
John A. Nagl, president of the Center for a New American Security, said he expects more Canadian and Australian troops to join the fight in Afghanistan, at the very least.
“It is going to be very hard for our allies to say no when [Obama] asks for more,” Nagl said.
The key for the Obama administration will be getting whatever its allies are willing to give and organizing those efforts in a useful way, said New York Rep. John M. McHugh , the ranking Republican on the House Armed Service Committee.
Until this point, some countries, such as Germany and France, have been unwilling to do certain types of missions, while others such as Canada have borne a disproportionately higher rate of casualties.
“We have to do a better job asking the variety of NATO partners to do those things they are both able and prepared to do,” McHugh said. “If that occurs, I think we have gone a long way toward both helping dramatically the situation on the ground in Afghanistan, but also bolstering the sense of unity and effectiveness that surrounds NATO itself.”
Looking Beyond NATO
In a move that reflects the uncertainties about support from Europe, Obama says he is looking to non-NATO allies, the United Nations and other international aid organizations for nation-building resources and the capacity to coordinate related efforts.
The White House is also expanding its search for donors to countries with interests in the region that have historically been considered adversaries, such as Iran, Russia and China. India is also being asked for aid, despite its long-strained relationship with Pakistan.
Japan has already said it will provide $142 million to pay the salaries of 82,000 police officers in Afghanistan for the months leading up to the Afghan presidential elections expected in August. The Japanese say they are also going to donate an additional $50 million to prepare for the presidential election, and another $102 million to combat Afghan poverty.
According to Frederick W. Kagan, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, building a command and control structure for the various nation-building contributions will be one of the central challenges faced by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and special envoy Richard Holbrooke.
Concurring in that assessment was Rep. Jane Harman , D-Calif., chairwoman of the House Homeland Security Intelligence Subcommittee.
“It takes a region; not just a village,” said Harman. But as things stand, the humanitarian aid mission in Afghanistan is “broken.”
The Bear, Again
The political gap between the United States and Europe could be widening at the very moment the need for unity is growing.
In the wake of the Russian invasion of Georgia in August 2008, European countries might have a greater need for NATO then they have since the demise of the Soviet Union.
“Clearly the political leaders, understandably, are looking at what they view to be the wolf closest to their sled and that is Russia,” McHugh said. “When you have a re-emerging Russian state that does what it did in Georgia and has on several occasions interrupted gas flows into Europe, they have to be concerned about that.”
Gen. Roger Brady, commander of U.S. Air Force in Europe and of NATO’s Allied Air Component Command, agreed, saying he’s seen growing concern in his office.
“There has been an uptick in interest since the activities in Georgia,” Brady said. “It certainly got the attention of those folks on the eastern frontier; folks who were former parts of the Warsaw Pact, the Baltics, obviously Poland, Bulgaria [and] Romania. They all have some level of concern about that activity and want to be reassured about NATO solidarity and U.S. partnership.”
That concern could be a key bargaining chip for Obama: emphasize to European allies that they want help from the United States in eastern Europe as badly as the White House wants help for the Afghanistan mission.
“NATO can’t afford to lose this, it would seem to me, and I would hope that the president’s efforts in the days ahead are successful,” McHugh said.
Matthew M. Johnson can be reached at mjohnson@cq.com.
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