BRUSSELS: Imagine if freedom and security spanned the European continent, from the Atlantic and the Mediterranean to the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea.
It’s a cheery vision in this post-September 11 age.
And it’s one that US President George W. Bush is peddling hard ahead of NATO’s summit in Prague this November, when up to seven nations which once lurked behind the Iron Curtain will be invited to join the team that won the Cold War.
But the “robust enlargement” which now seems inevitable could be disastrous for NATO, diluting its military capability, threatening its cohesion and stoking debate about its relevance.
“None of the candidates meets any established military criteria for alliance membership,” wrote Sean Kay of Ohio Wesleyan University in an opinion column that appealed to US senators to think before giving a green light to enlargement.
“Most importantly...NATO’s (diminished) capacity to make effective decisions based on consensus will make the organization even less attractive for US leadership.”
Washington’s decision effectively to go it alone in Afghanistan with its military response to the attacks of September 11 has already reinforced an impression of US indifference to NATO as a fighting force.
Far ahead of Europe in military technology and defence spending, the United States now looks unlikely to involve the alliance collectively in future wars.
Even NATO Secretary General George Robertson, who has tirelessly defended NATO’s relevance since September 11, warns that America’s allies face a stark choice between military modernization or marginalization.
STRATEGIC GAINS: Guillaume Parmentier of France’s Institute for International Relations believes that if Washington no longer considers NATO the institution of choice for political and military engagement in Europe, it risks becoming “merely a forum for discussion and a source of useful and interesting analysis”.
“The danger of moving down this...path becomes greater the more and the quicker that the alliance enlarges,” he wrote in the latest NATO Review. “This is because many countries aspiring to join NATO have poorly equipped militaries with the result that their practical contribution to overall alliance capabilities is likely to be minimal.”
But advocates of NATO enlargement say September 11 demonstrated a need to build the broadest possible coalition of countries which share democratic values to tackle new threats such as terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.
And it may keep eastern Europe on the path of reform, a path which over the past decade has steered poverty-stricken, authoritarian countries towards democracy and market reforms.
Taking in the three Baltic states — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — would build a bridge to Russia, which is now cooperating more closely with its old enemy on security issues.
Slovakia would consolidate NATO’s eastern flank, while Slovenia, Romania and Bulgaria would give the alliance a foothold in the Balkans, a region of stubborn ethnic tension and organized crime and a potential source of terrorism.
Romania and Bulgaria would also fill the gap between central Europe and NATO’s only Muslim member, Turkey, which could play a key role if there was a US-led operation against Iraq.
For the US there is the promise of over flight rights and facilities for missions reaching into Russia’s soft underbelly and Central Asia, and there is also the prospect of extending its sphere of influence to Europe’s furthest corners.
Two other candidates for NATO membership, Albania and Macedonia, are widely expected to be turned away at Prague.
MILITARISM: Many believe the new members, with their minimalist or bloated militaries, will be passive recipients of NATO’s security guarantee and a millstone around its neck.
“For the foreseeable future — I mean over the next decade or so — none of those seven countries which are likely to be invited into NATO this November in Prague are going to bring anything of value with them other than infrastructure and airspace access,” RAND Institute researcher Thomas Szayna said.
One NATO official said even now only two of the 19 allies, the United States and Britain, can reliably field forces quickly and for a sustained period in far-flung hotspots like Afghanistan.
Such missions require a range of capabilities from support ships packed with groceries to air-to-air refuelling.
“There are a couple of others trying,” said an official.
BACKSLIDING: The precedent is not comforting. Szayna said Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic, stalwarts of the former Warsaw Pact which joined NATO when it first expanded eastwards in 1999, have still not filled all the posts within the organization they were supposed to fill and many of their officials’ English-language skills are poor.
All three have failed to live up to promises to increase and refocus military spending once inside the alliance.
Each of the aspirant countries follow a Membership Action Plan (MAP) which demands a democratic political system, armed forces under civilian control, a military contribution to NATO and a willingness to achieve inter-operability with NATO allies.
The problem is that political and strategic considerations can override the MAP accession criteria, making entry possible for countries even if they are far from ready.—Reuters
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