[A-List] Britain/US split: NATO, EU

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

The US will be legislator, judge and executioner

The hawks in the White House have plans for Nato

Richard Norton-Taylor
Monday November 18, 2002
The Guardian

The Nato summit in Prague this week will determine the security interests of
European countries, including Britain, for decades to come. It will
determine what strategic direction they should take. It could determine when
European countries go to war and when to keep the peace. These decisions
will be made not by sovereign nations but by the United States.

It seems the Blair government has already decided where it stands: Britain's
national interest is identical to America's. If the Bush administration
launches a pre-emptive strike on Iraq, or any other "rogue" state, or
suspected terrorists, then Britain has no alternative but to applaud. If
Washington wants to use British bases for its "son of star wars" project,
then London will, in the end, inevitably concede.

That at least seemed to be the message - one that will determine Britain's
destiny for many years - delivered last week by Geoff Hoon, the defence
secretary.

"I do not see a divergence between the basis of UK and US security
interests," he told the New Labour-leaning Foreign Policy Centre. "Our
security interests coincide or are very similar, whether as part of our
close bilateral relationship or within wider defence alliances such as
Nato."

Hoon was speaking at a key moment in transatlantic relations in general and
in the history of Nato in particular. The Prague summit was originally
billed as a celebration to welcome seven more countries - from the Baltic to
the Black sea - into the western alliance. That was until questions started
to be asked about the post-cold war relevance of an organisation
increasingly ignored by the US, its dominant member. Nato played no role in
the Afghanistan bombing campaign and Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, said
last week it will not be involved in any American-led military attack on
Iraq.

Influential hawks circling around President Bush simply do not trust the
Europeans in the "war against terror", politically or morally. And they have
little faith in the Europeans' ability to get their military act together.
As Robert Kagan, the American commentator, put it: "Americans and Europeans
no longer share a common 'strategic culture'."

Yet Washington has no interest in letting Nato fade away, leaving a
strategic vacuum. Better for Bush that new life is breathed into the
alliance to give it both military welly and a political role - that of
promoting American power politics. To this end, Donald Rumsfeld, the US
defence secretary, believes that Nato must set up a rapid response force
that would go "any time, anywhere, at very short notice".

This force will strike anywhere in the world with or without the authority
of the host nation. The US will provide the firepower, the Europeans will
provide the "soft power" - they will clean up the mess.

Such a force, Washington hopes, will also snuff out the EU's embryonic plans
for its own rapid reaction force, the first manifestation of plans for a
common European security and defence policy. Once enthusiastically endorsed
by Tony Blair in a new entente with France, Washington quickly gave it the
thumbs down. Thus Hoon insisted last week: "Nato is and will be the only
organisation for collective defence in Europe."

France is deeply uneasy about the US approach, while Germany continues to
distance itself from the Bush administration's "war on terror". But no
matter. To avoid cumbersome (in another word, democratic) procedures in an
enlarged Nato, the US - encouraged by Lord Robertson, the organisation's
secretary general, and the British government - is determined to streamline
the way Nato makes military and political decisions. Consensus will no
longer be necessary.

"First and foremost, the alliance needs to strengthen its capacity for
action," said Hoon. "This will include the establishment of a new command
structure able efficiently to project power wherever it is needed, to
provide command and control for effective and decisive action." On one
reading, entirely sensible. On another, countries opposed to military action
will be ignored.

Washington would like European political cover for military adventures but
can do without it. What military support any European nation - including
Britain - could give would be marginal. Indeed, the capability gap between
Europe and the US because of cost and technology - and America's reluctance
to share it - is already unbridgeable.

Peter van Ham, a Dutch analyst, says in a new pamphlet, What Future for
Nato?: "The transatlantic security relationship, based on Nato as we have
traditionally known it, is now beyond repair. For non-Americans this is
gradually becoming a world where the US acts as legislator, policeman,
judge, and executioner."

Is it in Britain's national interest to embrace this world, dominated by a
single superpower? Earlier this year, the Foreign Office and ministry of
defence told MPs that if the government were asked by the US to use British
bases for its "son of star wars" project, it would respond "on the basis of
our national interest, which of course includes our very strong strategic
relationship with our closest ally".

As for intelligence, the CIA and FBI could learn a lot from Britain's
security and intelligence agencies in the "war" on terror. Is Washington
really going to refuse to cooperate against a common enemy by withholding
intelligence even if it disagrees on policy? As for missile defence, should
Britain and America's European allies spend billions of pounds on a system
that even the CIA questions?

While Bush speaks of an "axis of evil", and Washington refers to "rogue"
states, Whitehall insists that it is in Britain's national interest to
engage with countries such as Iran and Libya that are not only rich in oil
and gas but have no more interest in promoting al-Qaida than we do.

Britain and Europe cannot hope to catch up with the US as a military power.
Britain's military establishment knows that. There are other way to win
friends and influence people - in the military and defence field as well as
trade, finance, even culture. Our "national security" and "national
interest" encompass much more than the kind of weapons systems at our
disposal.

We don't have to be suffocated under a Nato umbrella by a US determined to
have no competition. There are many in the British establishment who know
this but dare not say so. A senior member of it was recently asked what he
thought America's interest was in the EU. "To divide and rule," he replied.
In Nato, where the US is so dominant, it does not even have to do that.

Richard Norton-Taylor is the Guardian's security affairs editor.