[A-List] The end of NATO?

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

A New Life for NATO? But It's Sidelined for Now
By PATRICK E. TYLER
New York Times, November 20 2002

PRAGUE, Nov. 19 - At any other time during the last 50 years, a summit
meeting of the Western alliance would be a gathering radiating the
unmistakable military power these leaders could throw against any security
threat to Europe or the United States.

But after a year of American-led combat operations in Afghanistan, where
NATO countries played a marginal role, and now with the prospect of war in
Iraq, the grand alliance has never seemed more on the sidelines.

With President Bush here to meet with leaders from NATO's 18 other members
and to welcome seven new ones, the most urgent task facing the assembly will
be to rescue the alliance from obscurity.

"The fact of the matter is that the main threat is gone and NATO has become
far less relevant," said James R. Schlesinger, the former American defense
secretary who spent a cold war career burnishing a trans-Atlantic military
machine designed to defend Europe and the West from the onslaught of Soviet
and Warsaw Pact forces.

Nonetheless, a resuscitation package has taken shape in the wake of the
Sept. 11 attacks, one that goes well beyond the retooling and reform that
has been a work in progress at NATO's Brussels headquarters since the Soviet
Union dissolved.

The effort is centered on creating a NATO rapid response force that could
move swiftly with light, technologically advanced weapons around the world
to strike at new threats from terrorists or rogue nations with weapons of
mass destruction.

First broached by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld at a meeting of
NATO defense ministers in Warsaw in late September, the new template would
bring NATO closer into alignment with the Bush administration's military
strategy. The reach would be more global than previously sketched plans for
an all-European defense force.

In the new NATO, commanders would ease requirements that all members
contribute proportionately to the common defense. Instead, contributions
could be based on areas of specialization, which Mr. Bush referred to on
Monday, an idea that allows the smaller and weaker members to find a niche
in NATO's force.

One country could provide a unit trained for mountain warfare, another could
contribute decontamination teams for troops facing chemical or biological
weapons, another military police. In effect, this would be an extension of
strengths already demonstrated: the Czechs, for example, might be able to
deploy units specializing in chemical warfare - as they did in 1991 - if the
Iraqis mount such an attack.

Still, a number of experts say it could take years for NATO to emerge as an
effective global military alliance, partly because of strained budgets in
Europe, enormous gaps in military capacity among member countries and
political divisions over America's role as the dominant power.

Lord Robertson, NATO's secretary general and the most ardent booster for
reinvigorating the alliance, acknowledged those divisions in a recent speech
in Berlin. He said fundamental questions were afoot about the alliance's
future, among them: "Is Washington committed to genuine multilateralism?" -
working with traditional partners like NATO - and "How can Europe exert more
influence on the world's only superpower?"

"The urge to find answers to these questions," he said, "must not distract
us from the fundamental issue: the trans-Atlantic relationship remains
indispensable for our safety and security."

In the first decade after the Soviet collapse, NATO showed that it could
adapt for interventions on the periphery of Europe when ethnic conflict in
the Balkans threatened to destabilize the continent.

But the Sept. 11 attacks and the Bush administration's dramatic deployment
of military forces to Southwest Asia - followed by the buildup now under way
in the Persian Gulf near Iraq - present NATO with a more profound
existential question: can a multinational alliance reach a consensus on when
and how to attack terrorists or rogue states threatening Western security?

Most Europeans devoted to maintaining the trans-Atlantic bonds created
during World War II have watched and listened with puzzlement and pique to
the policy arguments emanating from Mr. Bush's Washington. There, many
conservatives have argued that formal alliances may be a thing of the past,
since they limit America's ability to act decisvely and on its own schedule
as Mr. Bush says he is prepared to do in Iraq.

Mr. Schlesinger said it may be inevitable for the major Western powers to
tend to drift apart under the pull of domestic politics and economic strain.
Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany has already declared his
unwillingness to take part in military action against Iraq.

"Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, I've said the most important thing
is the North Atlantic alliance itself, not its military capabilities," Mr.
Schlesinger said. He urged leaders to look at "the psychological bonds of
the North Atlantic Treaty" to help keep them from drifting apart.

Yet this summit meeting is very much about military strength. If NATO does
not get new abilities to move forces rapidly and connect them
electronically, it could devolve into a political club in which members with
modern military forces would act outside the alliance, together or
separately, depending on calculations of national interest.

A number of Western diplomats arriving here said it was not too late for
NATO, in whole or part, to take part in a campaign to disarm Iraq, even
though the bulk of the war planning has been under way in the Pentagon and
at the United States Central Command headquarters.

"Our readiness to participate will depend on whether the United Nations
Security Council will be at the center of deliberations on Iraq and any
military operation that flows from that," a Danish diplomat said.

A French diplomat, referring to an armed action against Iraq, said: "Who
knows who will be involved? We hope there will be unanimous support from
NATO to the United Nations resolution on Iraq - that would be a strong
political signal - but it is a little too early to know what comes next."

Many NATO members are concerned that a Bush administration decision to act
on its own with a coalition of the willing could do significant damage to
the United Nations and to NATO.

"If we do not make some far-reaching decisions this week to reform NATO and
orient the alliance toward the future," the Danish diplomat said, "and then
we see that NATO is kept on the sidelines in the biggest military
confrontation of our times, then it will damage NATO, and I think everyone
understands this."