Preparing for NATO’s Failure

[Meist]

The obvious answer to the overarching, potentially alliance destroying requirement for another battle-group (1,000± soldiers) is: CANADA.

Just two years ago the brand spanking new minister of national defence promised new money and new men for the CF. "Increasing the strength of the Canadian Forces to at least 75,000 regular force personnel is a clear priority. We will also intend to increase the reserve force by 10,000." Gordon O’Connor told the CBC.

How many of those 25,000± people have been recruited and trained in two years? Are they really ‘new’ people or are they just replacing good, useful soldiers the CF could not convince to stay in the service?

Many will argue that two years is a long, long time – but: Is it, when we’re fight a war? We managed to do rather a lot in the way of recruiting and training between say, Feb ’40 and Feb ’42 and Feb ’50 and Feb ’52. But, I keep forgetting: the Canadian Army may be fighting a tough, bloody war but DND, the Government of Canada and Canada, itself, are resolutely at peace.

Anyways, Prime Minister Harper and Defence Minister MacKay: Where is the beef are the troops?

Well, I for one think it was just a bad idea for the then Defence Minister to make such a promise. You can't just promise more people, because the government can't force people to join. Of course, more money is usually a good thing, and a slick recruiting campaign always helps, but maybe there just aren't ~25 000 Canadians that want to join the CF? I could however be completely wrong, and the CF could be off to a good start on meeting those targets. Anyone have any statistics in regards to that?

As far as NATO goes I'm in agreement with what a lot of people have said in that it needs some.. work put into it.

 

[Old Sweat]

I tried to download the CDS's address to the annual CDA meeting, but my laptop decided it didn't want to play. As I recall the CDS said that in the last two (I think) years the trained CF strength went from 60,000 to 66,000. Given the attrition rate and the lack of capacity in the training system, that is significant progress.

Can someone confirm these figures?

 

[Edward Campbell]

Let’s, as bridge players like to say, ‘review the bidding:’

• In 1969/70 the Canadian government of the day, (Pierre Trudeau) made a sharp volte face and stood traditional (since 1949) Canadian foreign and defence policy on its head. Canada unilaterally abrogated its commitments to NATO and tried to steer a sharply left anti-capitalist/anti-American course. The effective withdrawal* from NATO worked, albeit not as ‘well’ as Trudeau wished; the ‘left turn’ did not because Canadians and Canadian industry and, de facto the government, per se, would not cooperate. Thus began three decades of darkness;

• In the 1980s (Brian Mulroney) the government talked a good fight but did little if real strategic significance – we remained ‘free riders,’ parasites on the military bodies of our friends and neighbours. A few very modest defence spending increases could not even prevent the ‘rust out’ of the CF;

• In the early 1990s the cuts to Canada’s defence forces got deeper. The real ‘fat’ had already been trimmed away in the ‘70s, followed by the ‘meat’ in the ‘80s. In 1993 Jean Chrétien attacked the muscle and bone;

• In the mid to late 1990s the government did another about turn. Chrétien suddenly rejoined NATO in an (eventually) effective manner in the Balkans operations;

• In 2001 Prime Minister Chrétien committed Canada to Afghanistan, to combat in Kandahar, as part of the US coalition. (The actual forces didn’t deploy until early 2002.) For reasons that were militarily/logistically sound and politically prudent Prime Minister Chrétien limited Canada to one battle group for one six-month tour of duty;

• In 2003  the government of the day faced a new dilemma. The very real threat pose by al Qaeda and the Taliban and sundry fellow travellers had made rebuilding the CF both urgent and popular. But, the US Bush administration remained unpopular with Canadians, 9/11 notwithstanding, and the decision to invade Iraq was wildly unpopular – amongst the public and the policy elites, equally. M. Chrétien was advised (probably incorrectly if recent evidence is to be believed) that the US required a Canadian commitment. All manner of unspecified bad consequences would result, the PM was advised, if Canada sat on the fence in the misnamed and ill-conceived global war on terror that now embraced Iraq. Chrétien hit upon a good excuse to avoid participating in Iraq: Canada would make a substantial commitment to ISAF in Afghanistan. A Canadian battle group plus a substantial admin tail went to Kabul;

• In 2005 the government decided, at NATO and US prompting, to stay in Afghanistan – this time by committing to a PRT in Kandahar. The PRT is small (200± people) but the concomitant and essential security and support bills drove the overall commitment to 2,500± troops;

• By 2008 we appreciated that 2,500 troops, of whom only 650± are in active combat roles, are not sufficient to do the job. We need more and better equipment and more combat troops – another battle-group of about 1,000 soldiers – to just ‘stay put’ much less to get the job done.

Now, like Old Sweat I do not know how many of the promised 25,000 new people have been recruited and trained. If, Big IF we have 6,000 new, ‘regulars’ then the government has done well. I would agree that a 10% growth rate over two years is highly acceptable. If the number is, say, 3,000 new troops then I’m still satisfied. But, if we are at, say, 61,000 effectives then I think we (long suffering taxpayers) deserve answers. I fully understand that the ‘system’ can only absorb so much money and do so much in two years. I understand that the first phase of transformation – which appears to me to be mostly about reshuffling staff officers’ desks in HQs (pace special ops people, I know you’ve got new units doing important stuff) – and the rush of new aircraft orders is using up a lot of the staff capacity, but the government promised new troops two years ago. It is not unrealistic, in my view, to expect progress.

The reason this itches is that I think the most effective way to get another battle-group is to add another Canadian battle-group to the mission. The Canadian admin tail is, largely, in place. It is possible that 750-850 more Canadians will be sufficient to provide to combat capable battle group ‘outside the wire.’ I think another Canadian battle-group will attract other reinforcements – “the Lord helps him who helps himself” sort of effect. I think another Canadian battle-group would be sufficient to allow the US to make the 3,000 additional Marines ‘permanent.’**

I’m guessing that we have enough LCols and Majs and Capts and MWOs to staff another battle-group. I’m guessing we are short, mainly, Sgts, MCpls and Cpls and some of the kit needed for another battle-group. I thought that’s the sort of thing the MND promised to remedy back in Feb 06. 

Finally, it sounds to me like the government and the commentariat are whining – we’ve done enough of that since 1969. It’s unbecoming.

----------
* The impact was to remove a small but potent fighting force from the front lines on NATO’s most dangerous front (the North German Plain) and put a smaller, impotent force into reserve on one of NATO’s less likely battlefields – the South German mountains.
** It’s hard, in an election year, to blame the US for resisting pressure to beef up its forces in Afghanistan when it is already carrying a large burden and the country hollering for help may not be fully extended. 

 

[daftandbarmy]

Why not just mobilize the militia? It would take a couple of years, but would give us long term staying power...

 

[benny88]

Let’s, as bridge players like to say, ‘review the bidding:’

  Thanks for the recap E.R.. I consider myself pretty aware and fairly well read, but because of my age, I've only been so for about 5 years. Your summary was a big help, thanks again.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Why not just mobilize the militia? It would take a couple of years, but would give us long term staying power...

That’s essentially what we did 60 years ago when we built 27 brigade for the newly formed NATO.

The three traditional regular regiments (The RCR, PPCLI and R22eR) were augmented by 2nd and later 3rd battalions (for service in the Defence of Canada Force and with 25 brigade in Korea). The 1st and 2nd Canadian Infantry Battalions, 1st and 2nd Canadian Highland Battalions and 1st and 2nd Canadian Rifle Battalions were created to serve in Europe. The new, composite regiments, were formed by bringing militia companies up to strength and then grouping them into composite battalions. (They later (Oct 53) became, respectively: 1st and 2nd Canadian Guards, 1st and 2nd RHC (Black Watch) and 1st and 2nd QORofC.)

Of course life was a bit simpler. First off: equipment was far less of an issue. These were, essentially, 1945 style ‘lorried’ infantry battalions and sufficient kit was readily (and equally importantly cheaply) available. Second: training was not a big issue. Almost all NCO positions were filled by combat veterans. Third: while Canada was not ‘at war’ – not in the 1944/45 sense of that word, anyway – the threats were very real and most Canadians perceived them to be real. None of those conditions exist in 2008, I suggest.

But, and someone please correct me if I’m wrong, I recall reading that at least one Canadian militia unit (Calgary Highlanders?) was/is trying to recruit and train a company for service in Afghanistan. I don’t know if that’s a good idea or even a practicable one but it might be worth exploring – maybe we can create ‘short service’ battle-groups from militia brigades for, say, a 30 month period of service including training, service in Afghanistan for, say, 12-15 months, and a couple of months for demobilization. I’m way too old and too out of touch to assess the practicability of such an idea – but we did it before, albeit in a vastly different time.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Back to my itch: 1,000 new caveat-free soldiers for Kandahar is not going to do the job, neither are 3,000 US Marines for the South and East of Afghanistan. Many military experts have suggested than 10,000 or 20,000 or even 30,000 more troops are required if we want to secure Afghanistan so that the lawfully elected government of that poor, war-torn country can do the very basic things governments of a sovereign state ought to do – like allowing aid and development agencies to operate in reasonable safety.

If we – that big, amorphous, NATO-led ‘we’ – want to ‘win’ in Afghanistan, as I suggest we do, then everyone, including Canada, has to pay the piper. Our ‘fair share’ may well be a small combat brigade (two or three battle groups plus support and the admin tail) for five to ten years.

It’s time to stop whining and start expanding. The sooner we settle the Afghanistan problem the sooner we can turn our attention to the other pressing crises, to the people for whom, we keep telling ourselves, we have accepted a ”Responsibility to Protect”.

 

[daftandbarmy]

30 million Canadians, 50,000 (ish) CF members. That's about 0.002% of the population holding up about 90% of our international reputation. It's time to do something drastic about that IMHO.



"The Last of the Light Brigade

There were thirty million English who talked of England's might,
There were twenty broken troopers who lacked a bed for the night.
They had neither food nor money, they had neither service nor trade;
They were only shiftless soldiers, the last of the Light Brigade." - Kipling -

 

[Gimpy]

30 million Canadians, 50,000 (ish) CF members. That's about 0.002% of the population holding up about 90% of our international reputation. It's time to do something drastic about that IMHO.

The number of troops should have little to do with how we uphold our international reputation. The UK and the US are quite similar to those statistics, in the UK its only 0.006% and in the US its 0.01%. Even in China its 0.005% and in India its 0.003%. We have a proportionately sized military compared to our peers. CF members are holding up this country's reputation amazingly, there is nothing wrong with what they are doing, and if Canada's international reputation is being let down it's not due to the soldiers, but due to the politicians who are making it harder for them to do as such. The politicians are hurting our international reputation far more than the troops who have done nothing to hurt it. The troops are doing their best to hold up a reputation that is being marginalized by politics, so nothing drastic needs to be done regarding them, but maybe something drastic should be done about the politicians. What that could be? Far beyond me. A lot of things have been tried, but in the end political power will outweigh personal morals for most politicians.

 

[Greymatters]

Thats a bit negative and counter-productive considering the potential positive solutions others are offering...

 

[Gimpy]

Thats a bit negative and counter-productive considering the potential positive solutions others are offering...

Would you care to elaborate on this? How is it counterproductive and even negative to argue that our troops are not the problem and the politicians are? I'd say daftandbarmy's proposal was much more negative than mine. Even if only 0.002% of our population is holding up our reputation what does the number have to do with it? That seems negative to place an emphasis on quantity over quality. More does not necessarily equal better.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here, in four parts, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from the most recent issue of Foreign Affairs, is an essay by former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski:

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/65251/zbigniew-brzezinski/an-agenda-for-nato
Part 1 of 4

An Agenda for NATO
Toward a Global Security Web

Zbigniew Brzezinski

September/October 2009

Summary --

In the course of its 60 years, NATO has united the West, secured Europe, and ended the Cold War. What next?

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI was U.S. National Security Adviser from 1977 to 1981. His most recent book is Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower.

NATO's 60th anniversary, celebrated in April with pomp and circumstance by the leaders of nearly 30 allied states, generated little public interest. NATO's historical role was treated as a bore. In the opinion-shaping media, there were frequent derisive dismissals and even calls for the termination of the alliance as a dysfunctional geostrategic irrelevance. Russian spokespeople mocked it as a Cold War relic.

Even France's decision to return to full participation in NATO's integrated military structures -- after more than 40 years of abstention -- aroused relatively little positive commentary. Yet France's actions spoke louder than words. A state with a proud sense of its universal vocation sensed something about NATO -- not the NATO of the Cold War but the NATO of the twenty-first century -- that made it rejoin the world's most important military alliance at a time of far-reaching changes in the world's security dynamics. France's action underlined NATO's vital political role as a regional alliance with growing global potential.

In assessing NATO's evolving role, one has to take into account the historical fact that in the course of its 60 years the alliance has institutionalized three truly monumental transformations in world affairs: first, the end of the centuries-long "civil war" within the West for transoceanic and European supremacy; second, the United States' post-World War II commitment to the defense of Europe against Soviet domination (resulting from either a political upheaval or even World War III); and third, the peaceful termination of the Cold War, which ended the geopolitical division of Europe and created the preconditions for a larger democratic European Union.

These successes, however, give rise to a legitimate question: What next? What are the implications and lessons to be drawn from the past 60 years? NATO's new secretary-general has been tasked to "develop a new Strategic Concept and submit proposals for its implementation for approval at [NATO's] next summit." Given the current and likely future security dilemmas confronting the alliance, that new concept will have to deal with at least four fundamental challenges: first, how to attain a politically acceptable outcome for NATO's deepening engagement in the overlapping Afghan and Pakistani conflicts; second, how to update the meaning and obligations of "collective security" as embodied in Article 5 of the alliance's treaty; third, how to engage Russia in a binding and mutually beneficial relationship with Europe and the wider North Atlantic community; and fourth, how to respond to novel global security dilemmas.

The first two of these challenges pertain to NATO's credibility as a regional U.S.-European alliance, the latter two to its potential global role. Failing to cope with any one of these four challenges could undermine the three transformational legacies of NATO noted earlier. And those legacies, far from being only of historical significance, are relevant to the alliance's globally important mission today.


UNITING THE WEST

For the last 500 years, world politics has been dominated by states located on the shores of the North Atlantic. As these states competed with one another for treasure and power, they in effect established the North Atlantic region's worldwide imperial supremacy. But that supremacy was not stable. It was periodically undermined by violent rivalries among the North Atlantic states themselves. In changing combinations, Portugal, Spain, France, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom competed, fought, and replaced one another as the preeminent overseas imperial power.

Over the course of the last two centuries, the global hierarchy changed dramatically even as the scope of the rivalry expanded, under Napoleon's France, from oceanic control to domination over Europe as well. Napoleon's challenge further transformed the geopolitics of the North Atlantic rivalry by precipitating the entry of two non-Atlantic powers -- central European Prussia (which later became Germany) and Eurasian Russia (later the Soviet Union) -- into the competition for the first time. A century later, World War I, which in fact was largely a European war, drew in the United States from across the Atlantic. The United States' entry proved decisive to the outcome of that war, and the victory of the new British-French-U.S. coalition seemed to assure the continued financial and political preeminence of the North Atlantic region.

That turned out to have been an illusion. France was bled to exhaustion. The United Kingdom was nearly bankrupt. The United States was still painfully ambivalent about its global role. And then Germany's quick resurgence triggered World War II. This global conflict was only very partially won by the latest variant of the North Atlantic coalition -- the U.S.-British one -- which had to share the spoils of victory in Europe with its wartime partner (and rising rival), the Eurasian Soviet Russia. Europe's central and eastern regions passed under Moscow's control, and its western remnants (still divided within by bitter memories of war) became dependent entirely on the future course of the United States. In the two world wars, Europe had effectively committed political suicide.

To its credit, the United States rose to the challenge. NATO was one of the two key instruments used by Washington to foster transnational cooperation in the western remnant of Europe. Although the Western Europeans themselves recognized the need to overcome their historical divisions, their initial postwar efforts centered as much on keeping Germany down as on advancing Western integration. It was the United States that, through the Marshall Plan, made Western Europe's economic recovery a genuinely transnational effort, one that even included the western parts of occupied Germany. And it was British diplomacy -- driven by London's recognition that its day in the sun had come to an end and that the United Kingdom's world role depended overwhelmingly on its ability to tie itself closely to Washington -- that most persuasively pressed the United States to make an explicit and binding security commitment to Western Europe's survival as a collection of democratic states and as an integral part of the shrunken West.

Although NATO was created primarily to provide such assurance against the looming Soviet threat, its political effect in Western Europe was to promote reconciliation with the former Axis powers Germany and Italy, while fostering an enduring acceptance of transatlantic interdependence. Most notable and significant in that regard was the initially difficult termination of Franco-German hostility. The French at first strongly opposed any formula for German rearmament, even within a common European defense community. But gradually, farsighted French and German leaders cultivated a political reconciliation that eventually flowered into a genuine entente.

None of this would have happened without NATO. Its transnationally integrated but militarily U.S.-dominated structures made the inclusion of German forces (albeit without a separate command or general staff) more palatable to the French even before the eventual admission into the alliance, in 1955, of West Germany as a full-fledged member. The institutionalization of NATO and the later emergence of the European Economic Community (which subsequently evolved into the EU) thus meant that the civil war within the West was finally over. The historic importance of that fact cannot be overstressed.

NATO itself, however, was conceived in fear and born in a fatigued Europe. Expectations of a new war were initially widespread, and the sense of vulnerability was acute. U.S. forces, except for a relatively weak presence in occupied Germany, were back home and mostly demobilized. The Europeans naturally pressed for a rapid return of U.S. forces and for automaticity in launching a full-scale military response to an attack. At first, however, U.S. war planners were inclined to think of the United States' security commitment to Europe -- in the event that war could not be deterred by what was then a U.S. nuclear monopoly and a Soviet ground offensive could not be stopped by a massive bombing of Russia -- as realistically involving only the obligation to defend a European bridgehead, to be followed later by a second liberation of Europe. Quite understandably, that was not entirely reassuring to the Europeans.

In that setting, the collective-action-triggering Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty was designed to bind the United States to Europe, but in a way that could overcome the traditional reluctance of Americans to become entangled in distant foreign conflicts. For the Americans, the wording in Article 5 -- to the effect that each ally would react to an attack on any one of them "by taking forthwith . . . such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force" -- meant that Washington retained the right to determine how it would react militarily if Soviet forces crossed the Elbe River. For the Europeans, it was a pledge that the United States would in any case be militarily engaged from day one. The commitment itself was clear, but the nature of the response was contingent. Nonetheless, through NATO, the strategic interdependence of the West became binding. And that formula sufficed for the next 60 years.

Whether World War III was actually likely will never be known. The post-1945 Soviet Union, ensconced in the middle of Europe, loomed as an enormous threat. But it was also war weary, and it had to digest what it had engorged. On both sides, some strategically farsighted officials were arguing behind the scenes that the emerging new contest for global supremacy would be politically prolonged but probably -- at least for quite a while -- not resolved by force of arms. On the U.S. side, George Kennan made a compelling case that the Soviet Union, although aggressive, could be contained and eventually worn down. Arguing that the threat from the Soviet Union was predominantly political and not military, he warned against excessive militarization of the Western response.

It is now clear from the Soviet archives that some leading Russian experts on the West, casting their arguments in Marxist terminology, were similarly inclined. In 1944, the Soviet foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, annotated for Joseph Stalin memorandums prepared by Ivan Maisky (the wartime Soviet ambassador in London and by then a deputy foreign minister) and Maxim Litvinov (at one point Maisky's equivalent in Washington and by then also a deputy foreign minister). They concluded that the postwar era would be marked by the United States' ascendancy, the United Kingdom's decline, intensified capitalist contradictions, and a prolonged period of growing competition between the United States and the Soviet Union -- but not war. Even though Stalin occasionally spoke darkly of another world war, he also seemed to think that it would not come anytime soon.

In 1950, Stalin may have viewed the Korean War as a convenient diversion from the standoff in Europe and also as an opportunity to potentially increase China's dependence on the Soviet Union. However, fears in the West that the Korean War was a precursor to a larger war precipitated a massive U.S. military deployment in Europe. Thus, the Korean War induced a political psychosis that intensified the inclination of both sides to define the Cold War largely as a military contest. Paradoxically, by spurring a confrontation in Europe between two armed camps, the violent conflict in Asia may have made both a war of miscalculation and a political accommodation in a divided Europe less likely.

Of course, one can never know if a NATO defined less in military terms (as Kennan urged) might have been able to explore a political détente with the Soviet Union after Stalin's death, in 1953 (at the time there were some vague hints of Soviet interest in a compromise on Germany), during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, or before the Soviet military suppression of the Prague Spring in 1968. All that is clear is that the possibility of exploiting the disarray in the Soviet leadership to achieve a peaceful revision of the political status quo was not seriously explored.

The reality is that in the vulnerable decades after World War II, conflict was avoided largely because the United States stayed committed to defending Europe and NATO remained united. That unity was tested during the two war-threatening crises of the early 1960s: the Berlin crisis and the Cuban missile crisis. In neither case is there reason to believe that Moscow was inclined to start a war, but in both the Soviet leadership was impatiently gambling that intimidation might work to alter the geopolitical status quo. Yet the paramount interest of the two antagonists in avoiding an all-out war prevailed, even if their continuing military standoff in a divided Europe did as well.

While Dr. Brzezinski is undoubtedly correct, “whether World War III was actually likely will never be known,” it is an undeniable fact that we – including US presidents, Canadian prime ministers, allied admirals and generals and  ordinary people, too – believed it was likely, indeed even probable, because people like Brzezinski told us it was so.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Part 2 of 4

ENLARGING THE WEST

By the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Soviet Union's officially proclaimed expectations of surpassing the United States in both economic and military power had begun to look hollow, and strains within the Soviet Union itself -- intensified by Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika -- began to mitigate Western fears that growing Soviet strategic power might make Europe vulnerable to nuclear blackmail. In that setting, both sides became more willing to actively explore such issues as arms control, human rights, and even troop reductions. By the end of the decade, the rapidly growing disarray in the Soviet bloc -- spearheaded by the success of the Solidarity movement in Poland and prudently exploited in its final phase by NATO (and particularly by closely cooperating U.S., German, British, and French leaders) -- had gotten out of hand. Before long, both the Soviet Union and the Soviet bloc became history.

NATO's role then changed. It became the framework for stabilizing a suddenly unstable geopolitical situation in central and eastern Europe. It is now easy to forget that even after the dissolution of the Soviet bloc in 1989-90 -- the emancipation of Eastern Europe, the reappearance of independent Baltic states, and the reunification of Germany -- the resented Russian army remained deployed, as during the Cold War, on the banks of the Elbe and, until 1994, in the former Soviet satellite states. Although the army's eventual withdrawal was all but inevitable, the uncertainties regarding regional security, border issues, and fundamental political identity in the former Soviet bloc were complex. With the emerging EU in no position to offer reassuring security, only NATO could stably fill the void.

What followed was less the product of strategic design than the result of history's spontaneity. The latter is often confusing and contradictory, and yet ultimately decisive. That was largely the case with NATO's expansion eastward. Initially, Russia's new leadership acceded reluctantly to it (notably, in the course of Russian President Boris Yeltsin's negotiations with Polish President Lech Walesa in August 1993); only on second thought, shortly thereafter, did Russia begin to object. Moreover, recently declassified materials clearly refute the oft-made argument that Russia was promised that NATO would not expand. In any case, there was no practical way of preventing the spontaneous surge of the central and eastern European states toward the only Western institution that could simultaneously assure their security and help define their political identity.

One has to remember that the central and eastern Europeans were in a mood of enthusiastic emancipation from the Soviet Union's almost five-decade and rather heavy-handed domination. They were determined to become an integral part of the free Europe and disinclined to become a geopolitical no man's land between NATO and Russia. If the central and eastern European states had been left out, the Europe divided in two by the Cold War, instead of becoming one, would have become a Europe divided into three: the NATO states in the west; a West-leaning but insecure central and eastern Europe, as well as the newly sovereign but unstable Belarus and Ukraine, in the middle; and Russia in the east. How such an arrangement could have peacefully endured is difficult to imagine. An enlarged NATO has proved itself to be by far preferable to the instability or even violence (à la Ukraine or Georgia recently) that almost certainly would have at some point ensued in a central and eastern Europe left to its own uncertain devices between a reunified Germany in NATO and a resentful Russia still tempted to view the region as part of its "near abroad." (It is noteworthy that the freshly reunited Germany, an immediate neighbor to central and eastern Europe, had no such illusions on this score and played a key role in pushing forward the NATO enlargement process.)

In brief, NATO enlargement was historically timely and also the right thing to do. By the early years of the twenty-first century, the almost total geopolitical overlap between membership in NATO and membership in the EU made it clear that Europe was finally both secure and united. The closure of the prolonged European civil war meant that Americans and Europeans, in looking back at NATO's first 60 years, did have genuine cause for celebration in April 2009.

ADJUSTING TO A TRANSFORMED WORLD

And yet, it is fair to ask: Is NATO living up to its extraordinary potential? NATO today is without a doubt the most powerful military and political alliance in the world. Its 28 members come from the globe's two most productive, technologically advanced, socially modern, economically prosperous, and politically democratic regions. Its member states' 900 million people account for only 13 percent of the world's population but 45 percent of global GDP.

NATO's potential is not primarily military. Although NATO is a collective-security alliance, its actual military power comes predominantly from the United States, and that reality is not likely to change anytime soon. NATO's real power derives from the fact that it combines the United States' military capabilities and economic power with Europe's collective political and economic weight (and occasionally some limited European military forces). Together, that combination makes NATO globally significant. It must therefore remain sensitive to the importance of safeguarding the geopolitical bond between the United States and Europe as it addresses new tasks.

The basic challenge that NATO now confronts is that there are historically unprecedented risks to global security. Today's world is threatened neither by the militant fanaticism of a territorially rapacious nationalist state nor by the coercive aspiration of a globally pretentious ideology embraced by an expansive imperial power. The paradox of our time is that the world, increasingly connected and economically interdependent for the first time in its entire history, is experiencing intensifying popular unrest made all the more menacing by the growing accessibility of weapons of mass destruction -- not just to states but also, potentially, to extremist religious and political movements. Yet there is no effective global security mechanism for coping with the growing threat of violent political chaos stemming from humanity's recent political awakening.

The three great political contests of the twentieth century (the two world wars and the Cold War) accelerated the political awakening of mankind, which was initially unleashed in Europe by the French Revolution. Within a century of that revolution, spontaneous populist political activism had spread from Europe to East Asia. On their return home after World Wars I and II, the South Asians and the North Africans who had been conscripted by the British and French imperial armies propagated a new awareness of anticolonial nationalist and religious political identity among hitherto passive and pliant populations. The spread of literacy during the twentieth century and the wide-ranging impact of radio, television, and the Internet accelerated and intensified this mass global political awakening.

In its early stages, such new political awareness tends to be expressed as a fanatical embrace of the most extreme ethnic or fundamentalist religious passions, with beliefs and resentments universalized in Manichaean categories. Unfortunately, in significant parts of the developing world, bitter memories of European colonialism and of more recent U.S. intrusion have given such newly aroused passions a distinctively anti-Western cast. Today, the most acute example of this phenomenon is found in an area that stretches from Egypt to India. This area, inhabited by more than 500 million politically and religiously aroused peoples, is where NATO is becoming more deeply embroiled.

Additionally complicating is the fact that the dramatic rise of China and India and the quick recovery of Japan within the last 50 years have signaled that the global center of political and economic gravity is shifting away from the North Atlantic toward Asia and the Pacific. And of the currently leading global powers -- the United States, the EU, China, Japan, Russia, and India -- at least two, or perhaps even three, are revisionist in their orientation. Whether they are "rising peacefully" (a self-confident China), truculently (an imperially nostalgic Russia) or boastfully (an assertive India, despite its internal multiethnic and religious vulnerabilities), they all desire a change in the global pecking order. The future conduct of and relationship among these three still relatively cautious revisionist powers will further intensify the strategic uncertainty.

Visible on the horizon but not as powerful are the emerging regional rebels, with some of them defiantly reaching for nuclear weapons. North Korea has openly flouted the international community by producing (apparently successfully) its own nuclear weapons -- and also by profiting from their dissemination. At some point, its unpredictability could precipitate the first use of nuclear weapons in anger since 1945. Iran, in contrast, has proclaimed that its nuclear program is entirely for peaceful purposes but so far has been unwilling to consider consensual arrangements with the international community that would provide credible assurances regarding these intentions. In nuclear-armed Pakistan, an extremist anti-Western religious movement is threatening the country's political stability.

These changes together reflect the waning of the post-World War II global hierarchy and the simultaneous dispersal of global power. Unfortunately, U.S. leadership in recent years unintentionally, but most unwisely, contributed to the currently threatening state of affairs. The combination of Washington's arrogant unilateralism in Iraq and its demagogic Islamophobic sloganeering weakened the unity of NATO and focused aroused Muslim resentments on the United States and the West more generally.

I disagreed in the 1990s and disagree now that “NATO enlargement was historically timely and also the right thing to do.” The potentially dire consequences that Brzezinski offers were not “likely” – possible, but not probable.  The enlargement may have been the result of “history’s spontaneity” but that doesn’t make it any of right, necessary or wise.

But he is quite correct to say that, “ the global center of political and economic gravity is shifting away from the North Atlantic toward Asia and the Pacific." This is a challenge to which the US led West – part of which is within NATO - must respond, in part by making the “West” a whole lot more “Eastern.”

The ”Muslim resentments on the United States and the West” predate “US leadership in recent years.” Brzezinski’s highly partisan Democratic instincts, never far below the surface, are on display. That “Muslim resentment” might well go all the way back to the First Barbary War (1801-05): from whence we get “The shores of Tripoli".

 

[Edward Campbell]

Part 3 of 4

SUSTAINING ALLIANCE CREDIBILITY

The dispersal of global power and the expanding mass political unrest make for a combustible mixture. In this dangerous setting, the first order of business for NATO members is to define together, and then to pursue together, a politically acceptable outcome to its out-of-region military engagement in Afghanistan. The United States' NATO allies invoked Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty in deciding to join the campaign to deprive al Qaeda of its safe haven in Afghanistan. The alliance made that commitment on its own and not under U.S. pressure. It must accordingly be pursued on a genuinely shared military and economic basis, without caveats regarding military participation or evasions regarding badly needed financial assistance for Afghanistan and Pakistan. The commitment of troops and money cannot be overwhelmingly a U.S. responsibility.

To be sure, that is easier said than done, but it should be the central political duty of NATO's new secretary-general to keep insisting on both military and financial support. The basic operating principle has to be that every ally contributes to the extent that it can and that no ally is altogether passive. The actual (not just pledged) contribution of each ally to the needed military, social, and financial effort should be regularly publicized and jointly reviewed. Otherwise, Article 5 will progressively lose its meaning.

Theoretically, it is of course possible that NATO at some point will conclude (and some of its members privately talk as if they have already done so) that the effort in Afghanistan is not worth the cost. Individual allies could quietly withdraw, salving their consciences by urging that NATO issue a grave warning of its collective intent to strike back from a distance if al Qaeda uses either Afghanistan or Pakistan as a base for launching new attacks against targets in North America or Europe. However, a NATO pullout, even if not formally declared, would be viewed worldwide as a repetition of the earlier Soviet defeat in Afghanistan. It would almost certainly prompt bitter transatlantic recriminations, would undermine NATO's credibility, and could allow Taliban extremists in Afghanistan and Pakistan to gain control over more than 200 million people and a nuclear arsenal.

Shortly after assuming office, the Obama administration concluded a policy review of the United States' goals in Afghanistan. Its reasonable conclusion was that a stable Afghanistan cannot be achieved primarily by military means. This goal will require a combination of a military effort that denies victory to the Taliban (and facilitates the progressive expansion of effective national control by the Afghan army) and a sustained international financial effort to improve the well-being of the Afghan people and the efficacy of the Afghan government. This is both more modest and more realistic than earlier notions of building a modern democracy in a society in which only the urban sectors are more or less quasi-modern and the rural areas are in many respects still quite medieval. Now that the elimination of al Qaeda's safe haven has been defined as the key objective, local accommodations with compliant Taliban elements no longer need to be excluded. NATO's military disengagement at some point could follow.

This redefinition of policy would provide a realistic basis for achieving a politically acceptable outcome but for one glaring omission: it does not address in a strategically decisive fashion the fact that the conflict with the Taliban in Afghanistan cannot be resolved without Pakistan's genuine political and military support for the effort to shore up a nonfundamentalist regime in Kabul. That full support has not been forthcoming in part because of the rising intensity of fundamentalist passions in Pakistan, especially among the rural sectors, and also because the geopolitical concerns of the Pakistani military about its country's own security are at odds with U.S. and British sensitivities regarding India's interests. Alas, for some in the Pakistani military, the extreme choice of a Taliban-controlled Pakistan that dominates a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan could even be preferable to a secular Pakistan wedged insecurely between a threatening India and an Afghanistan that geopolitically flirts with India in order to be independent from Pakistan.

Given China's rivalry with India and its strategic stake in a viable Pakistan, engaging China in a geopolitical dialogue about Pakistan's long-term security could be helpful in reassuring Pakistan regarding Afghanistan and India. India -- despite its reciprocal antagonism with Pakistan -- also has a stake in its western neighbor's not triggering a regional upheaval. Similarly, Iran, which views the Taliban with hostility, could again play a constructive role in helping stabilize Afghanistan's western region, much as it did in 2002. A serious effort by NATO to engage China, India, and Iran in a strategic dialogue on how best to avoid a regionwide explosion is thus very timely. Without that dialogue, NATO's first campaign based on Article 5 could become painfully prolonged, destructively divisive, and potentially even fatal to the alliance.

REAFFIRMING COLLECTIVE SECURITY

It was noted earlier that Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty sufficed for 60 years. But is it still credible? A closer look at its wording may be in order:
The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them . . . will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

Since European states 60 years ago yearned for guaranteed U.S. power but had no effective power themselves, that wording satisfied the basic European need. It mitigated their collective insecurity by committing the United States at a time when all knew that only the United States could respond with meaningful force. And once it did, all the others would pretty much have to follow. Now, however, the situation is different. The war in Afghanistan is a case in point. Most of the United States' allies now feel relatively secure. It is the United States that needs committed allies in that war. But the qualified wording of Article 5 ("as it deems necessary") gives each of them the option to do as much or as little (or even nothing) as they think appropriate. And suppose the Taliban were to take over Pakistan, with its nuclear arsenal, and then threaten NATO in Afghanistan. Would that meet Article 5's triggering standard of "an armed attack against one or more of [the NATO allies] in Europe or North America"?

Even more perplexing is the current significance of Article 5 to Europe itself. It raises the question of how tightly binding are NATO's collective-security obligations. If a geopolitically exposed European member of NATO were to become a victim of an armed attack and if the United States and the United Kingdom and other NATO allies were inclined to come to its aid but, say, Greece and Italy were not, could Article 5 be invoked?

Despite the expansion of its membership to 28 countries, NATO remains bound by what it has defined as "a fundamental principle" -- namely, that "all NATO decisions are made by consensus," that "consensus has been accepted as the sole basis for decision-making in NATO since the creation of the Alliance in 1949," and that "this principle remains in place." Accordingly, the secretary-general of NATO, as part of the task assigned to him at the recent alliance summit, might consider designating a senior allied group to undertake a review of the current meaning of Article 5. Not only the Afghan challenge but also the significant decline of the U.S. military presence in Europe, the increased membership in NATO itself, and the changes already noted in the global security context call for another look at this key article. Even if a war in Europe is unlikely (and in any such case, the U.S. reaction would be the most significant for some time to come), it is right to ask whether a single member -- or even two or three members -- of a collective-security alliance have the right to in effect veto a joint response. Perhaps some thought should be given to formulating a more operational definition of "consensus" when it is shared by an overwhelming majority but not by everyone.

Article 13 of the treaty should also be reviewed. It provides for the right of any member to leave NATO after 20 years but does not include any provision for NATO to exclude a member for not being true to its obligations. Unfortunately, the possibility that at a critical juncture, some external financial or political influence could seduce a NATO member can no longer be entirely excluded, particularly given the size of the expanded alliance and the abundance of outside temptations. One should not sweep under the rug the fact that a vague consensus that shields divisions may help preserve NATO's formal unity but would do so at the cost of potential paralysis in a moment of urgent need. Credible collective security will have no enduring meaning if it involves only selective benefits.

I remain convinced that Afghanistan will be NATO’s graveyard.

NATO will not fail IN Afghanistan; the US will not permit that to happen. It will fail in Brussels when NATO will demonstrate that Afghanistan has rendered it unwilling to conduct such a (necessary) operation again. It will fail in Ottawa and Canberra, too, where countries will lack faith in NATO’s capabilities to conduct dangerous military operations.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Part 4 of 4

ENGAGING RUSSIA

The alliance also needs to define for itself a historically and geopolitically relevant long-term strategic goal for its relationship with the Russian Federation. Russia is not an enemy, but it still views NATO with hostility. That hostility is not likely to fade soon, especially if Prime Minister Vladimir Putin becomes president again in 2012. Moreover, for a while yet, Russia's policy toward NATO -- driven by historical resentment of the Soviet defeat in the Cold War and by nationalist hostility to NATO's expansion -- is likely to try to promote division between the United States and Europe and, within Europe, between NATO's old members and NATO's new members.

In the near future, Russia's membership in NATO is not likely. Russia -- out of understandable pride -- does not seek to be a member of a U.S.-led alliance. And it is also a fact that NATO would cease to be NATO if a politically nondemocratic and militarily secretive Russia were to become a member. Nonetheless, closer political and security cooperation with a genuinely postimperial Russia -- one that eventually comes to terms, like the United Kingdom, France, and Germany did before, with its new historical context -- is in the long-term interest of the United States and Europe. Hence, two strategic objectives should define NATO's goal vis-à-vis Russia: to consolidate security in Europe by drawing Russia into a closer political and military association with the Euro-Atlantic community and to engage Russia in a wider web of global security that indirectly facilitates the fading of Russia's lingering imperial ambitions. It will take time and patience to move forward on both, but eventually a new generation of Russian leaders will recognize that doing so is also in Russia's fundamental national interest. Russia's increasingly depopulated but huge and mineral-rich Eurasian territory is bordered by 500 million Europeans to the west and 1.5 billion Chinese to the east. And the alternative favored by some Russian strategists -- an anti-Western axis with China -- is illusory for two reasons: its benefits would be dubious to the Chinese, and the economically weaker and demographically depleted Russia would be congested China's junior partner.

At this stage, the EU can be a more productive vehicle for promoting positive change in the East -- by exploiting the fact that none of Russia's newly independent neighbors wishes to be its colony or satellite again -- and NATO can make a contribution by consolidating the results of such positive change. In such a division of labor, the Eastern Partnership, originally proposed by Poland and Sweden, could very well be an effective instrument for promoting closer ties between the EU and Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine. With its activities ranging from providing financial and technological assistance to offering university scholarships and facilitating travel to the West, the initiative is responsive to the evident aspirations of the peoples concerned and capitalizes on the widespread public desire in the East for closer ties to the EU.

Russia today cannot react to such an initiative in the same manner as the Soviet Union would have in the past. The Kremlin has to respond by making equally attractive offers to the countries concerned, thereby indirectly confirming its own respect for their sovereignty, however reluctant that respect may be. In addition, the competition between Russia and the EU that such an initiative will foster will not only be beneficial to the countries so courted but also cultivate popular aspirations in Russia for similarly privileged social access to the West. Moreover, given the close social links between Russia and Ukraine, the more Ukrainian society gravitates toward the West, the more likely it is that Russia will have no choice but to eventually follow suit.

NATO has to be careful not to unintentionally reinforce Russia's imperial nostalgia regarding Ukraine and Georgia. The political subordination of each is still an evident, and even provocatively stated (especially by Putin), objective of the current rulers in the Kremlin. In steering a prudentially balanced course, NATO should maintain its formal position that eventual membership in NATO is open to both countries but at the same time continue to expand its collaborative relationship with Russia itself, as well as with most members of the Moscow-sponsored Commonwealth of Independent States. In addition to forming the NATO-Russia Council, NATO has already developed Individual Partnership Action Plans with four CIS members. Moreover, 11 CIS members currently collaborate with NATO in both the Partnership for Peace program and the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council.
These programs, although modest and carefully designed not to challenge Moscow's premier standing in the CIS, do provide the basis for considering a more formal security arrangement between NATO and Russia beyond the NATO-Russia Council. In recent years, Russia has occasionally hinted that it would favor a treaty implying an equal relationship between NATO and the Kremlin-created (and somewhat fictitious) Collective Security Treaty Organization, which was set up in 2002. Replacing the defunct Warsaw Pact and copying NATO's treaty, the CSTO now includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. NATO has been reluctant to consider a formal pact with the CSTO, since that would imply political-military symmetry between the two. However, this reservation could perhaps be set aside in the event that a joint agreement for security cooperation in Eurasia and beyond were to contain a provision respecting the right of current nonmembers to eventually seek membership in either NATO or the CSTO -- and perhaps, at a still more distant point, even in both.

A NATO-CSTO treaty containing such a proviso would constitute an indirect commitment by Russia not to obstruct the eventual adhesion to NATO of either Ukraine or Georgia in return for the de facto affirmation by NATO that in neither case is membership imminent. The majority of the Ukrainian people presently do not desire NATO membership, and the recent war between Georgia and Russia calls for a cooling-off period (which should not exclude providing Georgia with purely defensive antitank and antiair systems, so that the country does not remain temptingly defenseless). It should be in the interest of both Russia and the West that Ukraine's and Georgia's orientation be determined through a democratic political process that respects the national sovereignty and the political aspirations of the peoples concerned. Anything less could prompt a seriously damaging downturn in East-West relations, to the detriment of Russia's long-term future.

REACHING OUT TO ASIA

By thus indirectly resolving a contentious issue between NATO and Russia, a NATO-CSTO agreement could also facilitate a cooperative NATO outreach further east, toward the rising Asian powers, which should be drawn increasingly into joint security undertakings. Today's Shanghai Cooperation Organization was originally formed in 1996 as the Shanghai Five to deal with border issues among China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan. In 2001, it was renamed and expanded to include Uzbekistan. At that time, it was also charged with fashioning cooperative responses to terrorism, separatism, and drug trafficking. Afghanistan, India, Iran, Mongolia, and Pakistan have observer status. Turkey, given that it is a NATO member and has a special interest in Central Asia, could perhaps play a key role in exploring a cooperative arrangement between NATO and the SCO. A positive outcome could foster security cooperation on a transregional basis in one of the world's most explosive areas.

Such gradually expanding cooperation could lead, in turn, to a joint NATO-SCO council, thereby indirectly engaging China in cooperation with NATO, clearly a desirable and important longer-term goal. Indeed, given the changing distribution of global power and the eastward shift in its center of gravity, it could also become timely before long for NATO to consider more direct formal links with several leading East Asian powers -- especially China and Japan -- as well as with India. This could perhaps also take the form of joint councils, which could promote greater interoperability, prepare for mutually threatening contingencies, and facilitate genuine strategic cooperation. Neither China nor Japan nor India should avoid assuming more direct responsibilities for global security, with the inevitable shared costs and risks.

To be sure, it will not be easy to engage such new global players in fashioning the needed security framework. It will take time, patience, and perseverance. Despite the opposition of the rising powers to the United States' recent unilateralism in world affairs and their lingering resentment of Western domination, it is easier for these powers to pay lip service to the notion of shared obligations while letting the United States (supported by Europe) assume the actual burdens. Accordingly, the enlistment of new players will be a protracted process, but it must nonetheless be pursued. There is no other way to shape effective security arrangements for a world in which politically awakened peoples -- whose prevailing historical narratives associate the West less with their recent emancipation and more with their past subordination -- can no longer be dominated by a single region.

THE CENTER OF THE WEB

To remain historically relevant, NATO cannot -- as some have urged -- simply expand itself into a global alliance or transform itself into a global alliance of democracies. German Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed the right sentiment when she noted in March 2009, "I don't see a global NATO. . . . It can provide security outside its area, but that doesn't mean members across the globe are possible." A global NATO would dilute the centrality of the U.S.-European connection, and none of the rising powers would be likely to accept membership in a globally expanded NATO. Furthermore, an ideologically defined global alliance of democracies would face serious difficulties in determining whom to include and whom to exclude and in striking a reasonable balance between its doctrinal and strategic purposes. The effort to promote such an alliance could also undermine NATO's special transatlantic identity.

NATO, however, has the experience, the institutions, and the means to eventually become the hub of a globe-spanning web of various regional cooperative-security undertakings among states with the growing power to act. The resulting security web would fill a need that the United Nations by itself cannot meet but from which the UN system would actually benefit. In pursuing that strategic mission, NATO would not only be preserving transatlantic political unity; it would also be responding to the twenty-first century's novel and increasingly urgent security agenda.

Copyright © 2002-2009 by the Council on Foreign Relations, Inc.
All rights reserved.

China’s interests in Pakistan and in West Asia, more broadly, cannot be overemphasized. One huge potential disaster, just waiting to happen, is a failure by the US to recognize and accommodate China on these matters. Ignoring China is dangerous. The Chinese do not have the same vital interests as does America and the US led West. The Chinese do not even, always, define vital interests in the same way we do. Miscalculation is always possible; miscalculations of China’s interests in Pakistan could be tragic. Sadly the level of stupidity re: China and West Asia seems to be a bipartisan issue – equally abysmally deep amongst Liberal and Conservatives, Democrats and Republicans and so on.

Russia is not, in my view, going to be strategically relevant for another two generations. When it becomes relevant again it will be a smaller, more advanced, European leader of the Slavic nations. What is now the Russian “East” (Siberia) will be Asian.

NATO is not the only body with ”the experience, the institutions, and the means to eventually become the hub of a globe-spanning web of various regional cooperative-security undertakings among states with the growing power to act.” Military groups like ABCA, AUSCANZUKUS and Field Z have the capacity to expand. They are, already, leaders of NATO’s standardization and C4I processes.

 

[Edward Campbell]

I'm reviving a very old thread because Conrad Black, in a column in the National Post has revived the idea of the Anglosphere or, maybe even Anglosphere plus; here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisons of the Copyright Act from the National Post, is an excerpt:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/08/10/conrad-black-the-u-k-s-olympic-crossroads-reflections-on-the-commonwealth/

Britain’s Olympic crossroads

Conrad Black

Aug 10, 2012

...

This brings me to my third observation. Britain, under the misguided influence of Edward Heath (prime minister 1970-1974), dove headlong into what was then only a European Common Market, abandoning the Commonwealth, whose more purposeful members — Canada, Australia and New Zealand — had given their all for Britain in two world wars. Margaret Thatcher, once the Eurofederalists had gained control in Brussels and were trying to reduce all western Europe to satellized, socialist satrapies, put on the brakes and rushed into an historic embrace with Ronald Reagan in the special relationship, which had its finest hour since the piping days of Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Between them and with powerful assistance from John Paul II and some allies, including Brian Mulroney and Helmut Kohl, they won and ended the Cold War.

But now the United States is uninterested and is in gradual, more or less orderly withdrawal from the world, and Britain is an orphan to larger associations of countries. Europe is in shambles, and what will be saved will be benignly dominated by Germany, especially opposite a France that has suffered a national implosion of rational political judgment.

The most rational international political association, for Britain and Canada, would be a senior tier of the Commonwealth — the U.K., Canada, Australia, India, New Zealand and Singapore, all English-speaking democracies. All the members could focus their development activities on India, to aid it in rivaling China. Those countries have more in common than Britain does with Europe, or even than most of them have with the United States.

Not that our efforts would be combined in the Olympics. But as of Friday morning, those senior Commonwealth countries had a combined total of well over 100 medals — more than the individual totals for China or the United Sates (or Russia and its former satellites). An association, to be redefined in the light of the failings of the EU and the limitations of alliance with America, of the more successful states of the Commonwealth makes more sense now than ever. As in all things, what is needed is a bit of leadership and imagination.

National Post

cbletters@gmail.com

First: I do not think that an Anglosphere (even a "plus" one) that does not have active, even enthusiastic US support can or would do anything useful.

Second: let's not call it the Anglosphere because that disguises its cultural strength which is based on its respect for the rule of law and for transparent institutions, not on language.

But: let us, by all means, try and strengthen the strategic and military cooperation between:

1. Selected NATO members - America, Britain, Canada, Denmark, Netherlands and Norway;

2. Traditional allies - Australia and New Zealand; and

3. Newer friends who have demonstrated a commitment to the rule of law and good government - India, Finland, Japan and Singapore.

That, 12 countries, is, in my opinion big enough (and, broadly, sufficiently representative) to be credible and, still, small enough to actually accomplish something.

Remember that NATO, in its golden age, when it mattered and when, in my opinion, it actually worked, had only 12 members.

 

[Edward Campbell]

A necrothread is revived yet again because Prof Stephen Saideman, who I find a credible "authority" on the subject, suggests that we still need NATO, or something like it, for the next, inevitable crisis that will demand Canada's action in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/after-afghanistan-how-will-we-fight-the-next-multination-war/article16384521/#dashboard/follows/

After Afghanistan, how will we fight the next multination war?

STEPHEN SAIDEMAN
Contributed to The Globe and Mail

Published Friday, Jan. 17 2014

Winston Churchill once said that “There is at least one thing worse than fighting with allies – and that is fighting without them.” His situation, Britain alone facing the Axis powers after the summer of 1940, was an extreme one, but the quote illustrates the paradoxes that come with waging war while in an alliance. As 2014 seems to be the year that we look back and ponder what the Afghanistan war means for the future, the question becomes: what of NATO?

For everyone who participated, the experience was profoundly frustrating. As always, there was an uneven sharing of the burden. Canada used to be criticized for not spending enough of its gross domestic product on its military compared to many other countries. In Afghanistan, the burden-sharing problem was one of of blood, and, this time, Canada, along with several other countries, bore a disproportionate share of the burden. So, it is not surprising that there are many in Canada and in the other burden bearers (Denmark, Great Britain, Netherlands, U.S.) who are reluctant to do anything like this again. On the other hand, those that got the most criticism for not doing enough (Germany, Italy, Spain, etc.) feel as if they sacrificed a lot, losing significant numbers of soldiers but received no credit for it abroad and much criticism at home.

So, can we expect things to change the next time? To be clear, there will be a next time. Just as Kosovo created similarly sour sentiments about future NATO operations, Afghanistan may create a short period of reluctance followed by more NATO efforts. The reality is simple – most countries cannot fight alone and the one that can, the United States, has learned in Iraq that going alone is quite difficult. Moreover, the Iraq example serves another lesson – that coalitions of the willing have many of the same problems as NATO and other formal alliances but with fewer benefits. Just as there were contingents deployed in Afghanistan under the NATO banner that refused to do certain things, the U.S. found that members of the coalition of the willing in Iraq also had limitations on what they were allowed to do.

Given the challenges of Afghanistan, can we expect NATO to reform and eliminate the caveats and other restrictions that get in the way of military co-operation and more even burden-sharing? No. NATO’s institutions and those of its members are rather stubborn and are unlikely to change now or anytime in the future. Specifically, NATO’s Article V, which is the heart of the alliance – “an attack upon one is considered an attack upon all” – includes an opt-out clause – each country is to respond as each deems necessary. That clause will remain precisely because NATO decisions require consensus: all must agree not to veto a decision. And one can only get consensus if countries have the ability to opt out of things that they are unwilling to do.

Which leads us to the second set of institutions – the ones that vary across the democratic members of the alliance. There is a basic difference between coalition governments and everyone else. In a coalition government, the various parties in cabinet must negotiate to agree to participate in overseas deployments. In these negotiations, the less enthusiastic parties will make demands of the more enthusiastic parties, and these conditions become restrictions upon the mission. Germany was not alone in this process, as coalition politics shaped the performance of many countries in Afghanistan and later over Libya. For other kinds of democracies, these decisions about whether to deploy and whether to impose conditions on the troops are largely in the hands of the presidents and prime ministers who have more latitude. These individuals may choose to restrict what their troops can do, as president Chirac chose, or they can choose to grant significant discretion, as president Sarkozy decided.

The basic reality is this: democracies do not give up control of their troops when they send them abroad to participate in multilateral military operations. Doing so would be a huge breach in civilian control of the military, a fundamental component of modern democracy. Therefore, we cannot expect countries to change how they manage their militaries, even if such management led to underperformance in Afghanistan.

The reality is that any future military efforts will face the same kinds of challenges as NATO faced in Afghanistan. But NATO is not going away, as the alternatives have proven to be even worse. Coalitions of the willing have less legitimacy and much less of the history of common doctrine, interoperability and exercises that NATO has. To paraphrase Churchill, NATO is the worst form of multilateral military co-operation except for all of the others.

Stephen Saideman is Paterson Chair in International Affairs, CDFAI fellow and co-author of NATO in Afghanistan: Fighting Together, Fighting Alone

I continue to believe that NATO is well past its "best before" date and that it will be even less suited than now for the next "beyond the European periphery" mission.

I also continue to believe that my smaller, less rigid, less formal 12 nation group (I suggested America, Australia, Britain, Canada, Denmark, Finland, India, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and Singapore 16 months ago) (and, yes, I would be willing to swap e.g. Finland for e.g. South Africa id someone really insisted on a broader group) would be a better forum to provide military leadership for UN sanctioned combat missions in the Afro-Asian sphere.

 

[GAP]

Hmmm......the present biggies from Europe don't seem to be on that list.....

 

[Edward Campbell]

Hmmm......the present biggies from Europe don't seem to be on that list.....

Nope, they are not. The French are wiling to fight, but only when their vital interests are at stake and only under their own rules ... America can get away with that but France cannot; it is, as a very senior French diplomate said of Israel, just a "shitty little country" and no one needs it. The Germans remain unwilling to, due to deep domestic socio-political divisions, to engage in the world. Neither should be allowed a leadership role in most future coalitions.

My  :2c:

 

[GAP]

sound reasoning.....