NATO Partnerships at Chicago: Assessment

By Dr. Isabelle François
Distinguished Visiting Research Fellow
Center for Transatlantic Security Studies

 

The NATO summit in Chicago was organized around three key themes, including partnerships, and according to the Declaration by the twenty eight Heads of state and government agreed in Chicago, the North Atlantic Council gathered “to strengthen our wide range of partnerships” among other things.

The Summit certainly showcased partnerships in terms of the meetings that took place.  Three of those meetings involved NATO partners: the “expanded International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) meeting” and the meeting between Allies and 13 “core partners” (defined as those who “recently made particular political, operational and financial contributions to NATO-led operations”)[1], as well as the meeting at the level of Foreign Ministers with the 4 leaders of countries aspiring to join the Alliance (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Georgia.) The mere fact that these meetings took place delivered three strong messages.

First, it completed the work set in motion at the previous summit in Lisbon whereby a new partnership policy seeking increased flexibility and rationalization of the partnership frameworks was developed, agreed, and in Chicago demonstrated in action. The Alliance was able to have a meeting with 13 selected partners from different regional frameworks showing NATO’s flexibility in terms of who gets invited and in terms of the agenda setting. These leaders were gathered to talk about NATO-led operations as a testimony to their considerable contributions to the Alliance over the past few years.

Second, the meeting with aspirants ensured that the open door policy was not forgotten in what was publicized as “not an enlargement Summit.”  The point was brought home when Secretary Clinton indicated in Chicago that this was the last summit, which would not have enlargement on the agenda.

Third, the summit reiterated with the ISAF meeting that operational partnership is fundamental to the Alliance, and that NATO will continue to work with partners until and beyond 2014 in building an enduring partnership with Afghanistan. The meeting included the countries in the region from Central Asian countries to Russia and Pakistan, as well as Asian contributors from Japan to Australia and beyond.  The Declaration devoted a particular paragraph to the regional dimension recognizing “that security and stability in the “Heart of Asia” is interlinked across the region.”

That said for all the nice words and focus on partnerships there is not a single tasking in the communiqué, which pertains to partnerships.  There are some very timid efforts referring to partners in paragraphs dealing with emerging security challenges and smart defense and reiterating Allied commitment to engage with relevant partner nations on a case-by case basis as appropriate (i.e. with the usual qualifiers), which is nothing new and remains obviously sensitive within the Alliance.

Moreover, the partnership related paragraphs of the Declaration (26 paragraphs out of 65) are extensive. They cover everything one can possibly imagine from all the various frameworks (Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, Istanbul Cooperation Initiative, Mediterranean Dialogue, Black Sea, Middle East and North Africa) to the specific relationships  (Russia, Ukraine) and the flexible meetings above-mentioned (meeting with 13 partners, and with 4 aspirants).  In addition, the Declaration refers to partners in almost all other paragraphs be it on Afghanistan, missile defense, smart defense, cyber defense to name but a few. Nonetheless, there is no tasking coming out of Chicago to guide work ahead in the area of partnerships.  In NATO terms, this means that work will not be required to prepare for the next high-level meetings, be it at ministerial or summit level.

Some might interpret this as marking a time for reflection given that partnership has been high on the agenda of the Lisbon summit and the Chicago summit.  It will no doubt be also welcome by those who prepare for further cuts at a time of austerity.  Others, however, have indicated that partnerships will be central to NATO’s work ahead and an area where a lot of creative thinking is and will be required.  Without any tasking, however, NATO as an institution has no mandate to get this work underway.  As a result the thinking and the political agenda will have to be initiated by nations, and serious leadership will be required to accompany any new idea to be developed in this field given the resistance encountered on the part of some nations within the Alliance on any new developments in the area of partnerships. Leadership and serious political pressure will also have to be devoted to enlargement if the Alliance is to have it on the agenda of the next summit.

That said there seems to a positive assessment within U.S. official circles on partnerships at Chicago.  Asking a high-ranking official from the Obama administration a couple of days after the summit about U.S. expectations with regard to work ahead on partnerships in the absence of any tasking from the summit, I was told that President Obama indicated clear expectations that NATO would initiate further work towards getting countries like Australia to continue contributing to the Alliance beyond operational commitments and beyond the draw down of operations.  More specifically, expectations were that the NATO Secretary General would initiate such work.  While I have no doubt regarding U.S. intentions and the U.S. level of commitment to partnerships, my own assessment is that, in the absence of significant political pressure from key nations, such work cannot easily be initiated by the NATO Secretary General, irrespective of his own personal commitment to NATO partnerships over the past few years.  Leadership will be extremely important to go beyond Chicago.  New thinking will have to be done in capitals and Delegations in NATO will have to work it through the system, but this will be uphill in the absence of a formal tasking. There is of course always the option of inserting a tasking in future high-level meetings, and perhaps this is how it should be given that creative thinking has barely begun in Washington.

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[1] The meeting was attended by the leaders of Australia, Austria, Finland, Georgia, Japan, Jordan, Republic of Korea, Morocco, New Zealand, Qatar, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates.

Focus Recommendations for NATO’s Summit in Chicago

By Darren Ruch

As a general rule, wars are not fought unilaterally without the financial, political, and materiel assistance of other states.  Examples of historical, large-scale alliances include Allied (Entente) Powers and the Central Powers during World War I, the Allies versus the Axis during World War II, and the Cold War, involving a prolonged war between North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members and the Warsaw Pact nations.  The commonality of alliances and multilateral action in conflicts remains today, such as in the Libya Civil War, in which the National Transitional Council, NATO, and other states formed an alliance to topple the Libyan regime.

Maintaining well-established alliances is a smart investment because of their many benefits and military effects.  Coming into its 63^rd anniversary, the NATO alliance has survived the end of the Cold War, the Balkan wars in the mid 1990s, and the Libya intervention in 2011.  As the 25^th summit in Chicago approaches, NATO will need to reaffirm its mission and prepare for another decade of following its charter and continuing the strongest and oldest alliance still in effect.  Furthermore, it is in every member’s interest, especially the U.S., that NATO not only remain intact, but continue to be a strong alliance for the future.  This paper will argue that NATO is far from retirement or in need for a major overhaul, but rather should continue promoting its values and demand an equal contribution from all its members.  The paper will briefly touch on NATO’s values and ideals, identify some shortcomings of the alliance with lessons learned from the Libya campaign, and conclude with some recommendations for the upcoming Chicago Summit.

On April 4, 1949, NATO was founded on the foundation of “democracy, individual liberty, and the rule of law.”[1]  Within the first five articles of the treaty, the principles of joint negotiation, training, sovereignty, defense, and alliance are emphasized to promote defense stability and economic collaboration between its members.[2]  Successfully carrying out those ways and means is an important end for all the participating states: providing financial and materiel support to the military-strong states (US, UK, France, and Germany) and affording modernization and equipment to the members with smaller armed forces.[3]

NATO is an alliance for alliances; it rarely engages in operations solely with its own members.[4]  As of May 2012, NATO supports five operations: leading the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan (Operation ENDURING FREEDOM), NATO’s Kosovo Force (KFOR), detecting and deterring terrorist activity in the Mediterranean Sea (Operation ACTIVE ENDEAVOR), counter-piracy in the Horn of Africa (Operation OCEAN SHIELD), and supporting the African Union on the African continent, mostly focused in Somalia.[5]  Additionally, last year NATO completed its training mission in Iraq and, in October, concluded a successful four-month operation in Libya, Operation UNIFIED PROTECTOR, which provided a no-fly zone over the country.  In all of those operations, past and current, NATO was just one alliance within a wider coalition force.

By continuously working in partnership with other nation states, NATO achieves a number of additional objectives and promotes core values aside from its military operations.  NATO requires its member states to maintain a democratic political system, operate a market economy, respect persons belonging to national minorities, resolve neighbor disputes, commit to peaceful dispute settlements, have the ability and willingness to make military contributions to alliances, and achieve interoperability with its member forces.[6]  All of these values are within the member states’ interest to promote, both within the alliance and abroad, because of the beneficial peaceful and economic partnerships they build.  For example, liberal peace theory hypothesizes that established democracies do not conduct war with one another.[7]  By requiring democratic governance to those wanting to join and maintain membership, NATO sends a clear message that its primary ways of conflict resolution is through peaceful means.  With regards to NATO’s desired economic ends, market economies tend to attract foreign investment and cause an increase in production and rapid development, which is likely to grow the global markets of those members with weaker economies.  Through its neighbor disputes clause, NATO ensures that its members maintain diplomatic channels of communication.  Therefore, there should always be a dialogue among the partnered nations regarding national security and strategic matters.  Maintaining open channels of communication is especially beneficial to those members who do not maintain strong diplomatic relations within the Organization, such as Turkey and Greece.

While NATO promotes peace and economic expansion, there are aspects that need to be strengthened.  After Operation UNIFIED PROTECTOR, a number of deficiencies were brought to light, despite NATO’s long history, lessons learned, and best practices.  In his departing speech from NATO as Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates concluded NATO’s “military capabilities simply aren’t there.”[8]  His reasons for such a failure included a lack of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities; the inability of some nations to utilize their fighter aircraft effectively; insufficient targeting professionals; NATO’s failure to launch air sorties at over a 50% capacity; and a general shortage of munitions by member nations.[9]  To remedy these issues, the US military had to provide more ISR assets and targeting professionals than originally planned and had to front additional costs to replace the munitions stockpile.

In this speech, Gates stressed another weakness in NATO – an uneven distribution of responsibility.  In addition to pointing at some failures, Gates highlighted a few countries in the same speech, including Norway and Denmark, as members who were contributing more than their allies.  He remarked, “[those two countries] provided 12 percent of allied strike aircraft yet [had] struck about one third of the targets.”[10]  His overall message was clear: “[in NATO, there are] those willing and able to pay the price and bear the burdens of alliance commitments, and those who enjoy the benefits of NATO membership – be they security guarantees or headquarters billets – but don’t want to share the risks and the costs.”[11]  When Secretary Gates left his position in the Department of Defense, he expressed his frustrations with the members of NATO, saying some countries primarily reap its benefits, while others contribute more than their fair share.  Along with a wide range of commentators, Gates pointed at the failures of the alliance and, more importantly, highlighted that those failures will not enable NATO to be successful in the future, should a larger conflict than Libya arise, unless improvements are made.

NATO must reaffirm its mission and improve its interoperability to overcome its shortcomings.  The upcoming Chicago summit is a venue where issues such as NATO’s overall lack of assets, training, certified personnel, and insufficient financial contributions should be addressed.  The core values of NATO and the positive impact on both its members and nonmembers are too important to abandon because of recoverable shortages.  The core values of democracy, market economy, and mutual respect promote peace and economic growth with its partners.  With NATO continuing its five operational missions – most notably in Afghanistan – in accord with other nations, promoting these values and demonstrating its successes are invaluable as a continuing model alliance for the international community.  With today’s economic and security challenges, nations subscribing to the values and benefits of NATO cannot place their obligations to their partner states as a last priority.  The hardships that states are facing will pass in time, but the treaty organization will persevere well into the future, and NATO members must make their commitment a top national priority.

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[1] “The North Atlantic Treaty.” NATO. http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_ texts_17120.htm (accessed April 1, 2012).

[2] Ibid.

[3] “Chapter Four: Europe.” The Military Balance 112, no. 1 (07 Mar 2012): 71-76.

[4] ISAF maintains a force of over 130,000 troops from 50 countries, including 27 NATO countries, in Afghanistan.  KFOR is comprised of 29 countries, 22 NATO countries and seven supplemental state contributors.   Since 2004, Israel, Morocco, Russia, Ukraine, Finland, Sweden, and Georgia have augmented NATO’s Operation ACTIVE ENDEAVOR, through informal partnerships, liaison, or ship deployments or other physical assets.   12 Countries augment NATO in their other maritime operation, OCEAN SHIELD.   The African Union (AU) does not have a legal framework for their partnership with NATO, but the organization has been augmenting AU missions, mostly in Somalia, since 2005.

[5] “NATO operations and missions.” NATO. http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/ topics_52060.htm (accessed April 6, 2012).

[6] John Finney and Ivo Šlaus, Assessing the Threat of Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Role of Independent Scientists (Northwestern University: IOS Press BV, 2010), 30.

[7] Doyle, Michael. Ways of War and Peace: Realism, Liberalism, and Socialism. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997.

[8] Robert, Gates. “The Security and Defense Agenda (future of Nato).” Speeches. http://www.defense.gov/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=1581 (accessed April 1, 2012).

[9] Ibid.

[10] Robert, Gates. “The Security and Defense Agenda (future of Nato).” Speeches. http://www.defense.gov/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=1581 (accessed April 1, 2012).

[11] Ibid.

The United States “Pivot to Asia”: It’s NATO way or the highway

By Stefano Santamato, Center for Transatlantic Security Studies

The closer we get to the NATO Summit in Chicago, next May 20 and 21, the more European Allies and Atlanticists become worried about the United States “pivot to Asia.”  This is producing a degree of questioning in Europe about US steadfastness that has few if any precedents.

Every speech, every statement, every policy memo by U.S. government officials is finely combed in search of references to NATO or to Europe. As regularly happens on the eve of every major NATO event, the “relevance” debate is dusted off the shelves of transatlantic opinion makers and think tanks. Word counts are run to calculate how many times the Alliance or the Old Continent are mentioned in US official documents and in the US media as if the sheer articulation of these names would equal interest, regard or significance. In doing so, however, we confuse relevance with visibility, substance with narrative, demonstrating an Atlanto-centric vision of the strategic environment that is no more.

To begin with, let us be clear on the difference between policy and slogans. While “pivot to Asia” is an effective and evocative catchphrase, it is not accurate in describing the evolution of the United States defense policy. The Strategic Guidance Review unveiled last January specifically refers to the necessity to “re-balance” towards the Asia-Pacific region. Webster dictionary’s definition of (re)balance is to “arrange so that one set of elements equals another”. Equals, not overtakes or replaces. Coincidentally, NATO is also the only alliance mentioned in a document that refers heavily to working with partners and allies. Hardly a verdict of irrelevance.

Truth to be told, many European Allies are more concerned about the risk of reduced U.S. leadership in NATO than of a reduced U.S. military presence on the Continent, itself now underway. After all, when it comes to wider security issues, the United States still remains the glue that keeps Europeans together. And make no mistake: the President of the United States is doubtless well aware of this fact, and in Chicago he will surely reiterate the U.S. commitment to Europe and the importance of NATO in substantive and no uncertain terms.

But Europeans should also realize that what the “pivot to Asia” may mean in terms of Europe’s lost geographical prominence could be more than compensated of in terms of relative weigh in the transatlantic relationship. There are at least four reasons why the United States’ increasing focus on the Asia-Pacific region is an opportunity for Europe to redefine the North Atlantic Alliance on the basis of shared missions and shared responsibilities, without renouncing the transatlantic security bond.

First, between failed North Korean missiles launches and the long-term military growth of China, most of the immediate geo-strategic challenges to the United States are still well-anchored to the arch spanning East Africa through the Middle-East to Central Asia. The only way that the United States can afford to pivot to Asia is to make sure that its European allies remain closer and more engaged than ever in these areas that remain of critical importance to the U.S.

Second, coalition operations in the past twenty years, from Desert Storm to Operation Unified Protector in Libya, demonstrate that the only way the United States and its partners – including from the Middle East and Asia – can operate together, is by following NATO doctrines, procedures, and standards. To move away from this template would be like trying to switch from digital to analog communications. It is always a feasible alternative, but at what cost in terms of efficiency and effectiveness?

Third, in an age of fiscal austerity, NATO’s education, training and exercise facilities and programs have the unique potential for maintaining, improving, and expanding allies’ and partners’ ability to work together, while minimizing or even zeroing new investment costs.

Fourth and possibly most important, Afghanistan teaches us that NATO is the only alliance in modern history that has demonstrated the capability for enduring over ten years of military conflict without falling apart politically – indeed, while and even attracting new partners.

For these and other reasons, NATO and its European members should not worry overmuch about the narrative of the United States’ pivot to Asia. Rather, they should welcome the substance of a strategic shift that will guarantee NATO’s continued relevance for years to come, not because of its geography or its place in the pecking order of U.S. priorities, but because of its ultimate proven value. After all, unless the United States adopts a doctrine of strict isolationism and military unilateralism, meeting its strategic needs indeed means the “NATO way or the highway;” — never mind if the Alliance is not a big topic in speeches or the media. Maybe, in fact, this quiet reality of its critical importance to the United States is exactly what NATO needs.

More than Partners, not quite Allies – The “NATO Association”: a proposal for the Chicago Summit.

By Stefano Santamato
Center for Transatlantic Security Studies

In an article published in the NATO Review in March 2008, the late Ron Asmus wrote, “In the 1990s, NATO’s new partnerships were a key component of the Alliance’s reinvention for the post-Cold War era.”[1] Since then, partnerships involving the former Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites – Partnership-for-Peace and the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council – as well as parts of North African and Middle East – such as the Mediterranean Dialogue and the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative – have become keystones of NATO’s strategy to project stability across the European continent and beyond. In the past twenty years, partnership frameworks and programs have evolved constantly, reflecting different degrees of integration (nine European Partners are now full NATO members) and of reciprocal strategic interest.

As the Alliance embraces the tenets of its new Strategic Concept, adopted at the Lisbon Summit in 2010, and as these relationships enter their third decade, the perception is that NATO partnerships should not just be renovated, but renewed altogether.

The need to identify a new form of partnership relations in NATO is the result of two converging factors. On one side, there is growing recognition that the original intent of NATO partnerships has exhausted its political, enlargement, and outreach thrust. This, in parallel with the growing involvement of “operational” partners in NATO operations – from KFOR (Kosovo) to ISAF (Afghanistan) to Libya – has de facto created a two-tier NATO partnership cadre. First are partners like Sweden, Australia, Finland, or South Korea, to name but few, that are considered and consider themselves to be net contributors to NATO’s “cooperative security” paradigm; second are partners that are only interested in the political stage and international legitimacy that NATO’s partnership programs bring to their respective governments and bureaucracies.

On the other side, the growing post-ISAF vision of a NATO focused on core activities has led a number of Allies, spearheaded by the United States, to look at NATO as the ultimate operational enabler. This view was voiced by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during the December 2011 NATO Foreign Ministerial meeting, when the holding of a “special relationship” meeting at the Chicago Summit, with a yet to be identified core group of partners, was proposed. The idea envisions for a shift from geographically-based NATO partnerships towards more functionally related ones, placing a premium on the partners’ ability to contribute to NATO’s mandate and priorities. This shift is also aimed at removing – or rather contouring – the obstacles to a closer regional cooperation, e.g. Israel and the Mediterranean Dialogue or Russia and the EAPC, while preserving the self-differentiating nature of NATO’s partnership approach.

But there is also another important factor of the partnership equation that needs to be taken into account. The partners’ increased involvement in NATO operations has opened a “decision-making” debate in the Alliance. According to the NATO Political-Military Framework, which regulates partners’ participation in NATO-led operations, partners can only be involved in shaping decisions that, ultimately, will be taken only by Allies. This provision has created some frustration in many contributing partners, which see their troops and assets operating side-by-side with NATO forces, but which are not allowed to take part in NATO’s final deliberations on issues regarding, for instance, KFOR, ISAF or Operation Unified Protector.

To be honest, in practice partners’ influence in so-called ISAF-format or KFOR-format discussions goes well beyond mere decision-shaping. And NATO’s Comprehensive Approach has introduced a culture of increased inclusiveness. It is however true that granting full decision-making rights to operational partners would equate to the establishment of an á la carte NATO, in which partners would be allowed to pick and choose missions or activities while opting out of the Article 5 solidarity commitment.

Yet, this is an issue that needs to be addressed if NATO is to embrace a new concept of functional partnerships. A possible solution is the creation of a “NATO Association” that allows selected partners to move closer to the Alliance without committing to full membership for them. The initiative for such a NATO Association could be launched at the next Summit of NATO Heads of State and Government, to be held in Chicago (IL) on 20-21 May 2012.

The NATO Association should build on the three enabling pillars of the Alliance’s collective defense mandate — namely: a) defense planning, b) command and control, and c) standardization – and develop along specific functional areas or missions lines. Associated partners would not be able to participate to the policy making or in the management of the three pillars, but new decision-making mechanisms would allow their full involvement in activities such as operations planning, capability development, or training and education in the areas or missions of choice.

To begin with, Associated partners should focus on cooperation areas identified by NATO’s Smart Defense initiative, as well as on emerging security challenges such as cyber-defense, counter-terrorism or energy security. The NATO Association would be self-selective and organized along the principles of voluntary participation, active contribution and functional commitment.

In doing so, Allies and Associated partners would benefit from an input-driven and output-oriented relationship. The result would preserve the core of NATO’s Allies-only solidarity commitment while expanding it as a standard-setting, enabling platform. Ultimately, a NATO Association would provide a greater incentive to partners from various regions to cooperate and operate with the Alliance, either collectively or in coalition frameworks.  This would reinforce the vision of U.S. President Obama of NATO as a unique “force multiplier.”[2]

Stefano Santamato is a Senior Visiting Research Fellow for the Center for Transatlantic Security Studies (CTSS) at National Defense University’s Institute for National Strategic Studies (NDU-INSS). Mr. Santamato may be contacted at s.santamato.ctr@ndu.edu. The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone.

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[1] Ron Asmus: “Rethinking NATO Partnerships for the 21^st Century”, March 19, 2008. In NATO Review on line – http://www.nato.int/docu/review/2008/03/ART4/EN/index.htm.

[2] U.S. President Barack Obama press conference for the unveiling of the review of the U.S. Strategic Guidance for the Department of Defense – January 5^th, 2012 – Source: BBC.co.uk