Nato should stop roaming the world
It is seeking global partners and planning to fight Isil in Iraq and Syria when it should worry about Baltic states and Ukraine
Today’s Nato summit should refocus the 28- member alliance on its traditional task of mutual defence and move away from the past 15 years of seeking to become a global military expeditionary force. It is shocking to realise that Nato recorded a peak of activity in 2011 with six simultaneous missions in three continents, most of which were completely outside its territory. They were in Afghanistan, Kosovo, Libya, training in Iraq, counter- terrorism in the Mediterranean and counter- piracy in the Arabian Sea off Somalia.
In stark contrast to this activity, Georgia ( a friend of Nato) lost South Ossetia and Abkhazia to Russia and earlier this year, another friend, Ukraine, lost Crimea to blatant Russian annexation and is suffering further direct aggression as Russia continues to destabilise its eastern regions.
The lack of Nato reaction to these Russian military expansions in Europe contrasts vividly to Nato’s frenzied activity in an odd assortment of far- off wars. But despite having been caught sleeping by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Nato is not repentant about its global excitements andwants to position itself as a global security hub. To this end, it is still reaching out to a variety of partners, including India and Brazil, as well as China and many others, seeking to build a global network of military alliances that can spring into action as required.
It is not surprising that this vision has been rebuffed, sometimes very bluntly. The Brazilians told Nato that they did not see how a partnership could work and when former Brazilian defenceminister Nelson Jobim was in office, he made it very clear to surprised US officials that Brazil rejected any Nato interference in the South Atlantic and that “Nato can’t substitute the United Nations”. He added that Nato’s claiming an expanded area of action headed by the undisputed power of the US could lead to “multilateral war actions without the support from the UN Security Council”.
Pragmatic partnership
India has also received a similar uninvited wooing from Nato. Nato suggested a pragmatic partnership with India, in which Nato would be used as a forum for consultation and cooperation, noting the success of two Nato-Indian cooperative missions underway at present in Afghanistan and in the seas off Somalia where the Indian Navy is working closely with the Nato mission to stop piracy.
On Afghanistan, members of the Indian strategic community readily admit that while Nato’s Afghanistan mission coincides with India’s own strategic interest in stabilising that country, they are clear that International Security Assistance Force ( Isaf) has not had any Indian contribution and they do not conclude that India and Nato should develop closer cooperation. A coincidence of interests does not add up to a military alliance.
Similar doubts come from many countries. The further away a country is from Washington’s immediate orbit, there is a greater lingering preference for organised global structures like the UN to give legitimacy to cross- border interventions and foreign military activity.
The world is about to go through an important reordering as China either overtakes or catches up with the US as an economic and foreign affairs power. China and several other emerging powers will look with interest at the US and Nato’s willingness to sideline the UN and other institutions of global governance and assume they can do the same.
Nato should use this summit to give a ringing endorsement to the UN and place its undoubted military skills under its direction. Sadly this is not likely and US President Barack Obama and Secretaries of State and Defence, John Kerry and Chuck Hagel, respectively, arrived in Wales with their spokesmen issuing a frightening vision of how the US wants Nato to be a global security hub.
Earlier this week, Charles Kupchan, the director of European Affairs at the White House, said that one objective of the Wales summit is to “advance Nato’s role as a global security hub, building out the partnerships that it has built in Afghanistan and using new means of training, of institution- building to contribute to security on a very broad basis. This, hopefully, will include support at Nato for engaging in Iraq and Syria and potentially for a new Nato effort in Africa as well.”
Europe matters to Nato
It is a relief that Kupchan did remember his role as director of European Affairs and endorsed Nato’s European priorities to react to Russian actions in Ukraine. To this end, it was important that Obama’s trip to the Nato summit was preceded by a visit to Estonia where he met with the leaders of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in order to reassure them and warn Putin not to think of causing trouble in the Baltic states, which have large Russian populations very similar to Ukraine.
It is also encouraging that the Wales summit is likely to endorse Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s useful proposal for a Rapid Deployment Force to be based in central Europe and available as required to counter Russian activity in any Nato member- state and possibly others like Ukraine, if Nato agrees to stretch its defence mission to cover its friends. This is what Nato should be thinking about, rather than expeditions in the Middle East, outreach to Brics nations and looking for ‘ partners’ in Asia and Africa.