NATO's Price: Shape Up or Ship Out

Celeste A. Wallander

From Foreign Affairs, November/December 2002

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Summary:  Debates about NATO's future usually focus on missions, capabilities, and expansion--but figuring out how to keep wayward members in line is at least as important.

Celeste A. Wallander is Director and Senior Fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization remains today a unique and invaluable alliance. The single most important international institution serving U.S. national security interests during the Cold War, NATO has since continued to function as a reliable instrument for multilateral military cooperation. The alliance's outreach programs and the lure of membership for former Soviet bloc countries have constituted the core of U.S. security policy in central and eastern Europe for a decade. Just as a healthy and effective NATO is vital to U.S. national security, a strong U.S. commitment to the alliance is vital to NATO's future health.

The conventional policy debates about NATO's uncertain future focus on the challenge that terrorism poses to the alliance's military missions and capabilities, as well as on which countries should be next in line for accession -- both key topics at the November NATO summit in Prague. But these debates lose sight of a more fundamental problem: the very qualities that make NATO work are at risk. Nato is a uniquely effective multilateral military alliance precisely because it is a political security community of countries with common values and democratic institutions. Nato works only because it is both military and political in nature. Dilute NATO's political coherence, and the result will be a one-dimensional traditional military alliance that cannot operate effectively.

THE GOLDEN RING

Regrettably, the current obsession with how military missions will be defined and whether members spend two percent of their GDPS on defense has obscured a more urgent crisis: NATO needs to take steps to ensure that old, new, and prospective members live up to its political standards, thereby securing the organization's coherence and relevance. If NATO is truly dedicated to protecting democracy, human rights, and the rule of law, its own members cannot be exempt from upholding those principles.

The golden ring of NATO membership has certainly served as a powerful incentive for internal reform and Westernization throughout central and eastern Europe. But what happens now that these new democracies are members? What is their incentive to continue on the path of reform and convergence with the Western security community that is NATO? Actually, there is none. Nearly alone among international institutions, NATO does not have procedures for dealing with members that violate its rules and standards.

NATO members must therefore agree to amend the North Atlantic Treaty to allow for sanction, suspension, or even expulsion of backsliding members. The objective of such a revision would be to sharpen members' incentive to perform and live up to political standards so that the alliance can continue to work. Right now, NATO operates like a soccer team that holds tryouts to select players but then can never cut delinquent ones from the roster if they break training and lose their skills and conditioning. If NATO is to remain a successful team, it needs a credible mechanism to bench, and ultimately drop, flabby members.

EARNING ONE'S KEEP

There are two reasons why NATO members need to get tough on their own. First, ...

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