From Prague to Baghdad: NATO at Risk

Strobe Talbott

From Foreign Affairs, November/December 2002

Summary:  In Afghanistan, the Bush administration seemed determined at first to keep NATO on the sidelines. Now, as war with Iraq looms and the alliance ponders its own future, the president needs to reaffirm his commitment to the organization by including NATO in any new operation from the beginning. If not, its future relevance may come into question.

Strobe Talbott is President of the Brookings Institution and former Deputy Secretary of State.

As that possibility becomes more of a reality, NATO planners will have to give fresh thought to the alliance's relations with China. Strategists in Beijing cannot be sanguine about Russia's eventually becoming a real ally of the West. Four NATO partners -- Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Russia -- are already on China's borders.

As for the Russians themselves, they look to China not as a natural partner but as an almost certain geopolitical rival and as a potential military adversary. One reason Putin has been relatively relaxed about the next wave of NATO enlargement and the impending admission of the Baltic states is that he knows, as Western officials have long been saying, that Russia faces no threat from the west. But it does face one from the east, if only for a combination of demographic and economic reasons. Siberia and the Russian Far East are as rich in resources as they are barren in population, while the opposite is true on the Chinese side of the Amur and Ussuri Rivers. That discrepancy is a recipe for tension and even conflict.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, or "Shanghai Six," might serve as a useful starting point for engaging China in the network of NATO-sponsored Eurasian security structures. That organization brings Chinese officials together with ones from Russia and several Central Asian states, all members of the Partnership for Peace and of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council. Thus, in a development Truman and his contemporaries could hardly have imagined when they founded NATO 53 years ago, the alliance may turn out to be, at least indirectly through the EAPC, an ameliorating agent in relations between what used to be the Soviet Union and what is still the People's Republic of China.

NO GLOBAL NATO

NATO's reach may ultimately not even be confined to the Eurasian landmass. Several countries in the Pacific are already at only a degree or two of separation from the alliance. Japan is a signatory of the Stability Pact agreement and a financial contributor to rebuilding the Balkans; the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which is a direct descendant of the Marshall Plan, now includes Australia and New Zealand.

No other part of the world has a web of overlapping, mutually reinforcing political, economic, and security structures comparable to the one anchored in the Euro-Atlantic region. Charts for those regions would be as simple as the one for Eurasia is complex. That is largely because of the absence in those other areas of a militarily capable and politically respected defense pact that can create an environment conducive to cooperation and integration.

To fill that partial vacuum, NATO may, over time, extend its gravitational field even further. However, that does not mean there will ever be, or should be, a global NATO that brings together representatives from the nearly 200 countries on earth, ranging from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, arrayed around a table far larger than that in Brussels or anywhere else. If that happened, the alliance might as well merge with the UN General Assembly.

Nonetheless, it is both imaginable and desirable that over the coming decades NATO will take on new members and develop partnerships and ancillary activities in ways that strengthen its increasingly far-reaching political influence. This expansive reach and the possibilities it opens up argue for inclusiveness. But the imperative for NATO to maintain its core capabilities and effectiveness as a military alliance argues for selectivity, especially in the acceptance of new members. If it can strike that balance, NATO may someday be in a position to advance the interests of members and partners alike by leading coalitions on missions in virtually any region of the world where the defense of international peace demands.

SOFT POWER IS NOT ENOUGH

NATO's ability to deal with new threats faces an early test in the Middle East. The region reaching from North Africa to Pakistan is virtually an organization-free zone, which is a major reason why it is a zone of danger, both to itself and to surrounding areas, notably including Europe.