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.

Some in the administration -- particularly among top civilian officials at the Pentagon -- have tended to lump the UN and NATO together as "talk shops" that are all but worthless when it comes to dealing with the worst villains of this world. If they were to succeed in basing policy on that view, it could become self-fulfilling.

The UN?s potential efficacy in applying pressure on Saddam, and if necessary using force against him, has increased in the last year. That change is largely due to the continued improvement in U.S.-Russian relations that has been institutionalized in the NATO-Russia Council and personalized in the rapport between Bush and Putin. It is now conceivable to secure Russian support for UN resolutions with teeth in a way that was impossible in previous confrontations with Iraq.

Even though Putin has engaged in tactical maneuvers to pacify domestic constituencies and maintain leverage in future bargaining with the United States, he has shown signs of being prepared to abandon Moscow's traditional regard for Iraq as a client and instead throw in his lot with the West. But first he must be convinced that the United States and the West are, on this issue, one and the same. That was not the case this fall, given the transatlantic discord over whether military action against Saddam is justified and, if it is, how the operation should be authorized and conducted. Putin must also be convinced that Russia, as a permanent member of the Security Council, will be part of the process that puts a cocked pistol to Saddam's head and pulls the trigger if he refuses to comply with what are UN as well as U.S. demands.

Only in those circumstances would most NATO member states feel they can participate in the operation. They would have both the political motive and the military capacity to join forces effectively. They would not need (nor would they likely want) a formal Action Order from Brussels. Instead, they would act on the basis of a resolution passed in New York. Once again, as in the Persian Gulf, the Balkans, and Afghanistan, the main operation would involve primarily U.S. and British forces, but other allies could provide various forms of backup, such as securing the Iraqi borders to prevent Saddam from escaping or from shipping his weapons of mass destruction out of the country. Some of the new allies have niche capabilities that could be valuable. The Czechs, for example, have key expertise in chemical and biological weapons-detection equipment.

After the war is won, a force of at least 100,000 will be needed to keep the lid on what will inevitably be an even more unstable region in the immediate wake of the conflict. NATO troops will have to be at the core of that mission to secure its success. Then, for decades afterward, the international community will need the mixture of hard-power capabilities available through NATO for dealing with future threats. Indeed, the extent to which there truly is an international community will depend in no small degree on whether NATO and its web of partnerships are around to make that concept real.

East Asia has the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and the latter's more inclusive spinoff, the ASEAN Regional Forum, none of which has a military component. Indeed, the principal security structure in the area is the one provided by U.S. bilateral defense treaties with South Korea, Japan, and Australia, and U.S. training relationships with Brunei, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, and others. Africa has the African Union (previously known as the Organization of African Unity), and several subregional groupings that are beginning to exert a coherent and beneficial influence. The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation is nearly moribund partly because India's predominance intimidates the other members. Latin America has a number of organizations, including Mercosur (the common market between Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay), the Andean Pact, and the Rio Pact, which is the closest thing to a regional NATO outside of Europe. But the Rio Pact is a far cry from NATO, not least because of the priority the United States gives its relations with Europe: to wit, the American refusal to invoke the treaty in 1982 at the request of Argentina during the Falklands war.