Global NATO

Ivo Daalder and James Goldgeier

From Foreign Affairs, September/October 2006

Summary:  The advent of a new global politics after the Cold War has led NATO to expand its geographic reach and the range of its operations. Now, NATO must extend its membership to any democratic state that can help it fulfill its new responsibilities. Only a truly global alliance can address the global challenges of the day.

Ivo Daalder is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. James Goldgeier is Professor of Political Science at George Washington University and an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Broadening membership is preferable to creating ad hoc coalitions. For one thing, European militaries are stretched thin by the many new missions they are called on to perform in Afghanistan and in Sudan, Congo, and other parts of Africa. They would benefit from having more -- and more capable -- allies to share the increasing demand for military forces. For another, formal membership would strengthen the ability of countries to work together in joint military operations. It is precisely NATO's interoperability -- the result of joint planning, training, and fighting -- that allows its members to interact smoothly and efficiently when a crisis erupts. The United States has a huge technological advantage over its allies, but the potential of U.S. troops is maximized when they are involved in operations with other troops with whom they have trained on a regular basis.

In an expanded NATO, a U.S. general would continue to serve as the supreme allied commander, and a non-American, and perhaps in the future a non-European, would serve as secretary-general. To help make future enlargement possible, NATO should take intermediate steps, akin to those it took prior to welcoming new members from eastern Europe. These could include the proposed global partnership; the establishment of formal military liaisons between partner countries and the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, in Mons, Belgium; and the creation of the NATO Global Partnership Council, which would be similar to the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, a forum for regular dialogue between NATO members and 20 partner countries from Europe and Central Asia.

In considering how to enlarge NATO globally, there is no need to change the basic parameters of the structure that has served the allies so well for so many years. But the North Atlantic Treaty must be amended, particularly Article 10, which currently limits new membership in NATO to European countries. As of now, a number of countries with a questionable commitment to democracy and human rights, such as Belarus, are covered by Article 10, while stalwart democracies, such as Australia and Japan, are not. Yet a shared commitment to shared values should be a more relevant determinant of membership than geography. Any like-minded country that subscribes to NATO's goals should be able to apply for membership in the alliance -- just as central and eastern European countries have been doing since the collapse of communism.

Some people fear that an enlarged NATO with a broader reach would struggle to reach a consensus about when and how to act. There may be some truth to this, but the difficulty should not be exaggerated. The addition of ten new members over the past decade has not affected NATO's ability to act, even though skeptics feared that it would. Part of the reason enlargement has not bred irresolution is that NATO has developed a decision-making process that allows for the emergence of consensus without agreement: rather than blocking a decision, dissenting member states may append a footnote to it or abstain from contributing to whatever operation may ensue. Such practices would continue and likely expand if the alliance's membership were to become larger and more global. The search for consensus can also be enhanced if the major countries, starting with the United States, invest the time and energy necessary to reach agreement. Leaders must try, and try again, to bring alliance members together rather than abandon the process and go it alone.

CORE COMPETENCIES

Besides raising questions of efficacy, changes in NATO's composition and scope will also raise questions about the alliance's core purpose. As was true when NATO expanded eastward, in the 1990s, the most controversial aspect of any effort to enlarge the alliance's membership will be how such enlargement might affect the security guarantee in Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty.

Some current NATO members, particularly some of the newer ones, might worry that geographic enlargement will weaken the existing collective defense commitments of the alliance. However, no NATO member currently faces a military threat from another country, much less the type of threat that led to NATO's establishment in 1949. In the unlikely event that such a threat did materialize, nothing about NATO's enhanced reach would in any way weaken its collective defense commitments.

The principle enshrined in Article 5, that an attack on one is an attack on all, must remain at the core of the alliance. For the United States, this may not be much of an issue, perhaps even less so than was its undertaking to defend Latvia and Poland, countries that prior to joining NATO were not covered by the U.S. security umbrella. After all, whether formally or informally, the United States already guarantees the security of countries such as Australia, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea. But would Spain or Estonia want to make such a commitment to, say, Australia or Japan? Perhaps not. Then again, perhaps so. Even though Article 5 considers an attack on one member to be an attack on all members, each member is required only to take "such action as it deems necessary" -- a provision that effectively ensures that the use of force is never automatic. In fact, Article 5 has only been invoked once -- following 9/11 -- and only a handful of NATO members participated in the subsequent military action (which was conducted under U.S. rather than NATO command). Article 5 is designed to apply only in exceptional circumstances -- when an ally is attacked militarily -- and one would hope that any NATO member would come to the assistance of a friendly country under attack, whether it was a formal ally or not. After all, in August 1990, all NATO countries contributed to the grand coalition that responded to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, a state that is not even a democracy.

And enlarged NATO would not undermine the United Nations or the European Union, neither of which has the kind of military capacity that NATO possesses. Because NATO essentially is a military alliance -- albeit one with a democratic political foundation -- even an enlarged alliance would not become another UN. Rather, NATO would become a more capable and legitimate adjunct to the UN by helping to implement and enforce its decisions. If, as in the case of Kosovo in 1999, the UN is unwilling to authorize action against a threat to international peace and security, NATO might have to act anyway. In such an event, a more global NATO, backed by the world's leading democracies, would enjoy greater legitimacy, and that should allay the fears of those committed to a strong international order. Nor is there any reason to worry that the expansion of NATO's operations and membership would undermine the EU's increasing global engagement. Not only does the EU lack the kind of military capacity that it needs to operate far from Europe, but much of its work in postconflict reconstruction and policing would complement rather than compete with a global NATO.

Creating a global NATO is not about saving the alliance from obsolescence. The issue is not whether NATO goes out of area or out of business. The issue is how the world's premier international military organization should adapt to the demands of the times in a way that advances the interests not just of the transatlantic community but of a global community of democracies dependent on global stability. Global threats cannot be tackled by a regional organization. NATO has worked well in the past because its founding treaty demands that members be committed both to the political and economic principles underpinning democracy and to the common security challenges faced by the alliance. It would be foolish not to welcome into the alliance other countries that can make the same commitments and help confront new global challenges.