Alphen, Netherlands. 17 December.
The Atlantic Alliance is about to enter
a tumultuous period of change both in Europe and the wider world and how we
all conceive of our place in that world (not Europe) will be critical to the Alliance.
This dawning reality was brought home to me Friday when I had the honour
of debating NATO’s emerging security challenges with the Norwegian Ambassador
to NATO and his colleagues on the Norwegian Permanent Delegation. Given changing energy patterns and the
melting of Arctic ice Norway will find itself on a new ‘front-line’ as the High
North becomes a source of exploitation and friction. Moreover, with yesterday’s re-election of
Shinzo Abe as Japan’s Prime Minister and the possibility of renewed tensions with
China a most profound question was also apparent; what if any is NATO’s Pacific role?
NATO’s role in the Pacific I hear
you ask? Ask many Europeans where NATO’s
responsibility stops and I am pretty sure they would say the English Channel one end and the Baltic states' borders with Russia the other. Many forget that the NATO includes the US and
Canada and simply assume it is an organisation for the American-led defence of
Europe. Indeed, the only time NATO’s Armageddon Article 5 collective defence
clause was ever invoked was on 12 September, 2001 in defence of the United States.
This matters because it is not the US
that is ‘pivoting’ away from Europeans, but Asia-Pacific that is ‘pivoting’ towards Europe
and Europeans need to begin to get their heads around this. Article Five of the North Atlantic Treaty
states “The Parties agree that an
armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be
considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such
an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or
collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United
Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith,
individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems
necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the
security of the North Atlantic area”.
Now, no attack is pending but does the term “North Atlantic
area” now include the the US and Canadian Pacific coast and their Pacific possessions?
Times change. If it does NATO’s westernmost point is the US Wake Island some
12045kms/7485 miles from Brussels but only 3207kms/1993 miles from Tokyo. Indeed, Alaska is only 90kms/58miles from Russia’s
Far East across the Bering Strait.
There are some reports that US Secretary-of-State
Hillary Clinton is considering a Pacific-Atlantic Treaty Organisation or PATO. Certainly, is hard to
imagine a future conflict Asia-Pacific conflict that involves the US not demanding
of Europeans at the very least solidarity.
But what woud that mean in a Pacific context?
It is certainly the emptiest and most over-used word one hears in Europe
these days. The Oxford English
Dictionary defines ‘solidarity’ as “holding together, mutual dependence,
community of interests, feelings and actions”.
For many Europeans it seems to mean, ‘you have an obligation to defend
me and to give me your money for which I will do little or nothing in return”. The asymmetric commitment to successive crises has rapidly undermined the
'contracts' at the core of both NATO and the EU.
The 2010 NATO Strategic Concept states, “This
Strategic Concept will guide the next phase in NATO’s evolution, so that it
continues to be effective in a changing world, against new threats, with new
capabilities and new partners”. NATO is slowly beginning to grapple with the
modernisation of Article 5 collective defence.
To be credible in this new age that will necessarily mean a NATO capable of generating the biggest of biggest security pictures. It will also mean the creation
of advanced deployable military forces reinforced by the defensive and
offensive technologies of our time; missile defence, cyber-defence and global
intelligence across five domains - air, sea, land, cyber and space. Above all, it will require a complete
overhaul of NATO’s strategic mindset so that everything the Alliance does is
considered in the context of the world as it is, not the very narrow focus beloved of Europeans.
If not NATO will not die but slowly fade
like the old soldier that it now is. To
paraphrase John F. Kennedy, Europeans must ask not what the Alliance can do for Europe, but what
Europe can do for Alliance.
The sub-title
of the Strategic Concept is “Active Engagement: Modern Defence”. If that is to mean anything it will mean an
Alliance credible to the security needs of all its members, not just a
few. As the Alliance begins the long
slog to rebuild the mutual confidence and trust undermined by the imbalance of
effort in Afghanistan it will also a twenty-first century NATO relevant to the
twenty-first century not the twentieth.
Pacific
NATO. It is already a fact. Can we ever make it a reality?
Julian
Lindley-French
