Alphen, Netherlands. 12
August. Wales - the land of Celtic
myths, legends and fantasies. W.B. Yeats once wrote, “Take, if you must, this
little bag of dreams, Unloose the cord, and they will wrap you round…” Indulge me. Pretend for a moment that the NATO Wales
Summit in September really mattered.
Pretend for a moment that NATO's political leaders had the vision
and the will to really understand the strategic potency of that Welsh ‘moment’. And, pretend for a moment that for once NATO
leaders were prepared to put strategy before politics and prepare NATO for the
future rather than the all-too-comforting but dangerously illusory
past. What would my Welsh Fantasy NATO
look like?
Fantasy NATO would face
the world as it is, not as our leaders would like it to be and take its rightful place at
the hard core of a world-wide web of secure democracies. A strategic force multiplier Fantasy NATO would
forge new relationships between members and partners as the West ceases to be a
place but is re-born as the winningest idea of the twenty-first century in an
age of dangerous hyper-competition.
Fantasy NATO would
reflect today’s realities, not yesterday’s with a strategically-serious Europe easing
the pressure on failing, flailing America; the world’s only indispensable power
hopelessly indispensably present in all the world’s fractious regions. In Fantasy NATO flexibility and agility would
be the mantra of power. Sometimes
coalitions of willing and able members would lead; sometimes coalitions of willing members and even more able partners would lead; and sometimes a Fantasy NATO-supported Fantasy EU would lead.
All would be bound together by NATO Standards for the effective doing of effective
things effectively.
Fantasy NATO and Fantasy
EU would be unjealous of each other in my Welsh fantasy; united in practical partnership. Fantasy EU would be organised and integrated
around Germany and the Eurozone and at last able to manage crises beyond itself
not simply within itself. Britain, the
great brake on European integration and Continental Europe’s increasingly desperate
search for a twenty-first century balance between sovereignty, strategy, and affordability
would be cut free. Cut free to take its
rightful place alongside America, Canada, Australia and others that share its
strategic culture and that are prepared to properly share risk and burdens at the
point of contact with danger.
In NATO security might
be indivisible, but the sharing of burdens is clearly not. Fantasy NATO would finally face reality and have two new pillars; the New Atlantic pillar and the New European pillar. Nations would be free to move
and indeed choose between the two pillars for they would represent the
two very different strategic cultures now enshrined at the heart of the
Alliance. Fantasy NATO would also have two very different levels of
membership built on the principle of more pay more say. The New Atlantic pillar would be for the full-on full
members, whilst the European pillar for the half-membered and half-hearted. Whilst the Atlantic Pillar would be a small,
exclusive club containing all the ‘two-percenters’, the latter would be a kind
of strategic rest home for those who have decided to park themselves on the
margins of history – the ‘one percenters’.
Partnership as much as
membership would be the dynamic ethos of Fantasy NATO with new relationships
forged between stability partners, strategic partners and members. To that end, Fantasy NATO would find a natural
place in a family of reinvigorated international institutions. Indeed, Fantasy NATO could act as a brokerage
for the effective sub-contracting of legitimate forceful action and the mutual
reinforcing of institutions vital to the prevention of extreme state behaviour
and states of extremism the world over.
Above all, Fantasy NATO
would be a big, global military picture NATO; an Alliance of the strategic mind
that would reach across the globe. It
would have a clear, core mission to act as the true world standard for the legitimate
generator of democratic force and its effective command, control and
interoperability.
Fantasy NATO would be organised
around three strategic commands; Allied Command Operations, Allied Command
Transformation (finally free to transform); and Allied Command Knowledge. All three would be open to Member and Partner
alike. Critically, in Fantasy NATO ‘Transformation’
would act as the transition between knowledge, understanding, influence, deterrence and effect with ‘ACT’ at last equipped to properly scan global horizons freed from the mixed
metaphorical shackles of dangerous one-lensed and rose-tinted glasses.
Knowledge would be aggressive;
gained as much by doing as thinking. At
last exercises would test the unknown, the uncertain and the necessary rather
than the known, the comfortable and the irrelevant. With outcomes assessed, lessons-learnt and wisdom
shared across this free association of free nations via the rigours of science.
At Fantasy NATO’s
all-important hard military core a true Welsh monster would emerge Phoenix-like
at the behest of visionary leaders; a twenty-first century Article 5 collective defence Welsh
dragon ready to defend today and tomorrow not yesterday. Missile defence, cyber defence and advanced
deployable force would be hard-merged by knowledge into a fast-flying,
fire-breathing, sharp-eyed, sharp-clawed but discerning beast. “This is the Land of My Fathers” it would snarl. “So, don’t even think about it”.
September in Wales should see light break where no Welsh sun shines as Dylan Thomas would have it. So, will NATO fly in Wales? Will leaders finally put strategy before
politics? No, for that would be a pure
fantasy and for most of them my Fantasy NATO would be far too much reality.
Julian Lindley-French
