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NATO

FALL 2002/PRAGUE SUMMIT

The Results of the Prague Summit and the Challenges Ahead

By Fiona Simpson and Chris Lindborg
December 2002

NATO's "NEW" AGENDA

Since the end of the Cold War, the expansion of the membership of NATO has featured prominently in discussions on the future of the organisation. The journey from its original purpose as a counter to perceived Soviet expansionism to the inclusion of former Warsaw Pact states would once have been inconceivable. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO's purpose became markedly less clear. Despite its role in Bosnia and Kosovo, the balance NATO has traditionally attempted to strike between the military and the political shifted, for much of the 1990s, in favour of the latter.

Enlargement did not dominate the agenda of the Prague Summit, 21-22 November 2002, despite the induction of seven new members into the alliance. Instead, the events of 11 September 2001 continued to exert a powerful influence as member states sought to clarify the primary post-Cold War threat stemming from so-called failed states and from terrorism. Even with the shift in NATO's focus, the Alliance will continue to face political challenges.

THE BUILD-UP TO PRAGUE AND THE ANTI-CLIMATIC SUMMIT

Although NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson stated in advance of the Summit that, "we will not decide who will be invited [to join NATO] until the Prague Summit itself"1, most doubts regarding the inclusion of these states had been set aside after 11 September 2001. The fact that the names of the invitees were known prior to the Summit demonstrated that the issue of NATO enlargement has appeared less epochal in the face of the new challenges posed by terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

The expansion beyond the Alliance's traditional North Atlantic zone of operations was established last spring at Reykjavik during a meeting of the North Atlantic Council. This meeting, which went largely unnoticed by the press, represented a fundamental shift by effectively dispensing with the geographical limitations that had traditionally restricted NATO activities.2

However, it was during the September meeting of NATO Defence Ministers in Warsaw that a concrete proposal was first made regarding the Alliance's new raison d'être. On the 24 of that month, US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld advocated the creation of a NATO Response Force (NRF). Speaking about this proposal at a press conference, Rumsfeld articulated the prevailing sentiment in Washington that, "if NATO does not have a force that is quick and agile, which can deploy in days or weeks instead of months or years, then it will not have much to offer the world in the 21^st Century."3

The October 6 Declaration on NATO Transformation by NATO's Parliamentary Assembly underscored this shift in emphasis, by asserting that NATO "should now endorse defence against the threat of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, and particularly the threat of biological, chemical or radiological agents as a priority for the Allies."4

NEW MILITARY CAPABILITIES

With all of the preparations and speeches leading up to the Summit, the meeting at Prague produced little genuine news. Nevertheless, the membership invitations issued to Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia (these countries are now expected to join in 2004) set the tone for formalizing similarly far-reaching alterations in NATO's military command structure and force portfolio. The military sphere saw three considerable changes at Prague.

First, the Rumsfeld-supported NATO Response Force (NRF) was officially proposed as a "technologically advanced, flexible, deployable, interoperable and sustainable force including land, sea and air elements ready to move quickly to wherever needed, as decided by the Council."5 The NRF is intended to be fully operational by October 2006. This Response Force will be multinational in character and will involve approximately 21,000 troops. The NRF would be capable of intervening in a host of crisis scenarios, including intensive combat.

Second, the Alliance's command structure will now comprise only two strategic commands. "NATO", said Britain's Tony Blair, "needs command and force structures adapted to fulfil its new missions, not those of twenty years ago".6 An Operations command for Europe will function from Mons, whereas a Transformation command will be based in the United States, tasked with overseeing interoperability and transformational matters within Alliance forces. These changes are intended to streamline the command structure and to make it more "deployable".7 This restructuring, in part, appears to be a response to an understanding of new threats that are now beyond NATO's traditional borders.

Third, the assembled Heads of State approved the Prague Capabilities Commitment (PCC). The PCC is "a series of firm and specific political commitments"8 entered into by the allies in order to improve capabilities in a host of critical areas, including that of the alliance's WMD Centre. A feasibility study on allied Missile Defence is included in the PCC. The emphasis mirrors concerns over new terrorist attacks and the fear that those attacks will include the use of WMD. According to the Prague Summit Declaration, the PCC reflects the will of members to, "improve their capabilities in the areas of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear defence; intelligence, surveillance, and target acquisition; air-to-ground surveillance; command, control and communications; combat effectiveness, including precision guided munitions and suppression of enemy air defences; strategic air and sea lift; air-to-air refuelling; and deployable combat support and combat service support units."9

In separate paragraphs of the Declaration, NATO promoted its efforts to cope with the threat of cyber attacks and endorsed the implementation of five nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) weapons defence initiatives that include:

• Prototype Deployable NBC Analytical Laboratory;
• Prototype NBC Event Response team;
• Virtual Centre of Excellence for NBC Weapons Defence;
• NATO Biological and Chemical Defence Stockpile; and
• Disease Surveillance system. 10
  

POSSIBLE POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES

Such changes, however, mean that NATO will at the same time be obliged to work out how and whether its changed military mandate will harmonise with other organisations, such as the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the European Union (EU). The OSCE is not a military organization, and has no aspirations in this direction. Aspects of the OSCE and NATO political mandates - dealing with arms control verification, crisis management, and post-conflict rehabilitation - are unlikely to directly conflict with one another, although NATO's more glamorous military planning has tended to steal time and attention away from the OSCE's activities in the human dimension. OSCE - NATO interaction in Kosovo and Macedonia, however, may be seen as setting a useful precedent for future cooperation between the two multilateral organisations.

Relations between the EU and NATO are potentially more problematic. Proposals for a NATO Response Force are coming to the fore at a time when the planned EU Rapid Reaction Force (RRF) is falling farther behind its projected implementation date of 2003. The RRF, announced at the Helsinki Summit in December 1999, likewise envisioned a force available for deployment in a crisis. It anticipated the incorporation of up to 15 brigades or 60,000 troops who would be able to be deployed within 60 days and capable of staying in the field for up to one year. Not surprisingly, both the EU and Rumsfeld's proposals have caused concern over the possibility of friction between the two and remains a source of controversy. Indeed, the delay in bringing an EU RRF to fruition was identified by one critic as serving to, "fuel claims by opposition groups that the multi-national plan is merely a phantom force which will never be able to undertake serious military operations and will consequently undermine the role of NATO."11

The difficulties encountered by the EU in the development of the RRF may provide salutary lessons for NATO. Unlike the EU, however, NATO (as a result of US membership) does not suffer from the lack of equipment and intelligence units that have plagued the creation of the EU RRF. At present, plans are afoot for groups of NATO members to agree jointly to lease US-made tanker aircraft for in-flight refuelling and long-range transport of troops. It remains to be seen whether Germany - the key financier of such an agreement - will support this or, indeed, whether traditional divides between Europe and the United States over the use of force will stand in the way of ensuring such commitments. However, the NRF may be able to avoid some of the problems that have beset the EU because of proposed "niche contributions" which, insofar as they can be made without increasing defence spending, have proven popular - particularly with the seven states that constitute this round of NATO enlargement.

The proposal for a NRF made by the American Secretary of Defence presumes the creation of a force that will be seen as worthy of being committed to and made use of by the United States. However, the fact that the Alliance is governed by consensus has, not surprisingly, rendered many in Washington sceptical regarding the ultimate effectiveness of a NRF, nor pessimistic for the prospects of its successful establishment. Despite the desire for NATO to retain relevance, such doubts will have to be overcome if the United States is to consider the NRF a more useful instrument in the 'war on terrorism' than it evidently did NATO's invocation of Article V after 11 September 2001. In Europe, there are more general concerns over the depth of Washington's commitment to multilateral instruments in general. While the United States sought assistance from individual NATO members after 11 September, the formal lack of response to the Alliance's offer of assistance did little to dispel such scepticism.

In addition, the effect of the Prague Summit on wider security relations between Europe and the United States remains to be seen. Militarily, while many questions exist regarding the state and future of the RRF, the proposal itself is by no means dead. Most countries that will offer their soldiers to the EU will also be committed to NATO and will deploy their forces under EU auspices only in cases where NATO does not wish to become involved. Yet where this overlap between the two persists, so too does the possibility of growing tension between the European and American proposals. Even within the proposal for a NRF there continues to be divergence between its members over the circumstances in which force may be applied. This tension between NATO and the EU has implications for the effectiveness of each organisation's efforts to combat and prevent terrorism.

For example, American leaders see the Iraqi regime as posing a possible terrorist threat similar to the character of the attacks that befell the United States on 11 September 2001. Many European leaders either do not view Iraq as posing a similar urgent threat or they do not believe in dealing with the threat in the same way as their American counterparts. The vocal disagreement by German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder over US policy toward Iraq is only the most audible of wary European responses. Although NATO released a statement at the Prague Summit which expressed the Alliance's resolve to uphold UN Security Council Resolution 1441, the resolution itself is open to different interpretations of how to deal with Iraq if it does not comply with it and is one reason why the resolution passed in the first place.

European member states of NATO have shown themselves to hold very different notions of when and whether to use military force. The creation of a Response Force designed to counter this very threat under the auspices of NATO - an organisation governed by consensus - contains pitfalls from the very outset. Moreover, the desire of some EU states, France in particular, to retain autonomy from NATO in order to exercise a degree of European freedom of action, serves as another potential source of disagreement between the two proposed military organisations. Debates between Europe and the United States over military capabilities could overshadow discussions about improving other capabilities that could help combat terrorism, including civilian crisis management, targeted economic aid and diplomacy.

CONCLUSION

The aftermath of the attacks of September 11 have forced a reassessment of the rationale and role of a post-Cold War NATO and appear to have provided it with a new purpose and a new remit. The induction of new members into NATO was a key component of the meeting in Prague. However, the Prague Summit served more as the formal commencement, rather than the consolidation, of this transformation. In shifting its focus to terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and in expanding its membership and geographic mandate beyond the North Atlantic, the organisation has made a definitive break with its past.

It remains to be seen how NATO will approach its interactions with other organisations, such as the OSCE and the EU, whose memberships overlap. Although the proposed European RRF remains far behind its proposed operational date of 2003, the potential for competition between it and NATO continues, particularly in the wake of disagreements between European states and the United States on the use of force. While the NATO Response Force will not run into the problems of equipment and technology that have beleaguered the EU, it is unclear whether the United States will necessarily succeed in achieving the contributions required for NATO. Given the philosophical differences between the United States and European NATO members over foreign policy, the problems that will plague the NRF and other new capabilities are more likely to be political (i.e. when to use the new tools) rather than technological. Just as NATO may become more political than military through enlargement, the Alliance may also find it more difficult to reach political decisions.

Chris Lindborg is an analyst with BASIC.

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