A Risk Reduction Strategy for NATO

2. Document on the Vision Statement on
European Security

How will NATO's position in the structure of European security organizations be described? How will NATO-Russia and NATO-Mediterranean relations be contained in the Concept?

Any document entitled "vision" is likely to get good headlines but deserves rigorous scrutiny. The Alliance's vision for the future of Europe is brimming with enhanced military technology and devoid of plans to minimize the role of military force in international relations. Such a "vision" contrasts badly with that of Roosevelt and Churchill, the leaders who laid the foundations for today's international system. Even before the invention of nuclear arms, they realized that a system of counter-balanced, or unbalanced, military Alliances always produces war and that these are increasingly destructive. In August 1941 they declared that, "they believe that all of the nations of the world, for realistic as well as spiritual reasons must come to the abandonment of the use of force."³¹ In international security politics, the national interest is best served by pursuing the collective interest.

To date, there has been a failure to operationalize a collective system for international security. This failure has led states to fall back on a muddled system of national policies. Such an approach ignores the lessons learned by those who fought two World Wars. As a result of those wars, first the League of Nations and later the United Nations were established. Javier Solana, NATO Secretary General, speaking at a commemoration of the 350th anniversary of the Peace of Westphalia, said, "The Westphalian Peace was the first all-European peace after the first all-European war. It has shaped our thinking about the structure of the international system, and thus about war and peace, perhaps more than any other single event in the last 350 years. Yet the Westphalian system had its limits. For one, the principle of sovereignty it relied on also produced the basis for rivalry, not community of states; exclusion, not integration. In the end, it was a system that could not guarantee peace."³²

Interlocking Institutions
The vision statement that NATO will issue at the Summit will concern NATO's place in the hierarchy of inter-locking European security organizations. Similarly, the OSCE has been working on a Comprehensive Security Model for the 21st Century to be launched at the OSCE Summit in November 1999.

The US Administration has put forward its own proposals for the hierarchy of European security bodies called the "Triple Crown." In this vision of European security, NATO is described as the 'jewel in the crown,' the body of first resort in security activity. The European Union is seen as taking secondary responsibility for economic security and some other lesser subjects, and the OSCE, the only fully inclusive European security body, is left with overseeing human rights and democracy. The hierarchy established in this Triple Crown is one where military security matters are the most important and where economic and human rights, law enforcement and democratic governance are relegated to lower positions. The concept was first outlined to the NATO Defense College by US Ambassador Alexander Vershbow in November 1998:

This is what we in the US sometimes refer to as our "Triple Crown" strategy - a term we borrowed from horse-racing.

At the 1999 US-EU Summit, we hope to complete the new Transatlantic Economic Partnership (TEP) launched last December to further liberalize the transatlantic marketplace. We will also look for ways to intensify transatlantic cooperation on the environment, in fighting drugs and thugs, and in managing regional conflicts.

At the OSCE Summit next autumn, we want to develop that institution's unique capabilities to promote and defend human rights and democratic values, to mediate disputes before they deteriorate into conflict, and to oversee the rebuilding of civil societies after conflicts have been stopped.

So the NATO Summit is one third of the Triple Crown - albeit the jewel in the crown, for us NATO-centric folks in Washington and Brussels.³³

The one real benefit of the Triple Crown is that it lays out a clear pattern for action. States have conceal a lack of political will behind the alphabet soup of security organizations, and thus fail to take appropriate multilateral action in crises in accordance with the UN Charter.³⁴

Recommendations
NATO member states must develop the Alliance's new roles on behalf of the international community. NATO should be prepared to make its resources available to the OSCE and the UN for the future peace support operations in Europe. NATO should be seen as a necessary tool for security provision, rather than the overriding arbiter of what security is.

Relations with Russia
Russia has to be an integrated player, not a bystander, in the new security order that we are building in Europe. Our whole approach to Russia is based on this belief.³⁵ - Javier Solana, NATO Secretary General

The NATO-Russia Founding Act and the Permanent Joint Council do not provide the Russian Federation any role in the North Atlantic Council or NATO decision-making.³⁶ - US Senate resolution approving Alliance expansion

It is important that Russia becomes fully integrated into a new European architecture instead of being marginalized. Russia "views NATO's projected eastward expansion as something unacceptable because such expansion threatens its national security."³⁷ In an attempt to assuage Russian fears, NATO has tried to create a "special relationship" with Moscow.

The NATO-Russia Founding Act
On 27 May 1997, Russian President Boris Yeltsin and the leaders of the 16 NATO member-states signed a Founding Act that "defines the goals and mechanism of consultation, cooperation, joint-decision making and joint action that will constitute the core of the mutual relations between NATO and Russia." The significance of the Founding Act, however, is subject to interpretation. It is not legally binding and "does not limit NATO's ability to act independently and does not apply any limitations on NATO's military policy from the outside."³⁸ The Act does not provide Russia with a veto or "restrict the rights of NATO or Russia to independent decision making and action."³⁹ However, the Founding Act created the "NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council" (PJC) that meets at the Foreign and Defense Ministers level twice yearly, at the ambassadorial and military representative level monthly, and in times of crises.

Since May 1997, the PJC has held conversations that have dealt principally with organizational tasks (such as establishing a workplan) rather than issues of substance. Increasingly, however matters of substance - military infrastructure developments, doctrinal issues, nuclear safety and security, civil and emergency disaster planning, and even the Millennium Bug - have been discussed in the PJC. However, real progress on the wide area of subjects covered by the workplan remains elusive. Russia may lack the means to derail the process of NATO's expansion, but it has been demonstrating frustration and defiance with the West on a number of other regional issues, such as Iraq and Iran.

The PJC is a positive development in that exchanges of information and consultations have been started and are set to develop on issues, from nuclear weapons to the adaptation of the CFE Treaty. However, the PJC still looks like little more than Western damage limitation to the Russians.

NATO is not solely responsible for the lack of concrete progress through the PJC. Russian diplomats have yet to engage fully in the PJC. They have, as over the December 1998 bombing of Iraq, often threatened to withdraw from the PJC - although they have retreated from these threats. They have routinely missed meetings, refused to discuss tabled topics and generally acted in an obstructive manner.

However, NATO in general, and the US in particular, undermines the work of the PJC with a high handed attitude to security issues. When action was taken in Kosovo, and then again before the US and UK launched attacks on Iraq, Russia was not consulted. Such behavior reinforces Russian suspicions about the PJC, and the West's thinking in general, leading to uncooperative behavior in the PJC.

Although the PJC agreed to a NATO-Russia Workplan for 1999 at its December 1998 Ministerial. The statement issued following the meeting contained only a rather vague statement of the contents.

They [the Foreign Ministers] agreed a detailed Work Programme for the NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council for 1999, outlining a broad range of issues for consultations which will continue to promote transparency and confidence between NATO and Russia in the political and defense-related fields, as well as a number of practical cooperation activities, such as projects in the fields of civil emergency planning and defense-related environmental cooperation.⁴⁰

Recommendations
NATO and Russia must act, as equal partners, to inject the required effort into making the Permanent Joint Council a truly effective forum for consultation and cooperation.

NATO's Mediterranean Dialogue
Security in Europe is closely linked with security and stability across the Mediterranean. Traditionally, however, NATO has looked on North Africa as a battleground. For example, the still-secret NATO paper MC400 is understood to have its principal reference to North Africa contained in a paragraph about the need to seize and hold the Suez Canal.⁴¹ If not a battleground, then North Africa and the Middle East are regarded as sources of potential threats arising from terrorism or WMD. In an attempt to break away from the purely military approach to Mediterranean security, following the 1994 Summit NATO began a dialogue with six countries in the region: Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia.

This dialogue is carried out on a bilateral basis between NATO and each country separately. Since the 1997 Madrid Summit, these activities have been guided by the Mediterranean Cooperation Group, made up of political advisors from national delegations to NATO. The aim of the dialogue is said by NATO to be "contributing to security and stability in the Mediterranean; achieving a better mutual understanding; and correcting misperceptions about NATO among Mediterranean dialogue countries."⁴²

The political dialogue consists of regular bilateral political discussions at the ambassadorial level, with additional meetings or briefings on specific subjects on a case-by-case basis. Partners are briefed on NATO activities and given the opportunity to raise their own fears and concerns on Mediterranean security.

Among the practical results of the cooperation is the participation of several of the "dialogue countries" in SFOR.⁴³ Beyond that, NATO has sought to bring some transparency to its security relations with these Mediterranean states. For example, some partner military officers have been invited to attend courses at the NATO Defense College in Rome.

There are three main deficiencies in the Mediterranean dialogue. First, only friendly states participate in the process. Countries such as Libya or Algeria, with which NATO could engage in a dialogue to reduce tensions and mutual threat perceptions, are excluded.

Second, the dialogue does nothing to address serious military security concerns in the region. For example, there is no dialogue on reducing and eliminating all WMD in the Middle East, although several key Middle East states participate the dialogue. Further, there is no attempt to engage a state such as Algeria, currently undergoing a civil war, on how to resolve its internal crisis. There has been no attempt to produce, for example, a Dayton Accord for Algeria. NATO is overwhelmingly the strongest military power in the Mediterranean, and yet it persists in planning for military action against comparatively weak states. Policies such as the US stance of 'deliberate ambiguity' over the use of nuclear weapons against potential WMD sites in the region (and elsewhere) produce genuine fears amongst the public. Further, this doctrine undermines the Pelindaba Treaty for the African Nuclear Weapon Free Zone,44 under which NATO nations agreed not to use nuclear weapons against Treaty signatories. NATO's own activities are an impetus to boosting military defense in the region, and even to proliferation as countries seek a deterrent against potential NATO attack.

Third, NATO's own defense activities reduce the effectiveness of the dialogue by producing insecurity and instability in the region. NATO members continue to encourage a massive conventional arms buildup between Greece and Turkey, as well as between Israel and Egypt.

Recommendations
NATO must take the dialogue more seriously and extend it to include countries such as Libya and Algeria, which could pose threats such WMD, ballistic missile attack or terrorism against NATO nations. The most effiicient defense against such threats is to negotiate them away and support programs that engage the various players in cooperation.

NATO member states should stop contributing to the arms build-up in the Eastern Mediterranean and contribute more to peace support efforts.

The dialogue should also include the negotiation of reduction and elimination of all WMD in the region, including NATO WMD. Again, if NATO fears WMD aggression, then removing the threat through negotiation and elimination, backed by a rigorous enforcement regime in a completely non-discriminatory manner, is the most effective way to proceed. This must include an end to tacit support or indulgence of the Israeli nuclear weapons program.

These policies would complement European Union involvement in the Mediterranean through its Euro-Mediterranean Partnerships. These Partnerships involve financial and technical support from the EU for countries in North Africa, with the aim of promoting social and economic stability across the region. This goal is furthered by advantageous trade deals to promote economic development. These economic policies are now being complemented with the drawing up of a Charter for Peace and Stability between the EU and its Mediterranean Partners, which aims to promote security throughout the Mediterranean region.

For all the problems, such as lack of sufficient financial commitment, these EU programs form a coherent approach to security and good neighborliness policies across the Mediterranean, and reflect the needs of the region much better than the approach adopted by NATO to date.

A Risk Reduction Strategy for NATO continued

Introduction | Section 1 | Section 2 | Section 3 | Section 4 | Section 5
Section 6 | Section 7 | Section 8 | Endnotes | Appendices

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