NATO: A Post Summit Analysis

By Sally McNamara

President Obama celebrated NATO's 60th birthday this weekend in Strasbourg and Kehl, gathering with heads-of-state from 27 other nations as the transatlantic security alliance marked its diamond jubilee.

Croatia and Albania formally joined the alliance; France reintegrated into its military command structures; Anders Fogh Rasmussen was appointed as Secretary General; and NATO leaders agreed to start work on a new Strategic Concept. However, other thorny issues remain, including Eastwards enlargement, adequately resourcing the mission in Afghanistan, NATO-Russian relations and missile defense.

Here, foreign policy experts asses the impact and conclusions of the NATO Summit.

Croatia and NATO

By Marijan Gubic, Deputy Chief of Mission, Embassy of Croatia, Washington, D.C.

Croatia's membership in NATO represents the completion of one of the twin strategic objectives of the country since its independence. The prospective membership in NATO and the European Union forms an integral part of Croatia's Euro-Atlantic aspirations, which is the core foundation for a Europe that is whole, free and at peace. This aspiration also affirms Croatia's desire to be part of a pluralistic security community that links in strategic ways democracies that recognize their individual identities and special qualities as nations but who also share a common and unique value system that promotes freedom and the benefits of a market economy through robust defense and security institutions. NATO also represents a historic turning point for Croatia as it returns to the European family of nations. It also locks in Croatia into the strategic triangle of Zagreb, Brussels and Washington, D.C. as the unique framework that extends the promise of peace and security on the wider European continent and beyond. NATO is not just the most successful defense alliance in history, it is the vital component of global security and its uniqueness stems from its flexibility to reconcile the complex security challenges that we as nations face. NATO continues to be the single most important factor of global stability. Croatia recognized the importance of NATO membership very early and has special qualifications to extend the benefits of NATO to its completion in South East Europe. This weekend, Croatia has formally become an ally of the most successful and advanced countries in the world and has transformed itself from a consumer of security to a provider.

Croatia's membership in NATO is the culmination of prudent leadership in Croatia that transformed Croatia into a confident and capable ally of the transatlantic community, the wisdom of Croatian citizens and the steadfast commitment of Croatia's veterans to the cause of freedom and the assiduous work and dialogue between Croatia and the twenty-six NATO nations and its partners. Croatia's membership will contribute to renewing the alliance, a special feature of NATO that has been a constant source of its strength. Special recognition of the allies should be acknowledged, and in particular the United States and successive administrations since the end of the Cold War, in leading the alliance to strategic success. The challenges that lay ahead will continue to define the alliance, and the prevailing challenge is to extend the Euro-Atlantic perspective to those nations that seek to contribute to the values and security of the alliance and extend the benefits of living in freedom.

The NATO Summit: Not Groundbreaking, But Still Reasons for Optimism

By Dr. Liam Fox MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Defence, UK

Overall, while the recent NATO Summit in Strasbourg and Kehl wasn't as groundbreaking as many had hoped, there was a lot to be optimistic about.

I welcome NATO's two newest members—Croatia and Albania—into the alliance. Their membership shows what reform and hard work can achieve, but they must also realize that with membership comes responsibility. The membership of Croatia and Albania should send the message to the rest of the region that the natural home for the Balkans is inside the family of Europe and part of NATO.

For NATO to work properly as a security alliance in the post Cold War world NATO members must have the willingness to take equal risks with regards to supplying troops and equipment within the alliance and the willingness to financially fund and sustain these operations until "mission complete".

Currently there are certain members who are doing a disproportionate amount of the fighting, funding, and the dying. This is simply not sustainable in the longer term. NATO's success depends on the support of its members. NATO members need to understand that membership brings implicit and explicit responsibilities to ensure that their militaries have the capability to fight and win on the modern-day battlefield.

There was a lot of talk at the Summit about further troop contributions for ISAF in Afghanistan—especially for the period leading up to and during the upcoming elections in August. Time will tell if these contributions, which read so well on paper, will ever become real capability on the ground. In addition, I hope our European allies will be able to contribute more combat troops to the dangerous south and east of the country—but recent history has thought us to be skeptical.

Even after this summit I think many are still asking the question: "What is NATO for?"

The inconvenient truth is that NATO had it good during the Cold War: larger defence budgets, larger armies, and a clear mission with a clear end state—to stop the Red Army in the Fulda Gap and defeat it on plains of Central Europe.

Today, the NATO alliance must come to terms with the challenges it faces with the resources it has available. In a globalized and interdependent world NATO must be prepared for a full spectrum of challenges. The announcement of a new Strategic Concept is a very important step in helping NATO establish what its mission is in the 21st century and should be welcome with the full support of all NATO members.

Finally, President Sarkozy's decision to rejoin NATO's Integrated Command Structure should be welcome on both sides of the Atlantic. France can bring real military capability to the alliance, but this decision should not be at the cost of deeper EU defence integration. It must be made clear that NATO has the right of first refusal and primacy for all matters pertaining to the security and defense of Europe. For the last 60 years NATO has been the cornerstone of our collective defense. Now is not a time to turn our backs on an alliance that has been so good to us.

Where is the Russian reset button?

By Peter Huessy, President, GeoStrategic Analysis

Where is the Russian reset button? While much has been made of prospective changes in US policy, little has been said about what alternatives we can expect from Moscow. Congressman John McHugh writes: "With all the noise about policy shifts and breaks from previous...policies, there seems to be scant regard for what Russia actually says. This risks falling into the trap of failing to see Russia as it is, in favor of what we want it to be."

As such, it is not too early to think that it is Russian behavior that needs "resetting". This includes eliminating Russia's massive arsenal of theater nuclear weapons. And stopping the export of weapons technology to rogue states such as Iran and Venezuela, which may have been destined for Hezbollah and FARC in terror strikes against the US. And eliminating military pressure against members of NATO.

Of particular note is Russia's resource war against the West and its use of natural gas to blackmail its neighbors. It seeks to control the flow of oil and gas from Central Asia both to the East and to the West. Moscow also has a growing control of critical mineral resources, such as palladium and platinum mining and processing. We have what Daniel McGroarty and Dr. Christina Lin, in two recent but separate publications, describe as "economics as the continuation of war by other means" and "utilizing the Russian resource sector to once again reassert Russia's imperial status", respectively.

Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post warned yesterday of the administration's "willingness to embrace the priorities of... [others]...while playing down—or setting aside altogether—principal American concerns." If shrinking American international influence or to borrow from Charles Krauthammer, a "leveling is the essence" of the new Washington, a host of new but unwanted tenants may show up and take residence in the new strategic structure that is under construction. Steve Blanks of the Army War College warns that Moscow has become the center of an enterprise more reflective of organized crime than a nation-state. How reliable can such a state be as a partner?

While Washington is right that the North Korean launch was "a provocative attempt to improve the rogue regime's long-range ballistic missile capability", at the same time as part of a policy review, diplomats are discussing whether the U.S. will eventually have to accept Iran's insistence on carrying out uranium enrichment. Iranian bombs and North Korea missiles cannot be separated, however, and that is but one stark example of the dilemma facing America today. While it is important to keep ones ears open, as Jim Hoagland warns: "Listening is not a policy".

Tightening command in Afghanistan

By Michael O'Hanlon, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, The Brookings Institution

The Obama administration's new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, issued on March 27 before the president and secretary of state's trips to Europe, is a generally sound framework. It properly emphasizes the twin goals of protecting the Afghan population, on the one hand, and building up Afghan institutions so that they can themselves increasingly protect and assist their own population, on the other.

To be sure, there are weaknesses in the existing plan, even though it represents a major step forward and a far better framework than the Bush administration ever constructed in seven years of effort. For example, we still may not be committing enough troops. Even if Senator McCain's recent charge that the new plan represents military "incrementalism" are too dismissive, commanders reportedly want 10,000 more U.S. troops than the president has yet approved (taking American troop totals from their current 38,000 to nearly 80,000, if all are approved). Even more importantly, our goals for Afghan security forces remain far too modest; the current target of about 215,000 personnel is roughly half of what counterinsurgency doctrine would counsel (given that a country of 30 million should have at least half a million peacekeepers and/or police).

But in these early days of April, two other problems with the strategy stand out because they are of particular relevance to NATO. Ideally they would have been fixed before the summit, but there is still time to repair the flaws in the coming weeks.

Both concern command arrangements. In Iraq, make no mistake about it, while General David Petraeus rightly receives tremendous praise for the success of the surge, General Ray Odierno and Ambassador Ryan Crocker were essential elements of the three-man team there (of course, Odierno remains there now as Petraeus's successor). Between the three of them, they represented not only America's, but the overall international coalition's, various strengths and assets. Odierno commanded troops day to day; Petraeus oversaw the development and implementation of the surge-based strategy as well as its close coordination with Iraqi partners; Crocker handled politics and economics.

In Afghanistan comparable capabilities are largely lacking. Karl Eikenberry is likely headed to Kabul as ambassador, and he is well qualified for the task, but the political and economic elements of the job are much more multilateral and therefore complex than they were in Iraq. The U.S. ambassador therefore cannot do on his own what Crocker could do in Iraq. To take just one key example, of the $15 billion in aid disbursed in Afghanistan so far, only $5 billion or one-third has come from the United States, whereas 90 percent of foreign aid disbursements in Iraq were American in origin. In addition, there is no operational commander to help General David McKiernan, who commands all foreign forces in Afghanistan. His staff is smaller than Petraeus's was in Iraq (or than Odierno's is now), yet he has no help in managing day to day affairs. Rather, below McKiernan, there are five regional commands run by different NATO countries, each with subregional commands run by yet more countries, to coordinate and manage.

Even if most counterinsurgency is local, there are downsides to such a fragmented military command structure.  Best practices are harder to share, as is good intelligence data. The ability to quickly call reinforcements from one sector to another as needed is often slowed too--not only by the regrettable national "caveats" on how troops can be employed, which alas are a fact of life to some extent, but also by simple bureaucratic hurdles and cumbersome chains of command that run back through Europe before recoalescing at ISAF headquarters in Kabul.

As bad as the problems are on the military side, they may be worse on the economic front. And this is a crucial area of effort, as we seek to help Afghan farmers develop alternatives to opium, judicial systems train and deploy competent judges, and schools and health care centers reach the other half of the population not yet served. With the country ravaged by three decades of war, most Afghan ministries have no more than a few competent professionals to run their operations. Among other challenges, they must deal with some 40 donors, whose efforts are uncoordinated and often amount to a hodgepodge of individually worthy but disconnected efforts. Imagine this: if the competent ministers each receive just one briefing a month from each donor, and spend time digesting what they have learned, they could easily consume half their precious time just listening to Powerpoint presentations (two briefings a day, every day, plus time to prepare and to process).

We owe our Afghan friends more help. We should suggest to the Afghan government and our major allies that a three-person overall command structure be created for the coalition's work in Afghanistan. General McKiernan would retain his role, but devolve some day to day responsibilities to a new three-star operational commander coordinating all foreign military activities throughout the country. In addition, an international aid coordinator, accountable to all major donors and representing a single major point of contact for the Afghan government, should be named, somewhat along the "Paddy Ashdown" model from Bosnia in the 1990s. The current UN coordinator does not have nearly enough control over most funds to play this role.

There is a very natural way to share the burden, and the responsibility, of this new command structure. With two-thirds of all foreign forces in Afghanistan soon to be American, not only the ISAF commander but his deputy in charge of day-to-day operations should be a U.S. military officer. But with two-thirds of all economic and development assistance coming from non-U.S. origins, the aid and development coordinator should be European (or Japanese or Canadian, given which countries are providing the greatest resources right now). Down the road, that coordinator might come from a Muslim-majority country (indeed, a Turk could be considered for it right off the bat).

This approach would maintain the sense of international partnership of the Afghan mission while also keeping leadership jobs in the hands of those making the greatest contributions. It would also be a good way for President Obama to show what his new style of American global diplomacy will entail--with recognition of the role of allies and partners, yet at the same time a strong and sustained sense of U.S. leadership.

Paste rather than diamonds at NATO's 60th birthday

By Geoffrey Van Orden MEP,, British Conservative Member of the European Parliament and Defense Spokesman

Nato's Diamond Jubilee was more symbolism than substance but even the symbolism was awry. When President Obama was greeted by the French President in Strasbourg, it was the EU rather than the Nato flag that stood alongside the stars and stripes and tricolore. As President Sarkozy awaited NATO leaders strolling over the Rhine bridge from Germany, it seemed that Nato was returning to France rather than a prodigal France rejoining the family.

Sadly we did not even have to wait for the Summit to open for the reality of France's exceptionalism to emerge. While Afghanistan was again identified as the alliance's "key priority", President Sarkozy's refusal to contribute more troops cast a depressing pall over the gathering. Along with well-publicised cuts in the French armed forces it tells us all we need to know about his real motive in reintegrating into the military structures of Nato - to obtain endorsement of the EU's separate defence project and to have a hand in reshaping the Alliance to suit this French ambition. If, as seems likely, part of the deal with France is to give it one of the top two military posts in Nato - Allied Command Transformation - then it will have a key role in the drafting of the new strategic concept announced at the Summit.

The final communiqué repeats word for word the previous Bucharest Summit's insistence on the "complementary" nature of EU defence policy. But that's the wrong word – 'overlapping' or 'competing' would be better. After all, Nato and the EU share a membership. 21 of the 27 EU member states are full members of NATO, and five of the remaining six are neutral states. Are we really saying that the cost, duplication, division and distraction entailed by separate EU structures is justified by the potential involvement of the military forces of Cyprus? If, as recognised, the security challenges are common, why is there a need for separate structures making competing claims on the same limited pool of military resources?

As an example, take the naval anti-piracy efforts now being simultaneously conducted by Nato and the EU. The Summit Communiqué would have it that these are "complementary" - the truth is that both organisations draw on exactly the same diminishing numbers of frigates and destroyers from exactly the same countries. All that EU involvement brings is division of national contributions and confusion of operational commands.

A second example is Afghan police training. This is one of the tasks of the Nato Training Mission launched at the Summit. It will operate under the same command as the U.S. mission that successfully trained a third of Afghan police in 2008. But no similar agreement has been reached with the EU, which typically insists on maintaining an autonomous operation. At an annual cost of nearly $90 million, and now in its second year, EUPOL hasn't trained a single ordinary Afghan policeman. It is a microcosm of the duplication, division, confusion, and lack of tangible results that characterises ESDP as a whole.

The Alliance declares that its aim is to strengthen cooperation with other international actors, including the EU, to deliver a comprehensive approach, combining civilian and military capabilities more effectively. If that were really the case, the EU would focus on civil reconstruction and development projects, where it might add some real value.

Instead, we need to be doubly wary lest France's ambitions for the EU undermine the fundamental architecture of the premier security organisation of the democracies. The Obamas seem to cast stardust wherever they go – and the affection for them across Europe is undeniable – but when he gets home, the President of the United States will find that he's brought back little more than a few tawdry souvenirs from his foreign travel. Nato has not been revitalised. The democracies are not better prepared to meet the visceral threats to their very being.

Copyright 2009 The Heritage Foundation. www.heritage.org Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved.