Security Alliances

As NATO prepares to take over military operations in southern Afghanistan from U.S. forces, the Taliban’s increasingly bold attacks are straining the political and security framework of the country.

Robert E. Hunter, who was U.S. ambassador to NATO from 1993-98, says that at this week’s meeting of NATO foreign ministers, the current controversy over "rendition" of prisoners pales in importance to the issue of whether the NATO countries will agree to a significant increase in the size of their forces in Afghanistan, and to use it in combat roles. He says the Netherlands has raised some doubts that could scuttle plans to increase the force level from 10,000 to 16,000."I would say that the big event this week is not this political and psychological, political issue of rendition and the CIA, but whether Secretary [of State Condoleezza] Rice will succeed in convincing U.S. allies to stay the course in Afghanistan," says Hunter, currently senior adviser at the RAND Corporation and president of the Atlantic Treaty Association. He says, "I think they’re prepared to do so and also to take on more responsibilities. That’s going to be a tough sale but an important sale, and one to which I think the leadership under NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer is deeply committed."Hunter was interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor for cfr.org, on December 6, 2005.The semi-annual meeting of NATO foreign ministers takes place this week in Brussels. It is taking place against a background of controversy in Europe over the United States’ use of so-called renditions, where it flies certain prisoners secretly to different countries and has them incarcerated and questioned. Had you ever heard of this when you were a NATO ambassador in the 1990s?To put it very simply, no. In fact I don’t even know if it was a practice in those days. A lot of this, one has to understand, is post-9/11, which has been a rather extraordinary time for the United States. What does the United States gain from doing this? To begin with, I don’t know how much of it we do. I don’t know how much of what we’re seeing in the newspapers is accurate. One of the problems with this, in general, is everyone is operating with circumstantial evidence or circumstantial commentary. It might be useful to clear the air; to have a better picture of what is involved, what isn’t involved. We have the formal statements by the Secretary of State [Condoleezza Rice] which, I thought were quite categorical and straightforward. But it’s one of these issues that get "legs" the longer it goes on without clear explanation. Having said that, I think the argument is that in this very complicated and difficult and demanding world of terrorism there is something gained in sending to other places people who one believes has committed, or could commit more serious attacks on the United States or its friends and allies. In particular, their home countries might be better able to deal with them in terms of language and culture, environment and the like. Whether it’s a useful thing or not to do, I think we need to have a real debate and decision on.To me it’s interesting that none of the European countries that have been alleged to be the places where some of these "renditions" have taken place have acknowledged knowing anything about the practice. Presumably, somebody knew about them.Again, we’re operating in a murky environment here as to what the facts are. I suspect that in each of these countries there was at least somebody responsible, who understood it. These countries are put under a lot of pressure by the United States at a time when the United States to be cooperative. Some of them, of course, may find it useful in terms of trying to get information of potential or real terrorists. Having said all that and to try to demystify this a little bit, this is one of those questions in which you have to consider, what is the value of doing "x" versus the political and other costs, if "x" is revealed? And that’s a balance that has to be struck. And in this case, there are some doubts that it was struck in the right way. A particular action might be fine if it remains secret, but what happens if it becomes revealed? Do I pay a higher price? And this may be one of those cases. Let’s move on to the NATO meeting. The official business of the NATO meeting, I assume, is the expansion of an International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan? Afghanistan is the No. 1 question on the agenda for a couple of reasons. First, it’s in the United States’ interest to try to get NATO countries further engaged in Afghanistan, not only in the tasks that they’ve been doing, which is with the PRTs [the Provisional Reconstruction Teams]. The United States has also been hoping to get NATO forces and the NATO command more engaged in the southern and southeastern parts of Afghanistan, where most of the fighting has been going on. The U.S. command has some 18,000 troops in Afghanistan that have been doing the bulk of the fighting. The United States would like to reduce its troop presence and be able to use those forces elsewhere, including Iraq. There has been some resistance on the part of some NATO allies, in particular the Dutch, who have now indicated they may not want to play that role and that has slowed down and may even derail the effort to get NATO to play a broader military role. That’s one element of the discussions that are going on, which is as much political as it is military. The other aspect is NATO’s engagement in Afghanistan overall. Every NATO ally is involved in the ISAF. That includes Iceland, which doesn’t even have any military forces but sends a couple of doctors to it. It has been so significant for NATO that for a period of time this year the commander of forces there was a French general, which is remarkable because this is an operation run under the integrated military command under the Supreme Allied Commander of Europe, General [James L.] Jones. And here are the French who are not technically part of the command acting taking over as commander. And they have no problem with that. But the most important thing is that NATO, in its entire history, has never failed and the NATO members don’t want the first failure to be in Afghanistan. That’s one reason NATO countries resist deeper engagement in Iraq; it’s one reason they were a little bit leery of too much engagement in the Persian Gulf with the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative [that provided security throughout the broader Middle East]. I would say that the big event this week is not this political and psychological, political issue of renditions and the CIA, but whether Secretary Rice will succeed in convincing U.S. allies to stay the course in Afghanistan. I think they’re prepared to do so and also to take on more responsibilities. That’s going to be a tough sale but an important sale, and one to which I think the leadership under NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer is deeply committed.You don’t think the "fix" is already in on this?The fix is clearly not in; at least it wasn’t as of last week. I was at a conference last week in Doha that RAND organized with NATO as part of the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative and at that point, the fix was clearly not in. There are about 10,000 NATO forces in Afghanistan now under NATO command?Something like that, yes. The U.S. desire is to expand these to 16,000.That’s right, and to take further responsibilities in the southern, southeastern part where the fighting is taking place. The numbers are always a problem, but enough arm-twisting and enough "lets all do this to preserve NATO" can generally deal with the number of forces. The real issue is taking over an increasing potential for a combat role, and there people thought it was more or less on track until the Dutch government announced it might not be able to take on the role. I would say it’s going to be a lot of tough bargaining this week. They may not even come to closure. But for NATO, this is going to be a major test and a test of American leadership.What’s the problem for the Dutch? They’ve been pretty supportive of the United States, right?They’ve been very supportive of the United States. There’s no question about that. But there is a resistance back home to putting troops in harm’s way in a far-off region of Afghanistan.Obviously, they’re having major second thoughts about being engaged in the fighting part of Afghanistan and a number of other countries may find shelter in the Dutch position.NATO has to work unanimously? They have to take decisions unanimously and that is a very important concept. When they take decisions unanimously, everybody does fall into line on the political part of the decision, but not every country has to take part. NATO in that sense is always a coalition of the willing. Some countries are involved and some aren’t. It is remarkable that in the ISAF every single NATO ally is there because it is so important. It more directly relates to the war on terror than it does to what’s going on in Iraq. Nobody in NATO has any doubts about the importance of the war on terror or the importance of Afghanistan as a central focus of that. Some NATO countries are helping out in Iraq independently, right? There are some countries involved. There is some NATO training, but no appetite for further engagement in Iraq. Part of that is because several of their allies say, "Look, NATO as an institution has bought into Afghanistan and NATO as an institution cannot be permitted to fail," and that’s why there is reluctance, led by the Dutch. I suspect that when push comes to shove, if not at this meeting then at the next defense ministers’ meeting in the spring, something will get agreed on. It’s going to require a good deal of effort by the United States, a good deal of indication of exactly what is involved and what the end of the mission might look like.I gather some of the NATO countries that have small contingents in Iraq are looking to pull out.Iraq has to been seen as separate. As I say, NATO has a commitment in Afghanistan. It looks at it in institutional terms and also in terms as a central focus on the war on terror. For example, despite all the difficulties between the United States and some countries over Iraq, those difficulties have not spilled over to U.S. relations within NATO or U.S. relations with the European Union. Now in Iraq, a number of countries are either pulling out their forces or announced they would. The Italians want to reduce their contingent, the Greeks, the Poles, and the British next year want to reduce their forces. There’s not much stomach at this point for countries to be so exposed in Iraq. Whether that changes after December 15th after the elections in Iraq and what happens afterwards, we will have to see.What about NATO as an institution? Is it going to continue to expand? Is NATO going to take in Ukraine also?There are two summits slated at this point. One will almost certainly take place in Riga, Latvia, probably next October or November; a smaller summit is likely [planned for] the last year of the Bush administration. Some people are saying that that second summit should issue an invitation to Ukraine to join along with possibly one or two other countries, like Croatia. This is going to force a major debate, I suspect more serious than any debate on NATO enlargement since the very first one at the Madrid Summit in 1997 over the entrance of the Czech Republic, Hungry, and Poland, for a couple of simple reasons. One, it is still not clear that the democratic experiment in Ukraine is taking hold. Secondly, the country is still very deeply divided between, let’s say, its Western population and its Eastern population, the latter having a very heavy Russian component. Third, given the state of relations between the United States and Russia, internal developments in Russia and Russia trying to find its own future, for NATO to go forward and take in Ukraine without a much clearer understanding with Russia could be asking for real trouble.I’m sure the summit in Riga will cause a lot of heartburn in Moscow as well.I think the Russians have come to terms with the existence of the Baltic States now within NATO. But I think a number of Russians have recognized that if they have productive relationships with these states that have gained some membership in NATO and the European Union, economically that can be very helpful to at least the western parts of Russia. I think they’ve gotten over that particular concern. But Ukraine, from the Russian perspective and the Ukrainian perspective, is a real strategic issue if it actually comes formally into NATO. Right now, I would have to say Ukraine certainly is not ready for that, nor is NATO ready for that, nor is the NATO-Russia relationship ready for that. It is hard to envision Ukraine, which was an integral party of Russia, as part of NATO. I don’t actually see a problem of countries joining NATO, provided a couple of things are fulfilled: one, that NATO continues to be effective; secondly, these countries are ready to be fully engaged in the West; and third, membership of country "A" doesn’t come at the expense of interests of country "B." President George H.W. Bush enunciated the grand strategy that is being pursued in a simple phrase, "To try to create a Europe whole and free." The NATO perspective since then has always been that any country can join NATO if it’s ready and willing to meet the requirements of NATO membership, to try to indicate that NATO is not a threat to anybody but it is a threat against the forces of instability. Working with the Russians to reassure them on that and to engage them more deeply in NATO, beginning with the NATO-Russia council, is of major strategic significance for everybody in Europe—to try to achieve the goal that nobody has ever had a chance to even try since Charlemagne, "Europe whole and free."How is NATO doing overall?I think people outside the professional community that follows this, has to understand that NATO is really thriving in this decade as it did in the last decade because it has gone through a major internal transformation. The old argument that [Senator] Richard Lugar [R-IN] had twelve years ago, "NATO out of business or out of area," has been decisively answered. NATO allies are now prepared to be engaged in a host of places. Most remarkable perhaps, is Afghanistan and the commitment in Afghanistan to get it right, to be successful. The United States, since the problems of 2003 [the Iraq invasion] is now showing a much more positive perspective on NATO. The President’s visit [to Europe] in February, what Secretary Rice has been doing, and Secretary [of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld has come around to see the renewed value of NATO. The key element, of course, as always is American leadership. When American leadership is there NATO works; when it’s not, it doesn’t. That is what we have to look to.

This publication is now archived. Can NATO keep the peace in Afghanistan? The United Nations Security Council unanimously agreed October 13 to allow the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to expand its Afghanistan peacekeeping mission beyond the capital city of Kabul. NATO’s involvement is an important step in the evolution of the transatlantic alliance--created after World War II to counterbalance the Soviet threat--and will help increase security in Afghanistan in the future, experts say. But the move’s immediate implications are less clear. Many experts warn that it will be months before there is a significant expansion in the number of peacekeeping troops. What’s the current status of peacekeeping in Afghanistan? The U.N.-sanctioned International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) has about 5,500 troops based in and around Kabul. Most of the peacekeepers are Germans and Canadians; about 90 percent come from the NATO’s 19 member nations. NATO took control of ISAF on August 11, 2003, ending an unwieldy system of rotating command among individual nations. The peacekeepers support and protect the transitional Afghan government, headed by Hamid Karzai. Outside of the capital, however, the reach of the central government is limited. Much of Afghanistan remains controlled by regional militia, and the security situation in some provinces has deteriorated over the past year. The biggest threat comes from increasing attacks by Taliban gunmen. There are also some 11,500 U.S.-led coalition troops in Afghanistan hunting down terrorists, but for the most part they do not get involved in peacekeeping. Which U.S. forces participate in peacekeeping? Americans run two of four Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) deployed in Afghan cities. These small, civilian-military units (in general, made up of 100 to 200 personnel) play a limited role in reconstruction and provide security for international aid groups. The United States has encouraged other nations to take over command of these teams. One of the factors behind the expansion of ISAF was to help pave the way for other nations--particularly Germany--to lead PRTs throughout Afghanistan. What new NATO deployments are on the horizon? The German government has indicated it wants to send approximately 450 peacekeepers to the city of Kunduz, approximately 150 miles north of Kabul. NATO is currently assessing conditions in the rest of Afghanistan for additional troop deployments, but no other NATO nations have yet stepped forward to offer more peacekeepers. Because of the slow pace of this process, some Afghanistan-watchers do not expect to see a significant increase in ISAF forces until next spring. Afghanistan’s first national election is scheduled for June 2004. Why was Kunduz selected as the first city for ISAF expansion? There is already an American-run PRT in Kunduz, and the security situation is more stable than in other parts of the country. NATO officials say more detailed preparations are required before ISAF deploys into more dangerous areas, particularly the south and east, where there has been a resurgence of Taliban-related violence. Of Afghanistan’s 32 provinces, 16 have high-risk areas for international assistance workers and five have seen serious factional fighting, says Kevin Henry, the advocacy director of CARE. Only eight provinces, including Kunduz, are relatively secure. What does ISAF expansion mean for NATO? NATO’s willingness to command ISAF marks a milestone in the history of the 54-year-old military alliance: its first mission outside of the Europe-Atlantic area. With the Soviet threat a thing of the past and Europe largely at peace, NATO is searching for ways to remain relevant in the post-Cold War world, experts say. Since the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, NATO members have determined that the alliance should evolve into a more flexible organization with the capacity to intervene in small conflicts, fight terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, conduct peacekeeping operations, and support humanitarian missions inside and outside of Europe. NATO’s command of ongoing peacekeeping missions in Bosnia and Kosovo are part of this transformation. And in October 2003, NATO announced the creation of its first "rapid reaction" force. What is the new NATO force? Launched on October 15, the NATO Response Force (NPF) is a 9,000-member expeditionary fighting unit that can deploy on short notice anywhere in the world. Essentially, it is a pool of elite infantry and other forces from NATO nations trained to deploy and work as a team. So far, Spain is providing the largest share of NPF troops--2,200--plus ships, planes, and helicopters. The United States is contributing 300 troops. There will also be specialists in handling nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. The NPF will eventually number 20,000 soldiers, according to current plans. While its exact rules of engagement are still being determined, experts say it will likely deploy only with U.N. Security Council backing. Is NATO involved in Iraq? Yes, but indirectly. It is providing logistical and technical support to the Poles, who are leading a multinational military force stationed south of Baghdad. Spain will take over command from Poland, with NATO support, in 2004. Some former U.S. generals and other experts are calling for NATO to become the umbrella organization for peacekeepers there, in an effort to further internationalize the occupation force. But there has not been "a request yet for NATO to be formally involved" in Iraq, outgoing NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson said October 9. Dutchman Jaap de Hoop Scheffer will take over as NATO secretary general in December. Does NATO have enough resources to take on all these new missions? Not without difficulty, many experts say. Most NATO nations have small military budgets--and in many cases military spending is declining, says Michael Peters, an expert on NATO affairs and executive vice president of the Council on Foreign Relations. Only a handful of NATO nations--France, Germany, Britain, Turkey, and Poland--have the capacity to field significant numbers of troops, and cash-strapped Poland and Turkey require financial assistance to do so, Peters says. Ongoing Balkans deployments involving some 40,000 personnel already strain the capacity of some NATO members. NATO’s focus for now is getting Afghanistan "absolutely right" because it’s somewhere we cannot possibly fail before we start looking at other elements," Robertson said October 9. Is there resistance to NATO transformation? There is an ongoing debate within Europe over the level of resources that should be devoted to the European Union’s new Rapid Reaction Force, a 60,000-member military unit that may act independently of NATO and the United States. Support for making the force a centerpiece of E.U. security policy remains limited, but that could change if Britain--NATO’s strongest supporter in Europe--decides to throw its weight behind the effort, Peters says. The unit has already taken on two small peacekeeping missions: it currently commands the 400-member peacekeeping force in Macedonia, and it led a peacekeeping mission to the Democratic Republic of Congo between June and September 2003.

Ronald D. Asmus, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for European affairs in the Clinton administration and an expert on NATO, says that an “important first step” toward healing the rupture between the United States and its European allies has been taken in recent weeks. But he cautions that it is “only a first step” and that Europeans still mistrust Washington’s Iraq policies. “I fear we will have the victory of a [United Nations] resolution, but it won’t mean much at the end of the day,” says Asmus, a senior transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States and a former senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He was interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor for cfr.org, on October 1 and 2, 2003. Other Interviews In a recent article in Foreign Affairs, you write that “one of the most striking consequences of the Bush administration’s foreign policy tenure has been the collapse of the Atlantic alliance.” In recent weeks, there has been a great deal of conversation between the United States and its European allies at the United Nations and elsewhere about repairing this rupture. Is it going to happen? I think we have taken an important first step, but only a first step. The issue that is on the table at the United Nations is whether the United States and Europe can reconcile in a way that would change the dynamics both in the transatlantic relationship and possibly on the ground in Iraq. The issue is two-fold: will Europe step forward with a significant contribution [to Iraqi reconstruction], and is the United States prepared to allow Europe to have the right kind of U.N. mandate and voice in the process? The question the Europeans have had for the United States is, “Can we be assured that we will have some say in what’s going to happen [in Iraq] through the United Nations and other arrangements?” What happened was that the Europeans, given the option of a minimum package or a maximum package, went for the minimum package and the Americans gave them a minimum amount of say, as opposed to the maximum package and a greater amount of say. But it was an important step forward. You’re talking about the new U.N. resolution that the United States is circulating? Yes. Crucial to that resolution is the question of whether the United States and Europe are going to come together in a meaningful way to try and manage the rebuilding of Iraq. All European leaders are saying publicly, and in private are emphasizing, that they know that if Iraq were to go wrong, they would pay as big a price as the United States would. Will the Europeans approve the new resolution? I expect that the new resolution will be accepted and that the European members of the Security Council will either say “yes” or abstain. They have been signaling for some time that they will not oppose it. But the key question is a different one, namely, whether this resolution leads them to rethink their position and leads them to make significant contributions to the Iraq reconstruction effort. And there, unfortunately, the answer is likely to be “no.” The president’s speech at the United Nations was read in Europe as saying: We’re going to do this on our terms, and we welcome you and urge you to join us. It was not read as sending the message that the United States was willing to accommodate European concerns and interests and wishes in a way that would lead them to make meaningful contributions. So I fear we will have the victory of a resolution, but it won’t mean much at the end of the day. The resolution will not become the vehicle for a more meaningful reconciliation that would have led Europe to go beyond the minimum and do the maximum possible. What are the Europeans willing to do if a deal can be worked out with Washington? It is not agreed to yet. But there are European governments willing to put troops on the ground, willing to make a much greater financial contribution, and willing to do everything from training police to encouraging non-governmental organizations to go into Iraq and using the resources of the European Union to make a much greater impact. But in return, they want to have the sense, or the assurance, that they will have a say commensurate with their role. And they still feel, rightly or wrongly, that they’re being asked to sign up on American terms, and they do not feel confident that they would have the say that they think they would deserve. Now, in return, the American skepticism is that the Europeans are asking for that role without being willing to put resources on the table. That’s the dance that took place, and we did not reach closure. But we did take a step forward. Is the dance over? No, the dance is not over yet. In one leading European defense ministry, the internal wager is not whether but when it will put troops on the ground in Iraq. The assumption is that over the weeks and months ahead, there will be another attempt to bring the United States and Europe together in some way to find a more common approach, because at the end of the day, Europeans and Americans have a deep, common interest in ensuring that the project of rebuilding Iraq succeeds. The Germans made a public gesture of rapprochement when Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder met with President Bush recently. Is that a real policy change? I think Germany is the key. The U.S.-German relationship is the one that, in many ways, suffered the most in the past year. Many Germans are very sympathetic to the vision of a transformed, more democratic greater Middle East. German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer agrees with that view, and in order to bring the French back on board, you need to first reconcile with the Germans. The policy of ignoring the Germans was a mistake. I think we are moving in the right direction now. But Germany is a good example of a country that could have done more, but isn’t yet prepared politically to do the maximum possible. It is doing less than it could because it’s not convinced it will have an adequate role in the decision-making process. Are Europeans looking for a joint command with the United States? What Europeans are looking for and what Europeans ask is, why can’t the United States come up with a system similar to the one in Afghanistan today? That is a separate U.S. military contingent and a separate European force? No, it is much more. The plan the Europeans want in Iraq starts with a clear U.N. mandate, with the United States playing the dominant role behind the scenes. This would be done in a way that grants more legitimacy and makes it easier for both Europeans and other countries in the region to come in and participate. None of the Europeans have any problems with the U.S. military running the security side of this operation. That has never been the issue. They want that. The question is the civilian side and whether you can take the operation run by L. Paul [Jerry] Bremer [III] and merge or morph it into something that is much more international, both in appearance and in substance. That would give the Europeans a role commensurate with the resources they bring in. If there is only a modest amount of resources, then they should have only a modest amount of say. But we need to create the context by which Europe can contribute. I think we took a run at this at the United Nations. We didn’t quite get there, but I hope that we will take another run at this in the days and weeks ahead. We have to, if we are going to succeed. What is the French government’s position now? I think President Jacques Chirac is correct when he says that the key issue for many Iraqis is when they will assume responsibility for governing themselves. I think most people, including most Europeans, know that turning this operation over to the Iraqis in the near future is a silly idea and one that wouldn’t work. The debate between France and the United States is over tactics and timing and, unfortunately, the whole conversation is still poisoned by the rift over the Iraq fight earlier in the year. People want to see the United States succeed. They need to help the Iraqis organize themselves so they can take responsibility. But in the last couple of days, Secretary of State Colin Powell said that within six months, we want a draft constitution, and the Iraqis said they may not be able to meet that deadline. There is a danger of the process dragging out over too long a time period, and there is a danger of a premature transfer of power to an Iraqi authority unable to handle the responsibility it would assume. Then how can the Europeans expect an Afghan-type situation in Iraq? In Afghanistan, there was Hamid Karzai, who was an obvious choice for president. I don’t think there is anyone like him in Iraq. The Europeans say that they helped create Karzai. The Bonn meeting, in December 2001, which the Germans ran, created the international legitimacy and produced a U.N. mandate to empower someone like Karzai as the leader of the country, supported by the international community. That model is what most Europeans wish we would emulate in Iraq. This international mandate allows countries to contribute in a way that they find difficult to do at the moment. Where does the NATO alliance fit into this? NATO is in Afghanistan as a security force. The debate is about expanding the mandate of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) into the regions of Afghanistan outside of Kabul. A second debate is whether NATO, in the months ahead, would take over a sector in Iraq, the sector where a lot of individual national forces, like the Poles, are currently based. That is still a little bit taboo politically, but it is being actively discussed in the halls of the alliance and is a goal that many of us would like to see become a reality. It is something that could be on the agenda at the next NATO summit in May in Istanbul. The NATO defense ministers are meeting in Colorado Springs next week. There, the first issue is the expansion of the ISAF mandate in Afghanistan. Behind that lurks the issue of Iraq. But for NATO to take that on would require a firmer and deeper reconciliation across the Atlantic first. It is only when we come back together on the political level that we can consider having NATO take over a sector in Iraq. Can you give us some background on the new NATO secretary-general, Foreign Minister Jaap de Hoop Scheffer of the Netherlands? The new NATO secretary-general has some big shoes to fill because Lord Robertson has done a very good job in a very critical time. The Dutch have historically played a key role in the alliance because they have simultaneously been among the most Atlanticist and the most pro-European. They are trusted both in Washington and in key European capitals, and I think we are symbolically turning to the Dutch when the alliance has gone through a very difficult patch in the hope that someone like Jaap de Hoop Scheffer can help heal the rift and help put the alliance back together. But the big issue, which I addressed in my article, is what new agenda? We don’t need to put the alliance together around the old agenda, but around the new agenda. And the new secretary general is coming into office six months before a big NATO summit that will be the last summit of this administration’s first term. The key question is whether NATO is going to be able to kiss and make up and show that the United States and Europe are again working together, and whether it is going to set a new strategic direction in managing the problems of the greater Middle East. Those issues are front and center in the debate. I think if you visualize a map of the United States and Europe, you realize that, with the integration of central and east Europe from the Balkans to the Black Sea accomplished, the big challenge we face in NATO is developing a strategy to deal with the countries farther east— not only Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus but also Central Asia and the Caucuses. When you are peacekeeping in Iraq, you suddenly see the importance of having a strategy that promotes stability in that part of the world. Are your ideas acceptable to the NATO countries? When I started to make this argument about a year ago, many people both here and in Europe thought I was a little bit crazy. Today, I think this argument is winning in Washington. I think even some of my colleagues in the Bush administration would say that, if you would leave out my criticism of their performances at the beginning and end of my Foreign Affairs article, there is much they would agree with strategically. And I think in Europe there is an intellectual convergence around the idea that the greater Middle East is the big challenge. We need a new strategy toward the East. The question is whether, in the last year of this administration, people can take that incipient consensus and turn it into something more tangible and real and start to come up with more common policies on the real issues on the ground, as opposed to a just general understanding that we need to do this together.

Charles A. Kupchan, who has long predicted the eventual breakup of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), says that the Group of Eight (G-8) meeting of major industrialized powers in France will be "civil" but with "a somewhat chilly undertone." A former Clinton administration National Security Council staffer and currently the director of Europe Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, Kupchan says that the divisions over the Iraq war have created “a double whammy”--hastening the demise of NATO and widening a rift between Europeans on future policy with the United States. The author of The End of the American Era: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Geopolitics of the Twenty-first Century, Kupchan also says the United States is preparing to pull its military forces out of Germany and move them eastward as part of the change underway in the Atlantic alliance. Kupchan was interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor for cfr.org, on May 29, 2003. Other Interviews Monday’s G-8 meeting in Evian, France, brings President Bush together with the leaders of several countries that opposed the Iraq invasion. What kind of a meeting do you expect? G-8 meetings in general tend to be fairly scripted events, with most of the communiques and issues worked over beforehand, so I don’t expect any big news out of this meeting. I also think that the leaders of the main countries involved in the dispute over Iraq will be careful to be civil. I don’t expect either Bush or his counterparts in France, Germany, or Russia [Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schroeder, and Vladimir Putin, respectively], to be offering apologies or to come crawling back to the table. There will be a somewhat chilly undertone to the gathering. Sometimes at these types of meetings, the photo opportunities and other semi-informal get-togethers often tell a fuller story. Do you think there will be a lot of hugging? If [former President Bill] Clinton were there, he’d be hugging everybody. I don’t think that Bush is going to do a lot of hugging; he will go through the obligatory handshakes and photo opportunities, but if the statements and events of the last few weeks are any indication, he fully intends to exact retribution against those countries that did not back America at the U.N. Security Council. The Bush administration still seems to be holding a serious grudge against France. What does the United States want from France? The roots of the estrangement with France are quite deep. They go back to the 1960s, when [then French President Charles] de Gaulle essentially kicked NATO out of France and [withdrew France from NATO’s] integrated military structure. The legacy of the Gaullist period has induced many French leaders to stand up to and be critical of American hegemony. [As a result] a certain anti-French sentiment is very much a part of America’s foreign policy community. More recently, the Bush administration saw France as the ringleader in the effort to block the Iraq war resolution in the Security Council. So, the United States is interested in punishing France more than Germany and Russia, which it sees as having gone along with the French-led effort [rather than leading it themselves]. What about the Germans? They were very outspoken against the war. It’s interesting that this whole saga began with Germany. It was Schroeder who initially said, “Let’s resist the war against Iraq,” and then began running for re-election on that theme. After [Schroeder won] on a platform of standing up to George Bush, Chirac joined him, and Putin joined the Franco-German coalition. Had Germany been alone, it would never have seen this through and organized a blocking coalition in the Security Council. But on the other hand, what Germany did is itself revolutionary, because the Germans have been living under the American security umbrella since the defeat of the Nazis [in 1945], and by standing their ground against America on questions of war and peace, they said that they are ready to contemplate life without the Atlantic alliance. That’s a big deal for Germans. You’ve written about the inevitable break-up of the Atlantic alliance over the next 10 years or so. Has the Iraq war hastened this process? The Iraq war accelerated the demise of NATO and the strategic separation of America and Europe. It was more a symptom than a cause of that division. It’s become apparent that European and American security are no longer indivisible. The United States is, as a consequence, trying to reconstitute a different Atlantic alliance, in which its main partners are countries like Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria. But I don’t think that’s a workable proposition. You can’t ignore or turn your back on Europe’s major powers and still talk meaningfully about the Atlantic alliance. Will Poland’s dispatch of troops to help occupy part of Iraq exacerbate tensions and increase France’s irritation? It’s certainly going to ensure that there is a double-whammy, that is, transatlantic tensions intermixed with an intra-Epuropean rift. Certainly, Poland is carrying America’s water and is not coming into the European fold. In that sense, it calls into question whether a common foreign policy will be attainable in Europe anytime soon. Have the Americans and the Russians mended their relations since the Iraq war? ? The soundings that have been coming out of Moscow would not suggest that Putin is ready to go back to being Bush’s close buddy. [Secretary of State Colin] Powell was in Moscow not long ago, and it was clear that significant differences remain between Russia and the United States on Iraq and on Middle East policy in general. [Still,] of the three parties— France, Germany, and Russia— Russia is the one that the United States will try hardest to bring back into the fold, and that’s because Russia remains important as a strategic partner in the war on terror, particularly because of intelligence, its fight against Muslim extremists in its southern republics, and its tacit approval of American access to bases in Central Asia. Bush needs Putin now much more than he needs Chirac or Schroeder. Why did France, Germany, and Russia all support Security Council Resolution 1483 that more or less gave the United States and Britain permanent occupying rights in Iraq? It was a pragmatic decision, based upon the reality that they had little influence on the occupation because the United States has the boots on the ground. The United States now owns Iraq. Their votes didn’t signal any real rapprochement? Absolutely not. I think it was a pact of convenience that stemmed from the reality on the ground. Is there anything to be done to stop the United States and NATO or the United States and the Europeans from going their own ways? There is an optimistic scenario, and that is one in which both sides realize that the old Atlantic alliance is gone, that the game has changed, and they have to figure out what this next relationship will look like. If you do that, you could definitely get a cooperative dialogue going. It won’t be as close and it won’t be as meaningful as the traditional alliance, and in that sense we need to lower our expectations, but I think there are still plenty of common interests and objectives on which we can work together. NATO was created in 1949 to meet a perceived and probably real Soviet threat. Is it time for NATO to announce a fade-out? That would be a little bit more stark than most politicians can handle, but I would say that we ought to prepare over time for a handoff in which NATO becomes somewhat less Atlantic and much more European and the European Union assumes more responsibility for European defense. One proposal would turn NATO primarily into an anti-terror strike-force. That will make it relevant to the United States, but I don’t think that that is in the offing. Whose proposal is that? At the Prague [NATO] summit, in November 2002, [the] United States proposed what I think it called a global strike-force for NATO. Ron Asmus [a former deputy assistant secretary of state for Europe and an adjunct fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations] has written a piece, with Kenneth Pollack [former National Security Council Persian Gulf director and CIA analyst], about NATO going off into the Middle East and fighting terrorism. I don’t think the Europeans are going to sign off on that. If the Europeans take more responsibility for NATO, will the time finally come that the United States pulls its troops out of Germany? I think it’s happening as we speak. Two things are happening. One is that— and this is not yet completed— I believe that a good number of the heavily armored troops that went from [U.S. bases in] Germany to Iraq will not be going back, and may well return to the United States. Other U.S. troops in Germany will probably be redeployed further east, in Poland, in Hungary, in Romania. They will not really be troops focused upon European defense. They will be lightly armed troops capable of being rapidly deployed to south and east. So beneath the surface there are revolutionary changes taking place. Has this been discussed with Congress? There have been mentions of such plans in some hearings. And none of it is set in stone. I pick this up being in Washington and hearing what people in the Pentagon are thinking about. Given the strains in the relationship, are there any steps the United States and the Europeans can take to improve things? It would be beneficial to both the Europeans and the Americans to identify a new agenda on which there remains congruence of interest. That will tend to be on the softer side of things— dealing with the AIDS crisis, promoting development in Africa and the Middle East, addressing the question of global growth, trying to figure out the impact of a weaker dollar on transatlantic relations. There’s a lot of room for working together and for making some progress, and in that sense the Atlantic relationship may remain intact, but it’s going to be without its strategic foundations.

Charles A. Kupchan, the Council’s Director of Europe Studies, says that by the end of the decade, “the U.S. will have very little business left in Europe.” As the NATO summit meets in Prague, Kupchan argues that another round of NATO expansion will complete “the process of creating a Europe whole and free,” paving the way for a dramatic restructuring of Europe’s security infrastructure— and leaving the United States to focus elsewhere.Kupchan, who is also a senior fellow at the Council and an associate professor of International Relations at Georgetown University, made these comments in an interview with Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor for the Council’s website, cfr.org, on November 19, 2002.Q. We’re talking with Charlie Kupchan, who’s written a new book on Europe and the U.S. called The End of the American Era. Let’s focus today on the summit meeting of NATO countries taking place in Prague and President Bush’s trip, which will take him also to Russia and Romania.What is your feeling about the prospective enlargement of NATO? It has already been enlarged to include three former members of the Warsaw Pact: the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland. The press reports that NATO is going to be enlarged by another seven— Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Romania, Slovenia, and Slovakia— all from the former Soviet bloc. Is it a good thing that NATO become so big— bigger than the European Union?A. I think this next wave is a logical next step in the process that began in the mid-1990s, with NATO deciding to start integrating states from the former Soviet camp into its military infrastructure. The idea here is that as many of the new democracies that want to should be allowed to join. The upshot, however, is that these changes are fundamentally changing NATO. It is turning from a military alliance focused on territorial defense to much more of a loose talking shop— a political body which will, in some circumstances, perhaps coordinate military action, but probably more often than not be a place for consultation, putting together coalitions of the willing and really losing its identity as the premier security institution in Europe.Q. I guess the question goes back to 1989 through 1991, when communism fell with a thud in Europe. The Warsaw Pact dissolved because its members wanted out. The question then arose: should there be a NATO?A. The debate that emerged after those events focused on whether NATO should expand formally, giving new security guarantees to neighbors, or do something looser. It was at that time called the Partnership for Peace. That was a program of military cooperation short of a formal military alliance. What is happening now is that after the first round of NATO expansion to include the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland— which was more military in its orientation— we are sort of cycling back to a looser Partnership for Peace orientation. The Central Europeans have been chafing at the bit to get in, because it is their ticket to the West. They see it as rectifying the historical injustice which left them on the wrong side of Europe’s divide. But in some sort of strange, ironic, and perhaps remorseful fashion for them, the NATO they are going to be getting into isn’t what it used to be.Q. Isn’t the reason they wanted to get into NATO to be close to the United States, while they were rather dubious of the European countries?A. That’s correct, and the track record of European guarantees to Central Europe is not auspicious. And they have good reason to say, “We want Uncle Sam, we don’t want the EU.” They are getting into NATO because they want America, but they are going to get Europe instead. Europe is more or less at peace. Russia is democratizing. America really doesn’t have any business anymore to take care of, and so it is going to focus on terrorism, Iraq, Northeast Asia, the Middle East. And little by little, Europe as the strategic focus will disappear from America’s radar screen.I also think we are seeing a kind of drift in the political relationship between the EU and the U.S. over America’s unilateralism, over America’s defection from the Kyodo protocol, the International Criminal Court. And in return the Bush administration is beginning to see Europe as more of a nuisance than a partner. The administration certainly continues to smart from the rhetoric that accompanied the election campaign in Germany in September— which was not overtly anti-American, but certainly beneath the surface, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was tapping into anti-American sentiment.Q. Of course you are right; the American public is totally uninterested in things like NATO or the European Union because there are no threats around from Europe.A. Remember, President Bush was talking about pulling out of the Balkans, saying that this is Europe’s problem, not our problem. A lot of assets were taken from southeastern Europe to Afghanistan during the war to topple the Taliban. We have the First Armored Division still in Europe, but my guess is that in a matter of weeks, it will be redeployed to the Middle East. So even though in symbolic terms we are still a European power, in practical terms we are becoming distracted by other areas, and my guess is that we will ultimately see the drawdown of America’s military presence in Europe.Q. Is the EU in any position to unify or at least coordinate the military forces of the individual countries of Europe?A. It’s heading in that direction, but it’s not there yet. And that’s why I think it is fair to say we have a timing problem; the U.S. seems to be checking out, focusing on other areas, before Europe is quite ready to pick up the slack. And that’s why if I had a piece of advice for the EU, it would be to speed up the process. Get more collective in your defense policy. Spend more for defense. You don’t want to end up in a situation a year down the road where something bad happens— in, let’s say, Montenegro. The U.S. says, “Sorry, we’re not coming to the party.” And the EU doesn’t have the wherewithal to take care of the mess.Q. Is that what happened in Bosnia?A. Yes, we came in and cleaned up and used our aircraft and our coercive diplomacy to bring the parties to the negotiating table. And the same thing happened in Kosovo. I doubt that’s going to last. I think the Clinton administration was fundamentally ambivalent about intervening in the Balkans, while Congress was passing resolutions one after the other disapproving of the military operation. Europe has correctly looked over here and said, “America has fought its last war in Europe, so we should step up to the plate.”Q. Do you think the aftermath of 9/11 has changed the attitude of Congress or the American public to be more willing to take risks?A. It has fortified certain types of internationalism but intensified the sense that we have more important fish to fry elsewhere. We now have to go after al-Qaeda, Saddam Hussein. Maybe we will have operations in Indonesia, the Philippines. The last thing we want to do is to take care of Europe, where, after all, most of the big geopolitical issues have been resolved.Q. Let’s talk about the Russian-American relationship. When Boris Yeltsin was in charge, the relationship was often fairly stormy because he first took the temperature of his own parliament, and Russian public opinion was hotly opposed to having NATO on its borders. And now, President Putin seems unexcited by the whole thing.A. It is a very important change, and I would explain it in several different ways. One is that Putin is a real pragmatist. His priority is economic recovery, and he knows that if this is going to happen, it’s going to come from the West. And so he has really steered Russia westward and wants to attach it to European markets, and he is not going to let something like NATO expansion get in the way.Second, NATO expansion has lost some of its teeth, as we talked about earlier. It is much more political and much less military. So it appears less threatening to Russia.The third important point is that the Russian-American relationship has really changed since 9/11 because of the new partnership in Central Asia and because for the first time, you have people in the government— including conservative— saying, “You know, maybe one day Russia will join NATO.” And so this new council which has been created is called NATO at 20— i.e., Russia has a seat at the table. It is more than just window-dressing. It reflects a real reaching-out to Russia. For those three reasons, I think we are in a different ball game in terms of NATO-Russia.Q. And of course Putin has gotten strong support from Bush on Chechnya.A. Yes, he’s tried to portray Chechnya as Russia’s own battle against terrorism, and it certainly looks that way after the October Moscow theater hostage crisis. And so in that sense, there seems to have been a closing of ranks between Europe, America, and Russia.Q. Why did Russia go along with the Security Council on Iraq?A. My guess is that there were a lot of discussions with the Russians behind the scenes, including economic issues. Russia has a huge stake in Iraqi oil and has a huge debt in Iraq. We may have given them a wink and a nod about those two issues.Q. So how do you think NATO will fade out?A. I think the best of circumstances will be that its momentum keeps it going, at least in name, through this decade— that we see another round of enlargement that includes the former states of Yugoslavia and Russia, and perhaps some of Russia’s neighbors, like Ukraine. And that really completes the process of creating a Europe whole and free. At that point, my guess is that the U.S. will have very little business left in Europe, and the EU will then take over primary responsibility from NATO.Q. Do you also find it amazing that we still have U.S. troops in Germany?A. Yes, and they are really doing nothing in Europe. In many respects, it has become a forward base for power projection to the Middle East. It’s closer to Iraq than Norfolk. Still, a lot of troops have gone. They have gone down from about a half million to 100,000. We have basically a core left, a pretty serious fighting force. The mission is changing. They are really focusing on mobility and projection to other areas, rather than fighting somebody crossing the inner German border.