NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization)

Assessing the British House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee’s report entitled “Libya: Examination of Intervention and Collapse and the UK’s Future Policy Options.”

Dan Alles is an intern in the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations. At the 2016 Warsaw Summit last month, leaders from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) announced that they will deploy four multinational battalions to Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. This decision sends an important and reassuring message to the world at a time when some, like Donald Trump, are questioning the reliability and sustainability of the alliance altogether. Although Trump’s comments about burden-sharing have some merit, his judgements are misguided; weakening the current deterrence posture or abandoning the alliance would be disastrous for U.S. and global security. NATO is not only a collective deterrent against Russian aggression, but also a political and military organization that has adapted to meet twenty-first century challenges. Through these developments, NATO has become an indispensable part of U.S. security, and despite some limitations, it should not be abandoned. Although it was founded on the basis of collective defense, NATO broadened the scope of its missions over the past twenty-five years. Today, NATO is a leader in global crisis management and undertakes a wide variety of direct military operations to support this mission. These operations span the globe, from the alliance’s train and equip programs in Afghanistan, to its post-9/11 maritime surveillance programs in the Mediterranean Sea. This fall, NATO will also finalize plans to restart training and capacity building inside Iraq. NATO’s previous operation there, the NATO Training Mission-Iraq, concluded in 2011, but the rise of the self-proclaimed Islamic State has pushed the alliance to return. NATO is able to take action to prevent conflicts in support of a United Nations mandate or at the invitation of a sovereign government. In accordance, NATO also maintains a peace-support presence of about 4,500 troops in Kosovo and continues to support the African Union in its peacekeeping and counter-piracy operations. NATO’s evolution since the fall of the Soviet Union resulted in an immensely integrated military alliance system with a global presence. As such, the benefits of NATO now transcend its direct military footprint and incorporate a variety of tactical advantages as well. These advantages include:           A ready-made multilateral coalition prepared to respond to crisis. A world without NATO would be one where, if the United States wanted to avoid acting unilaterally, it would have to construct a novel coalition for every conflict that arises. Not only would this take more time and cost more money, but it would also be less effective, as the alliance has already worked out its policies and procedures and shared its best practices.             Joint training and deterrence exercises. Conducting training exercises allows NATO to maintain a force readiness and deter potential antagonists. Moreover, joint exercises offer zero-consequence trial runs to test and validate new concepts in demanding crisis situations. This in turn improves the interoperability of both military and civilian organizations.             Consultation and sharing of assessments, military plans and intelligence. NATO is an effective vehicle for intelligence and information sharing among member states. Its mechanisms for intelligence sharing improves coherence among partners, including other international organizations like the United Nations and European Union.             Sharing of military resources and infrastructure. During the Gulf War, NATO did not take a direct role in combat operations, but cooperated to provide logistical support to member forces in region, including organizing transportation, landing rights, port use, air traffic control, and medical support. Similarly, though NATO is not involved in the current coalition against the self-proclaimed Islamic State, member states contribute resources and facilities to the fight. Turkey’s Incirlik air base, where coalition troops fly sortie missions over Syria and Iraq, is just one example. According to U.S. Air Force data, there was a thirty percent increase in bombs dropped after missions from Incirlik began in 2015.   The overwhelming evidence for NATO’s strategic importance to the United States demonstrates that Trump’s comments about NATO were misguided. Moreover, approaching the alliance with threats to withdraw does not increase U.S. leverage in negotiations. Instead, it merely downplays U.S. leadership and emboldens Russia. In light of Russian action in Georgia and Crimea, and the extension of the Eurasian Economic Union—a trading bloc comprising Russia and former Soviet satellites—the United States should maintain its leadership role in NATO and encourage members to meet spending goals. Today, experts believe a Russian invasion of the Baltic Republics would be successful in a mere sixty hours, leaving NATO with limited bloody options to respond. The agreements at the Warsaw Summit were steps to increasing NATO’s defense posture, but more could be done to ensure that its tactical strengths are matched with an equally strong foundation for deterrence.

When the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) gathered in Warsaw on July 8, the 28-member organization laid out a vision for its future. Facing pressing security challenges ranging from what to do about Russia to how to handle the self-proclaimed Islamic State, NATO leaders assessed how to make the Alliance more modern, ready, and responsive. They agreed that one way to do so was to better engage women. Here’s a look at how NATO promotes the participation of women, and how it can best prepare itself for the challenges of the 21st century. Investing in women’s participation to advance stability                                           Progress toward increasing women’s participation in peace and security processes has been slow but steady since NATO started this work in 2007, and a 2013 review laid out how NATO can better deliver on its commitments. It found that NATO’s policies and directives provide the organization with the necessary guidance on what to do, but that too few political and military leaders are familiar with the policies, and not enough staff are trained to implement them. The review suggested that improved training, increased leadership, and greater accountability were needed. In Warsaw this month, world leaders recognized how women’s participation contributes to NATO’s core security objectives. They released a new action plan that seeks to increase the representation of women across the organization and its armed forces, implement mandatory gender training for all civilian and military staff, revise all of NATO’s planning and assessment tools to include a gender perspective, and require all operations to provide guidance on preventing conflict-related sexual violence. It’s important that NATO recognizes that women offer valuable contributions to its core priorities, but it needs to deliver on these promises. Of all its operations, NATO has come closest to this in Afghanistan. There, NATO’s view is that securing peace requires ensuring the rights and opportunities of Afghan women, and that any reconciliation process must not only be Afghan-led but also inclusive of women. When it launched its Resolute Support mission in 2015, NATO committed to support the Afghan government to empower women to participate fully in all aspects of Afghan society. Implementation is uneven, but efforts are moving in the right direction. NATO should extend to all of its engagements the level of commitment it has demonstrated to women’s rights and opportunities in Afghanistan. While NATO can support partners to increase the participation of women in their countries, it is up to the countries to decide what kind of assistance they want. Some—like Iraq—have not opted for this type of assistance; a choice that  hinders their security efforts. NATO and its allies should do more to encourage partners to recognize that investing in women’s participation will advance stability.   A female member of the NATO KFOR Joint Enterprise for Kosovo in February 11, 2010. REUTERS/Srdjan Zivulovic   Strengthening NATO’s Capacity                                                                                               In Warsaw, leaders agreed that the “empowerment of women at NATO and in our militaries makes our Alliance stronger.” They committed to improve the gender balance among the troops and officers deployed to NATO-led operations, and to promote the equal participation of women in their national armed forces (which average just over 10 percent women). Although gaps remain in women’s representation across the institution, it is significant that women now hold senior positions; in many cases, for the first time. Of note are the next NATO Deputy Secretary General (U.S. Undersecretary of State Rose Gottemoeller), the head of Allied Joint Force Command in Naples (U.S. Navy Admiral Michelle Howard), and the commander at NATO Headquarters in Sarajevo (U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Giselle Wilz). Washington’s nominations set a strong example for other NATO capitals. When it is seen as a NATO standard to encourage equal opportunities for women, countries take notice—especially those trying to join the Alliance. Leaders also reiterated the importance of gender expertise by recognizing it as a military capability. If countries are to deliver on NATO’s commitments to encourage the participation of women in preventing and resolving conflict, NATO must train national militaries on what this means in practice—on the strategic, operational, and tactical levels. NATO has taken important steps to do just that, and to expand the number of officials its training reaches. It provides a core resource—the Gender Education and Training Package—that schools can draw upon to train officials on how to integrate a gender perspective in military operations. Training for any official before his or her deployment must address gender. And NATO’s primary school for operational-level training made an online gender module a prerequisite for all courses, thereby reaching staff and providing training on issues from joint planning to logistics to communications. This sends a powerful message that understanding gender perspectives is relevant—and mission critical—to everyone. In Warsaw, countries also committed to invest in building their military’s capacity by increasing the number of gender advisors that report directly to military leadership. Though gender advisors provide NATO the necessary tools and expertise to deliver on its commitments, many gender advisor roles currently go unfilled. The system through which countries fill these positions depends on country interest, and they do not always prioritize the gender advisor roles. An exception is in Afghanistan, where countries followed through on their commitments to Afghan women’s rights by fully staffing gender advisor positions in the new Resolute Support mission. This is laudable, and should be the case across the Alliance. Beyond Warsaw                                                                                                                          A commitment to the opportunities and rights of women underlies NATO’s essential mission: “to ensure that the Alliance remains an unparalleled community of freedom, peace, security, and shared values, including individual liberty, human rights, democracy, and the rule of law.” It is these values that NATO defends, as it protects its borders and its people from security threats presented by Russia, the Islamic State, and beyond. In Warsaw, leaders took a few steps forward in their support for women’s participation in and contributions to national and regional security. But stronger leadership and greater accountability are needed to deliver on these commitments and to better prepare the Alliance to tackle the challenges it now faces.  

The British public’s momentous decision two weeks ago to quit the European Union (EU) continues to reverberate globally. But its geopolitical implications should not be exaggerated. Brexit poses an institutional crisis for the European Union. But it hardly indicates the impending “collapse of the liberal world order,” as some pundits fret. This weekend’s Warsaw summit will remind the world—and Vladimir Putin—that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) remains the real anchor of Western defense, and that the solidarity of the transatlantic alliance need not depend on the fortunes of the European project. Americans have long associated the Atlantic alliance with European unity—and for good reason. It was the U.S. security guarantee—formalized in the North Atlantic Treaty (NAT) signed in Washington in 1949—that provided Western Europeans the confidence they needed to take the first, difficult postwar steps toward continental integration, beginning with Franco-German reconciliation. Secretary of State Dean Acheson, who supported the emergence of NATO’s integrated command structure, was also a vocal cheerleader for a “United States of Europe” (as was his Republican successor John Foster Dulles). As a condition for Marshall Plan aid, for instance, the United States insisted that European recipients take steps toward unity. This pressure helped spur France’s proposal for a European Coal and Steel Community—the forerunner of today’s EU. Looking back, it all seems remarkable. For the first time in history, a dominant power (the United States) promoted unity rather than division in an area under its influence. Under the U.S. nuclear umbrella, Western Europe enjoyed an unprecedented period of peace, prosperity, and integration. The West’s triumph in the Cold War was thus a vindication for both NATO and European unity. In the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse, both the alliance and the EU expanded into the former Soviet space, to the very borders of Russia itself. Given this parallel history, it is understandable that observers would regard the EU’s current crisis as a threat to NATO. That would be a mistake. If anything, the EU’s travails reinforce the alliance’s centrality as the foundation of Western liberal order. The Brexit calamity—like the eurozone and refugee crises before it—is not fundamentally about Western solidarity, security, or even cooperation. It is about the degree to which Europe’s market democracies are willing to pool sovereignty, including by accepting common regulatory standards and supranational oversight in spheres (like migration) that have traditionally been left to competent national authorities. The debate over Brexit had ugly, xenophobic, and nativist overtones, to be sure. But the referendum’s outcome also reflected populist distrust of an EU perceived to lack democratic accountability and to be trapped in a vague no man’s land between confederation and political union. Brexit, in other words, is a constitutional crisis for Europe. But it is not a crisis for NATO, which remains as it always has been: an alliance of sovereign, democratic states. NATO forces report to a Supreme Allied Commander, who is responsible for setting strategy and doctrine, as well as conducting joint operations. But it is sovereign governments that are represented on the North Atlantic Council, and they have ultimate authority over the deployment of their national contingents. Nothing about Brexit, moreover, undermines the fundamental commitment contained in Article 5 of the NAT, which obliges each member state to take prompt measures to defend any other party in the event of an armed attack. Indeed, Brexit—however lamentable for the EU—may ultimately strengthen NATO by slowing the development of stand-alone EU military capabilities. Over the past quarter century, the EU has taken fitful steps toward deepening its collective defense capacity, which London had long opposed. With British obstruction removed, some now speculate that Brexit could pave the way for Germany and France to advance European military integration. In reality, however, such efforts are fraught with political and logistical challenges. In the meantime, Europe faces immediate challenges—not least from an assertive Russia—that demand an urgent response, and which a well-oiled NATO is already prepared to address. Early in NATO’s founding cycle, Lord Ismay famously defined its role as keeping “the Americans in, the Germans down, and the Russians out.” The end of the Cold War thus posed an identity crisis for the alliance. With Germany peacefully reunited and the Soviet Union gone, why should the United States (or any others, for that matter) stay in? Having lost an enemy, NATO had to find new roles. The first was consolidating a Europe “whole and free.” The second was going “out of area,” including in Afghanistan. The third was confronting “new threats,” from cyberwar to energy insecurity. But it is Vladimir Putin who has brought NATO back to basics. Russia’s seizure of Crimea, proxy intervention in eastern Ukraine, and ongoing efforts to intimidate the Baltics have revived NATO’s core purpose as a bulwark of Western collective defense. Last month, the alliance held the largest military exercises in its post-Cold War history, involving some 31,000 troops from twenty-four nations. This weekend in Warsaw, its leaders will formally endorse a plan to deploy four multinational battalions in Poland and the three Baltic states. The British decision to command one of these units (the others will be under U.S., Canadian, and German command) sends a powerful sign that active NATO membership is compatible with being outside the EU—just as it was between 1949 and 1973 (the year Britain joined the European Economic Community). NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has reassured rattled allies that Brexit will not undercut Britain’s long-term commitment to NATO. To be sure, talk is cheap, and UK Prime Minister David Cameron will soon depart the scene, leaving others to clean up the mess. Although some “Leave” supporters have affirmed that Brexit does not mark Britain’s “retreat into splendid isolation” but an opportunity to “find our voice in the world again,” skeptics worry that the post-Brexit UK will be both poorer and inward-looking, unwilling to support the ambitious defense spending increases that Cameron proposed last year. Will British citizens, confronting the potential economic blowback of Brexit, embrace the internationalist role that Boris Johnson touted as the future of an “independent” Britain? Others observers worry that Scotland will bolt the UK, depriving once-Great Britain of its only suitable base for its nuclear-armed submarines. These are real, practical problems. But they can be managed without calling into question either the credibility of the alliance or the British commitment to meet its NATO obligations. Nor should the EU’s current difficulties blind us to the tremendous structural weaknesses—demographic, economic, technological, and institutional—confronting Putin’s Russia, which for all the Kremlin’s bluster remains a declining rather than emerging power. In Warsaw, President Obama, Prime Minister Cameron, and their fellow leaders should drive home the basic reality: NATO faces Russia from a position of strength. The Russian bear may have pursued Brexit to the extent that it weakened an already limping Europe, but NATO is another animal altogether.