NATO has no strategic concept ("Stratfor", USA)

October 13 2010 1

On November 20, a meeting of the heads of twenty-eight states of the North Atlantic Alliance (NATO) Organization will be held in Lisbon to express approval of the new “strategic concept” - a document that will set out the tasks of the alliance for the next decade. This will be the third strategic concept formulated after the end of the Cold War. The previous two came out in 1991 (in the process of the collapse of the Soviet Union) and 1999 (when NATO intervened in Yugoslavia, which was the first serious military event in stories Alliance) years.

During the Cold War, the presence of fifty armored divisions of the USSR and the countries of the Warsaw Pact and an army of almost two million people (only to the west of the Ural Mountains) was more eloquent than any statement of tasks. Strategic concepts were formulated in 1949, 1952, 1957 and 1968, but they served only to reinforce the NATO mission, namely, to contain the USSR. Today, the existential crisis, in which the alliance has plunged, is only underlined by the controversy being waged around its strategic concept.

The evolution of the dangers surrounding NATO

During the Cold War, living was dangerous, but simple. The power of the Soviet threat and the devastation that prevailed on the European continent after World War II forced NATO's European allies to rely on the United States in defense matters. Any hope of deterring the full ambitions of the USSR was linked to Washington and its nuclear potential. It was not a matter of loyalty, not a choice based on cultural values or historical community. The inhabitants of Western Europe had no choice - in the potential they were threatened by the attack of the USSR. Such a lack of alternatives tightly bound European and North American allies in the alliance, and also helped to clearly articulate the tasks. NATO provided additional security benefits with almost no financial obligations, which allowed Europeans to focus on improving living conditions; Europe has gained time and got the resources to forge the structures of the European Union and the extensive systems of “welfare states”. The Americans did not consider this an excessively high price for holding back the Soviets. If Europe were under Soviet domination, the combination of the technical and industrial power of Europe with the natural, human and ideological resources of the USSR would give North America a threatening rival the size of an entire continent.

The threat of a Soviet attack on Europe was the only justification NATO needed. The Alliance almost did not have the usual options for responding to this threat. Toward the end of the Cold War era, the proliferation of anti-tank technologies made it possible to slightly alter the balance of power between NATO and the Warsaw Treaty Organization, but most of these technologies remained unchecked before Operation Desert Storm in 1991, and by this time the Soviet threat had long existed. This high-quality technical innovation was extremely expensive and was a direct result of the quantitative superiority of the adversary of the alliance. In 1988, the advantage of the Soviet bloc in numbers tanks was double. It was not for nothing that the Warsaw Treaty Organization called the plan of operations against NATO “Seven Days to the Rhine” - it was a rather realistic version of the outcome of the planned attack (assuming, of course, that the Soviets would have had enough money to ensure that by the 1980s there would already be under some question). Throughout the Cold War era, the Soviets were so confident that they refused to use nuclear weapons first, because they believed that superiority in conventional weapons would bring them quick results. NATO simply did not have such luxury.

It is worth noting that during the Cold War between Western Europe and the United States there were differences in the field of interests and strategy. Often, Western Europe sought to distance itself from the United States, including after the Vietnam War, which the United States conducted mainly in order to prove its loyalty to it. In this context, the Eastern policy adopted by West German Chancellor Willy Brandt (Willy Brandt) in 1969 was not so different from the modern relations between Berlin and Moscow, only in the cold war on the border between West and East Germany were Soviet tanks divisions, and this ultimately determined the prioritization of the NATO countries. Conflicts of interest and temporary disagreements among the members of the alliance, therefore, were of a secondary nature, yielding in importance to the armed formations, practicing a massive attack on the Rhine.

Thus, in the era of the Cold War, it was with all severity clear what threats surround the alliance, which created conditions not only for the viability and necessity of NATO, but also for its ability to confront the potential differences arising between its member countries. But this atmosphere was not eternal. NATO managed to contain the Soviet threat, but, having come to success, the alliance itself caused its future laxity. The threat from the Warsaw Pact Organization disappeared when the organization itself collapsed (in the middle of 1991), and then the Soviet Union (at the end of 1991). Moscow unilaterally pushed the border of its sphere of influence from the Elbe River (the old border between West and East Germany) beyond the Dnieper River, about a thousand kilometers to the east. In the nineties, the threat posed by Russia was limited to the proliferation of nuclear weapons as a result of its possible collapse, which forced the United States and NATO allies to support the erratically functioning government of Boris Yeltsin. And the temporarily established superiority of American power allowed the West to experiment a bit with various dubious adventurous from a strategic point of view, although in the former border between NATO and the West, the alliance attempted to make its mission to interfere in the affairs of the Balkan region from humanitarian motives.

Incomparable threats and interests

With each passing year after the end of the cold war, the nature of the threats surrounding the alliance changed. There were no threats from the east, and the expansion of NATO with the inclusion of Central Europe became an end in itself. And with the advent of each new member inside NATO, another national interest appeared, added to the definition of threats, and the rallying force of consensus on the issue of threats weakened even more.

The inconsistency in the allies' notions of threats was identified by three important events.

First, the events of September 11 brought to all the reality of the danger posed by the militant Islamists. The attack was the first time that NATO turned to the fifth article of the statute, which refers to collective self-defense. This paved the way for NATO’s actions in Afghanistan, a country far from the traditional alliance area in Europe. The subsequent jihadist attacks on Spain and the United Kingdom convinced everyone more of the global threat; but world terrorism is not fifty armored divisions. The weak interest of many NATO countries in the mission in Afghanistan in particular, as well as the serious disagreements over how to cope with the threat of international terrorism, generally indicate the insufficient viability of militant Islam as a uniting threat to the alliance. From the point of view of most European countries, the threat of jihadism must be fought not by military expeditions to the Middle East and South Asia, but by the actions of law enforcement agencies in their own countries where a restless Muslim population lives, maximum - by clandestine operations carried out by intelligence services abroad. This means that the Europeans would like to shift the emphasis in the fight in favor of police operations and data collection, not to mention the need to save money in the face of a financial saving regime throughout the continent.

Washington, however, still wants to bring al Qaeda leaders to justice, and is also strategically interested in transferring power from Afghanistan to such a government that could prevent the country from becoming a haven of terrorists. As STRATFOR specialists have shown, both of these motives are quite real, but because of them the United States turns out to be an excessively tied obligation to fight against the tactics of terrorists and the threat of international jihad at the expense of the emerging (including again) threats in the rest of the world. In the language of poker players, Washington made a big bet and does not want to fold, although his cards are bad. A lot of resources and political capital have already been invested, the Americans really do not want to merge. The Europeans, however, in essence, have already merged.

The second. The inclusion of the Baltic countries in NATO, together with the pro-Western “color revolutions” in Georgia and Ukraine (all of these events fit the gap between the end of 2003 and the end of 2004), prompted Moscow to raise its head, and Central Europe, the balance of threats has changed again. Russia saw in the inclusion in the alliance of the Baltic countries a sign that he is making plans for Ukraine and Georgia, and considered this unacceptable. Considering the importance of Ukraine for Russia from a geographical point of view, this is the underbelly of Russia, giving Moscow’s enemies an excellent opportunity to cut Moscow’s connection with the Caucasus — something like this will become a “transition line” for Russia in any form. The Kremlin reacted to the emergence of the threat of losing Ukraine, bursting back into the space of the former Soviet sphere, cutting off Central Asia, Belarus, the Caucasus and Ukraine with war (in the case of Georgia), political fraud (in the case of Ukraine, and then with Moldova) and "color revolutions ", modeled on the Western (in the case of Kyrgyzstan).

From the point of view of Western Europe, especially Germany, where they are well aware of their dependence on Russia (and hope to benefit from energy and economic cooperation with it), the fact that Moscow is raising its head is the tenth thing. The main European powers do not want another confrontation with Russia in the spirit of the Cold War. For the United States, this is more important, but due to the ongoing operations, the US ground forces are overstretched and do not have strategic reserves. Washington is gradually returning to the realization of this threat, but so far it considers it less important than its incessant activity in Afghanistan and Iraq. When the US is fully aware that Russia is raising its head, then they will realize that in a similar way only a part of the NATO countries are looking at Russia. And these are the Central European countries that form the new border area of NATO and Russia, for which raising Russia is the main national threat. France and Germany, the European "heavyweights", do not want the continent to be split by another cold war.

Thirdly, because of the strong economic crisis, it has already become clear to all that Germany is becoming the political leader of Europe. This became a natural consequence of the end of the Cold War and the reunification of Germany, although it took Berlin twenty years to “digest” the East and wait for a chance to use its power. This chance appeared in the first half of 2010 of the year. In May, when the crisis erupted around the public debt of Greece, the fate of Europe depended not on the decision of the European bureaucrats and not even on the collective decision of the strongest EU countries, but on the directives of Berlin. Now it is understood in the rest of Europe.

Berlin wants to take advantage of the crisis and transform the European Union to its own taste. Paris, meanwhile, wants to restrain the rise of Berlin and keep France in a leading position in the European Union. Thus, Western Europe wants, as in the days of the Cold War, to enjoy such a privilege as the opportunity to organize their affairs, but not to take part in military campaigns against militant Islamists and not to fight against Russia raising its head. In Central Europe, they observe with some concern that Paris and Berlin are moving closer and closer to Moscow, and countries loyal to the ideals of Atlantism, such as Denmark, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, who are always suspicious of the prospect of strengthening Germany, are trying to reaffirm their ties with the United States in the field of transatlantic security, given the increasing confidence with which Germany operates. Thus, the main West European countries of NATO have come into conflict with each other, and raising Russia’s head as a threat to be dealt with by military force is not considered.

Beginning of the End

The threats have changed, new members have joined the alliance, and NATO is trying to formulate new tasks. To this end, a “group of experts” led by former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright prepared a series of recommendations to the alliance for the next ten years. This Thursday, the NATO defense ministers will review the recommendations of the experts for the last time, after which a draft strategic concept will be formulated based on them, which, in turn, will be presented to the heads of state at the aforementioned November Lisbon summit.

Some of the recommendations are really aimed at solving the problems that are painful for the alliance, but that which cannot be solved is not solved; in particular, the issue of a unified perception of threats and ways of setting priorities and responding to these threats remains unresolved. After all, the alliance’s credibility and deterrent potential is rooted in how a potential adversary assesses his determination. During the Cold War, this determination, although it was always in some doubt (the Europeans never really believed in the US willingness to risk New York and Washington in a fight with Russia over Europe), was firm and regularly demonstrated. The United States organized wars in Korea and Vietnam primarily to show unequivocally to the European states (and the Kremlin) that the United States is ready to shed blood in distant corners of the planet for the sake of its allies. American troops stationed then in West Germany (many of them risked being cut off in West Berlin) were needed to demonstrate the US resolve to resist Soviet tanks stationed in the North German Lowland, not far from the Fulda corridor near Hesse. In recent years, no evidence of this decisiveness has been received, rather, on the contrary: the United States (and NATO) did not respond to Russia's military attack on Georgia, which wanted very much to join NATO (but did not join). It was not only a shortage of US forces, but also the reluctance of Germany and France to risk spoiled relations with Russia.

Thus, in the very heart of NATO, there is now a lack of determination, rooted in diverse interests and perceptions about threats among the countries of the alliance. According to the ideas about threats, the members of the alliance are divided into three categories: the first is the United States, Canada, and loyal European atlantists (Great Britain, the Netherlands, Denmark); the second is the main European powers (Germany and France, as well as the southern Mediterranean countries dependent on Berlin “in tow”); the third is the new countries of Central Europe that occupy the space “from sea to sea” (that is, from Baltic to Black) and traditionally frighten Russia and, in contrast, hoping for an alliance with Western Europe.

Since there is no clear threat to the alliance, and the interests of its members contradict each other so much, the recommendations of the “expert group” are for the most part incompatible with each other. It is enough to look at these recommendations in order to understand what interests a group of countries are striving to preserve, which exposes the ineradicable incompatibility of interests of the alliance since 2010.
Atlantis. This group is led by the United States. Atlantists want the alliance to focus on non-European theaters (ie, Afghanistan) and on non-traditional threats (computer security, the fight against terrorism, etc.); they need Central European countries to make additional commitments on defense spending; they also want to reform the decision-making system in such a way that in certain situations an individual country could not impose a veto, and the secretary general had the authority to act without agreement with others. The latter is in the interests of the United States, because it is Washington that will always have the greatest influence on the Secretary General, usually elected from among the citizens of the Atlantic countries.

Center of Europe. The main countries are Germany and France. They need expanded powers and the delimitation of the parameters of operations outside Europe (so that participation in these operations can be limited), increasing the mobility and effectiveness of the alliance (i.e., an opportunity to cut costs, because few still fulfill the requirement to allocate two percent of gross domestic product for defense) and also expansion of cooperation and balance in relations with Russia and additional consultations with international organizations, including the UN (to limit the USA’s ability to act alone, without multilateral support). They also want military exercises to be “non-threatening” in nature, which directly contradicts the requirements of the countries “from sea to sea”, so that the alliance with a clear demonstration of determination confirms its loyalty to defense obligations.

Group "from sea to sea." Central European countries want NATO both in word and deed (by conducting military exercises or even deploying military groupings) to confirm their readiness to comply with the fifth article of the charter, and that Russia is named as a force in the new strategic concept ( this contradicts the pro-Russian position taken by countries in the second group). Some countries of Central Europe also want the alliance's doors to remain open (with an eye to Ukraine and Georgia) and for NATO’s border with Russia to move further east, which neither the United States, nor the countries of the second group, nor even some third countries want.

Now, as in the coming decade, the problem of NATO is that different countries look at different threats through different prisms of national interests. Russian tanks worry only about a third of NATO countries (the “from sea to sea” group), while the rest are distributed among the atlantists seeking to strengthen the alliance to counter new threats and actions outside Europe, and the so-called “old Europe” seeking to allocate in the next ten years There are as few soldiers and resources as possible to solve any tasks.

It is unclear how the new strategic concept of NATO will be able to fix anything but a strategic discrepancy in the interests of the member countries. NATO does not disappear, but now it is devoid of a single and strongest threat, and it is precisely such a threat that made alliances between nation states possible in principle (although still short-lived). Without such a threat looming on the horizon, other matters — other differences — split the alliance. NATO still exists, not because it has a single goal, but because there is no such acute issue, because of which it could finally disintegrate. Thus, the repeatedly raised question of the "relevance" of NATO - more precisely, how NATO should be transformed to be relevant in the 21st century - should be posed the opposite: what will unite NATO in the 21st century?

During the Cold War, NATO was a military alliance with an adversary and a clear target. Now it is a group of friendly countries that apply standards of interoperability, which allows you to create a "coalition of goodwill" for the task, as well as discussion platforms. This provides member countries with a convenient structure on which to base multilateral police activities such as fighting Somali pirates or ensuring the rule of law in Kosovo. Considering how deeply rooted the phenomenon of the diversity of interests of NATO countries is, the question is what threat will unite NATO in the coming decade, so that the alliance gains the energy needed to implement the strategic concepts of investment and reform. The answer to this question is not clear. It is clouded by incompatible ideas of various countries of the alliance about threats, which makes you wonder if the November summit in Lisbon will be the beginning of the end of NATO?