The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is 57 years old – and facing the challenges of a midlife growth spurt as its 26 members gather next week for a summit in Riga, Latvia.
The unprecedented NATO deployment in Afghanistan exposes the alliance to much risk and opportunity. We hope it succeeds, both for the Afghans’ sake and NATO’s.
The choice of Riga as a meeting place underscores the transition of NATO from its historic mission of deterring aggression in Europe to an instrument in global security chores as near as Eastern Europe and as far as southern Asia.
Latvia, along with Estonia and Lithuania, was forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1939 as part of Joseph Stalin’s infamous pact with Adolf Hitler. Soldiers from the Baltic states later served in the Warsaw Pact that the Soviets organized among their eastern European satellites to parry NATO.
NATO’s mission in the East-West era of superpower confrontation was straightforward enough: Don’t yield an inch of the territory of member states to Soviet aggression. But the end of the Cold War brought ambiguity.
NATO was originally founded with 12 states: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Great Britain and the United States. Greece and Turkey joined in 1952, Germany in 1955 and Spain in 1982. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary joined NATO in 1999. In 2002, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia followed suit.
In today’s broader playing field, NATO is trying to make positive changes for stability outside the territory of its member states. It’s a remarkable sea change. In Cold War days, NATO had a firm rule against operations outside of its member states. But as it began to grapple with new-age security issues, it had to venture beyond its borders. It isn’t an army for the United Nations, but is edging in that direction.
NATO’s first major peacekeeping activity began in 1995 when it led the implementation force to secure the Dayton Peace Agreement ending the civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 1999, NATO nations sent ground troops to Kosovo following a 78-day air campaign to halt the “ethnic cleansing” atrocities of Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic.
After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001, NATO invoked its Article 5 for the first time – the clause in its treaty stating that an attack on one member is an attack on all. As a result, NATO allies joined in smashing the al-Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan and the Taliban regime that had sheltered them.
Today, there are about 31,000 foreign soldiers in Afghanistan with the NATO-led force. Aside from the U.S. with 21,250 and Britain at 5,800, NATO deployments include Germany at 2,900, the Netherlands at 1,947 and France at 1,700. Even Latvia has dispatched a token 9-member contingent.
The mission is imposing strains on the alliance as the member nations expand their deployment into difficult assignments in the Afghan south and west. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, among others, is trying to persuade German Chancellor Angela Merkel to drop her objections to the redeployment of Germany’s 2,900-strong contingent from their present positions in northern Afghanistan to the south, where they could help counter resurgent Taliban forces.
NATO’s world role is growing, at least in part in response to the continued weakness of the United Nations on security questions. Russia already consults with NATO on many security issues and Japan, Australia, South Korea, Sweden and Finland may be invited to increase their cooperation with NATO at this year’s summit.
Macedonia, Croatia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine and Georgia would love to join NATO. Spain’s former Prime Minister José Maria Aznar in March even urged adding Japan, Australia and Israel as full members of the alliance.
NATO expansion won’t be decided at the Riga summit, but its identity crisis will be evident for all to see.
