Change needed to maintain relevance for NATO, by Eric Koo

In late April 2006, in the capital city of Bulgaria, the USA has proposed extending the membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to also invite selected nations in the Asia Pacific region, such as Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea, into the alliance. The US proposal, however, has met with considerable reluctance, if not outright opposition, from NATO’s European member nations.
What really truly matters is whether the proposed potential members in Asia Pacific are willing to join in NATO, given its current peacekeeping commitments in Sudan, Iraq and Afghanistan. Since these commitments will require the devoting of financial resources and the deployment of troops overseas, it will be hard to convince some nations, such as Japan or South Korea, who may see no necessity to involve themselves in conflicts far from their own borders.

Despite the misgivings of some European partners about not wishing to see NATO become a global policeman, NATO is increasingly being involved in international affairs. Earlier this year in March 2006, NATO has offered to take on the United Nations (U.N.) mission in the Darfur region of Sudan. Certainly, it is heartening to see a powerful organization made up of an alliance of affluent western nations offer its aid in helping end the Darfur civil conflict, which killed more than 180,000 people and displaced 2 million people.
It is hardly the first time when NATO has stepped forward to play a more international role in the world today. In October 2005, when the NATO Secretary General, Mr. Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, made the announcement that it is sending another 15,000 soldiers to Afghanistan on a peacekeeping mission, it hardly raised an eyelid among members of the public and the international community. What is taken less note of is that the costs and logistics of moving some 15,000 troops are a significant one. With the modern international oil price hike, rising economic costs and commodities inflation, many may question the relevance of maintaining an alliance of countries that may no longer be needed.

Some have argued that, like the Warsaw Pact, NATO is fast becoming redundant in today’s multilateral world. Following such an argument, in order to reduce unnecessary costs and expended resources, NATO should be dissolved as well. However, the military expertise and bonds of interstate relations forged by a common alliance and joint military exercises, would be totally wasted in the long run amidst the grand scheme of things in international affairs.

Ironically, the primary purpose for which NATO was first formed, was never put to actual test. The NATO and Warsaw Pact countries never did come to blows in a great anticipated showdown, the so called would be “World War 3”, except in popular novel fiction, such as Ralph Peters’ “Red Army”. The only significant military engagement that NATO took part in was the Kosovo War from March to June 1999, where the organisation waged an eleven week air campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The aim of fighting the Kosovo War was to prevent ethnic cleansing of Albanians. However, it turned out that far less than the equipment and offensive power of the antagonist, the Yugoslav Army, was destroyed than what NATO had claimed over the media.

Modern wars are no longer fought between mammoth armies pitted against each other in pitched battles. However, the task of pursuing the aftermath of nation building is still a manpower intensive one, where substantial troop numbers are required to adequately police lawless regions in the wake of the chaos of war. This has proven so today in Afghanistan and Iraq, where local insurgencies still rage as ragtag militants and terrorists fight against what they perceive as foreign troops occupying their land. For example, the USA has increased its troop level to 152,000 from 138,000 in view of the October 15 constitutional referendum in October 2005. Since then, the numbers have been reduced. In peace-keeping operations, there is no fixed time frame with which troops must be committed, and are often deployed in pursuit of ambiguous aims that may change from time to time.

There is a need for NATO to find brand new definitions for its role, if it is to stay relevant in the international context. If the membership to this alliance originally consisting of western European nations can be extended not just to the selected nations in the Asia Pacific region, but to the rest of Asia as well, it is a certainly good thing. For one, increased co-operation between nations
Second, it keeps the relevance of the need to maintain NATO as a multi nation alliance.

If it is not to be eventually dissolved unanimously like its rival organization, the Warsaw Pact in 1991, NATO must expand its scope of activities. As terrorism waged by non state actors is the foremost security problem today, NATO must re-organise and retrain its military forces to tailor to the need of countering terror. NATO can also augment UN peacekeeping troops serving in similar areas of operations. High level conferences and resolutions can be formed to provide for a unified and systematic command combining NATO, UN as well as local security forces of the said conflict-rife zones.

NATO can also expand its current membership of 26 countries by granting admittance to nations outside the European bloc of countries. This will also help ease the burden of the necessity of military operations for peacekeeping purposes. NATO’s military expertise can be tapped to help build up indigenous local armed forces in war torn countries like Iraq and Afghanistan so as to establish independence in maintaining security on a long term basis.

NATO certainly is still relevant today. The only question is on how to give it a new veneer of legitimacy so as justify its existence in its contributions to global affairs.

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