Department of Political Science Chair of History of International Relations Post-Cold War NATO (1991-2004): an obsolete Organization? Supervisor: Prof. Maria Elena Cavallaro Candidate: Giorgio Catania Co-Supervisor: Prof. Christine Vodovar ACADEMIC YEAR 2018/2019 1 2 Table of Contents Introduction ......................................................................................................................................... 4 CHAPTER I: The Post-Cold War NATO from 1991 to 9/11 1.1 The 1991 Rome Summit: the formulation of the New Strategic Concept ......................................... 8 1.2 The debate behind the “out of area” issue: the Bosnian crisis (1992-1995) .................................. 17 1.3 NATO and Kosovo (1999): a legitimate military intervention? ..................................................... 24 1.4 9/11: the first invocation of the Washington Treaty’s Article 5 ..................................................... 38 CHAPTER II: The Normalization Process with the East and Russia 2.1 Eastern Europe, a no longer untouchable horizon ....................................................................... 46 2.2 The first (1999) and the second (2004) round of NATO’s enlargement .......................................... 52 2.3 Post-Cold War NATO–Russia relationship: new era or back to the past? ................................................. 67 2.4 Theories and interpretations behind Russia’s opposition to NATO’s enlargement ........................ 78 CHAPTER III: NATO-EU: the Evolution of the Transatlantic Partnership 3.1 Shaping a new relationship between NATO and the EC/EU .......................................................... 88 3.2 NATO and the European Union: Cooperation vs Competition ..................................................... 98 3.3 The Bush Doctrine and its impact on NATO: the case of Iraq (2003) .......................................... 106 Conclusions ..................................................................................................................................... 119 Appendix: Interview with Giuliano Amato .................................................................................................... 128 Summary ..................................................................................................................................................... 137 3 Introduction Although post-Cold War NATO has often been criticized and deemed unnecessary because of the end of the bipolar confrontation in Europe, historical evidence shows how the Atlantic Alliance is still standing, alive and well. In contemporary history, no other alliance has been able to last so long and no other international organization – apart from NATO – has been able to equip itself with an integrated army. The history and the features of the Atlantic Alliance mark the presence of some peculiarities that makes it one of a kind, a particularly challenging case-study. I was interested in studying such an international actor because it has deployed its functions in two historical contexts and international orders that were very different from each other. The first context was marked by the bipolar equilibrium of the Cold War, while the second one was marked by the so-called “unipolar” (i.e. US-led) international order which, since the early 2000s, has been replaced by an increasingly multi-polar system. The comparison between the two international orders serves to see to what extent the context could influence – or even determine – NATO’s existence and its course of action and to evaluate if there have been also other factors – beyond the structure in which it operates – explaining the reasons for its persistence. It is useful to assess the elements that justify the Alliance’s survival while of course the post-Cold War context represents an element of discontinuity. The core-issue of my analysis is the survival of NATO after the dissolution of the USSR. The collapse of the USSR and the end of Communism in Europe led to a heated debate over the role of NATO and the shape of the future collective security system. The Alliance’s future was challenged by the end of the Cold War, since its foremost function, safeguarding Europe’s security and freedom against the Soviet Empire, had no longer reason to exist. So, why NATO did not dissolve? What is NATO’s new raison d' être in a post-bipolar world? And is its persistence justified? These are only some of the questions I try to answer in my thesis. This research work aims to answer the question “Did post-Cold War NATO (1991-2004) become an obsolete Organization?”. Such a question makes it necessary to go back to NATO’s origins, since it is useful to analyse the Alliance’s original tasks and responsibilities and then analyse its post-conflict renewed prerogatives. The genesis of NATO – defined as an international defensive military Organization created by the Western powers on the two sides of the Atlantic – is to be found in the Cold War setting. After the end of World War II, the Western powers had to face the alleged threat of the Soviet hegemonism and influence in Western Europe. The episode of the “Berlin Blockade” and the Western airlift is particularly meaningful, as it gradually laid the foundations for a much more integrated and structured cooperation between the Western powers. 4 As a consequence, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty – occurred on the 4th of April 1949 in Washington – marked a memorable moment in the history of the 20th century. It was signed as a form of mutual defence and deterrence against the alleged expansionism of the USSR. That result was achieved in spite of numerous obstacles such as the American isolationism and the traditional disunity of the European countries. As Lord Hastings Lionel Ismay – NATO’s first Secretary General – famously said in 1957: the purpose of the Alliance was “to keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down”. Once that mission had been achieved, new problems were going to arise. The purpose of my thesis is to verify if NATO has become obsolete after the implosion of the USSR or if it has been able to maintain its relevance and validity in the new world (dis)order. NATO’s relevance has been extensively discussed and analysed. Existing literature shows that this is a widely debated issue. A good evidence of this is given by the contrasting opinion of important scholars such as Kenneth N. Waltz (2000) and John J. Mearsheimer (2001) – who stated that NATO’s persistence would trigger a renewed Russian aggressiveness – and David S. Yost (2003) – who asserted the permanent utility of NATO. In my thesis, I critically trace the main events of NATO’s history and I assess how those events have changed the Alliance’s nature. This research work is organized as follows. The first chapter starts from describing the new international environment after the implosion of the Soviet Union in 1991. Rob de Wijk (1998) has been one of the first to explain the Alliance’s adaptation process to the new post-Cold War reality, whereas Massimo De Leonardis (2001) has extended the research by illustrating the debate between Minimalists – those who wanted NATO to dissolve – and Maximalists – those who wanted NATO to survive. Through the consultation of NATO official documents, I analyse the 1990 NATO’s London Declaration and the 1991 NATO’s New Strategic Concept, listing the new tasks, goals and responsibilities through which NATO has tried to restructure itself. Mentioning the main refrain of the early 1990s – going out of area or out of business – has been useful to understand how the debate has evolved between two option: turning the Alliance into a “global organization” and expanding its responsibilities or remaining a “regional organization” in a Euro- Atlantic context that was not the same as before. Then, I address the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, carried out to alter the foreign policy of Slobodan Milosevic. The military intervention in Kosovo is of particular interest because of the heated dispute on its legitimacy. The conflict is here described through Stephen T. Hosmer (2001) and Benjamin S. Lambeth (2001) while the use of UN official documents and principles of political philosophy – such as the Just War theory – 5 have helped me to focus on the legitimacy of NATO’s military campaign, with particular reference on the method adopted by the Alliance (Daniel L. Byman, Matthew C. Waxman, 2000). The focus on the military campaign in Afghanistan is crucial to explain the first-ever activation of the Washington Treaty’s Article 5 (Bruno Tertrais, 2016), how NATO member states react to the beginning of the War on Terror and how the post-war situation was managed by the allies. The second chapter addresses the issue of NATO’s waves of enlargement, laying out the positions of Institutionalists (Frank Schimmelfennig, 1998 and Daniel Freid, 2008) – who were in favour of the expansion – and Neorealists (George F. Kennan, 1997 and John Lewis Gaddis, 1998) – who were against the expansion. The enlargement’s consequences on the Euro-Atlantic area and on the relationship with Russia is carefully deepened (Elias Götz, 1994, Hilary Driscoll et al. 2003). A large part of this chapter is dedicated to post-Cold War NATO-Russia relations and, in particular, I study how those relations between the two former enemies developed (NATO official documents), mentioning the distrust of both parts. In the attempt to tackle all these complex issues, the interview with President Giuliano Amato