Briefing Paper No.56 Alliance Rebrands Counter-Terrorism Role And
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Briefing Paper No.56 31 May 2017 Contact: Dr. Ian Davis Email: [email protected] www.natowatch.org Alliance rebrands counter-terrorism role and burden sharing commitment in attempt to appease President Trump: A review of the NATO Summit meeting in Brussels, 25 May 2017 By Ian Davis, NATO Watch president’s agenda, that shows the power of his Key events and decisions message”. taken: In addition to this being President Trump’s first • An Action Plan to do more in the fight NATO Summit, it was also the first visit for newly elected French President Emmanuel Macron. against terrorism was agreed. NATO leaders also used the meeting to unveil • NATO leaders also agreed to do more their new headquarters in Brussels. to ensure fairer burden sharing across the alliance. The day began with a general doorstep statement • Montenegro will soon become the by the NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg twenty-ninth member of NATO. and this was followed by two bilateral meetings • NATO moved into its new between Stoltenberg and the Prime Minister of headquarters in Brussels. Canada and the President of Poland. No details of the discussions were made public. Summary of the Summit After lunch, the Secretary General gave another This was a very short Summit meeting and one doorstep statement upon arrival at the new designed not to tax the notoriously short NATO Headquarters. This was followed by photo attention span and interest of President Donald opportunities of the arrival of NATO leaders and Trump. Significantly, there was also no post- (at 16.00) the unveiling of two memorials: Summit declaration, which NATO traditionally President Trump unveiled a memorial to 9/11 publishes to signal new strategies and key policy with a sculpture made from fragments of the shifts. Twin Towers, and then Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany unveiled a memorial with pieces The Summit agenda was focused almost from the Berlin Wall. President Trump used the exclusively on President Trump’s wish list: occasion to lecture allies on their financial stepping up NATO’s role in the fight against contributions, repeating his complaint that the terrorism and fairer burden sharing in the United States was shouldering an unfair burden. alliance. Sean Spicer, the White House press At 17.00, the host nation Belgium formally secretary subsequently boasted that “When you handed over the new building to NATO. have an entire meeting that is focused on the The day began in substance at 17.45 with a From the remarks given by the Secretary General closed working dinner for the Heads of State, the main aim of the Plan is to expand NATO’s which mainly discussed and took decisions on support to the Global Coalition against Daesh, counter-terrorism and burden sharing (see which was formed in September 2014. All 28 below). It was clear from the body language member states of NATO are already part of that during the photo sessions that there are deep Coalition, but NATO itself will now become a divisions between President Trump and most of member. In practical terms, beyond this show of the other alliance leaders, with Chancellor Merkel political unity, NATO is now committed to emerging as the strongest counterweight to the providing the Coalition with more AWACs flight- President. time, information sharing and air-to-air refuelling. It will also enable NATO to take part in political The meagre Summit outcomes can be deliberations within the Coalition, including on characterised as a modest repackaging of existing the coordination of training and capacity building. NATO commitments in an attempt to placate However, as the Secretary General was keen to President Trump. Whether this has the desired clarify, NATO will not engage in counter-terrorism effect only time (and the next Summit meeting in combat operations: 2018) will tell. From a European NATO “There has been no request for any NATO combat perspective, the objective was about not diluting role and there is no discussion at all about the programme agreed at the previous Wales and engaging NATO in a combat role in the Counter ISIL Warsaw Summits, and keeping the wider US Coalition”. administration (if not necessarily the US Is there a danger of President) engaged in this first step leading the implementation down a slippery process. While there slope to a future remains uncertainty combat role? The about the future history of the Afghan direction of US policy conflict does suggest towards NATO, so far, there is some cause the US administration for concern, given has not backed away that NATO’s initial from those earlier non-combat role in commitments. 2001 was overturned in favour [Remarks by Angela Merkel, of a combat role two Chancellor of Germany at the dedication of the Berlin Wall Memorial – photo credit: NATO] years later. However, the circumstances today are very different. After 9/11, NATO invoked Article 5, but NATO’s participation in the military Improving NATO’s counter- aspect of the ‘war on terror’ was declined by the United States, which preferred a national terrorism role operation supported by a ‘coalition of the willing’ The NATO Summit took place only days after the as less constraining. The change in 2003 was terrorist attack in Manchester, and the NATO linked to Iraq. While NATO took no position on leaders were attempting to send out a unified Iraq per se, it agreed to substitute for the United message of standing together in the fight against States in certain roles and missions in terrorism. The one concrete deliverable was an Afghanistan, to free US assets that were needed Action Plan for NATO to step up its efforts in this in Iraq. This turn of events is unlikely to be area. However, details of the Action Plan are replicated in Iraq today, not least due to the sparse, especially since the plan itself has not absence of public support for another large-scale been published (a not uncommon practice for military intervention in the Middle East. Instead, such documents, but a disappointing lack of the focus is on training, equipping and advising transparency on such a pivotal issue). local forces (see below) and low footprint or Page | 2 ‘remote control’ interventions with Special Forces successive reductions in military spending that and armed drones. took place in the years after the end of the Cold War and have begun to increase military In addition, it was announced in Brussels that spending again. NATO has agreed to establish a new terrorism intelligence cell at NATO headquarters within its At the 2016 Warsaw Summit, evidence was new Joint Intelligence and Security Division (JISD). provided that the military spending of European This intelligence cell is expected to improve how member states was no longer falling and was the alliance shares intelligence, including on beginning to increase. This message of foreign fighters. However, this was not a new improvement was continued by the Secretary decision. The JISD was created at the Warsaw General at the Brussels Summit: “In 2015, cuts Summit to fuse military and civilian intelligence came to a stop. And in 2016, total spending sharing, including connecting sources from the across Europe and Canada increased by billions of law enforcement community. Moreover, the dollars”. ‘announcement’ in Brussels was rather overshadowed by the ongoing row over However, President Trump didn’t appear to be intelligence leaks by the United States, not least too impressed and upped the ante by declaring: on operational matters concerning the “Twenty-three of the 28 member nations are still investigation of the Manchester terrorist attack. not paying what they should be paying and what they’re supposed to be paying for their defence. NATO has also agreed to This is not fair to the appoint a “senior NATO people and taxpayers of official” as a coordinator the United States and to oversee NATO’s many of these nations owe efforts in the fight massive amounts of against terrorism, and money from past years. “to ensure that our new And not paying in those Action Plan is past years….. We have to make up for the many implemented swiftly years lost – 2% is the bare and effectively”. Work is minimum for confronting also underway to today’s very real and very establish “a Hub for the vicious threats”. South” at NATO’s Joint Force Command in Naples. According to the [Remarks by Donald Trump, President of the United States at the Secretary General, it will constantly monitor and unveiling of the 9/11-Article 5 Memorial – photo credit: NATO] assess regional threats, including terrorism. Finally, “the alliance is also looking into making This debate—and accusations that Europe spends greater use of NATO’s Special Operations too little on defence and is being protected at US Headquarters, which already offers tailored taxpayers’ expense—is one of the longest counter-terrorism training for allies and partners. running fault lines within NATO. While the United This could involve more mobile training teams States does pick up a disproportionate share of deploying to countries at risk”. the NATO tab, the imbalance is not as great as is sometimes suggested—especially when comparing direct funding of NATO, rather than Ensuring fairer burden military expenditure per se. Indeed, regarding the latter, there is arguably a case for reducing and sharing rebalancing US security resources, but is often At the Wales Summit in 2014, NATO made a the ‘elephant in the room’ during transatlantic defence investment pledge to move progressively burden sharing discussions. As indicated by SIPRI towards allocating 2% of member states’ GDP to data, the United States could generate a $159 defence and, perhaps as important, allocate at billion peace dividend by reducing its spending to least 20% of their defence budgets to major the NATO 2% commitment.