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After the Summit: Long-Term Consequences for NATO

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After the Summit: Long-Term Consequences for NATO ESEARCH APER RResearch Division - NATO Defense College, RomeP - No. 37 – May 2008 After the Summit: Long-Term Consequences for NATO by Karl-Heinz KAMP 1 eeks after the NATO summit in Bucharest there is an ongoing Contents debate in academic circles and in the media on whether the 1. NATO’s Summit Inflation 2 W meeting of the heads of states and government was a 2. Afghanistan: Changing success or a failure. Some editorials express the disappointment of their the “Winning” Rhetoric 2 authors with the allegedly meager results of the top level meeting in the 3. The Perspectives for Romanian capital. Decisions not taken were seen as proof of a divided the Enlargement Process 3 NATO. Others acclaim the summit and saw those points the Alliance 4. How to Deal with Russia? 5 agreed upon as another proof of NATO’s ability to find consensus on 5. The Future of Transatlantic Relations 6 major steps in its evolution. 6. Changes in NATO’s Internal Geometry 7 On second thoughts, though, this debate appears to be fruitless, since 7. Conclusions 8 there are no commonly accepted criteria for the success of a NATO summit. Neither the length of the summit declaration nor the quantity of items being discussed says anything about the relevance of the meeting. Even the number of agreed decisions can’t be regarded as a yardstick for its relevance, as one can always argue that it would have been better for NATO’s future if this or that decision had not been taken. Research Paper NATO Defense College Of much greater relevance is the question of what the long term Collège de Défense de l’OTAN Research Division implications of the decisions and the debates of the Bucharest summit Via Giorgio Pelosi, 1 are. What trends will emanate from that meeting and what topics will 00143 Rome – Italie remain on the agenda for the next NATO summit already scheduled for Publications assistant: spring 2009 in Strasbourg (France) and Kehl (Germany)? What are the Laurence Ammour problems NATO will be confronted with? web site: www.ndc.nato.int e-mail: [email protected] Imprimerie CSC Grafica Via A. Meucci, 28 1 00012 Guidonia - Rome - Italie Director of the Research Division, NATO Defense College, Rome, Italy © NDC 2008 all rights reserved The views expressed in this paper are the responsibility of the author and should not be attribu- ted to the NATO Defense College or the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. Research Paper No. 37 - May 2008 1. NATO’s Summit Inflation In 2010 there will be a summit once again, probably in Lisbon, to adopt NATO’s new Strategic Concept. This was In the past, NATO meetings on the level of the heads of initially to be completed for the anniversary meeting in states and governments had primarily two purposes. The 2009, but since the new US administration will only take first, more explicit one was to mark turning points in the office in January that year, another summit has to be Alliance’s history and to facilitate particularly important arranged. political decisions that had to be taken on the highest political level. The 1990 London summit, only months after The negative consequences of such an inflation of the fall of the Berlin Wall, or the Washington Summit in summits are palpable. As each NATO meeting on the 1999, when the 50th anniversary of NATO was highest political level will be accompanied by tremendous commemorated, a new Strategic Concept was adopted media attention (fuelled not least by NATO and the and three new members joined the Alliance, are specific capitals of the member states themselves) the examples. expectations of the summit will be enormous. Hardly any meeting of the heads of states and government will be A second, more implicit purpose of summits was to able to meet these exaggerated aspirations, and general speed up NATO’s internal evolution, as every summit disappointment is inevitable. Summits that fall behind the meeting puts pressure on the decision making general hype will be regarded as failure or even as a processes in NATO and in the member states’ capitals. disaster. Furthermore, contentious issues of minor The need and the readiness for consensus tend to grow relevance might be bloated by the media excitement and the closer the deadline of summits comes. Furthermore, the general summit dynamics – the bizarre debate in summits always had the flavor of the exceptional. They Bucharest on whether or not to take Ukraine and Georgia took place occasionally - about every two or three into NATO’s “Membership Action Plan” is one of the recent years. examples. Lastly, the summit inflation has a harmful impact on NATO’s decision making, as it eases the Currently, though, NATO is facing an inflation of summit pressure for consensus. Knowing that there will be meetings, some of which seem justified neither by path another summit coming soon arouses the temptation to breaking historical events nor by the need to speed up postpone contentious issues instead of solving them. NATO’s decision making. Instead, a concentration of summits has been dictated by the political calendar. The As a result, both initial purposes of summits – i.e. fostering Riga summit in November 2006 had been tauntingly NATO’s cohesion by highlighting remarkable decisions characterized as “a summit in search of an occasion”, and speeding up NATO’s evolution – are likely to suffer since it had been scheduled without a pressing set of from summit meetings, whose results vindicate neither the decisions to be taken. Thus, NATO had problems finding effort nor the general attention. Instead, an image of adequate topics for the summit agenda and at the end disunity will erode NATO’s standing inside and outside the many of the decisions were postponed. Only seventeen Alliance. The post-Bucharest debate on the summit as a months later, another summit had to be squeezed in, “success” or a “failure” is a case in point. primarily to allow President George W. Bush a farewell meeting with the NATO Allies. One key result of that summit was the invitation to Albania and Croatia to begin 2. Afghanistan: Changing the “Winning” accession talks on NATO membership. Rhetoric In spring 2009, the heads of states and governments will NATO is still at war in Afghanistan. Hence, the Afghanistan meet again to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the problem is going to dominate any NATO summit as long Alliance. This summit was originally planned to take place as the Alliance remains engaged in the Hindu Kush. in Berlin (the appropriate location for such a historic event as the Cold War ended there) but for political reasons, the At the Bucharest meeting NATO has achieved significant venue has been moved to the Franco-German border progress – not at least by demonstrating that the Alliance region of Strasbourg and Kehl. Initially, this summit was is able to bring together the top representatives of supposed to welcome the invitees from Bucharest as full international organizations (UN Secretary General, World members of the Alliance. However, given ratification Bank Managing Director, EU Commission President, and requirements in most NATO countries, the legal EU High Representative) to achieve better coordination preconditions are unlikely to be completed by spring 2009, between civil and military stabilization efforts. so that some NATO members are thinking about holding Furthermore, since the NATO summit in Riga the number another summit purely for the enlargement ceremony in of NATO forces in Afghanistan has risen considerably by autumn 2009. about 50 percent. 2 No. 37 - May 2008 Research Paper Still the major long term challenge for the Alliance will be aptly. Furthermore, such a wording is more in line with to determine and to communicate what it intends to NATO’s Operational Plan for Afghanistan (OPLAN), which achieve in Afghanistan. This is particularly crucial since also aims at relative improvements in the areas of there is an ongoing debate on whether NATO is “winning” security, capacity building and development. or “losing” the war. Some observers regard the outcome of NATO’s mission as a make or break issue for the Alliance: The communication of this terminology could be achieved according to this view, losing in Afghanistan lead to the by an orchestrated attempt by NATO officials and policy end of NATO as a vital organization. makers in NATO’s capitals to choose the wording in official statements appropriately. A precedent for this was Such disputes might be intellectually challenging; the effort in some NATO countries to replace the term however, their practical use is limited. Given the “NATO enlargement” by “NATO opening”, to strip NATO’s preponderance of its armed forces, the NATO led rhetoric from any antagonistic spin vis-à-vis Russia international coalition in Afghanistan can hardly “lose” in a (admittedly with limited success as many Russian military sense. Yet, for a number of implicit problems, it decision makers still enlargement as an “expansion”). might be unable to “win” either: The open question though is whether a justification of the • Although stabilization and nation building had been civil-military campaign in Afghanistan based on a flexible exercised in the past, NATO as an institution had no rationale like “more security” will be resilient enough to blueprint of an operation of that size. It is no surprise ensure public support even in the case of rising numbers therefore, that the challenges of reconstruction of one of of casualties. How are we to avoid the public suspicion the poorest and most war-torn countries were grossly that the new rhetoric is more of a “window-dressing” to underrated. Even the Canadian Prime Minister Stephen camouflage the aggravation of NATO’s situation in Harper, as a representative of a country that is highly Afghanistan? Such unintended interpretations can only be engaged in the military fighting in Afghanistan, is on prevented if the terminology is embedded in a cohesive record as confessing “…we are all undercommitted.”2 and cogent justification for NATO’s engagement in Afghanistan in general.
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