Mon, Dec 17, 2001 page9

• NATO's future in jeopardy

  Since Sept. 11 the US has demonstrated it is as unilateral as ever, and its refusal to accept European military support may only serve to destroy trust between NATO members

  • By Ian Davidson
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  As wars end, diplomatic and political autopsies begin. It is too soon to draw firm conclusions about the "war on terrorism" being waged in Afghanistan. But it is not too early to draw other preliminary conclusions. One concerns the almost revolutionary changes now being contemplated in NATO's relations with Russia. Less visible is the deep and self-inflicted wound that, I suspect, has opened within NATO itself.

  From the beginning of this crisis, on Sept. 11, NATO's European members (as well as other countries, of course) promptly lined up with the US in moral and political solidarity and with offers of cooperation. For the first time since NATO's founding, Article 5 of the Washington Treaty was invoked.

  

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  The Washington Treaty was signed half a century ago to meet the Soviet threat at the Cold War's outset. Article 5 is the Treaty's keystone because it says that an attack against one member of the alliance shall be considered an attack against them all. This article distinguishes NATO from virtually any other defensive alliance in human history in the sense that it incorporated an open-ended guarantee of collective defense. Until Sept. 11, it had never been activated.

  Here was a momentous event in NATO's 52-year history and you might think that its activation would lead to a process of collective defense by NATO. Britain and a number of European NATO allies, including France, Italy and even Germany, quickly offered to provide military forces. But US President George W. Bush's administration did not want collective defense and it did not want NATO to get involved, apart from a small, essentially marginal military contribution by Britain -- in essence the US intended to fight this war by itself.

  A number of conclusions follow. First, it has become clear that the Bush administration, by inclination, remains as unilateralist as it seemed when it came to power 11 months ago. From the beginning, its first actions were to denounce or opt out of a number of multilateral engagements, such as the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.

  During the following months, it sometimes seemed that this attitude of systematic disengagement from its friends overseas might soften under the influence of US Secretary of State Colin Powell. Events since Sept. 11, however, confirmed that the unilateralist instincts of this US administration is in fact unmodified.

  The second conclusion, following from the first, is that the attempt by the British, on this occasion once again, to secure influence and advantage by playing on the "special relationship" with the US is being exposed, yet again, for the myth that it is.

  British Prime Minister Tony Blair has made heroic efforts to exert influence on the US -- first, by total military commitment to support for the US campaign in Afghanistan, and second, by arguing out loud that the war against terrorism can only be won if it addresses political, economic and military issues.

  But Blair's problem is that since Britain's military contribution to the US campaign in Afghanistan is marginal, his influence on US military strategy is also marginal. The more the British government proclaims its loyalty to the US, the more marginal its influence will be. This dilemma is being played out inside the British Cabinet, where Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, has argued for an international peacekeeping force to help stabilize Afghanistan, but has been opposed by Geoff Hoon, the British defense secretary, who is totally aligned with the Pentagon's hostility to any such proposal.

  The third conclusion is that it is now extremely difficult, perhaps impossible, to imagine that Article 5 can be invoked again. You cannot say to your allies that "this is the supreme moment when we call on the alliance for collective defense," and then in the next breath say, "we don't need you for collective defense; we're going to do it our way." In that sense, the centerpiece of the Atlantic alliance has been seriously, perhaps fatally, damaged.

  The fourth conclusion mirrors the third. European members of NATO have been deeply moved by the shock of the attacks on the twin towers and have been falling over themselves and each other to offer help to the US. But the US has been patently reluctant to accept the help offered by France, Germany and Italy.

  The fact that European offers of military help have been treated with disdain has not yet backfired. But the support of public opinion in European NATO will be vulnerable if the military campaign does not produce fairly quick political successes -- even more so if the US moves to a wider military war against "state sponsors of terrorism."

  The fifth conclusion is that this crisis may have seriously damaged efforts to create a common foreign and security policy between members of the EU. Blair's first response after Sept. 11 was to rush to Washington; but everything else that he has done since then has seemed designed to prevent any collective, integrated EU response.

  His systematic promotion of meetings of the "big" countries in Europe, independent of EU institutions or mechanisms, culminated in the recent farce over a dinner at Downing Street. Intended as one between Europe's big three -- Britain, France and Germany -- it ended up with all kinds of determined but unwelcome gate-crashers from the EU's other governments.

  Suspicions of the EU's smaller members toward the big three is now palpable. Britain, France and Germany have often resented being forced to tag along behind the US on defense issues. The EU's smaller members now fear being forcibly co-opted into an EU foreign policy when they have had no say in its development. It will be a bitter irony if the war against terrorism ends by shattering trust among the members of both NATO, the most successful alliance in human history, and the EU.

  Ian Davidson is a fellow of the European Policy Centre, Brussels, and columnist with The Financial Times.

  Copyright: Project Syndicate
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