NATO is about to adopt a new strategic concept. Can it keep pace with the way the world is changing?

Fewer dragons, more snakes

Nov 11th 2010 | from the print edition

NEXT week's NATO summit in Lisbon is likely to be one of the most crucial in the 61-year history of the military alliance. Officially, the 28 members are meeting mostly to approve a new “strategic concept” that frames the threats NATO faces and the ways in which it should defend against them over the next decade.

It is 11 years since the last such concept was adopted. In that period, both the world and NATO itself have changed greatly. But attention will focus on more immediate worries: above all, the prospects for the long war in Afghanistan, the response to Iran's nuclear ambitions and the need to “reset” NATO's ambiguous relations with its old enemy, Russia, after the chill caused by the invasion of Georgia in 2008. All this comes at a time of tumbling European defence spending and fears that America, preoccupied by strategic competition with China and by global terrorism, sees NATO as less vital to its security than in the past.

The new strategic concept itself should be easy to agree to. It is a sensible document, the result of a report drafted by a “group of experts” led by a former American secretary of state, Madeleine Albright. Last month NATO officials were claiming that it was “98% there”, and although members continue to differ on some issues, such as the alliance's future nuclear posture (of which more later), those will be papered over in Lisbon.

At the heart of the document is a restatement of NATO's core commitment to collective defence, enshrined in Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty. However, it recognises that there is little likelihood of an orthodox military assault across the alliance's borders. Most of the threats NATO faces are of the unconventional kind: from terrorism, rogue states with weapons of mass destruction, disruption of global supply lines, or cyber attacks on critical infrastructure such as power grids.

It is particularly hard for the alliance to decide when threats of this kind reach a level of seriousness that warrants an Article 5 response. NATO's bullish secretary-general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, formerly prime minister of Denmark, says there is nothing wrong with a bit of “constructive ambiguity”. Others say that NATO will know the moment when it sees it, as happened when Article 5 was invoked for the first time after the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001. But what about a big cyber-assault? At least at first, it may be impossible to tell who the instigators are.

The alliance will want to show its determination to press ahead with a territorial shield against ballistic missiles. Mr Rasmussen thinks this should convince members' sometimes sceptical publics that NATO can protect them against new threats. In the past, ballistic-missile defence (BMD) has been bedevilled by uncertainty over the technology, arguments about where the radars and interceptors should be put and the fear in some countries (most of all in Germany) of upsetting Russia, which still insists that the ultimate aim of a BMD system in Europe is to undermine its nuclear deterrent.

The Bush administration angered the Kremlin by planning to place long-range interceptors in Poland. By contrast, Barack Obama's administration has proposed the Phased Adaptive Approach, which will deploy tried and tested theatre-of-war systems as territorial defences, starting with the sea-based Aegis and moving on to land-based SM-3 missiles a few years later.

As well as being cheaper—Mr Rasmussen reckons that the cost will not exceed $300m over ten years—the new approach is clearly designed to deal with a potential Iranian missile threat, rather than bother the Russians. Mr Rasmussen would like NATO to say explicitly that defending against an attack from Iran is “an essential military mission”. But that could cause problems for Turkey, which has been asked to be one of the first hosts for the BMD system's powerful X-band radars, but does not want to jeopardise its growing regional influence or its increasing bilateral trade and energy ties with Iran.

Rather than see BMD as an obstacle to getting on better with Russia, NATO now thinks it can become something positive. With support from the Americans, the alliance has extended a hand to Russia, suggesting it could collaborate in the system. The technical and political difficulties are formidable, but co-operation is now seen as not just a way to soothe Russian prickliness, but a means of transforming the relationship from mutual suspicion and occasional crises into genuine long-term partnership.

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