[R-G] NATO's unending crisis of purpose

[Anthony Fenton]

NATO's unending crisis of purpose
Apr 05, 2008 04:30 AM
Thomas Walkom
http://www.thestar.com/Canada/Columnist/article/410406


NATO remains in crisis. I say "remains" because the world's most  
formidable military alliance has been in this situation since the 1991  
collapse of the Soviet Union. Regardless of NATO's decision to send  
more troops to help Canadian soldiers fighting in Afghanistan, this  
week's Bucharest summit served only to reinforce the point.

The crisis is not one of resources or interest. The North Atlantic  
Treaty Organization has weapons galore; three of its members are  
nuclear powers.

As for interest, the poor countries of Europe are lining up to join.  
The fact that Romania, a nation nowhere near the North Atlantic,  
hosted this week's summit says it all. Rather, the crisis that besets  
NATO is a crisis of purpose. Why does it still exist? Is it still, as  
its charter specifies, a defensive military alliance? If so, which  
countries is it defending itself against? Or is its new role to  
provide a rapid-reaction military response to events around the globe?

Afghanistan has brought all of these strains to the surface. In  
Canada, the debate over NATO's role is usually framed in terms of  
doers versus shirkers.

We, along with the British, Dutch and Americans, are seen as the ones  
willing to fight the Taliban. The French, Germans and others, on the  
other hand, are portrayed as shirking their responsibilities.

France's decision this week to commit more combat troops to  
Afghanistan (thereby freeing American soldiers to help us) is seen as  
a victory for the doers.

But, France notwithstanding, the real story of NATO in Afghanistan is  
that member countries still disagree over what exactly they should be  
doing there. The German government isn't shying away from combat  
because its soldiers are cowards; it is doing so because German voters  
aren't convinced that this war is worth fighting.

For Canada's Liberals and Conservatives, electoral concerns at home  
represent only part of the NATO equation. Since World War II, the  
foreign policy of both parties has rested on two principles.

The first has been the need to accommodate the United States, the only  
world power interested in protecting Canada.

The second has been to temper American power by drawing the U.S. into  
a web of international entanglements.

When NATO was set up in 1949, it served three purposes. Western  
Europeans saw it as a way to keep isolationist America engaged in  
their continent. The U.S. wanted an alliance to fight communism. But  
Ottawa viewed NATO, in part, as counterweight to Washington.

The irony, of course, is that to keep NATO alive we must ultimately do  
what the U.S. wants.

So for the Liberals and Conservatives, Afghanistan is a no-brainer.  
Canada's involvement there is necessary not just to appease Washington  
but to maintain the credibility of a military alliance in which we  
are, theoretically at least, on equal grounds with the U.S.

To Western Europe, however, both NATO and Afghanistan are much more  
debatable. With the Soviet Union gone, is there still a need to keep  
America engaged in Europe? Indeed, has NATO itself become an  
impediment to a goal that, for Europeans, might make more sense –  
engaging Russia? (This, incidentally, is one of the reasons why a U.S.  
plan to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO was nixed at Bucharest.  
Why provoke Moscow?)

Technically, Canada's troop commitment to Afghanistan ends in 2011.  
But that end date can be easily changed. My bet is that, in one form  
or another, Canada will stay longer. NATO may still not know what it's  
doing or why. But as long as it remains in Afghanistan, so will we.

Thomas Walkom's column appears Wednesday and Saturday.