What's Wrong with NATO and How to Fix it. Mark Webber

What's Wrong with NATO and How to Fix it - Mark Webber


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Vincent Pouliot, International Pecking Orders: The Politics and Practice of Multilateral Diplomacy (Cambridge etc.: Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 86–116.

      27 27. Jamie Shea, ‘NATO at Full Stretch’, International Politics Reviews, 4, 2016, pp. 36–42.

      28 28. John J. Mearsheimer, ‘The False Promise of International Institutions’, International Security, 19(3), 1994/1995, p. 7.

      29 29. Michael N. Barnett and Martha Finnemore, ‘The Politics, Power, and Pathologies of International Organizations’, International Organization, 53(4), 1999, pp. 699–700.

      30 30. Robert O. Keohane and Lisa L. Martin, ‘The Promise of Institutionalist Theory’, International Security, 20(1), 1995, pp. 39–51.

      31 31. Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes, The Light that Failed: A Reckoning (London: Allen Lane, 2019); Stephen Walt, ‘The Global Order after COVID-19’, Institute for Security Policy, Vienna, Working Paper, 2020.

      32 32. Robert O. Keohane, ‘International Organization and the Crisis of International Interdependence’, International Organization, 25(2), 1975, pp. 357, 359.

      33 33. Hugh Miall (ed.), Redefining Europe: New Patterns of Conflict and Cooperation (London and New York: Pinter Publishers, 1994).

      34 34. Edward Newman, A Crisis of Global Institutions? Multilateralism and International Security (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), p. 21.

      35 35. See, for instance, Julian Lindley-French, NATO: The Enduring Alliance 2016 (Warsaw: Foundation for Polish–German Cooperation, 2016); R.N. Burns and J.L. Jones, Jr, Restoring the Power and Purpose of the NATO Alliance (Washington, DC: Atlantic Council 2016); J.R. Deni, NATO and Article 5: The Transatlantic Alliance and the Twenty-First-Century Challenges of Collective Defence (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2017); John Andreas Olsen (ed.), Future NATO: Adapting to New Realities (Whitehall Paper 95) (London: Royal United Services Institute, 2020).

Part I Problems

      NATO’s first major ‘ill’ – doing too much – is arguably a problem of success. Three of NATO’s seven decades have fallen within the post-Cold War period, and it has accumulated a wide range of functions in consequence. Such adaptation and repurposing is clearly preferable to stasis and irrelevance. But accumulating more and more functions, with multiple institutions, policies and new members and partners to match, has also stored up problems. Taking on an extra commitment may seem logical in isolation, but when these multiply it can result in a dissipation of energy and a lowering of effectiveness. The magnitude of NATO’s problem is, therefore, not to be underestimated. Here we outline its various aspects. In Chapter 5, we offer some routes by which the problem can be addressed.

      This continental focus did not go unquestioned. During the 1950s, a debate unfolded on the possibilities of a global NATO. Secretary General Paul-Henri Spaak, French President Charles de Gaulle and deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery all argued that the Alliance should assume responsibilities beyond the defence of Europe. Fading colonial powers Portugal, Belgium and the Netherlands, meanwhile, felt the NATO allies should coordinate their activities at the United Nations.2 In the face of American indifference, however, such ideas came to nothing. The US was at times frustrated at the reluctance of its allies to lend their support to its military campaign in Vietnam or to the defence of Israel, but it did not envisage NATO as a vehicle to pursue the global competition with the Soviet Union (or, for that matter, the People’s Republic of China). Consequently, there was no agreement on a role for the Alliance ‘out-of-area’. When the allies went to war – the Belgians in the Congo, the Americans in Vietnam, the French in Algeria or the British over the Falkland Islands – NATO was not involved. And while the Alliance was busy organizing the collective defence – through force planning, standardization, exercises, air and naval patrols, territorial defence, communications, command structures and so on – not once did it conduct a mission involving force. ‘Throughout the entire period of the Cold War,’ the Alliance website notes, ‘NATO forces were not involved in a single military engagement.’3

      But the accumulation of tasks also has its downsides. NATO has taken on more than it can cope with and it makes claims to competence it cannot possibly fulfil. This problem of ‘overload’ was identified by the political scientist Anthony King back in the mid-1970s when analysing the growing demands placed upon domestic governments.8 It is a problem that also applies to international organizations. Overload has informed much of the debate on NATO’s post-Cold War evolution. As the Alliance has moved forward, scholars, think-tank analysts and politicians have lined up either to praise its adaptive creativity or to warn against over-stretch and a dilution of purpose. The latter position focuses on the downsides of NATO’s acquisition of new tasks, and its absorption of new members through enlargement.

      During the 1990s, NATO took decisive steps on both counts. It adopted the Partnership for Peace (PfP) programme in January 1994, launched an air campaign and peacekeeping mission in Bosnia, signed


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