22nd November David Sheard
Is there still a role for NATO?
When NATO was founded in 1949, it had a clearly defined role. It was an alliance for collective security against the USSR and the Warsaw Pact, whereby if one member state was attacked, the rest would come to her aid under article 5. Since the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, however, the role of NATO has become a great deal less clearly defined, since its members no longer really have any need for a defensive alliance. Indeed, operations such as those in Bosnia and Kosovo have suggested that for from being a defensive alliance, NATO may have some kind of future as an offensive alliance. There are also now doubts, however, over whether the futures of Europe and the United States are bound together as they were during the Cold War, and many European countries now pursue radically different, more pacifistic foreign policies to that of America. Many people now fell, therefore, that NATO is nothing more than an anachronistic hangover from the Cold War with no real future. Others would say, however, that organisations such as NATO and the UN are still crucial in the modern world to ensure that countries do not act unilaterally, but co-operate with allies. It is first perhaps worth considering in what way NATO’s role in the modern world is changing.
As has already been said, NATO may no longer really be viewed as a defensive organisation. This is not to say that it no longer has a credible role, however, and many would argue that it can be used as a useful tool in solving international problems. There are several examples of this suggestion in action. For instance, in 1995 the former Yugoslavia descended into anarchy. When the UN failed to keep the warring factions apart, with thousands of Moslems being massacred at the supposed safe-haven of Srebronica, NATO decided to launch an offensive against Bosnian Serb positions in August and September, thereby bringing the Serb leadership quickly to the negotiating table. This resulted in the Dayton Ohio Accords, which received peace in the region, and with NATO upheld with 20,000 soldiers who were deployed to the area. This was a great success that arguably wouldn’t have been possible without the intervention of a multilateral organisation such as NATO which, unlike the UN, could feasibly have an offensive mandate. Indeed, it essentially marked the rebirth of NATO as an offensive organisation, and it was the first time that NATO forces had been used in an aggressive manner. This has led to numerous cases of a similar nature. For instance, in 1999 in Kosovo, when it became widely feared that the Serbian government was beginning to initiate policies of ethnic cleansing and possible even genocide in its province of Kosovo, NATO intervened once again. By early 1999 it had become clear, as the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) pointed out, that the only way to stop what would have resulted in a human refugee catastrophe, was through military action. NATO therefore launched a 78-day air campaign that succeeded in forcing the Serbian government to comply with the demands of the international community. It would arguably have been possible for America to undertake such a campaign itself, but as the Economist points out, the fact that it was a multilateral organisation who carried out the attacks gave the war increased legitimacy. As they say, ‘it mattered a lot that it was not just the world’s most powerful country but nineteen of its most respected democracies that stood firm against the marauding Serb army.’ Indeed, one of the great advantages of NATO is that it is not regarded to simply be a tool of the Americans, and thus any action that it undertakes is guaranteed to have more respect that any unilateral action taken by America or any other country. Since that conflict, NATO troops have also led the Kosovo Force (KFOR), which has played a vital peace keeping role in the region. Finally, NATO has had important peace keeping roles in both Macedonia in 2001, where it disarmed rebel Albanian forces and enforced a ceasefire, and, more recently, in Afghanistan, where they have been helping to keep the peace in Kabul following the overthrow of the Taliban, recently overseeing fair elections in the region. Thus NATO’s role as a defensive alliance has become meaningless, but that’s not to say that it has no future. It is more accurate to say that NATO is now, as the above examples show, indispensable as an offensive force where required and as a peace keeper, and the fact that it is a multilateral organisations affords it a certain degree of respect that America could never gain.
