Nato's Istanbul Cooperation Initiative. NATOs Istanbul Initiative inscribes itself in the Anglo-Saxon geopolitical vision that dominates the Atlantic Alliance, more particularly since the disintegration of the USSR.

The RRE was a flouring of individual consciousness, of the realization that in every aspect of life – religion, the arts, politics, and economics – each individual must take responsibility for what he does.  It took its purest form in Protestantism, though it is now accepted in most of the Catholic world; but those three great upheavals all took place outside the orthodox zone of Christianity.  Of course, the RRE’s ideas spilled over the physical boundaries of Euro-America.  Yet, Euro-America is where these ideas come from, and where they are most at home.  It is no accident that the dividing line between Eastern Europe’s true anti-communist revolutions of 1989-90 and its bogus ones – between Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Slovenia and Croatia and the others – runs precisely along the dividing line between Euro-America and Euro-Asia; between the then candidates to membership in the European Union and the rest.

The power of a nation at the turn of the 21st century is made up of a combination of recognized and efficient élites, a good cohesion of society, a competitive economy, a dominant culture, powerful armed forces, and an effective organization of communication – the whole being henceforth dependent on the mastery of technological processes.  These elements are gathered in the American superpower.  Formed by the people who originally left Europe because they could not stand it – they wanted more freedom from authority of state and church, more scope to enrich themselves – the entire society bathes in economic liberalism and competition.  It is hence not surprising that, in the face of the American business culture, the call for a dialogue of religions, cultures or civilizations hardly finds an echo.

In its adaptation to the new era ushered by the fall of the Berlin wall the US of A unequivocally announced its ambition to play a leading role in the New World Order perceived to be American all throughout the twenty-first century.  Commensurately, the requirement of its survival was linked to the control of the flows of oil, finance and images.

Translated into operational terms, the management of the New World Order means the preservation and extension of the system of alliances, created after World War II, that has permitted the construction of a sustained cooperation between the principal democratic powers and in which the United States would continue to exercise its natural  leadership thanks to a vast reform of its armed forces, allowing it to manage several regional conflicts simultaneously, and the adoption of a strategy capable of determining the future environment of the security of the planet by containing regional threats and, if necessary, combating and vanquishing them.  This is sine qua non with impeding any potential rival from rising to the level of a regional hegemonic power.

On the economic level, it implies occupation of the field of international economic organization through the pursuit of two major objectives:

1.        The establishment (in 1994) and reinforcement of the World Trade Organization.  The US, with the greatest GNP and industrial park, the most powerful services industry and the first credit-worthy and homogenous market in the world, naturally hopes to be the principal beneficiary of this new order.

2.        The creation, with Canada and Mexico, of a North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) – a powerful economic block capable of dissuading any European or Asian vague desire to constitute regional economic fortresses.  The thrust of NAFTA’s power is even more credible in view of its explicit vocation to enlarge itself to Latin America, particularly to the MERCOSUR grouping (Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay).

These American objectives fall within what might be dubbed the “strategy of the lobster.”  The vital centers of the shellfish are formed by the three members of NAFTA, while the flesh-rich tail is represented by Latin America.  This geopolitical arthropod exercises its influence through two tremendous pincers: the military alliances that allow it to supervise Western Europe on one side and, Japan and the Asia Pacific area on the other. Between them extend the zones of turbulences (Euro-Asia and Islamistan) over which the animal projects its antennas and where it is possible, depending on the stakes, to intervene or refrain from doing so.

Since the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in July 1991 reports and books regarding the transatlantic link have multiplied.  Lately, ex-French Prime Minister Edouard Balladur advocated not only a new equilibrium but even a union between Europe and the US to manage the security of the world.  He even assimilated outright West and democracy while former generals that had assumed responsibilities within NATO propose with the Brussels-based think-tank Security and Defense Agenda the creation of a joint US-NATO-EU command and vehicle such concepts of American military thought as the use of nuclear preemptive strikes… All of these writings have three points in common:  they analyze the world outside NATO as a threat for international security in the next twenty years; they render natural a Western world united by common values in the face of a globalization perceived as chaotic; lastly, while noting the limits of power of western armies in the light of their interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq (and in Lebanon by Israel), they call for an enlargement of NATO missions.

The world is progressively going through a transition phase, from a unilateral militarized system dominated by a unique superpower to a multilateralism marked by the emergence of new powers, or worlds, (China and India, European Union), by the existence of other states endowed with the nuclear arm (Israel, Pakistan, North Korea and potentially Iran), and by the necessity of managing the increased scarcity of oil and other row materials.  Beyond the most evident threats (proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism), certain scenarios of probable wars are drawn around unilateral military actions (like that of the US in Iraq) and of conflicts for the control of scarce resources.  In these two cases the US could play a destabilizing role by deciding alone.

As the US emerged as the first truly global empire history has ever known, it put in place, since 1991, a unilateralism possessing unique distinctive characteristics that were suddenly amplified after the trauma of 9/11.  Justifying its identity by a “sacred particularity” or a “radical democratic messianic” Manifest Destiny, the US has arrogated to itself:

1.        The power to refuse common security rules: withdrawal from treaties relating to anti-ballistic missiles (AMB) prohibiting missiles anti-missiles to launch a program of anti-missile defense; very “soft” application of the 1972 convention prohibiting biological arms; refusal of inspections foreseen by the 1993 convention on chemical arms on the ground of protecting industrial secrets – thus contributing with China and Iran to making this international treaty more fragile; rejection of the 1997 convention on antipersonnel mines “to protect American troops in Korea;” refusal to negotiate on trade in small arms because the second amendment of the American constitution gives the right to individual arms; refusal to adhere to the collective justice of the International Penal Court first proposed by President Clinton.

2.        The power to act alone militarily: with a defense budget representing half the world’s expenditures on armaments, the present strategic reflection is on the use of small nuclear arms (“mini-nukes”) and the affirmation of the principle of preemptive war.

3.        The right to re-draw the map of the world as attested to by the “Greater Middle East Initiative.”

This US messianic vision will last a long time, with allies being more or less consulted.  The individualism, moralism and exceptionalism that impregnates American elites as well as public opinions explains the consensual sentiment that no one has the right to put into question the purity of their intentions, nor the correctness of their definitions of the Good and the Evil.  It is in this sense of exceptional character that is found the origin of the strategic slide from dissuasion to preemption, which falls within the logic of unleashing wars.  Moreover, the constant pragmatic stand of all leaders at the head of the White House to express unconditional solidarity with Israel makes the achievement of a durable peace in the Middle East uncertain - the Arab Peace Plan being one of its victims.  As far as the Muslim world is concerned, most American political speeches include a reference to Islamic-fascism as if Islam had the exclusivity of violence and radicalism.

Lastly, whatever their political inclination, US strategists:

1.        have a predilection for the over dimensionality of the military tool and the use of force;

2.        do not envisage something other than an American leadership of the security of the world.  This moral right is based on the principle of military superiority: technological supremacy and fire power will lead the adversary to defeat.  The limits of this path in Afghanistan and Iraq have not even led to a critical reflection but rather to the new strategy of “prompt global strike” that would  allow an attack on any given point on the globe with conventional missiles within less than an hour – a new version of air supremacy without risks on the ground.

3.        list their enemies into four main categories:

a.        “peer competitors” who constitute rivals to their leadership (China and Russia);

b.        countries of the “axis of Evil”, among which Iran holds a special place;

c.        harmful countries like Syria, Venezuela or Cuba.  In this and the latter case, a unilateral US strike is not excluded to compensate an eventual defeat in Iraq and, in the case of Iran, to put an end to an unacceptable durable resistance.

d.        regional powers that threaten the control of resources like a reinvented OPEC and a new cartel of gas producers.  It must be stressed out here that China imports 80% of its oil from the Middle East (and 40% from Iran alone) while India relies on this region for 90% of its energy needs. 

        The translation of the Anglo-American geopolitical vision at the level of NATO became evident as early as November 1991 when the alliance took a historical step by reviewing its strategic concept, revising it to take into account strategic changes in the European landscape and making public its new strategic direction.  It built a long term vision of a united Europe on a new security concept which signaled the transformation of NATO from confrontation to cooperation in Europe, with the Central East European Coalition (CEEC), and with Russia itself.  Nations across Europe could consult and discuss with NATO their security concern and situation. Dialogue became the main instrument. Institutionally, the North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC)  was set up to bring together NATO members with former adversaries of the Warsaw Pact and to “manage” conflicts in areas on the European periphery such as the Balkans.  Central and East European nations then entering a period of intense political and economic transformation found in NACC a forum for consultation and cooperation in political and security related matters, economic issues related to defense budgets and conversion, information activities as well as scientific and environmental issues.  

In 1994 an American initiative to further trust between NATO and other states in Europe and the former Soviet Union was adopted in the form of the Partnership for Peace (PfP) program. The conceptual underpinning here was that before partnerships could be established the countries need first to insure a democratic control of the armed forces and security services as well.  Security Sector Reform (SSR) was thus advanced to push forward the enforcement of good governance norms in all aspects of security policy making and implementation (i.e. not just military defense activities). The political, cultural, economic and societal traits obtaining in Central and Eastern European nations were such that enacting SSR was possible to a large extent.  NATO could thus, in 1997, replace NACC by the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council which provides a general political framework for cooperation between the Alliance and partner countries as well as for the bilateral relations NATO entertains with each partner country within the Partnership for Peace initiative.  This was at the level of Euro-America and Euro-Asia.

        In Washington D.C., and European NATO capitals, a new language has been in the making. Centered on the transformation of the organization and stressing the invisible character of security, it sees factors of belligerency as being ill-defined (water, migration, oil…).  This has led to a divergence of views on NATO’s role that has been camouflaged, in the merry rounds of summits, by a European-American declaration on non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and on combating terrorism to underline the two sides’ shared analyses of the major threats facing the world. Yet, even here also exist important divergences between both sides of the Atlantic on how best to deal with these common threats.

 

We thus observe an American speech at a virtual level that justifies everything: military control of the euro-Mediterranean and Gulf space.  With a strategy taken as an affair of opportunism, the US uses the empty space that a disunited Europe leaves behind while aiming at:

1.        impeding the emergence of a fully-fledged EU power by bothering its actions;

2.        creating a Broader Middle East that would turn Washington D.C. ‘s wordy rhetoric about democracy in the Middle East into some form of reality and in which the European Union has an indispensable economic role and a second level military part.

As far as the southern Islamistan front is concerned, NATO’s approach has been gradual, slowly evolving with its search for new missions as it moves from territorial defense to projecting power.  In 1994, an overture was made towards the immediate southern vicinity with the launching of NATO’s selective Mediterranean Dialogue (MD)  which distinguishes between acceptable and Backlash States.  Including today Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia, the MD is offered to interested countries in order to promote security and regional stability through bilateral cooperation between NATO and the individual states in a number of specific areas where the Alliance can add value. Through this dialogue NATO has aimed at enacting Security Sector Reform through military reform, democratization and collective security.  Based on the principles of joint ownership and complementarity with other international initiatives, the MD provides tailored advice on defense reform, budgeting and planning as well as well civil-military relations, intra-military cooperation to promote interoperability, fighting terrorism through information sharing, maritime cooperation, combating the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their vectors, and fighting small arms, drugs and human trafficking.  Within these broad areas of potential practical cooperation, a menu of expandable specific activities is proposed to meet the gradual growth of mutual understanding. Overtime, a clearer political dimension has also emerged with the holding of regular meetings of the ministers of foreign affairs.  However, this attempt to push forward the enforcement of good governance norms in all aspects of security policy making and implementation (i.e. not just military defense activities) has dragged since its inception with few tangible results.

In the first half of 2004, American hopes that more European troops might soon be sent to Iraq vanished while President Bush’s “Greater Middle East Initiative”  - made a year earlier at a conservative Washington think-tank that believes in unleashing the forces of “constructive chaos” (instability, chaos and violence) to permit redrawing the map of the region - for democratic transformation of the Middle East came under attack both from inside and outside the Arab World.  A fallback position emerged at the G8 Summit which scaled down Washington D.C.’s proposals to mere emphasis on supporting reform and modernization movements in the Middle East, though this would include dialogue with “the people” (i.e. civil society and dissidents) and the NATO Istanbul Summit that approved NATO’s training of Iraqi military and security forces outside Iraq and the launching of the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative (ICI)  which addresses Gulf States traditionally close to the West.   ICI signaled a first sign that NATO is preparing to play a part in a region which the US administration describes as the main source of strategic danger to the western alliance.  Put within the framework of the transformation process that imposes defining new missions for the alliance north of the Tropic of Cancer, the initiative has been justified by NATO’s and Gulf countries’ shared perception of the common threats posed by:

1.        the situation in Afghanistan,

2.        the situation in Iraq,

3.        international terrorism which – it is appropriately pointed out - has also struck the Arabian Peninsula.

Underlying all of this is the hope entertained by Washington D.C. that European members might eventually accept - as the security situation improves in Iraq - to send troops inside this country and thus relieve it from the burden of maintaining huge forces in it.  Already, Jordanian, Emirati, Egyptian and Moroccan participation, within the frameworks of the MD and ICI, in different NATO missions is most welcomed and encouraged.

The Istanbul Cooperation Initiative, like NATO’s Mediterranean Dialogue, is based on the assumption that the success of Security Sector Reform with members of the Partnership for Peace program can be transposed to the Mediterranean and Gulf region.  Yet, MD’s 13-year old experience has instead raised perplexing questions regarding NATO’s capacity to organize the Mediterranean security space as it has failed to lead to genuine results – military integration and interoperability have been nil.  In the case of the ICI, the four GCC countries that have accepted the initiative have demonstrated its hollowness by requesting border surveillance equipment and assistance in setting up domestic security operations – a field, though mentioned in the ICI, in which NATO has little to offer.  Moreover, the agreement reached with Kuwait relative to the security of information is of little significance.  This brings to mind that security based upon military domination cannot be stable in a durable fashion and must absolutely be supplanted by one established on a true and solid collective will that must find its roots inside States and societies.  This perception of security evidently requires that we do not limit ourselves to the political and military realms, but that we extend our vision to the economic, social as well as ecological and cultural dimensions.  In the end, the objective is to promote the external and internal stability of States rather than ensuring security in the classical sense.  In this perspective, NATO – a simple instrument – obviously cannot deal with complex, changing, heterogeneous situations.

In fact, the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative is not likely to yield any significant advantage to either NATO or Gulf States because it is driven by a fundamental misunderstanding of the rationale behind the current organizational structure of these states’ armed forces and security services.  In fact, the ultimate SSR objective of creating “armed forces and security services that are functionally differentiated professional forces under objective and subjective civilian control at the lowest functional level of resources”  sets criteria that can hardly be applied in Gulf States:    

1.        It is indeed very doubtful that it would make sense for Gulf regimes to create efficient armies capable of cooperating fully with NATO to face a variety of threats as the risks they incur in setting up effective armies clearly outweigh the benefits that could be gained in military efficiency.  The traditional separation between regular army and “national guard” and other separate units, such as tribal levies, is bound to endure. The security sector has, since independence, been managed so that it will not pose a threat to the ruling regimes who are satisfied with the outcome achieved in such a turbulent region.  In fact, it is quite difficult to fathom why Gulf States should yearn for radical reform.  The rulers of these states know what is in their best interest when organizing the security sectors of their countries.  In this perspective, the attitude of NATO officials appears naïve and can at times be categorized as patronizing.

2.        Retaining “objective and subjective civilian control” over the armed forces and security services of Gulf States is likely to endanger the regimes in place as their armies include a percentage of Pakistani and other foreign soldiers.

3.        Enacting greater democratic governance and transparency is likely to upset the fairly robust domestic political balances in Gulf countries as public opinion in the entire Arab World does not draw a line between the US and NATO which is simply seen as a foreign policy arm of Washington.  As a result, regimes linking up with NATO are perceived by liberal and Islamist oppositions as becoming ever more subservient to US policies, wishes and desires - a fact that has become clearly apparent in the cases of Mauritania, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia and which explains the strong public diplomacy component attached to the ICI.

4.        Current arrangements that have proved their worth throughout the last few decades are likely to be upset by any attempt to introduce SSRs like greater transparency in defense budgeting and decision making.  Consider, for instance, procurement in Gulf States which is as much a foreign-policy tool as it is an instrument of defense.  The acquisition of very sophisticated weapons systems constitutes indeed a sort of insurance policy underwritten by major Western powers and the commissions system going with it contributes to the equilibrium between internal forces.

5.        It is not clear what a NATO multilateral umbrella could add to the long independent history of Saudi Arabia’s bilateral defense ties with the US or the security relations binding Bahrain and Oman with Great Britain.  Who of the US or NATO would react to an aggravation of the crisis with Iran or the appearance tomorrow of Chinese or Indian warships in the Gulf waters to “insure the security of supply lines” as the usual terminology puts it?  

        As NATO military leaders have acknowledged the limited military value of the ICI the question arises regarding the hidden diplomatic project behind the call for a reinforced NATO role.  After Afghanistan, and above all Iraq, which non-western countries (in the sense Mr. Balladur and the military generals define “western” solidarity) will perceive NATO’s projection capacities as a force destined to stabilize a region in crisis?  Hasn’t it launched aerial bombardments on Yugoslavia in 1999 without a United Nations mandate?

One must recollect that four years after Secretary of State Collin Powell’s call that NATO considers “a new collective role in Iraq” – perhaps leading the coalition’s operations in south-central Iraq – NATO’s (and Europe’s) present involvement in Middle Eastern security remains modest indeed.  The idea was rejected by Gerhard Schröder, Germany’s chancellor, who opposed any use of NATO troops in Iraq.  Although 16 of the organization’s 26 members had then soldiers there, they contributed them as individuals, not part of NATO.  The Bush administration has since admitted that the 135,000 troops American troops will have to stay there for the foreseeable future.

Pushing through the ICI was then an attempt to make European NATO members feel involved in the security of the Gulf – a sentiment that might contribute to America’s exit strategy from the Iraqi quagmire.  The initiative, it is hoped, could yield symbolic results.  Yet the reality of SSR experiments in the Broader Middle East has laid bare a significant gap between policy commitment and actual implementation.  Promoting the development of effective defense institutions that are under civilian and democratic control, and are capable of cooperating with NATO forces if the need arises, denies the historical fact that phases of durable peace are linked to balance of powers and not the to the development or fall of democracies in the world.  Ultimately, the construction of an international multilateral security through a “collective role”must take into consideration the legitimate rights of everyone and not solely the right of western powers to manage the security of the region and the planet as well.

The Gulf countries that have joined the initiative most likely think that they are accepting an offer they cannot refuse in the current political climate since it explicitly excludes the eventual prize of NATO membership.  Yet, they speculate that the ICI will be kept at the level of an interesting dialogue without the need to enact reforms that would be costly in political capital.  The initiative is unlikely to contribute to the enhancement of Gulf security.  Decisions in this regard will be taken by American officials in bilateral consultations with the respective governments as has been done in the past.

In the end, questions regarding the purpose of the North Atlantic Alliance remain: should it be mainly a military organization, or a political club of democracies?

Works Cited:

• Nato: Article V and collective defence, CRS Report for Congress, Library of Congress by Paul E. Gallis (1997)

• World Economic Forum sur le Moyen-Orient et l’Afrique du Nord (2010)          

                                                                                 

• Enemy in the mirror :Islamic fundamentalism and the limits of modern rationalism, Roxanne L. Euben, Princeton University press ( 1999) p 15

• Angela E. Stent, Book review Imperial overstrech : Germany in soviet policy from Stalin to Gorbatchev (1998)

• L’Etat du monde, 1989-1990: annuaire économique et géopolitique mondial, la stratègie du Homard (1989)

• A Union of the West! Balladur says it’s time by John Vinocur, The New York Times, 7 Jan 2008

• The Great Nation of Futurity, John O’Sullivan vol 6, issue 23 pp 426-430 (1839)

• The Greater Middle-East Initiative. Off to a False Start, Marina Ottaway and Thomas Canothers, senior Associates, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (2004)

• Karp, C and ponzio, R., 2007, Nato, SSR and Afghanistan in Intergovernmental Organisations and Security Sector Reform,ed. D. Law, DCAF, Geneva, pp. 219-238

• ?

• The Greater Middle-East Initiative. Off to a False Start, Marina Ottaway and Thomas Canothers, senior Associates, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (2004)

• The neo conservatives and the policies of constructive chaos by Thierry Meyssam (2006)

• Dialogue with the Mediterranean. The role of NATO’s mediterannean initiative by Gareth M. Winrow p 151 (2000)

• Nato in the Gulf : Who is doing whom a favor ?, Legrenzi Matteo, Middle East policy (2007) p2 paragraph 3

• Nato in the Gulf : Who is doing whom a favor ?, Legrenzi Matteo, Middle East policy (2007) p2 paragraph 1

 

• Nato in the Gulf : Who is doing whom a favor ?, Legrenzi Matteo, Middle East policy (2007) p2 paragraph 3

• Axis of evil and rogue states: The Bush administratio, by Glen Segell 2000-2004, p 263

• Nato : The Istanbul Summit, Claire Taylor, International Affairs and Defence Section, House of Commons Library, (2004), p 16

         

 

 

   

---