1. NATO Readiness to reinforce collective defence, including investing in capabilities.
Recent events, notably the Russian invasion of Ukraine, have underlined the need for NATO readiness including a rapid combat-ready expeditionary force with attention to cyber defence and maritime security. As NATO scholar Julian Lindley-French and Admiral (ret’d) James Stavridis, former SACEUR, argued recently “Article 5 collective defence must be modernised and re-organised around cyber-defence, missile defence and the advanced deployable forces vital to contemporary defence.”
Host UK Prime Minister David Cameron has also called for a 10,000 member joint expeditionary force with Denmark, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Norway and the Netherlands indicating that they will participate. The model for the force will be the new Anglo-French Joint Expeditionary Force that will be operational by 2016.
2. Defence Spending
The United States shoulders three quarters of the alliance’s operating budget. US presidents and cabinet secretaries have consistently encouraged NATO members to spend more.
The US argument is expressed well in the valedictory remarks to NATO (June 10, 2011), of former US defense secretary Robert Gates, who warned, “The blunt reality is that there will be dwindling appetite and patience in the U.S. Congress — and in the American body politic writ large — to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources or make the necessary changes to be serious and capable partners in their own defense.”
Former US Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder graphically described the gap between the US and the rest of the Alliance: “the US spends three times as much as Europe on equipment, four times as much per soldier, and seven times as much on defence research and development.”
Fortunately, US public support for NATO remains high: 78 percent, the highest in 40 years, according to a May survey by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
Writing last month to NATO leaders, host David Cameron urged members to “make the strongest possible commitment to increase their defence spending”, stressing that such investment signals “that NATO means business“.
It will take considerable effort. Defence spending in 2000 for most NATO members was 2 percent of GDP but it has steadily declined. Today only a handful of the 28 members meet the target. IHS Jane’s Defence Budgets notes that 13 of the top 20 most rapidly declining defence budgets from 2012 to 2014 are NATO members or partners.
3. Relations with Russia and stronger ties with Ukraine
Russia’s invasion of Poland and illegal annexation of Crimea violates the UN charter of the Helsinki Final Act, and Russia’s 20-year old commitment “to respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine”.
With the end of the Cold War there was hope that Russia would eventually become a NATO partner and in 2009 NATO and Russia signed an accord “build together a lasting and inclusive peace in the Euro-Atlantic area on the principles of democracy and cooperative security.” Like the Obama ‘reset’ it hasn’t worked out as planned.
President Putin wants to create a sphere of influence on his frontiers and, through the creation of his Eurasian Union (a free-trade customs union between Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus), a counter-weight to NATO. Ukraine is not his first incursion into a neighbour’s territory. In 2008, at his instruction, Russian forces occupied southern Georgia.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk plans to seek membership in NATO (dropping Ukraine’s non-aligned status). In a recent extraordinary meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Commission, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen reminded members “of NATO’s decision taken at the Bucharest Summit in 2008 according to which Ukraine will become a member of NATO, provided of course that Ukraine so wishes and provided that Ukraine fulfils the necessary criteria.”
4. Deepening partnerships and maintaining NATO’s open door policy
NATO’s partnerships, born out of its 1990 London summit focused first on the former Soviet bloc nations (many of whom are now full members), then on crisis management in the Balkans, and, since 9-11, on wider partnerships now including more than forty nations around the world – Australia, New Zealand and, as the latest addition, Mongolia. At its peak, the ISAF mission in Afghanistan included 22 partner nations. Partnership does not include the security guarantee of Article 5.
5. Afghanistan and the completion of ISAF at the end of 2014
NATO has been involved in Afghanistan since the UN Security Council authorized the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in December, 2001. At its peak, ISAF deployed 150,000 troops, over a third of which came from European NATO members and Canada.
An Afghan government has yet to be declared following the elections earlier this year. In December, U.S. combat forces are scheduled to withdraw. The US is still without agreement with Afghan authorities to leave an estimated 10,000 troops there for training and counterterrorism missions.
6. Jihad
Writing in the Daily Telegraph last month, British Prime Minister David Cameron called for a “firm security response” to defeat jihadist militants and the Islamic State saying that, as host, he would use the Wales NATO summit to build international support using “all our resources – aid, diplomacy, our military prowess…We are in the middle of a generational struggle against a poisonous and extremist ideology which I believe we will be fighting for the rest of my political lifetime. We face in ISIS a new threat that is single-minded, determined and unflinching in pursuit of its objectives.”
Last week Mr. Cameron continued in the same vein saying, “This threat cannot be solved simply by dealing with the perceived grievances over Western foreign policy. Nor can it be dealt with by addressing poverty, dictatorship or instability in the region, as important as these things are. The root cause of this threat to our security is quite clear. It is a poisonous ideology of Islamist extremism that is condemned by all faiths and by all faith leaders. It believes in using the most brutal forms of terrorism to force people to accept a warped worldview and to live in an almost medieval state.”
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