NATO AND WORLD SECURITY
By Zbigniew Brzezinski
New York Times
August 19, 2009
In the course of its 60 years, NATO has institutionalized three
monumental transformations in world affairs: first, the end of the
centuries-long "civil war" within the West for trans-oceanic and
European supremacy; second, the United States’s post-World War II
commitment to the defense of Europe against Soviet domination; and
third, the peaceful termination of the Cold War, which created the
preconditions for a larger democratic European Union.
These successes, however, give rise to a legitimate question:
What next?
NATO now confronts historically unprecedented risks to global
security. The paradox of our time is that the world, increasingly
connected and economically interdependent, is experiencing intensifying
popular unrest. Yet there is no effective global security mechanism
for coping with the growing threat of chaos stemming from humanity’s
recent political awakening.
Additionally complicating is the fact that the dramatic rise of China
and India and the quick recovery of Japan within the last 50 years
have signaled that the global center of political and economic gravity
is shifting away from the North Atlantic toward Asia and the Pacific.
This dispersal of global power and the expanding mass unrest make
for a combustible mixture. In this dangerous setting, the first
order of business for NATO members is to define and pursue together a
politically acceptable outcome to its out-of region military engagement
in Afghanistan. This must be pursued on a genuinely shared military
and economic basis, without caveats regarding military participation
or evasions regarding financial assistance for Afghanistan and
Pakistan. Such a resolution of NATO’s first campaign based on Article
5 is necessary to sustain alliance credibility.
However, the fact is that the qualified wording of Article 5 allows
each country to do as much or as little as it thinks appropriate in
response to an attack on a fellow NATO member, and NATO’s reliance upon
consensus for decision-making enables even just one or two members
in effect to veto any response at all – a problem made more acute by
the expansion of the alliance to 28 members and the vulnerability
of some members to foreign inducements. Hence, some thought should
be given to formulating a more operational definition of "consensus"
when it is shared by an overwhelming majority but not by everyone.
The alliance also needs to define for itself a geopolitically
relevant long-term strategic goal for its relationship with the
Russian Federation. Russia is not an enemy, but it still views NATO
with hostility. Hence, two strategic objectives should define NATO’s
goal: to consolidate security in Europe by drawing Russia into a
closer association with the Euro-Atlantic community, and to engage
Russia in a wider web of global security that indirectly facilitates
the fading of Russia’s lingering imperial ambitions.
A good first step might be an agreement on security cooperation between
NATO and the Kremlin-created Collective Security Treaty Organization,
which consists of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia,
Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. In return for this concession – which Moscow
has long sought – such an arrangement should be made conditional
on provisions that confirm the right of current nonmembers to seek
membership of their own choice in either NATO or the CSTO.
Better relations between NATO and Russia could also facilitate a
cooperative outreach toward the rising Asian powers, which should
be drawn into joint security undertakings. Such gradually expanding
cooperation could lead, in turn, to a joint NATO-Shanghai Cooperation
Organization council, thereby indirectly engaging China in cooperation
with NATO, clearly a desirable goal. Indeed, given the changing
distribution of global power, NATO should soon consider more direct
formal links with several leading East Asian powers – especially
China and Japan – as well as with India.
But to remain relevant, NATO cannot – as some have urged – simply
expand itself into a global alliance or transform itself into a global
alliance of democracies. A global NATO would dilute the centrality of
the U.S.-European connection, and none of the rising powers would be
likely to accept membership in a globally expanded NATO. Furthermore,
an ideologically defined global alliance of democracies would face
serious difficulties in determining whom to exclude and in striking
a reasonable balance between its doctrinal and strategic purposes.
NATO, however, has the experience, the institutions and the means
to become the hub of a globe-spanning web of various regional
cooperative-security undertakings among states with the growing power
to act. In pursuing that strategic mission, NATO would not only be
preserving trans-Atlantic political unity; it would also be responding
to the 21st century’s increasingly urgent security agenda.
Zbigniew Brzezinski was U.S. national security adviser from
1977 to 1981. A longer version of this essay will appear in the
September-October issue of Foreign Affairs.