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| Author: | Lionel Beehner |
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July 27, 2006
Members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) remain divided on whether to enlarge the alliance and expand its mission further. NATO officials will meet this November in Riga, Latvia to discuss enlarging the organization to include Ukraine and Georgia in addition to the Balkan states of Croatia, Macedonia, and Albania at some further date. Some U.S.-based experts say NATO must enlarge to meet the changing nature of transnational threats, from terrorism to typhoons to turmoil in the Middle East. Yet others say expanding NATO may put too much strain on the alliance, weaken its collective defense mechanism, and needlessly upset Russia, which still harbor suspicions of the Cold-War-era bloc. In recent years, NATO has stretched its mandate to provide security forces in southern Afghanistan, deliver relief items to tsunami and earthquake victims in Southern Asia, and train and equip troops in Iraq. More recently, there have been calls for NATO forces to stabilize the border between Israel and Lebanon.
NATO was created in 1949 to protect Europe from the threats, both ideological and military, posed by the Soviet Union. “To keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down,” is how some experts described its mission. The twelve-member defense alliance expanded in the 1950s to include Greece, Turkey, and West Germany and in 1982, Spain. After the Soviet Union’s breakup, NATO absorbed a united Germany, and in the 1990s intervened in conflicts in the Balkans.
"NATO must expand if it’s going to have any relevance,” says Michael Peters.
The alliance expanded again in 1999 to include the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland, and in 2004 enlarged a final time to include seven more East European members. The day after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the alliance invoked Article 5 for the first time. This collective security principle states that an attack on one member is an attack against all. CFR Adjunct Senior Fellow Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall calls NATO “the only standing military alliance that works.”
A growing number of NATO’s missions are now outside the European theater—or “out of area.” NATO operations, in addition to the recent deployment of forces to Afghanistan, have included:
“The goal is to add countries that would add something to NATO,” Goldgeier says, “especially at a time when Europeans are having trouble meeting their own defense commitments.” He says expanding NATO will spread security and allow new members to meet a common set of military and defense standards (i.e. civilian control over the military). He supports opening NATO membership beyond the twenty applicants of NATO’s Partnership for Peace program, which is limited to states in Europe and Central Asia and includes many undemocratic states (i.e. Belarus). He says membership should be extended to any country that shares NATO members’ commitment to human rights, democracy, and open markets. Goldgeier envisions NATO one day allowing in states like Australia, Brazil, Japan, India, New Zealand, South Africa, and South Korea. To do so, experts say, would require amending Article 10 of the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty, which confines NATO membership to European countries (in addition to Canada and the United States).
Most critics of NATO’s “open door” policy say enlargement should be more gradual and only offered once internal divisions are resolved and existing members all meet the same standards. “We need to take baby steps,” says Julianne Smith, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It’s not an impossible dream but there’s evidence it may be a painful transition.” Among the concerns about an enlarged NATO:
“NATO’s already stretched it by including Baltic States like Latvia , which have no military capability. The only thing they bring from a military point of view is territory,” says Peters.
More members may also complicate internal disagreements on the role NATO should play in the world. For example, several European states, notably the Netherlands, have struggled domestically with plans to commit their troops to NATO missions in dangerous conflict zones like Afghanistan. Others are concerned an enlarged NATO will further slow the alliance’s reaction time. For example, NATO was criticized for its sluggish response in the wake of an earthquake that struck Pakistan’s Kashmir region last October.
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