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NATO and Nuclear WeaponsRiga Summit Update, November 28 - 29, 2006Few results as the shortest Summit endsFrom Acronym Consultant Martin Butcher in Riga, November 29, 2006 See also:
The 2006 Riga Summit drew to a close today with few achievements in the bag. NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said the Summit had lasted a day and a half, but in fact a dinner, a trip to the opera, and 2 hours around the conference table were the sum total of the time NATO leaders spent together here. It is really striking that a debate about the nature of the Alliance has been sidestepped. Should NATO be, as the Secretary General has said, a provider of security and stability as it is trying to be in Afghanistan? Or should it concentrate on more traditional defence and security activities in the Euro-Atlantic area? What role do nuclear weapons play in Alliance defence policy? It is also striking that the one security topic of greatest concern to the United States - that is, Iraq, has been completely absent from discussion here. While the wounds of 2003's battles inside the Alliance have been bandaged, they have not healed and any attempt to build a major Alliance contribution for Iraq would be fruitless. Even the situation with Iran, which if armed with nuclear weapons would pose a serious threat to NATO member Turkey is not prominent here. Since the EU is leading negotiations with Iran, it has been kept off the NATO agenda - a symptom of the dysfunctional EU-NATO relationship and the ongoing struggle between Atlanticists who are happy in an American-led unipolar world, and those who wish to see the EU take on a global strategic role of its own. So, what has NATO done in Riga? Comprehensive Political Guidance (CPG) NATO Heads of State and Government have approved and published the CPG, already agreed by Defence Ministers last June. This document is short, bland and somewhat self-contradictory. For example, it reconfirms the 1999 Strategic Concept, which "described the evolving security environment in terms that remain valid", but the two greatest threats to NATO identified in the CPG are terrorism and the spread of WMD. The latter received some mention in the 1999 document, but the threat of terrorism was almost completely absent. The CPG states baldly that "Collective defence will remain the core purpose of the Alliance… ", but then moves on quickly to describe potential Allied contributions to conflict prevention and crisis management. Much of the text is devoted to creating the planning and management processes and mechanisms that will allow the Alliance to carry out future missions like that in Afghanistan. This is more in accordance with the Summit Declaration, which states that Afghanistan is NATO's "top priority". While the CPG claims that the spread of weapons of mass destruction is a threat to NATO countries, it contains nothing about arms control, non-proliferation or disarmament measures that could be used to significantly reduce such threats. Instead, the guidance sets out a need to defend "NATO deployed forces" against WMD with missile defences, and to be able to "conduct operations taking account of the threats posed by weapons of mass destruction", nuclear, biological or chemical. This is an approach straight from the American National Security Strategy, and from the Pentagon's paper - JP 3-40 Joint Doctrine for Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction. It is perhaps surprising that European nations, many of which retain much more sympathy for an arms control based approach to threat reduction, have failed to insert any language concerning threat reduction and diplomacy into this guidance. On the presence of US nuclear weapons in Europe, the CPG says that "There will continue to be a requirement for a mix of conventional and nuclear forces in accordance with extant guidance", a bland phrase which does nothing beyond reconfirming the existing confused position we described in earlier updates. However, sources have indicated that German and Norwegian ideas on nuclear arms control and reductions, set out in their Foreign Ministers joint article on November 11 in the Frankfurter Rundschau will probably be pressed to a greater degree than was the case in 1998 and 1999, when such concerns were last raised, although they did not come up at this meeting. The Summit Declaration does contain references to the North Korean nuclear test and to Iran's nuclear program. NATO sources said that these were included at American insistence, and after a debate with France about the appropriateness of such references. While the CPG claims to provide guidance for the next ten to fifteen years, many commentators have said that it is little more than a stop-gap. The Secretary General yesterday underlined that when he said he expected a new Strategic Concept to be debated and agreed by 2008. There will be opportunities to press for changes in nuclear deployments and arms control policies during that process. NATO sources affirmed that, while ideas such as those put forward publicly by Germany and Norway had not been discussed at this Summit, they would have to be in the future. Sources told Disarmament Diplomacy that while the urgency of the situation in Afghanistan had brushed aside more traditional Alliance debates on nuclear weapons, if NATO wished to be a serious security player in the future, it needed to return to its roots and once again deal with non-proliferation and arms control in formal NATO settings. Afghanistan If the CPG is something of a sideshow, Afghanistan was the real business of the Summit. And if the Alliance is to succeed in its ambition to become an exporter of security and stability, then it cannot afford to fail there. However, whilst public unity was on display in Riga, little will be changed on the ground. During a working dinner on the evening of November 28, NATO leaders found ways to paper over their differences on the use of national troop contingents in the International Stabilisation Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. NATO now claims that the ISAF Commander has full command over 26,000 of the 32,000 troops in country. But according to sources present General Jones, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander (SACEUR), had told those present at the dinner that lack of combat troops was not the problem, it was a lack of airlift, adequate helicopters and military intelligence that was really hampering NATO operations. He also highlighted failings in non-NATO police training and drug interdiction missions. The rise in drug production, now accounting for around $3bn or half the Afghan economy, is fast becoming the greatest problem for NATO as it funds the Taliban and other regional warlords who oppose the central government. And yet, a NATO spokesman yesterday reconfirmed that NATO will not take a lead in drug eradication or interdiction, but will only support Afghan government activities. Missile Defence NATO took an initial step here to deploying limited missile defences, having agreed earlier in the year to move ahead with a NATO wide layered missile defence system. The first contract for concept development for a theatre missile defence system was signed with a transatlantic consortium here in Riga. This small contract for 6m Euros is intended to lead to the development of a deployable missile defence system that can defend NATO troops on mission outside Europe from short range missile attacks. It is intended to have an operational system in place by 2010. This is the first initiative in the NATO Active Layered Theatre Ballistic Missile Defence system, which flows from a report agreed by NATO ministers on the feasibility of missile defences, but still unpublished. Other Items There were a number of other issues in the Summit Declaration, from a minor training agreement with Mediterranean Dialogue countries, to the offer of membership in Partnership for Peace extended to Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia Herzegovina. Serbia and Bosnia will be pressed to give full cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia in the Hague as the price of involvement in this NATO programme. The prospect of eventual membership was held out to Balkan states, but the United States failed to advance the cause of NATO membership for Georgia. The Declaration also continued pro-forma references to NATO-EU relations and NATO-Russia relations, but nothing of substance emerged or was even discussed. One rumour that swept the conference venue and caused some excitement, was that President Putin would fly into Riga uninvited and take President Chirac to dinner for his birthday. This caused some mild panic amongst the Latvian hosts until it proved untrue. Still, Latvia's President Vike-Freiburga was asked if President Putin was coming even at her final press conference. The area of energy security has quietly moved onto and up the NATO agenda at this summit. NATO Ambassadors have been tasked with reviewing what role NATO might take to "safeguard the security interests of the Allies" in this field, something which could be reasonably expected to raise some Russian concerns and bring new tensions to the NATO Russia relationship in coming months or years. Conclusion The overwhelming impression at this Summit is that NATO is an alliance struggling to cope with the missions it has undertaken in Afghanistan, and that this is putting pressure on other areas of Alliance activity. Add to this American pressure to transform the Alliance politically into a global security provider, and it is very difficult to hold the 26 member states together on anything more than a minimalist agenda. In suggesting the writing of a new Strategic Concept for 2008, Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer is taking this situation on head first. It seems likely that, whatever debates about documents, declarations and concepts emerge in Brussels, the future of NATO is being decided on the fields of Afghanistan.
© 2006 The Acronym Institute. |