Only a few months ago, NATO leaders despaired of finding a worthwhile new task for the alliance. “If we can keep NATO going for a year, it will be a miracle,” said one top U.S. official last spring. The deal struck last week will keep NATO going. No longer designed to repel a Warsaw Pact invasion, it envisions rapid-deployment forces to deal with a multitude of new and unpredietable risks. The United States will remain dominant in the alliance, but the European allies will provide a larger share of the troops-and exert greater influence in NATO’s decision-making process.
It was the failed Soviet putsch and the Yugoslav civil war that inspired NATO’s “new thinking.” The coup attempt showed the instability of the U.S.S.R. and underscored the danger of nuclear weapons falling into irresponsible hands. The bitter conflict between Serbs and Croats in Yugoslavia highlighted the ethnic and religious animosities released by the end of the cold war. The European Community has tried –and failed–to pacify the warring Yugoslav republics, proving that the EC is not capable of policing the continent. (Last week the EC suspended its peace efforts and called on the United Nations to impose an oil embargo on Yugoslavia.) NATO planners say that leaves the alliance as the chief source of European stability.
The result is a new “strategic concept.” It replaces the classical cold-war principles of “forward defense” and “graduated response” with a doctrine based on smaller, more flexible forces. Battlefield nuclear weapons will disappear. Medium-range nuclear arms will remain in NATO arsenals but no longer in constant deployment on surface ships and submarines. A large share of NATO forces will consist of reserves. One old principle will not change. NATO still has no authority to act in “out of area” conflicts such as the Persian Gulf War.
This restructuring will not end European-American tensions. French President Francois Mitterrand signed the Rome declaration with the remark that “NATO is not a Holy Alliance” (a disobliging reference to the coalition formed by Europe’s reactionary monarchies after they defeated Napoleon in 1815). He and other advocates of an independent security system hope to balance the U.S. presence with new, allEuropean forces. Early next month at a watershed EC summit, Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl, the German chancellor, will seek Eurosupport for a Franco-German force to operate largely outside NATO. British and Dutch opposition may kill it. But the argument is likely to go on for years.
The Rome summit also created a new institution called the North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC). It will comprise the NATO countries, the Soviet Union, the three Baltic republics, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Romania. NATO officials will hold frequent meetings with the ex-communist states and there will be an annual NACC ministerial meeting. Subjects range from demilitarizing arms plants to air-traffic management and how to run elections. Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia have said they would like to become full NATO members, but the European allies feel that would be, as British Prime Minister John Major put it last week, “unsettling.” The NACC device meets the Central European aspirations halfway.
Bush and other leaders described the cellar-to-attic revamping NATO as “historic.” But both halves of once divided Europe are changing so fast that the new doctrines may be out of date in just a few years. “I only hope they last till I retire,” said a middle-aged alliance official in Rome, “but I can’t guarantee they will.” One change at least may be permanent. All of NATO’s previous doctrinal documents had been classified top secret. The Rome declaration was published as soon as it was signed, for all the world-and especially for the former enemy–to read.
