NATO and Terrorism Now That

NATO and Terrorism Now that NATO is involving itself more and more in the field of terrorism in Afghanistan and elsewhere, is NATO really equipped to become involved in terrorism? Tomas Valasek, Senior Analyst for the Center for Defense Information in Washington, D.C., wrote that after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, and shortly thereafter when the U.S.

went into Afghanistan to destroy the Taliban, NATO was "…nowhere in sight." Valasek explains that the 19 allies in NATO had spent "decades planning for jointly defending one another from attack" but when the U.S. got into Afghanistan, NATO was asked not to become involved by the Bush Administration. "Some observers say that NATO's role as a fighting alliance is over," Valasek wrote in 2001. Lord Robertson, head of NATO, said at that time that the U.S.

"…needs capable and effective European forces with which to cooperate, or on which to rely in peace support mission where the Alliance as a whole is not engaged" (Valasek, 2001, p. 3). Meantime, the Bush decision -- in keeping with his administration's willingness to "go it alone" vis-a-vis wars against terrorists -- to keep NATO out of Afghanistan did not stand the test of time. Soon enough, NATO was involved, and Prasad P.

Rane (writing in the journal Strategic Analysis) notes that in order to get into the fight NATO invoked Article 5 "…for the first time in the history of the Alliance" and declared that an attack on one of its members is indeed an attack on all NATO member nations (Rane, 2007, p. 73). In 2003 NATO took over the International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF) and subsequent to that NATO has had a "growing involvement" in Afghanistan. Rane writes (p.

74) that NATO's "…understanding of counter-terrorism is different from that of the U.S." due to differences "within and reservations of some of the NATO members." On page 82 Rane writes that NATO's development of counter-terrorism strategies has "…required a fundamental restructuring" of its organization in "both spatial and temporal terms" and the implication is that NATO is not fully up to speed with how to deal with terrorists and terrorism.

In fact on page 86 Pane insists that NATO's counter-terrorism strategy "seems to be oscillating between the WM (War Model) and ECJM (Expanded Criminal Justice Model)." The problem is of the 19 nations in NATO, many members see the ECJM model as the best role for NATO and others (the most recent members) prefer the U.S. approach, a more vigorous pursuit of the insurgents.

Pane concludes by saying that the "…philosophical divide between west Europeans and the Americans within NATO over counter-terrorism strategy will persist and in all probability grow wider as NATO digs deeper in Afghanistan" (p. 86). Meantime the Atlantic Council published an article in June, 2010, that states in no uncertain terms that "Today's NATO is not the NATO of the Cold War…nor is it even the NATO of just a decade ago" (Gorka, et al., 2010, p. 1).

The article goes into NATO's original mission in some detail, mentioning that it was originally designed to "…deter a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, to keep U.S. forces on the continent and to keep West Germany" on the right track to democracy after WWII. Gorka mentions that NATO has problems because there are nations that do not share the "political and moral.