NATO the North Atlantic Treaty

NATO

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was founded in 1949 when twelve nations from Western Europe and North America signed the North Atlantic Treaty in Washington, DC (NATO.int, 2011). The first NATO members are listed in Appendix A along with the current membership role. The key stipulation in the treaty was that "an armed attack against one or more…" of the members "…shall be considered an attack against them all." The structure of NATO began to take shape in 1950, when the outbreak of the Korean War heightened the sense of urgency felt by the NATO members. Gen. Eisenhower was appointed Supreme Allied Commander Europe and began the task of setting up NATO's structure.

The first forty years of NATO were defined largely by the organization's role in the Cold War, standing to defend Western Europe against the communist nations of Eastern Europe. Other critical incidents that helped to define NATO's role were the Yom Kippur War between the Arabs and the Israelis, and the 1974 Cyprus crisis between Turkey and Greece, both NATO members at the time (NATO.int, 2011).

Modern NATO history begins with the end of the Cold War, a situation that brought NATO into its current role in conflict resolution around the world in areas of interest to NATO members. The organization has been a major contributor to a number of missions in the Balkans, beginning in 1991. NATO's operations during that time have included monitoring embargoes, peacekeeping and active conflict, such as enforcing the no-fly zone over Libya earlier this year. The first no-fly zone monitoring was conducting over Bosnia-Herzegovina after the United Nations declared a no-fly zone over that country in 1992.

NATO has expanded in the post-Cold War environment as well, adding the central European nations of Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary. NATO's missions have expanded in recent years to include areas of northern Africa such as Libya and the Sudan, and the shipping lanes off the Horn of Africa that have been subject to significant piracy (NATO.int, 2011).

Raison d'Etre

NATO has essentially had two reasons for being in its history. The first was to protect against communist incursions into Western Europe. After the end of World War Two, NATO was created essentially as a counterweight to the Soviet Union's extensive sphere of influence. The Soviet Union was strong at the end of the war, while the armies of the Western nations were generally weak. Soviet troops began suppressing all non-Communist political opposition and Europe was being divided along communist/non-communist lines. The newly-created United Nations was quickly breaking down in terms of its ability to protect the sovereignty of nations, a situation which led the U.S., UK and Canada to forge their own solution. When France and the Low Countries joined the talks, the North Atlantic Treaty was formed (Haglund, 2011).

Thus, NATO from the beginning was set up as a military opposition to growing Soviet influence, and to provide the West with equivalent might in the Cold War to staunch the spread of communism. When the Cold War ended in the late 1980s and early 1990s and the once-powerful communist states began to either break apart or transition to capitalism, NATO's role shifted. Haglund (2011) argues that after the Cold War ended, NATO was "reconceived as a cooperative-security organization." NATO would thereby have two mandates. The first was to foster dialogue with former adversaries in the Warsaw Pact (many would eventually join NATO). The second was to manage conflicts in areas on the European periphery. This brought NATO's involvement to the Balkans, where a succession of conflicts emerged after the break-up of Yugoslavia. NATO's geographic scope has since extended into North Africa, and with the September 11th terrorist attacks, into Afghanistan as well.

Admissions Policies

Appendix A shows the NATO membership and the timeline for each country joining. After West Germany joined, there were no new members until Spain joined in 1982, and then no more new members until 1999. Since that point, there have been three enlargements of NATO, adding twelve new members. Ten of these were once part of Warsaw Pact nations and three were once part of the U.S.S.R. The other two are former Yugoslav constituent states of Slovenia and Croatia.

Article 10 of the North Atlantic Treaty covers the rules for joining NATO. Essentially, it is an invitation only club, wherein the current members can invite other European states to join. For example, Turkey has long blocked Cyprus from joining because of the disputed status of that island.

Internal Structure and Management

NATO has twin structures -- civilian and military -- and a number of organizations. The civilian structure consists of several divisions, including those related to defense policy and public diplomacy. The civilian headquarters is located in Brussels and has a staff of 4000. The civilian headquarters is home to the North Atlantic Council, which is the senior political decision-making body. The Council consists of high-level representatives of each member country. There is no one person who is head of NATO, though the political leaders of the constituent countries will have varying degrees of influence. The Council is chaired by the Secretary General, who is selected by the representatives of the constituent countries (NATO.int, 2011).

Within the military structure there is the Military Committee, Allied Command Operations and Allied Command Transformation. It is possible for a country to be a member of NATO's civilian organization while not a member of the military organization, a move that both France and Greece have made at different points in history. Most of the organizations exist with the Military Structure. The Military Structure, however, does not shape policy, the Civilian Structure does. The one exception to this is the Nuclear Planning Group, which is the only body within NATO that has the same level of authority and the North Atlantic Council, but only within its area of expertise (NATO.int, 2011).

The most prominent position within NATO's civilian leadership is the Secretary General. The current Secretary General is Anders Rasmussen from Denmark. This role is as a chair and a coordinator between the different bodies, and the Secretary General has the ability to work with all major divisions of NATO. While the Secretary General does not have sole decision-making power, this role is the most important and influential within the organization.

NATO's Activities

Because the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact essentially ended the first mandate for NATO and ushered in a new era, with a new raison d'etre, there is little point in discussing the Cold War activities of NATO outside of a historical context. Western society did manage to avoid nuclear holocaust or any significant communist incursions in Europe, other than what the Soviets had controlled after World War Two. The Cold War ended and the West won. This is oversimplification, of course, but the reality is that NATO met is most basic objectives during that, and whatever missteps might have been made along the way - no resolution to Cyprus being a big one -- are little more than footnotes in the history of that era. The more important evaluations of NATO need to reflect the modern NATO organization, its modern mission and its modern strategies.

The breakup of Yugoslavia provides much of the basis on which we can analyze NATO during the 1990s. The Eastern Bloc broke up quickly, and many states from that part of the world embarked on a process of modernizing their political and economic environments. There was certainly some hardship along the way, but the breakup of the Soviet Union created relatively little conflict, outside of the Caucasus region at least. By the end of the decade, the leading nations of Eastern Europe were set to join NATO. In the Balkans, however, the breakup of Yugoslavia left NATO with a succession of major tests to its mandate of managing conflicts on Europe's periphery. The Balkan region abuts Italy (through Slovenia, a non-conflict country) and Greece, but NATO saw the conflicts as something that it should manage, and undertake successive mission in the region. NATO's first military action came in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and then NATO became involved in the still-unresolved situation in Kosovo. The organization's involvement in both of these conflicts will be analyzed for its relative success and failure.

The 2000s brought the first direct attack on a NATO member, the September 11th terrorist attacks. In accordance with Article 5, this brought NATO into conflict with al-Qaeda, and by extension the Taliban. NATO has since extended its role somewhat to become involved in Libya, the Sudan and other North African hotspots. This extension of NATO's role, particularly the use of force to support the civil uprising in Libya, represents a further evolution in NATO's role.

Bosnia-Herzegovina

The breakup of Yugoslavia quickly led that region into conflict in 1991. The conflicts took on an ethnic and nationalist tone, and quickly became bloody. In November of 1991, NATO adopted its new "Strategic Concept" outlining its intentions to engage in security actions along its periphery (Schulte, 1997). This gave NATO the pretext to engage in the Yugoslav conflicts, but it did not do so until 1995. In the intervening years, NATO used primarily diplomatic means of dealing with the situation. The organization at this point was assisting the United Nations, and eventually took at the role of enforcing sanctions against the combatants. During this time, the conflict continued unabated, as the sanctions had only nominal impact. If the objective of NATO had been to stop the conflict, that objective was not met at all during this time. However, there is little evidence that actually stopping the conflict was the objective. The objective of 'managing' the conflict can be interpreted in a number of ways, but from NATO's actions the organization simply did not want the conflict to expand into other parts of Europe. There was a significant ethnic element to the conflict, and of course some of the regions involved bordered on NATO countries, and also on non-combatant countries like Slovenia.

In 1994, the NATO strategy in the region shifted from one of containment and monitoring to one of active combat involvement (Haglund, 2011). While enforcing the no-fly zone over Bosnia, NATO aircraft shot down Serbian jets that had attacked a Bosnian factory. The next stage of the operation was called Operation Deliberate Force, which entailed bombing Serbian positions and assets. Having officially entered the conflict, NATO turned the tide of the conflict as well. Deliberate Force lasted for 2 1/2 weeks, and destroyed the capabilities of the Bosnian Serbs were to that point had been the main aggressors (Hendrickson, 2005).

Operation Deliberate Force led to the signing of the Dayton Accords, which ended the conflict. The fact that the conflict ended so quickly once NATO became actively involved indicates that Operation Deliberate Force was a success, but it is not so easy to determine whether or not the entire Bosnian operation was a success. The conflict had dragged on for three-and-a-half years when NATO's role was strictly non-confrontational. As long as the organization was playing the role of monitoring sanctions, the conflict raged and NATO was ineffective.

It is worth considering, however, that NATO did not have a clearly defined mandate for Bosnia. As Hendrikson (2005) points out, NATO's early involvement in the conflict was not without internal conflict. The EU and United Nations had taken the lead on dealing with the conflict in 1991. Member nations of NATO were conflicted about whether or not the Balkan region should be part of their mandate. NATO's role at the time, of course, was in a state of transition at the end of the Cold War. The member nations were unsure whether or NATO should become involved in the conflict, and allowed other organizations to take the lead. Some key NATO members -- the UK, Canada and France, were already involved in the conflict under the auspices of the United Nations (Ibid).

When NATO finally engaged in the conflict militarily, it was the first time that NATO had ever done so. At that point, NATO had determined that it had a clear mandate and sought to enact that mandate. Prior to Deliberate Force, NATO had remained as something of an outside player, and other than the Banja Luka incident had not been involved heavily in conflict.

Thus, when measuring the success of the NATO mission in Bosnia it is worth considering that NATO did not have much mandate. The member nations could not agree of whether the Balkans was to be in their sphere of influence, and they could not agree on any set objectives for their mission other than enforcing sanctions that the UN had approved. When NATO attained clarity of vision with respect to its role in Bosnia, its swift, decisive actions brought about an end to the conflict quickly. On those terms, the NATO mission in Bosnia was a success.

Kosovo

The Balkans proved to be an ongoing challenge for NATO, however. The next major conflict zone was in Kosovo, a province of Yugoslavia that was comprised primarily of ethnic Albanians, a Muslim people. When the Kosovars saw that the international community had little interest in their corner of the Balkans, their unarmed resistance became an armed one, ushering in another major conflict in the former Yugoslavia. According to the U.S. Department of Defense (1999), Operation Allied Force had the objective to "degrade and damage the military and security structure that President Milosevic has used to depopulate and destroy the Albanian majority in Kosovo."

The bombing campaign was successful as it led to the withdrawal of Yugoslav forces from Kosovo. There were criticisms of the operation, because of the high number of civilian casualties, upwards of five hundred according human rights groups (Human Rights Watch, 2000). The campaign, according to these groups, did not enjoy success because of the loss of civilian life. Arguably, however, the loss of civilian life would have been much greater had the conflict dragged on.

After Operation Allied Force, NATO became involved in the post-conflict reconstruction effort, which was another first for the organization under its post-Cold War mandate. NATO set up the Kosovo Force (KFOR), that was to be NATO's primary involvement in the country from that point. Under the UNSC Resolution 1244, KFOR was established to be "responsible for establishing and maintaining security in Kosovo," and the force has existed ever since (Dursun-Ozkanca, 2009). KFOR initially was the most powerful force on the ground in Kosovo and as a result had to operate civilian tasks outside of its mandate (Ibid).

KFOR remains mandated to provide security for Kosovo today. This mandate includes providing backup for local police forces faced with strong security challenges. There are many such challenges in Kosovo, particularly with respect to strife between the Kosovar majority of the minority Serb enclaves. Kosovo's situation remains complicated because the international community is split with respect to Kosovo's declaration of independence, with as many major countries opposing this declaration of independence from Serbia as supporting it.

NATO's more recent tasks in Kosovo include disbanding the KPC (Kosovo Protection Corps, a sort of a paramilitary police force). KFOR is also implementing development zones, areas of a stable and secure environment that can be part of building a new, safe Kosovo for all its people. NATO has not typically engaged in post-conflict peace-building activities, so its ongoing involvement in Kosovo is an example of NATO's expanded mandate in the post-Cold War milieu. While the primary peace and security mandate in Kosovo remains, NATO appears to have less of a mandate with respect to its current activities outside of security in Kosovo, at times conflicting with the role of the EU (Dursun-Ozkanca, 2009). In addition, the is little timeframe for the end of the NATO mission in Kosovo.

Overall, it may be difficult to judge the relative success or failure of the NATO mission in Kosovo. Part of the reason is that the problem is ongoing, and probably will be until the sovereignty issue is resolved. NATO also has a fairly changeable list of objectives for Kosovo. The initial role of KFOR is still valid. By and large, KFOR has been successful at keeping the peace in Kosovo, although the long-run success of these efforts will be dictated in part by the ability of KFOR to bring together people of different ethnic groups to live side-by-side. For the past ten years, the peace has been kept by keeping the Serbs and Albanians apart from one another, a situation that is not sustainable in the long run.

When NATO established KFOR in 1999, it knew that it was entering into a long-term commitment to this mission. In that respect, it is hard to say that the current twelve-year run in Kosovo is successful or not. The mandate that NATO has in Kosovo has expanded into civilian efforts in post-conflict reconstruction, and it appears that NATO is committed to maintaining a presence in Kosovo until the sovereignty issue is resolved. That the mission has lasted so long ultimately is not the fault of NATO. Most member nations support Kosovar independence as a resolution to the situation. In addition, KFOR itself is only around one-tenth of its initial size, so the commitment has been reduced dramatically, indicating that by and large the mission in Kosovo has been successful, if a slower-than-expected process.

Afghanistan

When the United States was attacked by the terrorist organization al-Qaeda on September 11th, 2001, this marked the first time that a NATO member had been subject to attack. According to Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, NATO members are obligated to treat this attack on one member as an attack on them all. Article 5, of course, was written at the outset of the Cold War and the strong wording held very much true. In a more globally diverse world, it was uncertain how the NATO partners would react to an attack on the United States, especially by a non-sovereign entity. The attacks then, would be a test for NATO. Additionally, when it was determined that the theater was going to Afghanistan, this marked the first instance where NATO became involved in an "out-of-area" conflict (Gallis & Morelli, 2008). The action in Afghanistan was also viewed as an extension of NATO's role into counter-terrorism and anti-weapons-proliferation activities (Ibid).

NATO's organization in Afghanistan is the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). The ISAF, as with KFOR, has taken on a role that goes beyond the military defeat of al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and encompasses a wide range of post-conflict reconstruction activities: training the Afghan army, police and judiciary; supporting the anti-narcotics efforts of the central government and developing a market infrastructure (Ibid).

This nation-building effort remains unresolved. The country's provinces were divided into Provincial Reconstruction Teams, with individual countries given a province with which to work. Each nation has different views on how the reconstruction process should be conducted, and this has led to patchwork results in Afghanistan. The mission continues for the ISAF, but is complicated by a number of factors, including the withdrawal from the mission of key partners like Canada and the United States, and ongoing security threats that make the rest of the reconstruction efforts nearly impossible to implement.

At present, NATO is transitioning some regions of the country over to Afghan leadership. The City of Kabul was transferred in 1998, and the first tranche of transfer to Afghan security forces is underway at present. NATO is still viewed as having a combat mission in the country, and that this will extend to at least 2014 (NATO, 2011). The NATO mission in Afghanistan, therefore, is a work in progress. There can be little doubt that even the initial combat action aimed at al-Qaeda and the Taliban has been something less than a resounding success, given the violence that plagues much of the country today. The organization is committed to a long-term post-conflict reconstruction process in Afghanistan so while the early results are mixed at best, the final assessment of the success or failure of this mission cannot yet be ascertained.

Libya

In 2011, NATO enforced militarily a no-fly zone over Libya, but the action also included air strikes are Libyan government troops. This involvement was a resounding success in that the Libyan conflict ended relatively quickly and with the overthrow of the Qaddafi regime. The operation began in March of 2011 and ended in October when the regime's hold on the country was removed (NATO.int, 2011).

Operation Unified Protector, as the mission was known, was a coalition of NATO and non-NATO countries acting to defend the Libyan people from a regime that was attacking its own civilians with the full might of its military. The mission mirrors Afghanistan in its partnership between NATO and non-NATO countries. The operation was aerial in nature, and there were no ground troops involved (Ibid). The United Nations Security Council adopted a resolution authorizing member states to take all necessary measures to protect the Libyan civilians.

This came in the form of a no-fly zone, whereby NATO aircraft engaged Libyan aircraft, but this mission was quickly extended to the following three objectives. NATO and its partners were to enforce the UNSC resolution until:

"All attacks on civilians and civilian-populated areas have ended

The Qaddafi regime withdraws all military and paramilitary forces to its bases and The Qaddafi regime permits immediate, full, safe and unhindered access to humanitarian aid for the Libyan people." (NATO.int, 2011)

There has been some question among observers as to how faithful NATO and its allies were to the objectives of the mission. NATO aircraft began engaging Qaddafi ground forces directly, having quickly decimated the Libyan Air Force. Additionally, when the civilian protestors took up arms, the conflict could have been characterized as a civil war, and the defense of those rebels would fall outside of the UN mandate. However, the conflict was brought to resolution quickly, and those concerns have largely abated.