The international community has yet to exploit one of its best stabilisation instruments, membership of the “clubs” that nations aspire to. The dynamics of these aspirational clubs are peaceful, preventive and comparably cheap. The combined impact of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the European Union (EU) advanced stability and democracy in post-cold war Central and Eastern Europe, yet this lesson has not been employed in other regions of the world. Surprisingly so, as success stories are harder to find when it comes to exporting political and economic stability to these regions. NATO should therefore extend its reach and become an aspirational club open to membership around the world, thus becoming a weapon of mass democratisation.

 

The United Nations is important as an organisation where all existing states can meet, but it will never provide the impetus for global change. The end of the cold war has given the international community a unique opportunity to support transition democracies and make democratic governance the norm. Established democracies should therefore feel an obligation to provide institutional frameworks that foster democracy, the rule of law, progress towards a market economy and the settlement of border disputes. By changing NATO’s remit and renaming it the Organisation of Democratic States (ODS) that would offer membership to any country that fulfils the necessary democratic criteria, the alliance could become a motor for this global transition process. Its appeal could be greatest in those regions that are the least hopeful - the Middle East and Africa. Membership of the ODS would offer a stamp of approval that not only brings security guarantees but also better credit ratings and improved prospects for foreign investment.

 

No one contests today that the nature of global threats has changed radically in the last 15 years. But our global institutions have changed only slowly, so there is rising dissatisfaction over their inability to handle the emerging new challenges. On both sides of the Atlantic there is widespread agreement that our institutions are failing to offer the sort of carrots needed to pull countries ranging from transitional to rogue into the orbit of liberty and democracy or to provide the sticks needed to rein in governments up to no good.

 

The UN’s recent reform package does not satisfy these requirements. Its minimal institutional changes are drops in the ocean when set against international terrorism, global warming and fragile statehoods. These reforms also fall far short of giving impetus to the many countries in transition from an authoritarian regime towards more democratic structures.

 

The most significant element of UN reform has been the introduction of the “Responsibility to Protect” norm into the international system. This stipulates that a state, as well as the international community, holds a responsibility to protect its population from “serious harm, as a result of internal war, insurgency, repression or state failure”. It provides the international community with not just a right to protect populations from oppressive governments but also a responsibility. This represents a significant step away from the “Westphalian” model that for 350 years has governed our thinking on the rights and responsibilities of nations and their governments.

 

Throughout the debate over Responsibility to Protect, much emphasis has been placed on military intervention. Although understandable in light of Afghanistan and Iraq, it distracts from the greater prize of strengthening international conflict prevention. The Responsibility to Protect norm places its strongest emphasis on the Responsibility to Prevent, which should “address both the root causes and direct causes of internal conflict”. Because preventive policy tools are less visible and more incremental – so that the reasons for their success or failure are more difficult to identify than direct reactionary policy measures – governments around the world have been weak in devising preventive strategic frameworks.

 

For all that, the international community holds a potentially successful stabilisation tool that is preventive by nature, averts human suffering and is cost-effective in the shape of aspirational clubs membership. It reflects the human logic that people will always want to become members of a stable and prosperous club, even if to do so they are obliged to respect its rules. The main prerequisites are that club membership should bring some concrete benefits, and that the membership criteria should apply equally to all.

 

Aspirational clubs are fundamentally different to all-inclusive clubs. Membership of all-inclusive clubs is generally defined by geography, whereas aspirational clubs have a principle as their main entrance criterion. The AU and UN are good examples of the former, and the EU and NATO are the best examples of the latter.

 

One of the great success stories of recent years has been the stabilisation of central Europe. Thanks to NATO and EU enlargement, these countries were encouraged to move towards liberal democracy and a market economy. Unlike with the UN, or indeed the African Union, NATO and the EU have strict rules that need to be adhered to by applicants. NATO and the EU also had very specific gifts to offer which aspirant members recognised would bring tangible benefits, like territorial security financial support and political recognition, which in turn all supported economic growth. And now that central Europe has joined, the wave is spreading further to the once-failed states of the western Balkans and the former Soviet Union.

 

Europe was fortunate to have two well-functioning aspirational clubs. This dynamic led towards the swiftest and most peaceful transition towards democratic governance the world has ever seen. But states in regions like Africa and the Middle East have not had such a clear guiding light, and their instability can be partly explained by this.

 

Rather than trying to promote regional integration in Africa and the Middle East, the alternative is the establishment of a global club, grown out of NATO that could be called the Organisation of Democratic States (ODS). Just as NATO has offered a political/security infrastructure for European states, the ODS could offer the same benefits globally. Of course, states could only join if they fulfil the criteria of democracy and market economy that are inherent in club membership.

 

By offering its membership to countries around the world under this strict conditionality, the ODS could have a significant impact. States like South Africa, Botswana, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Japan, New Zealand, and Australia would no doubt be eligible to join immediately. Others, such as Algeria, , Russia, Lebanon, Iraq,Morocco, Nigeria, the Philippines and Indonesia that are presently working to improve democracy and the rule of law, would be encouraged to set ODS membership as their pole star.

 

In much the same way as NATO provided a platform for harmonising military and security practices, the ODS would provide the same benefits globally. This would be extremely important when it comes to deployment of forces to combat terrorism and in support of conflict prevention or post-conflict reconstruction. While the ODS should not be positioned as a replacement for the UN, there is no doubt that it would gain its own legitimacy from being an equally global club, and could offer to deploy coherent – jointly trained –forces for the UN when required..

 

The fact that democracy has already spread in the last fifty years[1] gives a particularly pressing reason for creating the ODS now. Given the fragility of many newly democratic regimes the international community needs to ensure that none of these countries experiences a relapse into authoritarianism. This challenge is at present only being addressed in a patchy manner by democracies around the world. For instance, the Community of Democracies project is “an informal association of states dedicated to promoting and strengthening democracy at home and abroad” (Democracy Coalition Project, www.demcoalition.org), but its benefits remain elusive as it fails to provide concrete benefits to members and hence non-members have little incentive to improve their ways in order to join.

 

To transform itself into the ODS, NATO would need to change surprisingly little. It has a well-functioning institutional structure and its membership criteria are tried and tested. It has also gathered a wealth of information on possible future membership of transition countries, and so far has been much faster to conclude enlargement negotiations than the European Union. This has greatly reinforced NATO’s reputation as an alliance that spreads peace and democracy, and so provides an institutional anchor for transition countries. For NATO to become a global democratic alliance like the envisaged ODS, it would need to take out the almost obsolete reference in its treaty preamble to the North Atlantic area. NATO members like Turkey and Estonia, or Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council countries like Kazakhstan, have little association with the North Atlantic, and taking out the geographic limitation while changing the name to ODS would mean only very small changes to NATO’s structures and mechanisms, but with a potentially huge impact on the international order.

 

For NATO to become the ODS, there would nevertheless have to be more than a name change and an extension of the geographic remit. To ensure that decision-making did not grind to a halt with a greatly expanded membership, some form of majority voting would need to be introduced, with possibly both the US and the EU (the latter collectively) having a veto.

 

Even if individual EU member states sat at the table, by only attributing a veto to the EU collectively, a powerful encouragement would be given to the development of a real European Security and Defence Policy. Furthermore, by broadening the alliance beyond its current geography, the notion that a single EU voice may threaten remaining members would be reduced, as in a bigger NATO, having a single EU voice would encourage rapid decisions. It would also be important to include a clause in the treaty establishing the ODS about suspending member states that may for one reason or another lose their democratic status. And as a forum of democracies, the ODS should also seek to place democratic – rather than just governmental – decision-making at its heart, with an expanded place for parliamentarians and civil society by building on the strengths of NATO’s North Atlantic Assembly.

 

It is worth considering whether the ODS should offer more than security guarantees by adding an economic policy arm to its capacities. Basic ODS membership would offer political dialogue and security guarantees, but there is also an argument that the ODS might envisage some form of financial support, comparable to the EU’s regional funds perhaps, and with easier access to markets through the creation of a free trade area. Obviously, these steps would be secondary steps to the primary aim of establishing ODS as the world’s central democratic security alliance. However, these economic would increase the magnetic effect of this potentially powerful aspirational club.

 

To maximise its impact from the start, the ODS could concentrate on recruiting members in areas where there is a lack of international or regional security organisations and where fragile semi-democracies would benefit from the support of ODS membership. The two most obvious areas are Africa and the Middle East. Countries striving to develop free market and democratic principles have few if any international incentives to pursue reform. External pressures to change are heavily diluted, and cannot be compared with those that encouraged eastern European countries in the early 1990s and Western Europe in the 1950s.

 

Africa is the only continent where security, living standards and economic development have all deteriorated over the last two decades. The continent now poses a significant challenge to the international community on moral as well as on security and economic grounds, so the international community should not shy away from a novel approach.

 

Some important steps are already being undertaken to foster change in the way African countries govern themselves. The AU represents a very positive step forward and is beginning to act as a stabilising factor in crises through direct political mediation, by forming alliances to increase international pressure on conflict protagonists and by conducting Peace Support Operations. But the AU has no aspirational club mechanism as it is an “all-inclusive” club.

 

The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), is one aspirational mechanism that could provide limited pressure for reform along free market and democratic principles within the AU framework. But its peer review mechanism is judged by its own members, some of which are countries that do not themselves espouse progressive principles. The actual rewards of the NEPAD in any case are very uncertain. So even if the NEPAD can act as an aspirational mechanism for Africa, but its system is untested and its rewards are elusive. Offering ODS membership to these struggling semi-democracies could therefore provide the whole continent with an aspirational mechanism.

 

Sub-Saharan Africa is the poorest and most violent region in the world. It has suffered more casualties of war over the last decade than did Europe in the Great War of 1914-18. Nigeria holds the key to stabilising the whole region. Its population of 130m is projected to rise to 180m by 2015, and represents a quarter of the regional population. If Nigeria can be stabilised, the whole of sub-Saharan Africa could become politically stable. The international community has a substantial interest in assisting Nigeria on its fledgling path towards democracy and economic prosperity. A tenth of US oil imports come from Nigeria, and within the coming decade it will have become one of the world’s top three natural gas suppliers. At the same time, Nigeria has the largest Muslim population in Africa, so it could either become a showcase for integration, or a frightening scenario of inter-ethnic hatred.

 

The possibility of ODS membership, preceded perhaps by letting Nigeria join an ODS version of NATO’s Partnership for Peace, could act as a significant stabilisation factor. Politically, it would provide Nigeria’s elites with an incentive to uphold democratic principles. Militarily, potential ODS membership would strengthen the Nigerian army through participation in ODS training and resource sharing. Exchanges with armies from democratic countries would help the Nigerian military to better understand its role in a democratic system.

 

The Middle East continues to have the smallest proportion of democracies in the world. Partly for historical reasons, democratic structures have spread very slowly. The past decade has seen a gradual momentum in the democratisation of the region, but these successes are patchy and still deeply unstable.

 

The striking exception in the Middle East is Israel. It represents the most advanced democracy in the region and has long yearned for NATO membership. ODS membership should be offered to Israel, but would need to be dealt with delicately as it would increase the divide in the region and could be seriously detrimental. There are two ways around this, to be conducted in unison. First, if Palestinian authority was adhering more and more to democratic principles, its territory would be part of the ODS membership, so it would be only with their consent that Israel could join the ODS. Second, the ODS membership process for Israel could occur in parallel with that of Arab states such as Lebanon and possibly Iraq. Both options would take the explosive potential out of offering Israel membership in the ODS.

 

Could Iraq’s membership of the ODS constitute part of a viable exit-strategy for the US-led coalition forces? Offering ODS participation could be preferable to other exit scenarios for a number of reasons. It would institutionalise military cooperation between Iraqi and ODS forces, providing the Iraqi forces with essential military capacities. Membership would also put Iraqi government representatives and military officials on a level playing field with their coalition counterparts, and it would provide a strong incentive not to fall back on authoritarian rule.