An opinion shared by some academics posits the need for a new re-invention of NATO, the third of its kind in the post-Cold War era. For some analysts, that would logically entail the adoption of a third post-Cold War new Strategic Concept, after the ones endorsed at the NATO summits in Rome (1991) and Washington (1999). However, the recent NATO summit in Riga (late November 2006) chose to endorse a policy document meant only to supplement, not to replace, the alliance’s 1999 Strategic Concept, i.e. the Comprehensive Political Guidance.
Besides that sheer fact, a more controversial issue would be to base a possible new NATO strategy on the concept of strategic coercion, which would entail offensive action against state and non-state actors alike. Offensive as it is by itself, the concept is also politically unsound and militarily dangerous. Such an approach would be tantamount with generalising worldwide controversies over the right to intervention such as those generated by the NATO war in Kosovo (1999), and extending the present quagmire in Afghanistan to wherever trouble spot NATO might choose to intervene in future. Or, to put it alternatively, to transfer the current prevailing anti-American (or, to be precise, anti-Bush) feeling generated by the failure of the Iraq campaign, upon NATO at large, and to transform the latter into a sort of a much-hated globo-cop.
True enough, there is an ongoing debate on how the alliance should be given a more global profile, especially on whether or not the alliance should assume roles in homeland and energy security, as well as in the democratisation process. But other than that, among policy decision-makers there is not much disagreement about the role of NATO. In order to successfully transform itself from a mere instrument for defence into an organisation for collective security the alliance has firstly to continually update its military structure. From the latter perspective, by declaring that NATO Response Force is fully operational, the Riga summit marked a crucial turning point. NATO’s rapid reaction force is capable of performing missions worldwide across the whole spectrum of operations, including evacuations, disaster management, counterterrorism, and acting as “an initial entry force” for larger, follow-on forces. Secondly, the alliance has also to start new forms of political dialogue and cooperation in the security sector with countries that share its founding values and its security problems. Last but not least, NATO should continue to work on strengthening the transatlantic link and to further reconcile the transatlantic agenda which was dramatically shattered throughout the war in Iraq.
NATO has enough of a credibility problem already in Afghanistan. Instead of embracing stabilisation and reconstruction operations among its core standard operations, NATO should work on forging a new ‘division of labour’ with the EU in the security and defence domains. By-gone are those days when the EU was merely a regional player. Despite its still unsolved equipment, financial and human resources problems, through its ESDP, the EU has increasingly become an international actor, performing military and civilian crisis management, security sector reform, rule of law enforcement, and border assistance missions not only in its immediate neighbourhood, in the Balkans (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia), Caucasus and Eastern Europe (Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova), Mediterranean and Middle East (Egypt, Gaza), but also in far-away places such as Congo and Indonesia. Building on the ‘lessons learned’ in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the cooperation between NATO and EU should be taken now to a new level, having as its theatre of operation the global arena – as suggested by NATO’s Secretary General by announcing the intention of involving the EU in a future Contact Group for Afghanistan.