North Atlantic Treaty Organization - Harvard Model United Nations

North Atlantic Treaty 

Organization 

TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Introduction 5 

History of the Committee 5 

Topic Area A 5 

Topic Area B 19 

Position Paper Requirements 27 

Closing Remarks 27 

Bibliography 30 

Appendix 31 

Topic Area A: 

Standards for NATO Intervention 

Topic Area B: 

NATO in the 21st Century 

Statement of the Problem 

History of the Issue 

Current Situation 

Relevant NATO Actions 

Proposed Solutions 

Questions a Resolution Must Answer 

Bloc Positions 

Suggestions for Further Research 

5 

6 

10 

15 

16 

17 

18 

18 








19 

20 

22 

25 

26 

27 

27 

Economic and Social Council 

& Regional Bodies

North Atlantic Treaty Organization 

Harvard Model United Nations 2013 

A Letter From the Secretary-General 

Dear Delegates of HMUN 2013, 

Stephen Ethan Lyle 

Secretary-General 

Ainsley E. Faux 

Director-General 

Miranda M. Ravicz 

Under-Secretary-General 

Administration 

Da-Bin Ryu 


Business 

Alexandra M. Harsacky 

Comptroller 

William R. Gorman 


Innovation and Technology 

Julia A. Solomon-Strauss 


General Assembly 

Lisa L. Wang 



Samuel H. Leiter 


Specialized Agencies 

It is my distinct honor and high privilege to welcome you to the Sixtieth Session of 

Harvard Model United Nations. Our entire staff of 215 Harvard undergraduates is 

eager to join with you this January at the Sheraton Boston for an exciting weekend of 

debate, diplomacy, and cultural exchange. You and your 3,200 fellow delegates join a long 

legacy of individuals passionate about international affairs as well as the pressing issues 

confronting our world. 

Founded in 1927 as Harvard Model League of Nations, our organization has evolved 

into one of America’s oldest, largest, and most international United Nations simulations. 

Drawing from this rich history, Harvard Model United Nations has strived to emphasize 

and promote the unique impact of the UN and its mandates in the eradication of humanity’s 

greatest problems. The United Nations is truly a global body with representation from 193 

member states and is the closest the world has ever achieved to a “Parliament of Man.” 

HMUN 2013 is ambitious in its scope: our committees will jump from the Iroquois 

Confederacy in 1775 to the dawn of the year 2015 and the complex problems it will bring 

for the world economy. Our committees are diverse not only in time, but also in topics, 

with discussions on international security, human rights, development, managing a worldreknowned 

corporation, technology, and many pressing regional issues just to name a few. 

At HMUN, we also strive to emphasize international diversity within our community. To 

that end, HMUN 2013 is proud to welcome students from over 40 countries to share in 

this incredible experience. 

At Harvard Model United Nations, we set out to tackle meaningful issues that world 

leaders have struggled mightily to resolve. Our challenge is considerable. And yet, HMUN 

2013 will be one of the fondest memories we will come to share. Meeting friends—old 

and new—hailing from different cities, states, and continents is a profound experience. 

I wish you the best of luck in your preparations for HMUN, and please do not hesitate 

to contact me with any questions or concerns you may have along the way. Opening 

Ceremonies will be here before you know it. Get ready. 

Sincerely, 

59 Shepard Street, Box 205 

Cambridge, MA 02138 

Voice: 617-398-0772 

Fax: 617-588-0285 

Email: info@harvardmun.org 

www.harvardmun.org 

Ethan Lyle 



22 Economic and Social Council Specialized & Regional Agencies Bodies



A LETTER FROM THE UNDER-SECRETARY-GENERAL FOR THE 

ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COUNCIL & REGIONAL BODIES 








Da-Bin Ryu 


Business 


Comptroller 







Lisa L. Wang 






Dear Delegates of the Economic and Social Council & Regional Bodies, 

Welcome to the Economic and Social Council and Regional Bodies at the 60th session of 

Harvard Model United Nations! After a year of preparation, your directors, moderators, 

crisis directors, assistant directors, and I are excited to meet you and to begin debate in ten 

of the most invigorating, creative, solution-oriented, and collaborative committees of the 

conference. 

As an organ, ECOSOC is uniquely tasked with the discussion, promotion, and resolution of 

global issues touching states on a very individual level. Thus, while the General Assembly and 

Specialized Agencies grapple with issues of state security and international peace, delegates 

of ECOSOC are constantly reminded that the United Nations, a union of states, is equally 

devoted to promoting the interests of the individuals that compose them. 

This year, we will cover the sciences of disease, the status of women and refugees, and the 

future of human rights in our standing committees. We will also deliver dynamic localized 

debate from our Regional Bodies, through two outstanding and long-running committees, 

the European Union and NATO. We will travel back in time to explore the Western Sahara 

crisis through the League of Arab States. Our NGO program returns to this organ, promising 

both fixed and roving delegates acting as ambassadors for the conference charity cause-- 

Water, Human Rights, and Development. Yet, despite this focus on traditional excellence, 

we are not short on innovation: environmental and health catastrophes await in the newly 

formed Special Summit on Water Control. 

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me or your director. Once again, 

welcome aboard, and let’s make the 60th session of HMUN one to remember! 

Sincerely, 

Lisa Wang 


Economic and Social Council & Regional Bodies 

ecosoc@harvardmun.org 



Voice: 617-398-0772 

Fax: 617-588-0285 



“Never measure the height of a mountain until you have reached the top. Then you 

will see how low it was.” – Dag Hammarskjold, Former Secretary General of the 

United Nations 


3



Dear Delegates, 








Da-Bin Ryu 


Business 


Comptroller 







Lisa L. Wang 






Welcome to Harvard Model United Nations 2013 and the North Atlantic Treaty 

Organization. My name is John Pulice, and I am excited to meet you all in Boston this 

January! I am from Burke, VA, having attended Thomas Jefferson High School for Science 

and Technology. I was involved in Model UN for all four years of high school. I am currently 

a member of the Class of 2015, planning to concentrate in Computer Science. Currently, I 

am working to direct a production of West Side Story. 

This January you will find yourself in the seat of international military power, the North 

Atlantic Treaty Organization. You will debate the most pressing issues of the 21st century. 

The topics to be discussed are NATO’s Standards of Intervention, and NATO’s Role in 

the 21st Century. NATO’s standards for intervention are absolutely crucial, for right now 

there are none. NATO’s involvement in conflicts has been arbitrary and unpredictable, and 

defining what requirements are necessary for NATO involvement is key. Without it, NATO 

relies on a “know it by sight” litmus test for involvement, which provides a non-standard 

front to NATO’s allies and adversaries, and prevents coordination of response to developing 

crises. NATO’s role in the 21st century touches upon the first topic, but asks the broader 

question of “What should be NATO’s job in the world of 2013?” Delegates should consider 

not only NATO’s intervention aims, but also its endgame in expansion, and interactions 

with other international organizations. Is NATO still primarily a military alliance, or should 

it be viewed as a peacekeeping organization with greater might than the UN? 

I encourage every one of you to familiarize yourself with your individual country’s policy 

and role in NATO. As NATO is a deliberative body, there is a plethora of statements and 

viewpoints on its actions. Fully understand this information and weaving it into a cohesive 

and correct country policy is key to a realistic and successful summit. 

The study guide will be a great first resource, and I highly recommend all delegates to read it 

cover to cover, but it is by no means all the preparation a delegate on this committee needs. 

The topics should provide ample challenge and stimulating debate for the duration of the 

simulation. Having up-to-date information will benefit you as the simulation will move fast 

in transpired events. Please feel free to e-mail me with any questions or concerns about the 

conference, committee, topics, or college life. Feel free to just say hello! 

I hope you are excited for HMUN 2013. I know that I am ecstatic, as is the wonderful staff 

we have assembled for NATO. I cannot wait to begin debate on some of the greatest 21st 

century challenges the world faces. Take care and see you at Opening Ceremonies! 



Voice: 617-398-0772 

Fax: 617-588-0285 



Sincerely, 

John P ulice 

John Pulice 

Director, North Atlantic Treaty Organization 

nato@harvardmun.org 



INTRODUCTION 

This committee is a simulation of the North Atlantic 

Council, in a summit on January 1, 2013. Each delegate 

is the permanent representative of his or her nation at the 

NATO Summit, and the world in which this committee 

will operate will follow the exact state of affairs as they 

stand on January 1, 2013. The committee will convene 

under parliamentary procedure, and the ultimate goal 

will be addressing one or both topics posed in this guide. 

Any resolution of the North Atlantic Council will require 

unanimous approval of all NATO Allies, which must be 

a consideration in the debate and compromise process of 

the committee. 

Delegates have all the powers and abilities afforded 

to a Permanent Representative to NATO. However, it 

is key to remember that (a) delegates are not meant to 

impersonate/play the specific person who currently holds 

that post at NATO for their country, but rather to simply 

hold the same position as that person and (b) delegates 

do not have the singlehanded authority to change or 

affect their nation’s policy on issues. Delegates of this 

committee are not the heads of state of their respective 

nations, and are encouraged to be in communication 

with their governments as issues arise, and accurately 

represent the espoused policy of their nation to the North 

Atlantic Council. To that end, delegates are not held to 

the hard line letter of their nation’s policy, as compromise 

is a key part of the deliberation process, but delegates 

should not singlehandedly initiate radical shifts in policy 

without sanction from their state. 

This committee is a continual crisis committee. The 

committee as well as individual delegates will be receiving 

crisis briefings throughout each session of the committee. 

Each session will operate in “accelerated real time”, as 

each session will cover no more than a day or two in the 

progression of the crisis, but the time between sessions 

will span anywhere from hours to weeks. This will enable 

the committee to take action in the form of directives, 

press releases, and memos, and for the results of those 

actions to be assessed and responded to over the course 

of the conference. 

Get ready to be creative and collaborative as we 

combat some of the most pressing issues facing the world 

today. NATO is a key player in 21 st century foreign affairs. 

Know your policy, and know how your policy translates 

to unknown circumstances. Crisis is always a fast-paced 

exciting experience, and we know every delegate will be 

engaged at every place of the process. 

The 2013 NATO Summit will be unlike any before. 

Good luck. 

HISTORY OF THE COMMITTEE 

The North Atlantic Treaty was signed on 3 April 1949 

in Washington, DC by the United States, Canada, and 

ten European Allies: Belgium, Denmark, France, Iceland, 

Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and 

the United Kingdom. In this ‘transatlantic bargain,’ the 

United States agreed that it would support Europe’s 

economic recovery from World War II, and the United 

States pledged that it would contribute to the defense of 

Europe if Europeans would organize themselves to help 

defend against the Soviet Threat. 1 

Throughout the next half-century, NATO would be 

centered on this mutual assured security premise on which 

it was founded. Over the next 50 years, NATO would 

expand three times, in 1952 (adding Greece and Turkey), 

1955 (Germany), and 1982 (Spain). NATO would 

become central to the adversarial relationship between 

the United States and the USSR throughout the Cold 

War, as NATO was the military arm of the binary conflict 

that defined world affairs for the rest of the 20 th century. 

Brought to the brink of war multiple times (during 

the Berlin Airlift, Cuban Missile Crisis, and numerous 

proxy wars), NATO would be central to the determent 

of this final war, as the mutual assured destruction from 

a NATO-Warsaw Pact conflict was assured. Article V of 

the North Atlantic Treaty assured this, as an attack on 

one is an attack on all, and the nuclear capabilities of 

numerous NATO allies would certainly come into play 

in such a situation. 2 

TOPIC 1: STANDARDS FOR NATO IN- 

TERVENTION 


NATO in the 20 th century largely stood as a result 

of the Cold War-division of Europe, coordinating the 

west into a multi-national atomic alliance. NATO often 

served solely as a deterrent from nuclear war, as standoffs 

between the US and USSR largely amounted to proxy 


5


wars in nations suffering internal division between 

communism and capitalism. Many Cold War conflicts 

occurred, as well as numerous more Cold War incidents, 

and with the backing of NATO, these occurrences 

were resolved, whether over days or decades, without 

the involvement of the entirety of NATO nor the use 

of nuclear weapons. Despite the brinksmanship that 

defined much of the Cold War, nations never enacted 

such nuclear weapons due to the mutually assured 

destruction of such an endgame. 

However, in 1991 the USSR was dissolved as tensions 

eased and its constituent nations broke away. After the 

USSR dissolved, and the successor Commonwealth of 

Independent States (CIS) and dependent Warsaw Pact 

also ended in a similar manner, NATO had no direct 

adversary. This adversarial relationship with Soviet States 

and the Warsaw Pact had been fundamental to NATO’s 

existence, but NATO allies agreed that NATO had a 

necessary role to play, based on the shared values of the 

members, as well as shared apprehension at a quickly 

changing world. NATO soon trudged on, without a 

clear mantle but with the backing of the now unrivaled 

superpowers of world affairs. 

NATO soon took up a new mantle, intervening in 

the genocide of Bosnia (1992-1993) to enable the UN 

peacekeeping mission to succeed, then taking up a more 

offensive role as the peacekeeping proved ineffectual. 

Soon after, NATO took up a similar role in Kosovo, 

spearheading the protection of Kosovar minorities, and 

despite a much less defined resolution, the Kosovo 

mission managed to end the persecution of ethnic 

minorities. NATO took up a much greater humanitarian 

role, serving as an overseer in the Balkans protecting 

ethnic minorities from genocide. However, during the 

same time period, NATO largely ignored any moral 

obligation to intervene in many other such conflicts, 

most notably in Rwanda, and also in Somalia and 

elsewhere. NATO intervened in Bosnia for many reasons, 

but understanding and confronting the factors that 

motivate NATO’s decisions to intervene in one location 

and not another is crucial. NATO’s role in Bosnia was 

largely consensus based, premised on partnership with 

and authorization from the UN, and serving more of a 

‘greater good’ mantra than its previously political role. 

However, after the attacks of 9/11, NATO’s role 

in foreign affairs has become much more muddled, as 

NATO is largely unequipped to address the threats 

of international terrorism. NATO’s involvement in 

Afghanistan has been minimal, as a second-hand inheritor 

of problems the United States could not solve unilaterally, 

and in Iraq, the NATO refused the involvement sought 

by the United States. 

In a century more defined by international guerrilla 

warfare than brinksmanship, what role should NATO play 

in international security and humanitarian intervention? 


NATO in Bosnia 

After the fall of the USSR, members of NATO met 

to determine if NATO still had a role in the world. Some 

argued that NATO was built on common values, not 

just a common enemy, and others asserted that Russia 

still remained a viable threat, and that NATO would 

remain as an ‘insurance policy’ of sorts in case new ‘fires’ 

required extinguishing. In November 1991, NATO 

members assembled in Rome to articulate their strategic 

concept for NATO: dialogue with all European nations, 

a reduction of NATO’s forces and a restructuring of 

remaining forces, and the agreement that European 

members of NATO would assume greater ownership of 

their security. 3 

As these goals were being articulated, a conflict was 

brewing that would test these newly formed values. 

Following the death of Josip Broz Tito in 1980, Yugoslavia 

was tenuously held together for the next decade as the 

different ethnic groups fought for predominance, and 

as the nation began to disintegrate, the withdrawal of 

Croatia, combined with heterogeneity of the nation 

began an armed conflict. The fighting spread to Bosnia- 

Herzegovina, where the interspersed Muslim, Croatian, 

and Serbian populations became intertwined in a bloody 

battle. 4 

The Bosnian War began in March 1992, and although 

the NATO strategic concept stressed the need to prepare 

to deal with such a circumstance, NATO leaders made 

clear their desire to avoid NATO involvement. At root 

was the United States’ reticence to become entangled 

in the Balkans. Outside of the US Election, there was 

also concern of creating a precedent that would require 

intervention in other states, such as the disintegrating 

USSR. The European nations went forward with a UN 

peacekeeping operation (UNPROFOR) but besides 

minimal troops to protect relief efforts, no military 

action was taken at the onset. 5 

By mid-1993, the Bosnian Serbs had gained control 

of most of the country, and had encircled the safe 

zones established by UNPROFOR. Therefore, NATO 



members agreed to draft plans for air strikes against those 

threatening the UNPROFOR mission. The UN and 

NATO enacted this plan jointly with a “dual key,” by 

which both organizations had to agree on any target to 

be attacked. This was necessitated because, at this point, 

international presence in Bosnia was due to UN Security 

Council action. 6 

In 1995, it became clear that the UNPROFOR action 

was not going to succeed, even when bolstered by NATO 

air strikes. European allies suggested the withdrawal of 

UNPROFOR, but this would be a victory for those that 

the United States deemed at fault, and cause a serious 

blow to US foreign policy. After the attack on the UN 

safe area in Srebrenica in July 1995, the US’s Clinton 


Administration was pushed toward action. Soon after, 

the Bosnian Serbs conducted a vicious and brutal war 

crimes campaign, executing 8,000 Bosnian men and boys 

and sexually abusing thousands of women and children. 

As news of the increasingly heinous actions spread, it 

became clear that NATO had to act, and in response 

to a marketplace shooting on August 30 th , Operation 

Deliberate Force began. This bombing campaign, along 

with an increasingly successful Croatian surge succeeded 

in making the Serbs negotiate with the other parties 

involved. The Dayton Peace Accords resulted and were 

completed and signed in December 1995. As a part 

of the agreement, an Implementation Force of 60,000 

troops was sent to Bosnia to maintain the peace, and in 

7


December 1996, this force was renewed as a Stabilization 

Force remained until the EU took over in 2004. The 

EU takeover in 2004 indicated the shifting scope of 

the issues, as they became rooted in socioeconomic and 

political tensions related to, as opposed to militaristic 

involvement. 7 

NATO in Kosovo 

As peace was largely implemented in Bosnia, 

aggressions broke out once again, but this time in Kosovo, 

as conflict between Serbian military and ethnic Albanian 

forces resulted in more than 1,500 deaths. NATO 

allies became increasingly concerned by the escalation, 

the humanitarian cost on the region, and Milosevic’s 

disregard for diplomacy. October 1998 brought a phased 

air campaign against Yugoslavia if no withdrawal of 

forces from Kosovo occurred. Against the wire, Milosevic 

agreed to the terms of the resolution, and the air strikes 

were called off. An Organization for Security and 

Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) verification mission was 

established in Kosovo to enforce compliance. 8 

In late 1998, the deteriorating situation led the 

nations involved to draft a peace plan, which they then 

proposed to Serbian and Kosovo authorities, and the next 

day NATO authorized air strikes on Serbia and Milosevic 

if they did not accept the peace plan. Kosovo accepted 

the plan but Serbia rejected it so on March 24 th , air 

strikes resumed against Serbian targets, and in retaliation, 

Serbian troops began driving Kosovar Albanians from 

their homes, killing 10,000. Milosevic agreed on June 3 rd 

to NATO conditions in the peace plan. With this plan, 

Yugoslav forces withdrew, and a NATO-led peacekeeping 

force was put into place to keep the peace. The final status 

of Kosovo was left undecided. 9 

NATO After 9/11 

On Septemer 11 th , 2001, al-Qaeda terrorists seized 

control of four US commercial passenger planes and 

flew them into two of the greatest symbols of American 

economic and militaristic power, the World Trade Center 

in New York City and the Pentagon in Arlington, VA. 

9/11 appeared to signal a new era of international security 

threats, with a new era of attacks on civilians against 

which nations cannot readily defend. Suddenly, the twosided 

wars of the past century seemed far-gone, as the 

enemy of NATO was now a well-funded, multinational, 

and invisible terrorist network whose aim was not land 

or resources, but the infliction of mass harm against the 

United States and its allies. 10 

It is important to remember that the 9/11 attacks 

were not the first enacted by the al-Qaeda organization. 

In 1993, al-Qaeda staged a car bombing of a parking 

garage under the World Trade Center towers in New 

York City, killing one and injuring dozens. In 1998, two 

twin bombings on US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania 

killed over 200, and the 2000 USS Cole bombing killed 

17 members of the US servicemen. These attacks occurred 

over the ten-year span following the fall of the USSR, 

deemed the ‘no name’ era due to the lack of a unifying 

enemy of the west, and it was not until the 9/11 attacks 

that attention shifted fully to international terrorism. The 

9/11 attacks were the culmination of this decade-long 

effort to create a ‘holy war’ against the United States. 11 

The terrorist attacks of 9/11 changed the narrative 

of war in the 21 st century. The emergence of al-Qaeda 

marked the beginning of a new form of terrorism, one 

infinitely more unpredictable, increasingly harder to 

define, and indistinguishable from its surroundings. This 

new terrorism was unlike anything the west had previously 

experienced, and for an alliance that formed around a 

clearly defined and opposed enemy, it was a challenge 

the alliance was not equipped to battle. Terrorism was 

September 11, 2011 (Associated Press) 


not a new concept in foreign affairs and security, but the 

implications and possible consequences were magnified 

to a level never before seen. 12 

Less than four weeks after the attacks, the United 

States launched a full-scale military operation into 

Afghanistan, titled Operation Enduring Freedom. The 

mission of Operation Enduring Freedom was to destroy 

the organizational infrastructure that al-Qaeda had built 

in Afghanistan and to overthrow the Taliban regime that 

had supported them in the process. The United States 

sought to destroy the safe haven that al-Qaeda had in 

Afghanistan, and to ensure that the 9/11 attacks were not 

followed by multiple attacks of similar magnitude. 13 

The United States invoked Article V of the North 

Atlantic Treaty less than 36 hours after the attacks, and it 

seemed implicit that NATO would play a major role in any 

military plan. However, the Bush administration quickly 

dispelled these impressions, as former-US Secretary of 

Defense Donald Rumsfeld said, “the mission determines 

the coalition, and the coalition must not be permitted to 

determine the mission.” United States unilateralism was 

formalized at a NATO Defense Ministers meeting on 

September 27 th , as the US Deputy Secretary of Defense 

made clear that the United States would not seek NATO 

collective action, nor would the United States use 

NATO institutions in pursuit of the mission, instead 

simply requesting contributions from those nations 

willing and able to help. European members of NATO 

were dissolved by the unilateral declaration, especially 

given the previous efforts of the United States to have 

NATO engage more at a global level. The US decision to 

marginalize NATO following 9/11 was seen as a slap to 

the face, given the past commitment of the United States 

to NATO. NATO seemed to be the clear option to the 

international community, and its exclusion left NATO 

with a questionable role in international security, as well 

as an uncertain future. 14 

A systematic failure of the Bush Administration 

to plan for post-combat operations provided for the 

resurrection of NATO in Afghanistan in 2003. In 

August 2003, NATO took over the leadership of the 

International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF), and 

NATO took up permanent headquarters, and controlled 

strategic command and control of ISAF. In October 

2003, the UN expanded ISAF beyond Kabul, and soon 

Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) spread out all 

over Afghanistan in order to expand the authority of the 

central government and secure the nation as a whole. 

However, it became increasingly difficult to sustain troop 



commitments, as NATO had played no collective role in 

the combat operations. Nations that had not contributed 

to the initial success of removing the Taliban became 

more reluctant to contribute troops to the long-term 

peace structure, and the ISAF fell short of the necessary 

forces. 15 

Iraq 

In October 2001, the United States and United 

Kingdom submitted a draft resolution to the United 

Nations asserting that Iraq and Saddam Hussein were 

in violation of UN Resolution 687, an after-result of 

the Gulf War, which required destruction of all Iraqi 

Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) and inspection 

to verify such action. The new draft resolution (1441) 

called for the Iraqi government to prove its compliance 

with Resolution 687 and to cooperate with a new 

round of UN-led inspections. In December 2002, the 

United States and United Kingdom asserted that Iraq 

had violated Resolution 1441, and an already deflated 

alliance soon became shredded as internal discord grew 

to levels theretofore unseen. 16 

The path to war in Iraq was marked by unbridled 

support by many top-level United States officials, 

those who had voiced support during the Clinton 

Administration for intervention in Iraq from conservative 

think tanks. The United States marched fervently toward 

regime change in Iraq, despite a complete lack of 

conclusive evidence linking Iraq to al-Qaeda. The fervor 

on the part of the Bush administration was matched in 

kind by staunch opposition from France and Germany. 

Both France and Germany objected to the rationale for 

the war, and both sought to demonstrate their rejection 

of United States dominance. 17 

As transatlantic dialogue broke down, the European 

members of NATO fractured, with western members, 

such as France and Germany, in firm opposition, and 

new eastern members showing support for US action. 

The transatlantic crisis of 2002-2003 saw the sharp 

division of strong NATO allies, as the United States 

and United Kingdom went forward with their Iraq War 

without the support of NATO. This fracturing showed a 

sharp chasm in diplomatic philosophy, with the United 

States and United Kingdom regarding their European 

allies as being deluded to the limitations of diplomacy 

and international law, and Europeans accusing the 

United States of a blatant disregard for the international 

laws and institutions it once championed. 18 

9


Despite being the clear choice in Afghanistan, it 

quickly was clear that NATO would not be the standard 

bearer for the action. Only Britain, Australia, and Poland 

provided direct military contributions to Operation Iraqi 

Freedom, and no direct NATO involvement existed in 

the combat operations. United States unilateralism had 

taken hold, by choice in Afghanistan and by necessity in 

Iraq. 19 

In Iraq, the preoccupation with military planning 

for Iraqi defeat had trumped the planning for post-war 

reconstruction. Flawed assumptions about the ability 

to democratize the existing regime motivated a lack of 

planning for regime change, and the resulting insurgency 

determined the need for a larger force in the long term 

to win the peace, so the United States turned to NATO. 

NATO provided the necessary organizational structure 

and experience to sustain such a task of long-term peace. 

However, NATO was in no position to make a major 

commitment to Iraq in the way it could to Afghanistan. 

Even as NATO sought some role in the rebuilding, there 

was the conflict between the United States’ enduring 

unilateralism and the need for international legitimacy. 

NATO’s role remained confined to training of Iraqi 

security forces in a conflict that the United States fully 

owned. 20 


Libya 

The Arab Spring revolutions of 2010 in Tunisia 

propagated to Libya by February 2011, with unrest 

quickly suppressed by Libyan military force against 

its populace. As reports of civilian casualties spread, 

international outcry followed, and on February 26 th 

the UNSC issued a resolution that called for an arms 

embargo, travel ban, and asset freeze for members of the 

Libyan regime. The Transitional National Council was set 

up in Benghazi to coordinate the resistance movement, 

and although bolstered by international support, the UN 

resolution had little impact on the Libyan forces as they 

continued onward, defeating rebels in the east. 21 

Just as General Muammar Qaddafi was poised to 

regain control of Benghazi, the West drastically undercut 

his campaign. A second UN resolution was adopted on 

March 17 th that gave legal authorization for intervention 

by force, as the international community was called upon 

to bring a complete end to the violence. Just days earlier, 

on March 12 th , the Arab League had nine of its twentytwo 

member states call on the UNSC to impose a no-fly 

zone in order to protect civilians. The support of these 

Arab nations was deeply significant, as Western nations 

feared that intervention in Libya would be viewed as 

another neo-colonial attempt to meddle in the Muslim 

world. 22 

On March 19 th , just two days after the passage of the 

UNSC resolution, the bombings began. French and British 

planes, led by the United States, flew deployments over 

Libya. At the end of March, NATO took over responsibility 

for the enforcement of the UNSC resolution, including 

the no-fly zone and the arms embargo. Although the 

opposition was certainly strengthened by the prospect of 

a fair fight, they were nowhere near victory. They were 

severely lacking in weapons and training, and the idea of 

Qaddafi surrendering to his western foes was a massive 

fallacy. Qaddafi would not lie down at the hands of his 

most reviled enemies, and his emboldened nature was 

indicative of his intention to fight. 23 

A bloody stalemate followed NATO’s entry into 

the Libyan Civil War. Countless lives were lost as towns 

repeatedly traded hands between government and rebel 

forces. However, the most important battle surrounded 

the struggle for control of Misarata, an important costal 

city for strategic positioning. Rebel forces had taken 

the city early, but regime forces sought to regain it in 

March. The city was held hostage by mortar attacks, tank 

patrols, and snipers posted on rooftops. Residents sought 

supplies through the port, which was their only link 

to the outside world. Supplies became scarce, and the 

Qaddafi regime even went so far as to cut off water to 

the town. The Battle for Misarata lasted until mid-May 

when, with the help of NATO air strikes, rebel forces 

finally able to regain control of the city. 24 

The loss of Misarata was a major defeat to the Qaddafi 

regime. It also made the battle for Tripoli that much more 

crucial. Tripoli became paralyzed by fear, with snipers 

placed throughout the city in order to intimidate anyone 

from even considering action. Young men disappeared 

in the middle of the night. Regime forces would come 

out at night to mark the houses that they suspected of 

supporting the rebellion, and the streets rang out by day 

with the shouts of regime supporters who were paid to 

march the city brandishing weapons. Combined with the 

foreboding sounds of NATO air attacks were one that 

had already gone astray and caused civilian casualties. 25 

Tripoli was rapidly becoming an Orwellian nightmare, 

frozen in time, where civilians are trapped indoors and 

supplies grow scarcer by the day. 



NATO operations in Libya by country (The Guardian) 


11


However, the writing on the wall seemed clear to 

the Qaddafi regime, as it sought increasingly desperate 

resolutions that would keep them in power. With his 

forces being steadily degraded by NATO strikes, Qaddafi 

unsuccessfully appealed to Islamic scholars in Saudi 

Arabia for them to impress that it was unacceptable 

according to the tenets of Islam to rise up against rulers. 

Considering Qaddafi’s lifelong rejection of the Saudi 

religious establishment, this was a last-ditch resort 

indeed. In even greater desperation, the Qaddafi regime 

began overtures to the West, with aides dispatched to 

London to sell a plan in which Qaddafi’s son would 

oversee the Libyan transformation while the rest of the 

family is granted immunity. Another overture involved 

former Foreign Affairs Secretary Abdel Ati Al-Obeidi, 

telling international media that if the rebels agreed to a 

ceasefire, Libya would hold free and fair elections within 

six months. Both proposals were greeted with skepticism 

at best, as decades of lies had kept the Colonel in power, 

and Libyans were not going to accept a resolution that 

left the Qaddafi dynasty anywhere but in jail. 

While Qaddafi was panicking, the NCT was proving 

itself a credible group. The council progressively gained 

recognition as the only legitimate representative of the 

Libyan people. France was the first to recognize the NCT 

as such, and many nations soon followed suit, including 

the United States. The NCT increasingly looked like a 

government in waiting. As Qaddafi became increasingly 

bizarre and desperate, the rebel forces were capturing 

numerous key towns in the western region of Libya. 

With greater coordination with NATO, the rebel forces 

had effectively encircled Tripoli by August. With rebels 

already armed in Tripoli by months of smuggling, forces 

swept in from all directions and were met by virtually 

no resistance. Most forces defected or fled, including 

Brigadier Barani Ishkal, Qaddafi’s cousin and the head of 

Qaddafi’s security for Tripoli. His secret contact with the 

NCT, and subsequent allegiance to the rebels once the 

invasion began, opened the way for Tripoli’s fall. 26 

In the March/April 2012 edition of Foreign Affairs, 

US Permanent Representative to NATO Ivo Daalder 

and Supreme Allied Commander Europe James Stavridis 

penned an article called “NATO’s Victory in Libya.” In 

this article, NATO’s intervention in Libya is hailed as 

a “model” for future interventions, as it showed that 

“NATO is uniquely positioned to respond quickly and 

effectively to international crises” and that “a politically 

cohesive NATO can tackle increasingly complex, and 

increasingly global, security challenges.” 27 The authors 

discuss the success and failures of NATO’s involvement, 

but largely hail the Libya Operation as a model to be 

sought. One note is that the Libyan Operation was 

achieved with one-fifth of the personnel employed by the 

Kosovo Operation. Whether this indicates a favorable or 

unfavorable trend in NATO operations is not considered 

herein, but it is certainly made clear that a decade ago 

it was unlikely that NATO could even execute such an 

operation as took place in Libya. 28 

Syria 

In late 2010 and early 2011, Syria seemed a fairly 

stable nation, especially when considering the bubbling 

situations in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen. In December 

2010, pieces in the Los Angles Times and the New York 

Times praised the history and culture of Syria, as well as 

the new direction of government. US Senator and former 

presidential hopeful John Kerry had met five times over 

the past two years with the first family of Syria, with the 

prospect of Syria-Israel peace negotiations the eventual 

and seemingly achievable goal. In March 2011, the First 

Lady of Syria, Alma al-Assad had a Vogue magazine 

feature, which quickly became controversial. In the 

article titled “Alma al-Assad: A Rose in the Desert,” al- 

Assad was hailed for her mission to create a “beacon of 

culture and secularism” in Syria. Syria had long been a 

state of tumult, but over the course of the Arab Spring, 

Syria rapidly shifted from beacon of relative stability to 

oppressive military state engaged in a civil war with its 

people. 29 

Dara is a modest city of 70,000-100,000 people in 

southwest Syria, near the Jordanian border (see map, next 

page). During the first week of March 2011, at a school 

in Dara, ten children (aged between 9 and 15), inspired 

by a slogan from the Egyptian uprising, wrote “down 

with the regime” on the wall of their school. Graffiti was 

a common way of dissenters to express malcontent due to 

the lack of formal channels to effect change. The motives 

in this situation seemed much more mischievous than 

malicious. However, the mukhabarat (Syrian intelligence) 

was already on heightened alert for discontent due to the 

events in Tunisia and Egypt, and this heightened level 

manifested itself in the arrest of the schoolchildren and 

their reported sending to Damascus. The arrest of the 

children was not atypical, but the situation had changed, 

due to the widespread coverage of events in Tunisia, 

Egypt, and elsewhere. 30 

On March 15, a few hundred protestors, many 

related to the detained children, marched in front of the 


Omari mosque in Deraa. They demanded the release 

of the children, as well as reform of the corrupt and 

repressive government that allowed such acts to happen. 

The protests grew to several thousand, and Syran security 

forces opened fire, killing four in their attempt to 

disperse the crowd. The next day, nearly twenty thousand 

protestors came out. Protestors began chanting antigovernment 

slogans, and damaging government offices 

of the mukhabarat, the Baath party, the governor, and the 

security forces. Daily protests continued, and the situation 

escalated on March 23 rd when security forces raided the 

Omari mosque in a second crackdown attempt, killing 

fifteen and wounding hundreds. The Omari mosque had 

become a makeshift hospital for wounded protestors and 

fearful refugees, adding to the fallout of the crackdown. 


Basic services, such as water, electricity, and cell phone 

networks, were shut off and funerals banned, as they had 

become a rallying point for the protests. That evening, 

government forces had surrounded Deraa, preventing 

any ingress or egress. The city was being quarantined 

in an attempt to isolate and exterminate the protests to 

prevent their spread. In less than two weeks a small, poor, 

and heavily Islamic city had become the site of a massive 

government crackdown. 31 

The protests that erupted in Deraa were not the only 

protests to erupt in late March 2011. There were also 

protests in Banias, a fairly conservative Mediterranean 

coast city, about the regime’s anti-Islamic decrees of 

recent years. Protests popped up in a number of other 

cities around the country, notably in Homs, Qamishli, 


13


al-Hasaka, Hama and Latakia, as well as some suburbs 

of Damascus. Social media spread word of the protests 

quickly all over the country, thus sparking more of them. 

However, the initial protests in these cities focused on 

local issues of importance as opposed to national issues, 

and there was little to no coordination among the 

protestors. The protests’ widespread organic origination 

reflected the widespread systematic problems in Syria, 

and yet there were very few calls for the fall of the regime. 

The protestors primarily wanted the implementation of 

long-promised reforms on the part of the regime, and 

camaraderie among the shared hopes of the protestors 

blossomed, as the isolating and disconnected society of 

Syria was broken. 32 

The mukhabarat, or security/intelligence services, are 

expansive and omnipresent in Syria, or at least that is the 

image they have and want to keep. Fear and intimidation 

are tools that the mukhabarat has employed for decades 

to deter potential unrest and anti-governmental activities. 

The repressive activities of the mukhabarat are often quite 

arbitrary, and as a result there is a level of countrywide 

paranoia. The mukhabarat is a rather obscure aspect 

of Syria, but estimates indicate that there are 50,000 

– 70,000 full time security officers employed by the 

mukhabarat, in addition to hundreds of thousands of 

part-time officials. The 2011 estimates indicate a ratio of 

one intelligence official to 240 civilians, and funding for 

the mukhabarat makes up a third of the Syrian military 

budget at over US$3 billion a year. 33 

The mukhabarat was a defining staple of the state of 

emergency that had been in place in Syria since 1963. 

The emergency law refers to Decree No. 51, implemented 

on 9 March 1963, the day after the Baath party gained 

power in a coup. The law allowed government to stifle 

and arbitrarily eliminate internal challenges to the regime. 

The law allows pre-emptive arrests, overriding penal and 

constitutional codes, and suspending of habeas corpus. 

In the wake of this law, Supreme State Security Courts 

(SSSC) were created, which arbitrarily sentence those 

detained and arrested on the grounds of protecting the 

state. 34 

Considering the half-century history of military state 

rule, the reforms announced by the Syrian Government 

on 24 March 2011 were significant. The announcement 

included the formation of a committee to investigate and 

try anyone who had committee unlawful acts, including 

soldiers who had killed protestors. The government 

spokesperson, Bouthainia Shaaban, also stipulated that 

the wages of government workers would be raised 20- 

30%, and there would be cuts in income tax, as well as 

increases in pensions. She also generally spoke of new 

health reforms, judicial reforms, the softening of media 

restriction, the establishment of new anti-corruption 

measures, and the allowance for new political parties. 

Finally, the announcement promised the formation of a 

committee to study the need to lift the state of emergency 

that was first implemented in 1963. 35 Bashar al-Assad 

remained silent in the initial weeks of the protests, in 

what was later revealed to be an attempt at a drastically 

different response than those that had taken place in 

Tunisia and Egypt. 36 On 30 March 2011, Bashar al- 

Assad finally addressed the nation through a speech to 

the People’s Assembly. In a widely panned and severely 

disappointing speech, al-Assad harped on the premise of 

the Syrian government, namely the exchange of reduced 

freedom for greater security, and blamed the erupting 

protests on a “foreign conspiracy”. 37 

On 31 March, al-Assad established a committee 

to study the termination of the 1963 emergency law. 

This action was viewed skeptically, as it carried no real 

President Bashar al-Assad of Syria (Wikipedia) 


assurance of action to be taken. Over the first two weeks 

of April, numerous actions were taken, including the 

appointing of a new Prime Minister, concessions to 

the Kurds, increasing the wages of government workers, 

the removal of the ban on female teachers wearing the 

niqab, and the release of hundreds of political prisoners 

that had been arrested since the uprisings began. On 

16 April 2011, al-Assad made a speech to the newly 

sworn-in Cabinet, during which he announced the 

lifting of the emergency law. The speech also covered a 

great deal of ground on numerous topics, including the 

economic situation in Syria, unemployment, agriculture, 

eliminating corruption, and political reform. However, 

the speech focused very little on what most people 

wanted to hear: specific political reforms that would end 

violence and dismantle the security state. The speech 

was quite similar to his inaugural speech in 2000, the 

messages in the 2005 Baath Party Regional Congress, 

and numerous other speeches during his tenure. In late 

April, the 1963 emergency law was lifted, the state of 

emergency was ended, and the Supreme State Security 

Courts were abolished. However, other decrees were 

passed that were just as restrictive, and many Syrians 

regarded the emergency law as continuing in all but 

name. Syrian activists were growing impatient as the lack 

of genuine reform became apparent. 38 

On 22 April 2011, Syria was affected by the 

largest demonstrations yet, and correspondingly this 

was the bloodiest day yet: human rights organizations 

estimated that over a hundred people were killed. The 

government intensified its crackdown on 25 April, 

when tanks rumbled into Deraa. Defections from the 

government army were prevalent, and by the summer, a 

semi-organized opposition fighting force called the Free 

Syrian Army was formed. In May and June 2011, the 

regime continued a schizophrenic response to protests, 

alternating between concessions and reform measures, 

and intensified crackdowns in cities across Syria. On 

31 May-3 June, the opposition groups and individual 

activists met at a conference in Ankara, Turkey, in an 

attempt to form an overarching organization that could 

represent the opposition. Despite setbacks, the conference 

served as a launch pad for the Syrian National Council 

(SNC) that would be formed in the autumn of 2011. 39 


Relevant NATO Action 

The Prague Summit (2002) 

At the 2002 NATO summit, allies identified 

strengthening and deepening relations with 

Mediterranean Dialogue (MD) partners as one of the 

highest priorities of the Alliance. The Alliance also 

approved measures to enhance the consultation between 

NATO and the Mediterranean Dialogue on terrorism. At 

the Summit, NATO declared: 

“We encourage intensified practical cooperation 

and effective interaction on security matters 

of common concern, including terrorismrelated 

issues, as appropriate, where NATO can 

provided added value … We reiterate that the 

Mediterranean Dialogue and other international 

efforts, including the EU Barcelona Process, are 

complementary and mutually reinforcing.” 40 

The Barcelona Process is an effort, initiated in 1995, to 

strengthen dialogue with Mediterranean nations, and this 

laid the foundation for the Union for the Mediterranean. 

Its inclusion here indicates an implication that the 

cooperative dialogue was a prerequisite for benefits of 

other regional initiatives. At Prague, NATO made it clear 

that Arab nations would receive no economic benefits 

from other NATO/EU initiatives if they did not support 

NATO in its counter-terrorism endeavors in the region. 

The allies sought to demonstrate their resolve to pursue 

terrorism, and to enhance NATO’s role in the region. 41 

Istanbul Summit (2004) 

The milestone of the NATO-Middle East cooperation 

was the 2004 Istanbul Summit. This Summit brought 

forward the idea of a new upgraded relationship, “to 

establish a more ambitious and expanded partnership 

guided by the principle of joint ownership and taking 

into consideration their particular interests and needs.” 42 

Furthermore, NATO brought forward the hope of 

cooperation with other countries in the broader Middle 

East through the creation of the Istanbul Cooperative 

Initiative (ICI). Through this, NATO upgraded the 

Mediterranean Dialogue to a real partnership, and 

launching the ICI with the aim of reaching out to, and 

fostering coaction with, nations in the ‘broader Middle 

East.’ 43 

In December 2004, a historic meeting took place 

among the foreign ministers of NATO nations and 


15


the Mediterranean Dialogue partners. The aim was 

to deliberate and discuss the proposals of the Istanbul 

Summit with emphasis on defining or upgrading the 

scope of the relationship at the time. At the end of the 

meeting, the ministers agreed to upgrade the dialogue to 

a practical partnership. The new partnership was called 

the ‘Expanded and Broader Mediterranean Dialogue.’ 

Set up to promote the political side of the dialogue, as 

well as enhance practical cooperation, the Dialogue 

aimed to support bilateral aid on topics where partners 

possessed resources beneficial to others. This included 

support of Operation Active Endeavor, restricting the 

spread of WMDs, integration with NATO’s forces, and 

alliance assistance areas such as border security and 

defense technology. 44 

Riga Summit (2006) 

The Riga Summit of 2006 brought forward even 

more determination to develop and expand the scope of 

NATO’s existing partnerships. At this Summit, NATO 

members called for the increased ability to consult with 

partners as events arose, as well as the strengthening 

of NATO’s ability to work with nations by opening 

up partnership tools to MD and ICI nations that are 

available to members of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership 

Council (EAPC). Numerous new tools were presented to 

MD states to promote more constructive relationships. 45 

The Riga Summit’s outcomes were much more 

limited than the monumental Istanbul Summit, but 

they do reflect the seriousness with which NATO has 

committed to increased NATO-Middle East dialogue. 

The new agreement ushers in a new phase of cooperation, 

defined by more substantial opportunities for dialogue 

and consultation with nations, as well as greater progress 

toward “interoperability” among nations in their joint 

pursuit of goals and ideas. 46 The inclusion of MD 

and ICI nations in programs that previously had only 

been available to EAPC states shows the longevity of 

arrangement. NATO fully intends for its cooperation 

with the Middle East to be a longstanding and integrated 

affair, which will enable greater ability to react and 

manage Middle Eastern situations as they arise. 47 


In this topic we have examined the five cases in which 

NATO has intervened (Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, 

Iraq, and Libya) as well as an emerging international 

security situation in which NATO intervention may be 

necessary (Syria). When approaching the scope of this 

topic, please do not consider a country to be out of 

the scope of this committee simply because it has not 

been discussed above. The range of situations in which 

NATO could be reasoned to have moral or regional 

World leaders at the 2006 Riga Summit (Riga Summit) 


esponsibility to intervene, and did not or has not (ex. 

Rwanda, Darfur, etc.), should not be limited to those 

in this guide. However, barring international crisis, it is 

unlikely that any nations outside of those in this guide 

will be in such a state to need NATO intervention when 

this NATO Summit takes place in January 2013. 

Concerning NATO interventions on a general 

scheme, a standard resolution on future intervention 

should be passed by the North Atlantic Treaty 

Organization to bring some sense of formality in action 

to the interventions which NATO has taken thus far. The 

interventions that have occurred by NATO have been 

largely hurried and unorganized. The interventions in 

Bosnia and Kosovo were predicated on the failure of the 

United Nations, when NATO troops took a progressively 

aggressive approach as UN peacekeeping efforts failed. 

Interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan were second-tier 

reactions to United States initiated actions, as NATO 

served as a better actor to advocate for long-term training 

and stability. Finally, in Libya, NATO acted with blessing 

from the UNSC, and served a largely ‘guardian’ role, as 

NATO action was restricted to enforcement of the no-fly 

zone and prevention of government-inflicted massacres. 

In these five interventions, a large span of NATO 

actions is evidenced. In Bosnia and Kosovo, NATO 

served to intervene in a civil war that was turning 

genocidal. In Iraq and Afghanistan, NATO worked as a 

nation-building entity, helping to achieve the long-term 

goals of United States action. Finally, in Libya, NATO 

took a similar approach to those in the Balkans, but 

with far fewer persons involved. NATO prevented the 

structured persecution by the government, and enabled 

the civil wars to play out, with much more conclusive 

results than in either Bosnia or Kosovo. 

Up to this point in NATO intervention, the actions 

that NATO has taken have largely been on a “know it 

when I see it” basis. Some of the formal considerations 

are the constraints of the militaristic demands of certain 

interventions over others. For instance, the Libyan 

intervention was possible at a time when NATO allies 

were also bundled down in Afghanistan and Iraq, 

mainly because of the small personnel demands of the 

action. NATO’s action in Libya was largely restricted to 

(a) enforcement of the no fly zone over Libya and (b) 

bombing runs on key targets of Libyan military strength. 

The lack of troops on the ground enabled allies such as 

the United States and United Kingdom to commit to the 

effort without severely impacting their already strained 

military resources. 



However, now that the Iraq War has ended and the 

Afghanistan War is on a set timeline to end in 2014, and 

once the troop capacities of NATO allies are restored, it 

may be increasingly possible for NATO to involve itself 

in conflicts that it previously could not have reasonably 

managed. The honest logistics of each nation’s military 

situation are key in the decision process, as it is ultimately 

NATO allies that supply the troops that make a NATO 

action successful. Considering a nation’s military 

capabilities is key in making an informed commitment 

of resources to an armed conflict. 


United States 

The United States has largely been a proponent of 

NATO involvement in interventions, with the United 

States being the generating force behind NATO’s actions 

since 1990. However, in soliciting NATO’s action, the 

United States has sought a “unilateral coalition” action as 

opposed to a NATO allied response, which has generated 

a mix of responses from nations. Because the United 

States has been the main supplier of troops for NATO 

action, this puts the United States in a unique situation of 

choosing between international assistance and achieving 

unilateral aims, and under the Bush administration, the 

United States elected for the latter. However, the Obama 

Administration had largely reaffirmed the United States’ 

commitment to the international community, but the 

Obama Administration has not encountered a 9/11-scale 

event. The measured response to the Benghazi attacks on 

11 September 2012 seem to indicate that such a heavyhanded 

response will not occur under this administration, 

enabling NATO healing to continue with a wary eye to 

past precedent. 

17


United Kingdom 

The United Kingdom has been the United States’ 

greatest ally in the War on Terror, as the primary 

contributor to both Afghanistan and Iraq, and the greatest 

defender of the United States on the international stage. 

However, as UK public support for involvement in Iraq 

fell, Tony Blair lost the Prime Minister post in the United 

Kingdom, and the United Kingdom ceased military 

support in Iraq in 2009. The United Kingdom has not 

been a rubber stamp for United States action; instead 

the UK has been the greatest meaningful international 

contributor to those actions. 

France and Germany 

France and Germany have lead the opposition 

to NATO acting out United States foreign policy in 

the wake of 9/11 and the War on Terror. Throughout 

NATO’s history, France especially has been concerned 

with ensuring the United States’ commitment to NATO, 

not just to individual actions, and this clearly failed in 

the discourse following 9/11. 

Italy and Spain 

In the aftermath of 9/11, Italy and Spain pushed 

hard for the development of the MD process with 

respect to combating terrorism, as well as instituting 

a new set of practical cooperative activities, including 

military exercises. Their relative proximity to the sources 

of danger in the Middle East, as compared to other allies, 

motivated their vigor toward this policy position. 48 

Former Soviet States 

The former Soviet States of Eastern Europe have been 

largely supportive of United States action, springing at 

the chance to support the superpower that helped them 

escape their Soviet entrapment. Despite their continuing 

reforms and development, they have made modest but 

meaningful contributions to Iraq and Afghanistan. The 

support of these nations has helped the United States 

avoid any grossly imperialistic image, as the Middle 

Eastern interventions have at least had a substantive 

coalition at their backing besides the United States and 

United Kingdom. 


Concrete Present-Day Questions 

Does the current conflict in Syria meet the qualification 

for a NATO intervention? What other violations 

would need to occur to merit NATO involvement? 

Does a NATO intervention require UN approval? 

Philosophical Questions Regarding Intervention 

What criteria does a situation have to meet to be a 

candidate for NATO intervention? 

Does the question of intervention ultimately come 

down to logistics? Is NATO simply not built to 

intervene in an active civil war? 

What differentiation, if any, should NATO make 

between civil wars where civilians may be in harms 

way and outright genocides? 

Do the ends of a conflict matter? Should a genocide 

by an established government on its people (Darfur) 

be unaddressed by NATO but a genocide by warring 

factions (Bosnia) qualify for intervention? 


Further research on the topic should surround 

understanding country positions on what each NATO 

nation’s opinion on previous interventions has been and 

how these espoused positions can be generalized and 

applied to future crises. Looking at NATO statements 

as well as discourse on the intervention resolutions 

is important. As every NATO resolution must be 

unanimous, a policy that will be maintained in this 

committee, the voting records are largely unhelpful in 

ascertaining national positions. 

Actual troop contributions to Iraq and Afghanistan 

are also good indicators of NATO nation’s positions 

on the NATO interventions in which NATO has not 

played the leading role. The United States’ decision to 

unilaterally address the al-Qaeda threat in Afghanistan 

was a polarizing issue in NATO, with a clear division 

between nations who supported and opposed such an 

action. Similarly, when the United States attempted to 

have NATO action take place in Iraq, nations split on 

the issue clearly. Looking at the progression on these two 

controversial interventions will help define the extremes 

of NATO interventional tendencies. 

When considering the less controversial interventions 

in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Libya, it is more telling to consider 

the discourse that led up to the UNSC resolutions in 

these cases, as opposed to the actual NATO resolutions 

on the subject. The vigorous discourse during the preintervention 

situations in Libya and the Balkans is much 


more telling than the discourse after NATO unanimously 

agreed to intervene. To address this topic to the extent 

necessary, each country must know and understand 

what events or developments are deterministic to that 

country’s decision to endorse NATO military action. 

Turning our eyes to the developing situation in 

Syria, each nation must consider their previous policies 

and considerations in the previous cases of NATO 

intervention. These previous policy developments 

should be placed in the context of current efforts in 

Syria, including any unilateral action a nation has taken 

in support of the rebellion or the Syrian regime. Also 

to be considered are actions to support NATO allies or 

allies of NATO nations, such as Turkey, Jordan, Israel, 

and Lebanon, which have all been affected at this point 

by overflow of refugees and occasional skirmishes. 

A great article to read is “NATO’s Victory In Libya” from 

Foreign Affairs magazine (http://www.foreignaffairs. 

com/articles/137073/ivo-h-daalder-and-james-gstavridis/natos-victory-in-libya). 

It is an exposition 

by the NATO Supreme Commander and the US 

Permanent Representative to NATO, in which the 

Libyan Intervention is examined as a model for 

future NATO interventions. As both of the officials 

who penned the article are from the United States, 

it is not by any means the tome of the issue, but 

it is a good resource to understand some of the 

ways in which Libya succeeded and failed, and how 

NATO can build an intervention policy from what it 

learned in Libya. 

The UN Summits that are briefly touched upon in 

this article, from Prague, Istanbul, and Riga, are excellent 

resources for further understanding of the development 

of NATO policy in the wake of the September 11 th 

attacks. The Summit Declarations provide a very different 

aspect on the issue, as NATO nations were currently 

conducting interventions in the Middle East as these 

policies were discussed. The Summits largely consider 

the other half of NATO Intervention: the manner in 

which NATO should engage the neighbors of nations 

where intervention is taking place, as well as how NATO 

should create constructive and collaborative dialogue 

with nations that have no aspiration to become NATO 

nations. 

Finally, when considering Syria, the details of 

international discourse surrounding the devolution of 

events in Syria is key to understanding policy of the 

nation. One speech of interest is Bashar al-Assad’s initial 

address to the People’s Assembly on 30 March 2011, just 



when the Deraa protests were beginning: (http://www.albab.com/arab/docs/syria/ 

bashar_assad_speech_110330. 

htm). The situation in Syria rapidly grew and centralized, 

but it is important to recognize the similarities between 

Syria and Libya, and the vast differences. Also, consider 

Kofi Annan’s plan for a cease-fire in Syria, and its failure 

to gain traction, in order to see what peace alternatives 

have been attempted and failed to mitigate the situation. 

NATO intervention is a large and daunting topic, 

with many socioeconomic and political factors affecting 

action or lack thereof. Understanding each nation’s 

policy as each intervention developed, as well as the 

current state of evolving policy on Syria, will help each 

delegate advocate for his or her nation’s aims in a NATO 

intervention, or argue against one. The situation in Syria 

and around the globe is rapidly developing, with the 11 

September 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, and it is clear 

that the Middle East, and the world at large, is extremely 

volatile. Past precedent may not provide a good guide 

to future action. By understanding the philosophical 

principles on which each NATO ally has acted, and 

following those principles and ideas, the North Atlantic 

Treaty Organization may be able to address and solve 

emerging crises throughout the world. 

TOPIC 2: NATO’S ROLE IN THE 21 ST CEN- 

TURY 


NATO in the 20 th century largely stood as a result 

of the Cold War-division of Europe, coordinating the 

west into a multi-national atomic alliance. NATO often 

served solely as a deterrent from nuclear war, as standoffs 

between the US and USSR largely amounted to proxy 

wars in nations suffering internal division between 

communism and capitalism. Despite the brinksmanship 

that defined much of the Cold War, nations never 

enacted such nuclear weapons due to the mutually 

assured destruction of such an endgame. 

In 1991, the USSR was dissolved as tensions eased 

and the constituent nations of the USSR broke away. 

After the USSR dissolved, the successor Commonwealth 

of Independent States (CIS) and dependent Warsaw Pact 

also ended in a similar manner, and for the first time since 

its inception NATO had no direct adversary. NATO and 

allies agreed that NATO had a necessary role to play, 

and NATO endured past the Cold War. 

19


After the attacks of 9/11, NATO’s role in foreign 

affairs has become much more muddled, as NATO is 

largely unequipped to address the threats of international 

terrorism. In a century more defined by international 

guerrilla warfare than brinksmanship, what role 

should NATO play in international security? 

The purpose of NATO in the 21 st century 

must be concretely and philosophically addressed, 

else NATO risks becoming a relic of the past, standing 

as a beacon of inaction, and occupying a mandate that 

expired a generation before. 


NATO’s description as a “transatlantic bargain” by 

Harland Cleveland, former US permanent representative 

to NATO, remains a relevant and insightful tool to 

consider NATO’s actions over the past half-century. 49 The 

original bargain, formed in the wake of the Second World 

War, was between the United States and its European 

partners, with the politically important participation of 

Canada. The first half was that the United States pledged 

support to Europe’s economic recovery from the war if 

Europeans would coordinate recovery efforts to use the 

assistance most effectively. The bargain further guaranteed 

that the United States would contribute to the defense 

of Europe, if the Europeans would organize themselves 

to help the defense against the Soviet danger. As the 

bargain grew and changed over time, the European allies 

proved themselves adept in the economic aspects, with 

the Organization for European Economic Cooperation 

(OEEC) formed in 1948, and the later economic 

integration that preceded the modern European Union. 

Seat of the first OEEC Meeting in Paris, France (OECD) 

However, the European security integration did not come 

to fruition, with France’s proposal of a European Defense 

Community failing in 1954. This left the transatlantic 

bargain highly dependent on US nuclear weapons and 

US troop presence in Europe to give credence to NATO’s 

defense against a Soviet threat. 50 

NATO in the Wake of the Soviet Fall 

NATO had been indispensible to the West during 

the Cold War. NATO had been working hard to improve 

security relations in Europe, largely through arms-control 

negotiations and confidence-building measures with the 

Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact. Now, the authoritarian 

hand that had held the Warsaw Pact together was 

crumbling, and the Warsaw Pact itself would soon 

likewise crumble. West German authorities and postcommunist 

East German authorities began negotiating 

reunification under the watchful eyes of the four states 

that had kept Germany divided for nearly a half-century. 

The world was on the brink of a new Europe, and 

many officials in Western Europe and the United States 

questioned what NATO’s place might be in a world in 

which the Warsaw Pact had disbanded, and the Soviet 

Union was withdrawing its forces from central Europe. 51 

In the wake of a crumbling Communist infrastructure 

in Eastern Europe, a variety of different concepts for 

future organization of European security emerged. Some 

experts speculated that it might be best to keep the Warsaw 

Pact in business to help organize future European security. 

Others confessed that NATO had outlived its usefulness 

because there was no longer any threat, and professed that 

the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe 

(CSCE) could take over responsibility for maintaining 

peace and security in Europe. Some Europeans, including 

French President François Mitterrand and British Prime 

Minister Margaret Thatcher, tried to find alternatives to 

German reunification, while the United States facilitated 

the completion of the long-term West German goal. 52 

With such a diversity of opinions, and a rapidly 

changing Europe around them, the leaders of NATO 

nations agreed that they should address the question of 

whether NATO was necessary anymore. Immediately, all 

member states, as well as the NATO Secretary General, 

believed that NATO should be preserved, even if there 

was no consensus on the reason. The main justifications 

were largely along three lines: first, that NATO was more 

than a military alliance, and was based on a community 

of values shared by its members; second, that the Soviet 

Union remained a viable threat, and NATO could be an 


‘insurance policy’ to future conflicts should they arise; 

and third, that NATO was better-positioned to handle 

new risks and uncertainties that may arise, as the likeminded 

countries of the alliance could work together. 53 

In July 1990, less than nine months after the Berlin 

Wall had fallen, the heads of NATO governments met 

in London and issued the “London Declaration on a 

Transformed North Atlantic Alliance”. This announced 

a ‘major transformation’ of NATO, with the offering 

to join the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact states in the 

renunciation of their former adversarial relationship, and 

the beginning of a friendly and cooperative relationship. 

Additionally, the leaders also agreed that NATO should 

change its military system, especially concerning its 

nuclear strategy. NATO set in motion a major overhaul 

of strategy, aimed at creating a ‘new strategic concept’ for 

the alliance over the course of 1991. With this admission 

and declaration, NATO members began to define 

NATO’s place in the post-Cold War era. 54 

In July of 1991, the Warsaw Pact was dissolved, 

leaving NATO standing but in even greater need of 

clarity concerning its future relationship with former 

members of the Pact. NATO took the first formal step in 

the Rome Declaration of November 1991. In it, NATO 

invited former Warsaw Pact members to join in a more 

structured relationship of ‘consultation and cooperation’, 

and they created the North Atlantic Cooperation Council 

(NACC) and invited the foreign ministers of the former 

Pact countries to the inaugural meeting in December 

1991. When the Soviet Union dissolved the same month, 

NATO immediately invited Russia to join the NACC, 

and Russia became a founding member. NACC’s goal 

was to serve as a forum for dialogue on mutual security, 

and 16 NATO members and 22 former Warsaw Pact or 

USSR republics participated in the new council. 55 

The NACC represented a major statement of intent 

by the NATO allied nations. The formation of the council 

signaled the intent of NATO to engage in substantive and 

constructive dialogue with former Warsaw Pact/USSR 

states. Apprehension existed among NATO nations at 

the prospect of admitting former Warsaw Pact nations 

to the alliance; the NACC’s creation opened the door to 

that prospect. Eastern European nations that wanted to 

join NATO saw the NACC as totally inadequate in their 

long-term security goals, but accepted this initial offer 

and immediately began working toward furthering their 

security. It is important to remember that in 1990, the 

question was not whether Warsaw Pact nations would 

join NATO, but whether NATO even was necessary after 



the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. The primary NATO 

concern in 1990 was facilitating the transition in the 

Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact, and neither the US nor 

its European allies were prepared to signal any possibility 

of Warsaw Pact nations joining. 56 

With the election of Bill Clinton as US President 

in 1992, the future prospect of NATO enlargement 

remained uncertain. Officials in the earlier Bush 

Administration indicated that the process of opening up 

NATO had begun with the NACC, and that it could 

and hopefully would lead toward NATO membership 

for some NACC partners. With Clinton’s assumption 

of the presidency in January 1993, the future of NATO 

enlargement was uncertain, as the economic message 

of the campaign had preceded a firm line against 

NATO enlargement, and progress on NATO remained 

unaddressed until the 1994 NATO Summit. NATO had 

concerns about immediate expansion; as such a process 

moving too quickly could sour prospects for negotiation 

with Russia and forestall that process by years. In the 

United States, administration officials were torn on the 

subject, but the advocacy of National Security Advisor 

Tony Lake, combined with President Clinton’s advocacy 

for enlarging democracy and free-market areas, meant 

that Clinton would be receptive to advocacy by Eastern 

European states for NATO membership. Both Lake and 

Clinton came to believe that NATO enlargement would 

serve the democratic and free-market ideals that both 

ascribed to, and it was this value-based rationale that 

would succeed in convincing the public and Congress 

that NATO enlargement was in the United States’ best 

interest. 57 

Even as official policy favored deferral to the 

January 1994 Summit, key officials in several NATO 

administrations began indicating their accordance with 

future NATO enlargement. As stronger advocacy toward 

this end grew, the majority of policy-level officials leaned 

toward deferring the demanding enlargement issue, 

which continuing to develop tie to the democracies. The 

concept developed by the US Pentagon acknowledged 

the need for aspiring members to meet certain political 

and military criteria before being considered for 

membership, as well that NATO should help countries 

become producers, not just consumers, of security. It is 

with this predication in mind that the proposal for the 

Partnership for Peace (PFP) emerged. 58 

The PFP was a policymaker’s dream scenario. It 

signaled to those who aspired to NATO membership that 

their cries had been heard, and yet it made no concrete 

21


commitment concerning future actions beyond the PFP. 

The PFP also served practical needs, as nations aspiring 

to NATO membership could not expect to do so until 

they began to exchange their Cold War security and 

military systems for those of NATO. PFP would provide 

a channel for NATO assistance to aspiring members, and 

conversely enable aspirants to contribute to NATO’s new 

role as a regional peacekeeping institution. PFP served to 

spread the burden between current and aspiring NATO 

members, and was another clear step, but it was only 

a step, and more steps would be required for NATO 

membership to be actualized. Aspiring NATO nations 

knew that active participation in the PFP would be key to 

future membership, but were wary of it enabling NATO 

to further postpone the process. At the 1994 NATO 

Summit, NATO formally endorsed the PFP, and twentynine 

nations became partners in the PFP. Of these, three 

graduated to NATO membership in 1999, seven more in 

2004, and two in 2009. Finally, in 1997, the uncertain 

role of the NACC was settled as it was replaced with the 

Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC). 59 

NATO’s relationship with Russia and other Soviet 

bloc nations became increasingly complicated in the years 

following the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. From the 

beginning, Moscow resented the fact that former Warsaw 

Pact and USSR nations were joining their opposing 

alliance during the Cold War. The NATO enlargement 

process directly threatened Russia’s ‘sphere of influence,’ 

making Russia wary of the special relationship sought by 

NATO. 60 

Russia remained a top concern of NATO after the 

collapse of the USSR. Despite its devastated economy 

and military being so weak it failed to silence Chechen 

rebellion, Russia remained a world-class nuclear power, 

equipped with enormous natural resources. As such, 

allied calculations could not ignore Russia in any 

future strategic planning for NATO. In 1997, NATO 

and Russia negotiated a more permanent cooperative 

relationship, which resulted in the Founding Act on 

Mutual Relations, Cooperation, and Security between 

NATO and the Russian Federation, signed in Paris in 

May 1997. The Founding Act set a large agenda of topics 

for collaboration between NATO and Russia. It created 

the Permanent Joint Council (NATO+Russia) to further 

facilitate continuing consultations. However, this only 

formalized existing tension, as Russia sought to use the 

PJC to participate in NATO decision making, whereas 

NATO countries wanted to ensure that the PJC was 

only a place for consultation, not collaborative decisionmaking. 

In working with Russia, NATO did not want 

to give Russia any direct say in NATO deliberations, nor 

any sort of veto of NATO actions. This collaborative aim 

was at least minimally bolstered in 1996, when Russian 

forces joined NATO forces in the Implementation 

Force in Bosnia. Russia was likely motivated to assist 

by paternalistic sentiments toward Serbia, in what was 

perceived as under attack by NATO, but the ability to 

constructively collaborate on a militaristic level was a 

victory for proponents of a friendly future with Russia. 61 

Over the course of the 1990s, NATO’s aim for 

purpose after the Warsaw Pact largely occupied the three 

arguments that originally justified its existence: 

1. NATO is based on a community of values shared 

by its members; 

2. The Soviet Union remained as a viable threat; and 

3. NATO is better-positioned to handle new risks and 

uncertainties that may arise. 

Over the 1990s, the NATO advocated these values, 

democracy and free-market enterprise, through increased 

collaboration and cooperation with former Warsaw Pact 

or USSR nations. Through the NACC, FTP, and the 

EAPC, NATO created a functional channel for former 

Warsaw Pact or USSR nations to enact the reforms and 

changes that would make them viable candidates for 

NATO membership. NATO viewed itself as an advocate 

for stability and peace, using its unique positioning as a 

military alliance to influence crises and arbitrate them to 

conclusion. 


The 9/11 Attacks on the United States were originally 

believed to be a rallying cry for NATO, centering the 

organization on a common enemy, just as the Pearl 

Harbor Attack had done 60 years before. The alliance 

had somewhat stumbled through the 1990s, intervening 

in the Balkans but lacking a set of clear overarching 

goals and a clear adversary. If North Americans and 

Europeans could find common ground in identifying 

and responding to a major threat, no greater threat could 

have been presented than that of al-Qaeda on September 

11 th . The Transatlantic Bargain failed the test presented 

by 9/11. 62 

Global reaction to the attacks of September 11 th was 

immediate and overwhelmingly supportive of the United 

States. An outpouring of condolences and offers of aid 



Attacks linked to Al Qaeda since 2002 (Stories of USA) 


23


came from NATO nations, with many nations declaring 

the attack an attack against democracy. The mantle of 

“We Are All Americans” rapidly grew as nations pledged 

to help the United States bring to justice and punish 

those responsible for the attacks. EU foreign ministers 

affirmed their resolve to spare no effort in the pursuit 

of those responsible, and the western world was quickly 

cohering around the pursuit of justice in the wake of 

September 11 th . 

In Brussels, the discourse at NATO headquarters 

quickly turned to invoking Article V of the North 

Atlantic Treaty. The speed at which discussion turned 

to this option, and the decision to even discuss its 

invocation were momentous for NATO. Article V was 

the central pillar of the allied defense structure, with 

mutual assured destruction considered the result of 

Article V’s invocation since its inception. An invocation 

of Article V was to mobilize NATO for war; invocation 

was not a process taken lightly. Not once before had the 

Alliance met in Brussels to seriously debate activation of 

Article V, so the meeting in Brussels on 12 September 

2011 was remarkable. 63 

The unanimous vote of the North Atlantic Council 

on 12 September 2001 to invoke Article V was certainly 

a milestone in the history of NATO, but it was not 

without unease. During the debate, most of the members 

were willing to invoke Article V, but Germany, the 

Netherlands, Belgium, and Norway expressed serious 

reservations. Ministers from these states were concerned 

that adopting any measure could be seen as a sweeping 

endorsement of the eventual American response to the 

attacks. As NATO had not addressed terrorism until 

then, the ministers worried that invoking Article V 

would push the organization into uncharted territory. 64 

In the time before the 1999 Washington NATO 

Summit, the United States had encouraged NATO allies 

to equip NATO with strategies and tactics to combat 

future acts of terrorism. However, NATO allies such as 

France opposed the US initiative because they feared it 

would transform NATO into a European police force 

instead of a military alliance. 65 In the 1999 NATO 

Strategic Concept, it simply reads that “alliance security 

interests can be affected by other risks of a wider nature, 

including acts of terrorism, sabotage, and organized 

crime…” 66 The 1999 Strategic Concept stopped short of 

the United States’ desired link between acts of terrorism 

and Article V. NATO failed to sustain any substantive 

discussion about the role of NATO with regard to 

terrorism, and even in the wake of September 11 th , the 

role of NATO in preventing terrorism largely defaulted 

to the European standard of the 1990s, leaving it to 

the democratic and civil institutions of the individual 

nations. 67 

However, the vigor of the rhetoric immediately after 

the September 11 th attacks brought concern to many 

NATO allies. Bush’s statement that “either you are with 

us, or you are with the terrorists” brought worry to many 

stalwart US allies. Many NATO allies of the United 

States believed that literally declaring “War on Terror”, 

as opposed to just al-Qaeda, was a counterproductive 

step. 68 

“The mission needs to define the coalition, and we 

ought not to think that a coalition should define the 

mission.” 69 Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld espoused 

this to the White House Press Corps just weeks after the 

September 11 th attacks and the invocation of Article V, 

and it became increasingly clear that NATO would not be 

central to the United States plan going forward. In doing 

so, President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld broke with 

decades of precedent of NATO as a central component 

in the design and execution of US foreign policy. By the 

time September 2001 had ended, it was clear that the 

United States was largely rejecting the outpouring of 

support from NATO in favor of unilateral action. These 

decisions were a major blow to the alliance. The United 

States could have galvanized the alliance in pursuit of 

al-Qaeda, but instead elected to marginalize NATO, a 

decision that proved detrimental as the requirements 

of nation building in Afghanistan and Iraq became 

immensely larger than expected, and marginalized 

NATO was much less interested in becoming intertwined 

in conflicts in which it was not wanted to begin with. 70 

In January 2002, George W. Bush delivered his “Axis 

of Evil” speech. As it quickly became clear, the United 

States intended to expand the War on Terror to encompass 

Pyongyang, Tehran, and Baghdad. It became increasingly 

clear that the Bush Administration considered Saddam 

Hussein as a part of its War on Terror, and as the United 

States rolled toward War in Iraq, its European allies 

became quickly alienated by the unilateral approach 

that the United States employed in its decision making. 

By the Summer of 2002, German Chancellor Gerhard 

Schroeder and French President Jacques Chirac emerged 

as the leaders of the European opposition to involvement 

in Iraq. German public opinion on an Iraq War was 

dismal, but even after the 2002 fall German elections, 

the rhetoric coming from Berlin was heavy in vitriol, and 

was matched therein by the rhetoric from Paris. 71 



Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush, and Dick Cheney (Japan Focus) 

The NATO divide between the United States and 

United Kingdom on one side, and France and Germany 

on the other, proved detrimental to NATO discourse 

over the next several years. As support for, and opposition 

to, the Iraq War solidified on both sides, neither side 

abandoned the poison that marked the initial remarks 

for their side. For its part, France derided those Central 

and Eastern European nations that had signed letters of 

support for the United States, calling them “childish,” 

“dangerous,” and having missed “an opportunity to shut 

up.” For its part, the Bush Administration released, in 

September 2002, a national security policy statement 

called “National Security Strategy of the United States,” 

which is the formal espousal of the now infamous “Bush 

Doctrine.” 72 

The Iraq War was a debacle for NATO unity on all 

accounts. In less than a year, the collective of NATO allies 

went from a galvanized unit centered around the pursuit 

of justice for September 11 th , to a backhanded, indignant, 

and deeply divided group that could not be conceived to 

reach any sort of unanimous resolution on involvement 

in the Middle East. NATO, which had largely stumbled 

through the 1990s without clear purpose or intent, felt 

it had finally found reason for action in the September 

11 th reaction, and this hope in cohesion around a 

common enemy exacerbated the despair of the United 

States’ election to act unilaterally. NATO was once again 

without a purpose, deeply divided by the firestorm of 

rhetoric, and much further from agreeing on a course 

forward than before the 2000s began. 


The range of possible solutions on this topic is broad. 

They largely span the possible aspects in which NATO 

can act moving forward. Depending on what NATO 

wants its body of action and purview to be, there is a vast 

range of what it can consider its mantle going forward. 

NATO can retreat to its former role as a deterrent military 

alliance of ideological allies, with its only actual job being 

that of actor of last resort. Despite the military heft of 

NATO and its allies, it was never put to use during the 

Cold War outside of the diplomatic struggles between 


25


itself and the Warsaw Pact. On the other hand, NATO’s 

role going forward can be one of ‘actor of first resort,’ 

intervening in developing crises, and becoming a UNtype 

arbitrator with the military heft that the UN lacks. 

There is a large range of possible options for NATO to 

consider for its legacy moving forward; however, each 

option has its own pros and cons to be considered should 

it be adopted as a motivating factor for NATO. 

If NATO were to return to its limited role as a 

military alliance, it would generate several net benefits 

and costs for the alliance. For one, restricting NATO’s 

intervention actions would help NATO allies with their 

troop balances and budgets. (Note: Topic A is designed 

to discuss the specifics of when and why NATO should 

intervene, and Topic B is designed to discuss the overall 

aims of NATO in 2013 and beyond. Topic B very well may 

discuss intervention but it should be on the philosophical 

level of NATO’s aims in intervention, not the concrete 

and data-driven motivations for intervening). The cost 

of a standing alliance is innumerably less than an active 

alliance. NATO’s military commitments overseas have 

progressively decreased in military size, so the allocation 

of resources to 

NATO should be considered. Should NATO stand as 

an alliance of last resort, acting only in the extremist cases 

of a direct threat to a NATO ally? Conversely, should 

NATO operate on the mantra of being the enforcement 

wing of UN international rectification? NATO’s most 

successful actions in the wake of the Cold War have 

been those that were authorized by the UNSC. However, 

those actions have largely been the least beneficial 

politically to the nations of the alliance, benefiting other 

nations as much as they benefitted the allies. NATO has 

largely shied away from being a military alliance of one 

side, taking the mantra of being a force for good and 

democracy. Yet, these policies and beliefs are not without 

opposition, and it would be naïve for NATO to assume 

that it is unopposed in the modern world. Even as al- 

Qaeda is devastated by drone attacks and covert actions, 

numerous other state-level agents vehemently oppose 

NATO’s aims and beliefs. NATO cannot subvert itself 

to be a non-partisan agent of change, but understanding 

and considering the relationship between NATO and 

the UN is key to defining NATO’s future agenda and 

policies. 

In considering possible solutions to the future of 

NATO, options for the North Atlantic Council span the 

gambit of possible actions that NATO has in its reach. 

Another aspect to be considered as a part of NATO’s 

future is the end to NATO expansion. NATO currently 

has several nations in different stages of dialogue for 

admission to NATO, and this is on top of the several 

nations that have joined NATO since the late 1990s. 

NATO must consider what, beyond just expanding its 

purview, NATO wants out of expansion of countries. At 

what point does NATO expansion defeat its efficacy to 

enact action as a military alliance? And what does NATO 

want from the nations it is adding to the alliance? 

With the growing reality of NATO facing an enemy 

that doesn’t have formal borders, the pros and cons of 

NATO expansion are key in preventing future action 

from cutting off NATO’s ability to act. Finally, this 

body should consider NATO’s interaction with the EU 

and other socioeconomic institutions. As NATO moves 

forward with its aims, the overlap between the militaristic 

mantle of NATO and the socioeconomic mantle of the 

EU has grown, and the way in which the two institutions 

interact should be considered. As well, what level of 

interaction should NATO have with institutions of 

socioeconomic action, such as UN councils, WTO, IMF, 

etc. that have immense international power but rather 

little direct overlap of action with NATO? As NATO 

because more aimed toward peace than war, deciding 

how NATO acts with these bodies is key to shaping the 

future of NATO action. 


What should NATO’s primary purpose be in 2013 

and beyond? 

Is NATO’s goal of promoting security one that is best 

achieved by a military alliance? 

As NATO becomes an arbitrator in non-NATO 

conflicts, what should NATO’s relationship with the 

UN be? Should NATO intervention be predicated 

on UNSC approval? 

If war should break out amongst NATO nations, how 

would the alliance structure handle such an event, 

given the unanimous consent required by NATO? 

At what point does NATO’s size begin to work to its 

detriment? Is there a point at which NATO should 

not consider any more expansion? Which types of 

countries should be given priority leading up to this 

capacity? 



In the final days of negotiation regarding the 

North Atlantic Treaty itself, several other woven out of 

the dialogue that brought about NATO. For one, the 

Canadians had wanted an Article 2 that would emphasize 

the social and economic dimension of NATO. In the final 

days of the negotiation, many nations were wary of the 

plethora of lawsuits that the US Constitution’s general 

wording on ‘general welfare’ had created, and ultimately 

this worry about sensibility and purview of the treaty 

won out. Nations agreed to a reference to “economic 

collaboration” in Article 2, but any further NATO policy 

on socioeconomic issues was left out as the allies favored 

a military-centered alliance. 73 

Another intense debate in the treaty signing was the 

duration of the alliance. France championed the fifty-year 

model of the Brussels Pact, but this was unacceptable to 

the Unites States and Canada. Canada recommended a 

five-year period with the assumption that a long-term 

schedule would be made as security integration develops. 

In this concern, several nations such as Belgium, were 

attempting to lock the United States in to the alliance for 

a longer-term period to prevent the situation of the past 

two World Wars, where the United States enters far into 

the conflict to alleviate already battered European allies. 

The settled compromise allowed the Senate to review the 

treaty after ten years, and Allies were required to stay in 

for twenty years, and after that they could leave barring a 

one-year notice period of their withdrawal. 74 


NATO Summit Declarations 

The Declarations that surround each NATO summit 

are excellent resources for seeing the evolution of NATO 

policy and intent every two years. The issues addressed 

in each one are radically different despite their proximity 

to each other. Understanding these shifts in expressed 

policy is central to seeing how NATO has viewed its 

own role on a formal level, even if the declarations 

themselves are not a full picture of the things that NATO 

may be undertaking at any particular time. The London 

Declaration on a Transformed North Atlantic Alliance 

can be found at http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/ 

official_texts_23693.htm. 



National Statements Surrounding NATO Action 

Looking at the rhetoric and action each NATO 

nation takes surrounding each of the five interventions 

is key to seeing how each NATO member views NATO’s 

role in light of these actions. Especially surrounding the 

Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, the volume of rhetoric on 

the part of most NATO nations is vast, and gives a pretty 

complete picture of how those nations view the role of 

NATO in light of the way that some NATO allies wished 

to employ it in those circumstances. 

POSITION PAPER INSTRUCTIONS 

Position papers serve two critical purposes for any 

Model United Nations committee. For you, researching 

and writing position papers will help you learn more 

about the country you’re representing. For other 

delegates in the committee, your position paper will be 

able to improve their understanding of your countries’ 

policies and aid lobbying, negotiation and bloc formation. 

Ultimately, clear and concise position papers will aid 

debate in committee and promote a better committee 

experience. 

Some basic notes on formatting your paper: the 

header should have your full name, the topic area of the 

position paper, the country you are representing and the 

high school you are from. The paper should be singlespaced 

and in Times New Roman (size 12 font). 

The paper should also be composed of three parts: 

(i) a statement of the problems your country see as most 

important, how they affect your country and why it is 

necessary for the committee to address, (ii) your country’s 

policies concerning the problems addressed before and 

previous actions taken in the past and (iii) potential 

solutions to the problems your country wishes to address. 

Although there may be instances in which you could not 

find specific examples or information concerning future 

solutions, suggesting possible solutions according to 

general attitudes held by your country is acceptable. 

Speaking to your school’s Model UN faculty advisor 

or a more experienced member of Model UN from your 

school will help you while writing your position paper. 

However, if there are any questions or concerns, please 

e-mail me at nato@harvardmun.org; I will try my best 

to help! 

CLOSING REMARKS 

It is my sincere hope that this guide leaves you well 

prepared to address the complex and difficult issues 

27


of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. While this 

guide aims to be a complete introduction to the two 

topics of debate for this NATO Summit, it is by no 

means exhaustive, and there are many other viewpoints 

and details on the issues which a guide of this size cannot 

contain. Consult the bibliographic list for a small taste 

of the body of literature on these topics, as well as the 

further research section for jump-off points for your 

position paper research. With the questions raised by this 

study guide in mind, go through your nation’s articles, 

statements, contributions, votes, laws, etc. with the 

ultimate aim of a general understanding of the NATO 

policy of your country, especially on these issues. 

I cannot express my excitement for the conference to 

convene in January. If you have absolutely any questions 

or concerns, please e-mail me at nato@harvardmun. 

org, and I will gladly be in contact. See you soon! 

Best regards, 

John Pulice 

John Pulice 

Director, NATO 

nato@harvardmun.org 

ENDNOTES 

1 Stanley S. Sloan, Permanent Alliance? (New York: Continuum International Publishing Gropu Inc., 

2010) p. 4 

2 Ibid 

3 NATO, the EU, and the Atlantic Community, Sloan 

4 Ibid 

5 Ibid 

6 Ibid 

7 Ibid 

8 Ibid 

9 Ibid 

10 The United States and NATO Since 9/11, Hallams 

11 Ibid 

12 Ibid 

13 Ibid 



14 Ibid 

47 Ibid 

15 Ibid 

48 NATO and the Middle East Mohammed Orfy (119) 

16 Ibid 

17 Ibid 

18 Ibid 

19 Ibid 

20 Ibid 

21 Pursuing Strategy: Edström and Gyllensporre 

22 Alison Pargeter, Libya: The Rise and Fall of Qaddafi (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012). 

23 Ibid 

24 Ibid 

25 Ibid 

26 Ibid 

27 http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137073/ivo-h-daalder-and-james-g-stavridis/natosvictory-in-libya 

49 Stanley R. Sloan, Permanent Alliance? (New York: Continuum International Publishing Group Inc., 

2010) p. 3 

50 Ibid p. 4 

51 Ibid p. 93 

52 Ibid p. 93 

53 Ibid p. 94 

54 Ibid p. 95 

55 Ibid p. 100 

56 Ibid p. 100 

57 Ibid p. 101-02 

58 Ibid p. 103 

59 Ibid p. 103-05 

60 Ibid p. 129-30 

28 http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137073/ivo-h-daalder-and-james-g-stavridis/natosvictory-in-libya 

29 David Lesch, Syria: The Fall of the House of Assad (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012) 

61 Ibid p. 130-31 

62 Richard E. Rupp, NATO after 9/11: An Alliance in Continuing Decline (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 

2006) p. 93 

30 Ibid 

63 Ibid p. 94-5 

31 Ibid (55-57) 

64 Ibid p. 95 

32 Ibid (69-70) 

65 Ibid p. 95 

33 Ibid (65) 

66 http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_27433.htm 

34 Ibid (71) 

35 Ibid (70) 

36 Ibid (74) 

37 Ibid (76-78) 


2006) p. 95-6 

68 Ibid p. 98 

69 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/specials/attacked/transcripts/rumsfeld_ 

text101801.html 

38 Ibid (83-86) 

39 Ibid 

40 Prague Summit Declaration 


2006) p. 100-102 

71 Stanley S. Sloan, Permanent Alliance? (New York: Continuum International Publishing Gropu Inc., 

2010), p. 247-48. 

41 NATO and the Middle East Mohammed Orfy 

72 Ibid p. 248 

42 Ibid 

43 Ibid 

44 Ibid 

73 Lawrence Kaplan, NATO 1948, (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2007) p. 

220-21 

74 Ibid p. 221 

45 Ibid 

46 Ibid 


29


BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY 

A History of NATO – The First Fifty Years. Gustav Schmidt (Ed.). New York: Palgrave Publishers, 2001. 

Aybet, Gülner. A European Security Architecture After the Cold War. New York: St. Martin’s Press, LLC, 2000. 

Behnke, Andreas. NATO’s Security Discourse After the Cold War. London: Routledge, 2013. 

---. Re-Presenting the West. Stockholm: Stockholm University, 2007. 

Bilinsky, Yaroslav. Endgame in NATO’s Enlargement. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1999. 

Borawski, John, and Thomas-Durell Young. NATO After 2000. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2001. 

Coker, Christopher. The Future of the Atlantic Alliance. London: Macmillan Press Ltd., 1984. 

Daly, M. W. Darfur’s Sorrow. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 

Douglas, Frank R. The United States, NATO, and a New Multilateral Relationship. Westport, CT: Praeger Security 

International, 2008. 

Edströj, Håkan, and Dennis Gyllensporre. Pursuing Strategy: NATO Operations from the Gulf War to Gaddafi. New 

York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. 

European Security After 9/11. Peter Shearman and Matthew Sussex (Eds.). Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 

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APPENDIX 

Exhibit A: NATO Membership (Source: NATO) 


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Exhibit B: The North Atlantic Treaty (Source: NATO) 

Washington D.C. 

4 April 1949 

The Parties to this Treaty reaffirm their faith in the purposes and principles of the Charter 

of the United Nations and their desire to live in peace with all peoples and all governments. 

They are determined to safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilisation of their peoples, founded on the principles 

of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law. They seek to promote stability and well-being in the North Atlantic area. 

They are resolved to unite their efforts for collective defence and for the preservation of peace and security. They 

therefore agree to this North Atlantic Treaty : 

Article 1 

The Parties undertake, as set forth in the Charter of the United Nations, to settle any international dispute in which 

they may be involved by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security and justice are not 

endangered, and to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent 

with the purposes of the United Nations. 

Article 2 

The Parties will contribute toward the further development of peaceful and friendly international relations by 

strengthening their free institutions, by bringing about a better understanding of the principles upon which these 

institutions are founded, and by promoting conditions of stability and well-being. They will seek to eliminate conflict 

in their international economic policies and will encourage economic collaboration between any or all of them. 

Article 3 

In order more effectively to achieve the objectives of this Treaty, the Parties, separately and jointly, by means of 

continuous and effective self-help and mutual aid, will maintain and develop their individual and collective capacity 

to resist armed attack. 

Article 4 

The Parties will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political 

independence or security of any of the Parties is threatened. 

Article 5 

The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered 

an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise 

of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will 

assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such 

action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North 

Atlantic area. 

Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall immediately be reported to the Security 

Council. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore 

and maintain international peace and security . 

Article 6 

(1) For the purpose of Article 5, an armed attack on one or more of the Parties is deemed to include an armed 

attack: on the territory of any of the Parties in Europe or North America, on the Algerian Departments of France (2), 

on the territory of or on the Islands under the jurisdiction of any of the Parties in the North Atlantic area north of the 

Tropic of Cancer;on the forces, vessels, or aircraft of any of the Parties, when in or over these territories or any other 



area in Europe in which occupation forces of any of the Parties were stationed on the date when the Treaty entered 

into force or the Mediterranean Sea or the North Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer. 

Article 7 

This Treaty does not affect, and shall not be interpreted as affecting in any way the rights and obligations under the 

Charter of the Parties which are members of the United Nations, or the primary responsibility of the Security Council 

for the maintenance of international peace and security. 

Article 8 

Each Party declares that none of the international engagements now in force between it and any other of the Parties 

or any third State is in conflict with the provisions of this Treaty, and undertakes not to enter into any international 

engagement in conflict with this Treaty. 

Article 9 

The Parties hereby establish a Council, on which each of them shall be represented, to consider matters concerning 

the implementation of this Treaty. The Council shall be so organised as to be able to meet promptly at any time. The 

Council shall set up such subsidiary bodies as may be necessary; in particular it shall establish immediately a defence 

committee which shall recommend measures for the implementation of Articles 3 and 5. 

Article 10 

The Parties may, by unanimous agreement, invite any other European State in a position to further the principles 

of this Treaty and to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area to accede to this Treaty. Any State so invited 

may become a Party to the Treaty by depositing its instrument of accession with the Government of the United States 

of America. The Government of the United States of America will inform each of the Parties of the deposit of each 

such instrument of accession. 

Article 11 

This Treaty shall be ratified and its provisions carried out by the Parties in accordance with their respective 

constitutional processes. The instruments of ratification shall be deposited as soon as possible with the Government 

of the United States of America, which will notify all the other signatories of each deposit. The Treaty shall enter into 

force between the States which have ratified it as soon as the ratifications of the majority of the signatories, including 

the ratifications of Belgium, Canada, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United 

States, have been deposited and shall come into effect with respect to other States on the date of the deposit of their 

ratifications. ( 3 ) 

Article 12 

After the Treaty has been in force for ten years, or at any time thereafter, the Parties shall, if any of them so requests, 

consult together for the purpose of reviewing the Treaty, having regard for the factors then affecting peace and security 

in the North Atlantic area, including the development of universal as well as regional arrangements under the Charter 

of the United Nations for the maintenance of international peace and security. 

Article 13 

After the Treaty has been in force for twenty years, any Party may cease to be a Party one year after its notice of 

denunciation has been given to the Government of the United States of America, which will inform the Governments 

of the other Parties of the deposit of each notice of denunciation. 

Article 14 

This Treaty, of which the English and French texts are equally authentic, shall be deposited in the archives of the 

Government of the United States of America. Duly certified copies will be transmitted by that Government to the 

Governments of other signatories. 


33


The definition of the territories to which Article 5 applies was revised by Article 2 of the Protocol to the North 

Atlantic Treaty on the accession of Greece and Turkey signed on 22 October 1951. 

On January 16, 1963, the North Atlantic Council noted that insofar as the former Algerian Departments of 

France were concerned, the relevant clauses of this Treaty had become inapplicable as from July 3, 1962. 

The Treaty came into force on 24 August 1949, after the deposition of the ratifications of all signatory states. 

Exhibit C: Sample Resolution 

Resolution 361 on NATO’s Ongoing Role in Afghanistan (Source: NATO) 

The Assembly, 

Reaffirming the importance of the NATO mission in Afghanistan, and noting that the success of the mission is vital 

to the future welfare of the Afghan people and to the continuing credibility of NATO as an international actor; 

Stressing the strategic importance of the mission to secure the stabilisation and reconstruction ofAfghanistan and 

prevent the region from becoming a haven for international terrorism or a narcostate; 

Commending the excellent performance of our forces in Afghanistan and those of allied nations in very demanding 

conditions and honouring those who have lost their lives in this mission; 

Commending the successful expansion of NATO’s responsibilities across the totality of Afghan territory; 

Noting with concern the resurgence of violent opposition in Afghanistan as well as the surging narcotics problem, 

continued corruption, and limited reach of the central government; 

Recognising that the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is a transitional force, and that the training and 

equipping of the Afghan National Security Forces will be the ultimate key to the establishment of abiding security 

throughout Afghanistan; 

Understanding that in the long term, there is not a simple military solution to Afghanistan ’s problems, and that an 

Afghan political solution will be absolutely essential; 

Requesting a greater presence of other international organisations such as the United Nations and the European 

Union, and recognising that NATO’s role is only one of the necessary elements of Afghanistan ’s stabilisation; 

Recognising this is inherently a very long-term and multifaceted mission; 

Welcoming the additional contributions of some NATO members, but encouraging all member states to share fully in 

the risks and costs of our collective decisions; 

Noting that NATO Commanders continue to lack adequate personnel and equipment to perform the tasks assigned 

to them based on our collective decisions, and deploring the failure to supply additional forces and assets in adequate 

measure as requested; 

Further noting with concern that insufficient personnel and equipment can increase the risk to our troops as well as 

to innocent civilians, indigenous or otherwise; 

URGES member governments and parliaments of the North Atlantic Alliance: 

(a) to reaffirm their commitment to assisting the Government of Afghanistan to provide a secure and stable 

environment for its people; 

(b) to initiate a political dialogue leading to a consensus strategic vision on Afghanistan, which could be endorsed 

at the Bucharest Summit of 2008; 

(c) to supply the personnel and equipment that our military commanders deem necessary to perform the mission 

with which we have tasked them and to include additional training teams, helicopters, and Intelligence, Surveillance 

and Reconnaissance assets as a matter of priority; 

(d) to encourage the sharing of “best practices” guidelines for Provincial Reconstruction Teams so that their 

efficacy can be maximised; 

(e) to reconsider the prospect of direct NATO involvement in the counter-narcotics effort in support of the 

Government of Afghanistan; 



(f) to further reduce those national caveats which continue to hamper commanders’ ability to plan and conduct 

operations to their maximum effect; 

(g) to continue efforts to minimise civilian casualties, while challenging false or exaggerated reports thereof; 

(h) to ensure political obstacles in Brussels do not endanger full and necessary co-operation on the ground 

between NATO and other international organisations, especially the EU; 

(i) to increase NATO force levels in the areas of Afghanistan where the threat from insurgents is greatest. 

Exhibit D: Post-War Europe (Source: Mary Baldwin College) 


35

North Atlantic Treaty Organization - Harvard Model United Nations

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