F OCUS - American Foreign Service Association

More documents

Recommendations

Info

F O C U S and its continued influence in Europe. Though it is an alliance based on mutual defense, with decisions reached by consensus of the biggest and the smallest member-states, NATO still translates as “American” in most European minds. This perception has its ramifications for European efforts to find the proper alignment between their defense posture as NATO members and their plans for a defense role for the European Union. The number of European uniforms visible at NATO’s sole headquarters in North America, Allied Command Transformation (formerly SACLANT) in Norfolk, Va., was always minimal compared to the thousands of American and Canadian troops stationed in Europe. During the Cold War, of course, it was Europe that needed boots-on-the-ground protection against the Soviet Union. Now, despite NATO’s wider horizon, Europe remains the Alliance’s geopolitical epicenter. Europe’s attitude towards NATO is schizophrenic. On one hand, the Alliance provides strategic protection for European member-states and lessens their need to spend money on defense. The flip side is having to deal with American activism — whether nudging NATO’s borders ever closer to Russia’s sensitive frontiers, or taking NATO “out of area,” all the way to Afghanistan. As David Calleo observed in the December 2008 Foreign Service Journal (“NATO’s Future: Taking a Fresh Approach”), the “toolbox” strategy of using NATO as an intervention force risks transforming “a defensive European alliance into an instrument for American intrusions around the world.” Since the end of the Cold War some two decades ago, almost every NATO summit has been an excuse to rehash op-eds proclaiming “The End of NATO.” The underlying disagreements usually pit the United States Gerald Loftus served at the U.S. Mission to NATO from 1994 to 1998, among many other Foreign Service postings. A subject matter expert for interagency coordination at U.S. European Command and graduate of the National Defense University, he organized seminars on a range of national security topics for NDU’s Africa Center for Strategic Studies from 2004 to 2006. A retired FSO, he lives in Brussels, where he analyzes diplomatic issues on his Web site (http://AvuncularAmerican.typepad.com/blog). Despite NATO’s wider horizon, Europe remains the Alliance’s geopolitical epicenter. against the Europeans, but are almost always patched up to allow the alliance to carry on. This is not to minimize what can be existential (in terms of NATO as an organization) questions. Does the North Atlantic- European quadrant of the globe still require a standing alliance in the face of a diminished threat from the East? As NATO expands to almost double the number of member-states it had during the Cold War, can its decisionmaking apparatus withstand the increasing difficulty of reaching consensus? And — for both Europeans and Americans — does an alliance dedicated solely to defense capture the growing complexity of relations between the world’s largest trading partners and densest concentration of democracies? Membership Means Something After the Second World War, with the Cold War blasting its Siberian air on a ravaged Western Europe, the wartorn population greeted the creation of NATO in 1949 with relief. The postwar path of multilateral defense went hand in hand with cooperation in the economic sphere: the Marshall Plan and its successor, the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development; and the European Coal and Steel Community, the almost-forgotten precursor to today’s European Union. There was strength in numbers. In some sense, NATO is a victim of this success. European member-states — which also tend to belong to the E.U. — no longer see NATO as their primary institution of reference. Even in the collective security sphere, NATO’s monopoly is over. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe has responsibilities for early warning, conflict prevention, crisis management and post-conflict rehabilitation, as well as a membership that truly extends from “Vancouver to Vladivostok.” But the OSCE — the largest regional security organization in the world — isn’t a NATO competitor. With its 56-member council, including countries as different as Belarus and Belgium, OSCE is a convenient forum but not a defense alliance. NATO, with its potential membership list of 50 (the “Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council,” which combines NATO’s 26 members and its 24 partner countries, has been a way-station to member- 16 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / A P R I L 2 0 0 9
F O C U S Underlying disagreements regularly pit Washington against the Europeans, but are almost always patched up to allow the alliance to carry on. ship), should be wary of going down a similar “talking shop” path. NATO membership means something, as last summer’s South Ossetia conflict powerfully reminded the world. In discussions throughout 2008 over Georgian accession hopes, both before and after Russia moved troops in August, NATO countries emphasized the Article 5 mutual defense clause. Peter Savodnik, writing in the January Harper’s, posited the dilemma in an article titled “Georgian Roulette”: “The question is whether NATO believes Georgia ... is worth defending.” He cites Charles Elbinger of the Brookings Institution: “Let’s assume that they had been admitted to NATO. Do we really believe that NATO would have come to their defense? I personally do not believe there’s any stomach for a military confrontation with Russia.” Savodnik believes that should NATO welcome Mikheil Saakashvili’s Georgia, the Alliance “may not survive a second attack.” What Europeans Want In the hierarchy of Europe’s multilateral organizations, neither NATO, OSCE nor OECD attracts the most attention and funding. The European Union does. And the E.U. has its own alphabet soup of security-related processes (most can’t be called institutions yet). Foremost among them is the Common Foreign and Security Policy, which is to dovetail with the European Security and Defense Identity within NATO. How? That’s what is rather confusing, especially to Europeans on the street. Wags point out that there is no common policy, nor individuals to lead it, as long as the A P R I L 2 0 0 9 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 17
Page 1: PLANNING FOR RETIREMENT ■ COMING
Page 6 and 7: F OREIGN J O U R N A L SERVICE Edit
Page 8 and 9: LETTERS Progress on Contact Reporti
Page 10 and 11: L E T T E R S gressional authority
Page 12 and 13: CYBERNOTES New Focus on Public Dipl
Page 14 and 15: C Y B E R N O T E S This is not ju
Page 16 and 17: S P E A K I N G O U T guage-design
Page 20 and 21: F O C U S Lisbon Treaty remains unr
Page 22 and 23: F O C U S Many Americans might reca
Page 24 and 25: F O C U S O N N AT O A T 6 0 ANSWER
Page 26 and 27: F O C U S NATO’s International Se
Page 28 and 29: F O C U S bership. But none of the
Page 30 and 31: F O C U S O N N AT O A T 6 0 THE RU
Page 32 and 33: F O C U S “transformation agenda
Page 34 and 35: F O C U S 2003 Iraq War, and would
Page 36 and 37: They may also not expect changes in
Page 38 and 39: who are younger, married for shorte
Page 41 and 42: AFSANEWS American Foreign Service A
Page 43 and 44: V.P. VOICE: STATE ■ BY STEVE KASH
Page 45 and 46: ing restrictions on rehiring annuit
Page 47 and 48: FS VOICE: FAMILY MEMBER MATTERS ■
Page 49 and 50: 2009 Foreign Service Youth Contests
Page 51 and 52: CLASSIFIEDS A F S A N E W S LEGAL S
Page 53 and 54: BOOKS The Importance of Religious F
Page 55: B O O K S nates, though several le
Page 58 and 59: I N M E M O R Y ernment and the Ja
Page 60 and 61: I N M E M O R Y mation Agency in 1
Page 62 and 63: I N M E M O R Y the Food and Drug
Page 64 and 65: I N M E M O R Y of adventure, her
Page 66 and 67: u COORDINATE MAINTENANCE u OVER 24
Page 68 and 69:
REAL ESTATE ADVERTISING INDEX When
Page 70:
REFLECTIONS Recalling Lockerbie BY
show all

F OCUS - American Foreign Service Association

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?