NATO’S ROLE IN CENTRAL ASIA
Abstract
In the years after the Cold War NATO “operates in an environment of continuing change "and has undergone a deep-rooted transformation concerning its strategy, membership and operations. Initially NATO was conceived as an alliance with the aim of protecting its members’ territory from a large-scale aggression emanating from an “enemy” (after 1955 the Warsaw Pact became such an enemy). Its planning was based on the classical concept of war, i.e. confrontation of big military units on a broad theater. Use of nuclear weapons was included in its options, even only as a measure of last resort. NATO’s post-Cold War strategic agenda—German unification, the integration of Central and Eastern Europe, partnership with Russia and the Ukraine, and stabilization of the Balkans—is essentially complete or on the track of being completed. It cannot serve as the Alliance’s strategic purpose.
In the words of Henry Kissinger “today’s world is in a state of revolutionary disarray.” NATO must keep pace with developments in the international stage and cope with new risks, dangers and threats which are smaller in scale but make Western societies more vulnerable.
NATO’s transformation began in the early 1990s and is still progressing. The Summits in Washington (1999), Prague (2002) and Istanbul (2004) have given NATO its new face. The Alliance is gradually becoming a political rather than military and a collective security instead of a collective defense organization.3 It has adopted an “Open-Door Policy,” with a result that any state willing and able to incorporate its values, strategies and tactics has an option to join it; NATO has recently accepted ten Central and Eastern European states as its members, thus contributing to a Europe whole, free and at peace.
NATO does not consider itself to be any country’s adversary; there is not a single state which could be viewed as “the” enemy. Similarly, the enlarged Alliance does not threaten any country; on the contrary, it seeks a synergy of efforts by all states, including Russia, in order to success-fully address the new challenges.
While collective defense and Art 5 operations remain its core purpose, NATO must also take account of the global context; its operations cannot be territorially limited. The traditional idea that war occurs solely between mutually exclusive spatial entities, either states or blocs, no longer holds. Permeable boundaries and shifting alliances mark the struggles of local militias and the local political economies of warfare in specific places. Enemies no longer so obviously control territories; violence is often constrained to particular places but its connections spill over the territorial boundaries of conventional geopolitical categories.4 The greatest likelihood for people in America and Europe being killed does not emanate from a major military invasion, but from a threat posed by terrorists or failed states in the periphery armed with weapons of mass destruction attacking our citizens, our countries or our vital interests.
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References
See: F.S. Larrabee, NATO’s Eastern Agenda in a New Strategic Era, RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, CA, 2003, p. 174.
See a very interesting study on NATO’s adaptation to new challenges: H. Haftendorn, Das Atlantische Bundnis in der Anpassungskrise, SWP-Studie, Berlin, February 2005, p. 7.
See: J. Howorth, J.T.S. Keeler, “The EU, NATO and the Quest for European Autonomy,” in: Defending Europe:
he EU, NATO and the Quest for European Autonomy, ed. by J. Howorth and J.T.S. Keeler, New York, 2003, pp. 3, 14.
See: S. Black, After Two Wars: Reflections on the American Strategic Revolution in Central Asia, Defense Acad-emy of the United Kingdom, Conflict Studies Research Center, Central Asian Series 05/14, April 2005, p. 10.
See: F.S. Larrabee, op. cit., p. 31.
See: A. Bogaturov, International Relations in Central-Eastern Asia: Geopolitical Challenges and Prospects for Political Action, The Brookings Institution Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies, Washington D.C., June 2004,p. 7.
See: I. Berman, “The New Battleground: Central Asia and the Caucasus,” The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 28,No. 1, Winter 2004-2005, p. 61.
See also: Security through Partnership, NATO Public Diplomacy Division 2005, p. 36 [www.nato.int/docu/pub-form.htm].
See: H. Haftendorn, op. cit., p. 24.
See: R. Weaver, “Continuing to Build Security through Partnership,” NATO-Review, Spring 2004 [hww.hq.nqto.int/
ids/docu/review/2004/issue1/english/art1_pr.html].
See: Security through Partnership, p. 6.
See: J. Lanxade, “Imagining a New Alliance,” in: NATO Transformation: Problems and Prospects, ed. by C.R. Nelson and J.S. Purcell, The Atlantic Council of the U.S., April 2004, p. 15.
See: S. Black, op. cit., p. 11.
See: Faultlines of Conflict in Central Asia and the South Caucasus. Implications for the U.S. Army, ed. by O. Oliker and Th.S. Szayna, RAND Santa Monica, CA, 2003 passim; E. Wishnick, Strategic Consequences of the Iraq War: U.S.
ecurity Interests in Central Asia Reassessed, Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, Carlisle, PA, May 2004,p. 33 [htpp://www.carlisle.army.mil/ssi].
See: E. Wishnick, Growing U.S. Security Interests in Central Asia, U.S. Army War College, October 2002, p. 3.
See: S. Black, op. cit., p. 23.
See: R.N. McDermott, “NATO Deepens its Partnership with Central Asia,” Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst,
November, 2004 [www.cacianalyst.org/view_article.php?articleid+2836}.
See: A. Bogaturov, op. cit., p. 4.
See: H. Haftendorn, op. cit., p. 24
See: S. Black, op. cit., p. 12.
See: B. Kerry, “Iraq Is the Wrong Answer, International Herald Tribune,” 13 April, 2004, p. 7.
See: D.L. Burghardt, “In the Tracks of Tamerlane: Central Asia’s Path to the 21st Century,” in: In the Tracks of Tamerlane: Central Asia’s Path to the 21st Century, ed. by D.L. Burghardt and Th. Sabonis-Helf, Center for Technology and National Security Policy at the U.S. National Defence University, Washington D.C., 2003, pp. 3, 17.
See: A.K. Cebrowski, “Transformation and its Implications for NATO,” in: NATO Transformation, p. 2.
See: Ch.A. Kupchan, The End of the American Era: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Geopolitics of the Twenty-first Century, A CFR Book, Alfred A. Knopf, November 2002, p. 336.
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