“Ambition gap” could threaten NATO

Date: 09/01/03

By Dana Spinant

In light of the organisation's biggest enlargement in history, NATO's secretary-general stresses that cracks in the relationship between Europe and the US could impact badly on the capabilites of the Alliance.

THE growing gaps between Europe and the United States are a serious threat for NATO, the Secretary-General of the Atlantic Alliance George Robertson warns.

After having launched the biggest enlargement in NATO's history, Lord Robertson urges caution to keep the two sides of the Atlantic connected.

He warns that Europe may fall victim to an "ambition gap".

"There is a danger of a capabilities gap, of a thinking gap and an ambition gap," he told this newspaper. "If we go down that road it would be profoundly dangerous for transatlantic relations."

"The Americans are buying the equipment for the future," says Robertson, while Europe is still equipped "for the past and for enemies that have disappeared".

However, it is not only about weapons but also about military strategy.

"There is a thinking gap, because the Americans are transforming not just their equipment and their training but the whole way in which they go about using their military equipment.

"And we've got to be a part of that, or we'll never be able to work with them in the future or influence the direction they are going in."

The third gap risks having crucial consequences for Europe. "Much more worrying is the possibility of an ambition gap: of European governments wanting to do things in the European backyard, or even further afield, say in Africa, but not having the ability to deliver on the ambition. This is bad for the connection between governments and their people."

However, with Europe and America increasingly seeing the world differently, and having a clashing approach to the use of military force, the most difficult rift to heal might be the political gap.

Buying the same weapons would not automatically make Paris or Berlin and Washington think alike about Iraq or North Korea, for instance. But Lord Robertson, a former British defence minister, denies the risk of political strains between the two sides of the Atlantic.

He insists the US and the European allies have no problems in taking decisions on controversial issues.

"I pointed out to President [George W.] Bush in Prague that we passed a statement, a very tough statement on Iraq to present it to the summit, where it was endorsed. And it took 18 hours to do it: that was 41 days quicker than the United Nations," said Robertson.

Some claim that the accession of seven countries, expected to take place in 2004, would reinforce the American influence within the Alliance, as the former communist states are significantly pro-America. But Robertson challenges this view. "They are all European as well, so you could say that the European cabal is going to be strengthened as well. But none of these labels actually matter.

"That's not the way it stands. Individual countries are going their own way, and they are all equal to the US, to Germany or France." It is not as though they choose camps within the Alliance, he insists.

Critics of NATO also say it is condemned to inaction. That view is because, in the most important front of the moment - the fight against terrorism - the Alliance played a marginal role, while the US and its close European allies took central stage in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"Even when NATO offered to act in the aftermath of the 11 September [2001] terrorist attacks on the US, Washington politely said it would take care of its own business," a European Commission official said.

"Although the North Atlantic Council invoked Article 5 [which provides that an attack on one is an attack on all members], NATO was not called to do much in the fight against terror: that proves that the Alliance does not have a bright future," he added.

Lord Robertson disputes this view. He points out that it was NATO AWACS (Airborne warning and control system aircraft) based in Europe that "went to defend American cities. It was NATO ships in the Mediterranean who have interdicted something like two-and-a-half thousand ships in order to make sure terrorists are not using the seaway".

He also claims the Alliance should take indirect credit for having built the capacity for different armies to work together. "It is NATO interoperability and training habits and practices that allowed all these nations to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan."

The Scotsman predicts the Alliance will be busy in the future as "this is only the first snapshot" of the war against terrorism.

"NATO is now revamping itself, remodelling itself in order to deal with these challenges and, after the summit meeting in Prague, it is in a much better position to go forward [as] even more relevant that it has been in the past."

He strongly rejects the view that despite, or even because of, the expansion into seven countries NATO will become irrelevant. Critics of enlargement say an alliance with 26 countries will be incapable of taking decisions with unanimity. Lord Robertson claims that ever since NATO expanded, from 12 to 15 countries, to 16 and then to 19 members, "there were people who claimed that adding new nations would make it completely paralysed. They were wrong then and they are wrong now".

"The thing that keeps NATO going and makes NATO so efficient and so effective is that people take defence very seriously. So not every ambassador speaks at every meeting, not every country wants to have its say or to block things, although they've all got the right to block. So it operates by good will.

"And I don't see any reason why the seven new countries, who after all we've examined in such detail, are going to break that political will."

The Alliance chief claims NATO has acted very quickly in the past, although it had to decide by unanimity. "We invoked Article 5 of the Washington Treaty in six-and-a-half hours, we deployed troops in Macedonia last year, four-and-a-half thousand troops, in only five days after the political decision.

"We had a campaign against a heavily armed state in the Balkans, Yugoslavia, and we prevailed in 78 days, only 78," he points out.

And it shouldn't be any more difficult to take decisions in future, he claims: "It works at 19, so it will work at 26. And I see good reasons for believing it will be just as strong, if not stronger."

Another crucial moment for the Alliance was the long-overdue conclusion, in December 2002, of an agreement on the use by the European Union of NATO military assets.

"I cannot overestimate the importance of this decision," he said. "This will make the rapid reaction force a reality. Without this deal the EU's rapid reaction force would have had serious problems. Indeed, it would have betrayed its very origin, because it was always designed to be connected to NATO, complementary to NATO, not competing with NATO.

"This [agreement] was an enormously historic day for the EU and a big bonus day for the Alliance as well."

Interview with George Robertson, secretary-general of NATO. He stresses that cracks in the relationship between Europe and the US could impact badly on the capabilities of the Alliance.