The latest NATO summit has finished in Lisbon, with lots of agreements for expensive projects and nice statements about cooperation. But unfortunately it is all a ruse, and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen is in reality fighting a losing battle for the survival of his organisation.
Rasmussen's idealistic calls for a US-EU-Russia missile defence shield have built on suggestions from Madeleine Albright and former NATO Secretary General George Robertson for Russia to eventually join NATO. His vision is to be applauded; it would lead to a safer world and steps towards rapproachment between Russia and the West should always be welcomed. But improved relations did not come about through anything NATO did. It was the installation of Obama as President in the US that Moscow responded to, not statements from NATO's SHAPE headquarters outside Brussels.
Fantasy
Yet the prospect of Russia joining NATO is simple fantasy. Russia, for domestic reasons, needs NATO as an enemy. Maintaining the presence of an 'other' helps define national identity within Russia and secure a sense of togetherness. On top of that, Russia would not want to be a part of an organisation that is predominantly led by and controlled by Washington.
However, Russia-NATO cooperation has improved. In the realm of combatting terrorism, Russian and NATO experts are researching together on how to identify terrorists seeking to detonate weapons on public transportation, and there is a NATO-Russian non-proliferation nuclear working group as well. Russia has aided NATO in Afghanistan by granting usage of Russian supply lines to forces deployed there, and is also cooperating heavily in the fight against the narcotics trade. Yet all of this is in reality very little. Despite nuclear cooperation, Russia is the reason Iran has nuclear reactors. And tension is still very real when the subject of Georgia is raised – the prospect of Georgia joining NATO through the 'open-doors' policy is anathema to Moscow; and NATO is still smarting over Russia's victory against Tibilisi in the 2008 war.
Still, Rasmussen wants to push for more cooperation, asking for more contributions to Afghanistan and increased Russian involvement in the fight against piracy in the Gulf of Aden. A look at the finances will reveal why.
The Fogh of Finances…
Common Missile Defence is outrageously expensive. The US can not really afford to do this alone. Using NATO as an umbrella would help establish this system, and share the costs. Missile defence, if truly shared, would also probably compromise US sovereignty over its satellite system, and the Pentagon would be loathe to do this. Moscow would also refuse to give details of its GLONASS system for shared usage. The EU's Galileo, however, would be ideal.
Getting Russia to help in the Afghanistani mission would also reduce costs, as Russia is geographically located in a far more convenient location for missions to Afghanistan. And Russian defence spending will increase in 2011, when virtually everyone elses will decrease. The UK will see our NATO membership pledge broken with spending falling below 2% of GDP, and Obama's administration has slashed US defence spending. The panel of experts developing NATO's new mission statement, led by Madeleine Albright, has been urging closer cooperation between NATO and the EU to avoid defence duplication.
Brussel's quiet victory
The reality behind Rasmussen's calls for greater cooperation is one of falling defence spending within NATO and his attempts to stop the inevitable. If the US and Russia would find missile defence cooperation difficult, then the EU satellites would solve the problem. Using Galileo capabilities would be ideal for everyone – the US and Russia could maintain their own systems and gain access to the EU's second-rate one.
Meanwhile, the Treaty of Lisbon has already duplicated NATO's main raison d'etre in Article 42.7 of collective defence, and the EU does not have problems that hinder NATO, such as Turkey, which has blocked NATO cooperation with the EU because of Cyprus's membership. The EU is already operating military expeditions as well. 405 people are deployed in Georgia under the EU Monitoring Mission there, which already has a 2 year duration. And the European Defence Agency has been envisaged to coordinate European defence purchasing to ensure EU states are not duplicating each other. Like it or not, the EU is doing everything that NATO wanted to do, and as Dominic Strauss Kahn of the IMF has been calling, is likely to gain more financial and budgetary power because of the state of European finances, and so will be able to centralise and harmonise Europe as a state-entity with one armed force, able to take care of itself, and release the US from its financial commitments to defending Europe. Essentially, NATO will soon be redundant and replaced by the EU. Now, it is an organisation fighting for a reason and trying to justify itself in tight financial times.
Britain: short-term sleepwalking
Sadly, the coalition government in Britain has aided this process every step of the way, most significantly with the cooperation agreements with the French. By denigrating the UK's armed forces, the government has increased the validity of everything Brussels wants to accomplish. There are centuries of reasons why cooperation with France is not good: quite simply, British and French interests are different. Take the Common Agricultural Policy for example: CAP is great for France; but like pouring British taxpayers money down the drain. And the Yugoslav conflict in the 1990s showed that information shared with France can often find its way into the wrong hands. The US Congress is already reluctant to share technology with the UK because of our continental ties, and the continents ties to China.
Whilst defence cooperation with France might be a logical short-term financial solution, in the long-term, the coalition government has taken a step towards the dismantling of NATO and the strengthening of the EU with the creation of a common European army. As ever, Britain's place in all of this is ambivious, and will lead to us losing access to US technology and being dragged deeper into the European project at the expense of national democracy. Labour took short-term decisions at the expense of the nation: Is this really what Cameron and Hague want to be remembered for also?
