NATO’s Transformation in the 1990s

In the 1991 Strategic Concept the Allies recognized that dramatic changes in the
European and Eurasian political landscape were underway. However, they could not
imagine the extent to which the Balkan conflicts would involve their security interests
and lead to direct military involvement.

The 1991 Strategic Concept retained the Alliance’s traditional focus on collective
defense, but called for smaller forces with “enhanced flexibility and mobility and an
assured capability for augmentation when necessary” to counter aggression against any
Ally.1 In order to respond to threats and risks that are “multifaceted in nature and
multi-directional, which makes them hard to predict and assess,” the Strategic Concept
recommended “immediate and rapid reaction” forces for deterrence and defense
against limited attacks, and supplemental main defense forces and reinforcements for
the “unlikely” contingency of a “major conflict.”2

The language of the Alliance’s 1991 Strategic Concept suggests that NATO did not then
envisage participating in any crisis management operations as they came to be
understood in subsequent years; the mission remained collective defense against
aggression affecting Alliance territory, not intervention beyond that territory.
According to the 1991 Strategic Concept, “The Alliance is purely defensive in purpose:
none of its weapons will ever be used except in self-defense.”3

The Allies did not anticipate in 1991 that the following year they would begin to engage
in a wide range of demanding non-Article 5 operations in the Balkans. (The “non-
Article 5” formula was devised to refer to Alliance military operations other than self-
defense.) These operations, which the Allies have also pursued in Afghanistan since
2003 (and in Libya in 2011), have been called various names, including crisis
management, crisis response, stabilization operations, and peace operations. In most of
these operations the Allies have pursued what they have since 2006 called a
“comprehensive approach.” This approach has sought improved marshalling of the
range of crisis management tools within NATO, plus extensive coordination with local
authorities and other international organizations, particularly the United Nations and
the European Union, as well as a large array of non-governmental organizations and
partner countries, including Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea.4

1 North Atlantic Council, Strategic Concept, November 7, 1991, par. 47.

2 North Atlantic Council, Strategic Concept, November 7, 1991, par. 9 and 47.
3 North Atlantic Council, Strategic Concept, November 7, 1991, par. 36.
4
The Allies agreed in 2006 that “Experience in Afghanistan and Kosovo demonstrates that
today’s challenges require a comprehensive approach by the international community
involving a wide spectrum of civil and military instruments, while fully respecting mandates
and autonomy of decisions of all actors, and provides precedents for this approach.” North
Atlantic Council, Riga Summit Declaration, 29 November 2006, par. 10. NATO Allies

1
In contrast with their failure in the 1991 Strategic Concept to envisage the requirement
that would soon emerge for “crisis response” or “crisis management” interventions in
the Balkans, the Allies did show foresight and imagination with regard to outreach and
partnership activities intended to shape the Euro-Atlantic security environment.

In the 1990 London Declaration the NATO Allies set out a vision in which NATO
would be “an agent of change.” The Allies asserted that NATO could “help build the
structures of a more united continent, supporting security and stability with the
strength of our shared faith in democracy, the rights of the individual, and the peaceful
resolution of disputes.”5 In order to achieve this objective, the Allies held, “The
Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) should become more
prominent in Europe’s future, bringing together the countries of Europe and North
America.”6

The CSCE at that time included Canada and the United States, the Soviet Union and its
Warsaw Pact allies, and all the other countries of Europe, except for Albania. The Allies
called at the London Summit for a CSCE Summit in Paris later in the year to establish
new CSCE institutions, and the Paris OSCE Summit accomplished these goals, thanks
to the concurrence of the Soviet Union and its European allies. In November 1991, at
the Rome Summit, the NATO Allies asserted that

The CSCE has the outstanding advantage of being the only forum that brings together all
countries of Europe and Canada and the United States under a common code of human
rights, fundamental freedoms, democracy, rule of law, security, and economic liberty. The
new CSCE institutions and structures, which we proposed at our London Summit and
which were created at the Paris Summit, must be consolidated and further developed so
as to provide CSCE with the means to help ensure full implementation of the Helsinki

nonetheless have differing definitions of the requirements of a “comprehensive approach,”

including the extent to which the Allies should develop and employ civilian capabilities under
Alliance auspices. For background on national and NATO policies concerning the
“comprehensive approach,” see David S. Yost, NATO and International Organizations, Forum
Paper no. 3 (Rome: NATO Defense College, September 2007), pp. 19-30, 155-158, 176-183,
available at http://www.ndc.nato.int/download/publications/fp_03.pdf (accessed 2 July
2009); and Brooke Smith-Windsor, “Hasten Slowly: NATO’s Effects Based and Comprehensive
Approach to Operations,” in Research Paper, NATO Defense College, no. 38 (July 2008), available
at.
5
North Atlantic Council, Declaration on a Transformed North Atlantic Alliance, London, 5-6
July 1990, par. 2, available at http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_23693.htm.
6
North Atlantic Council, Declaration on a Transformed North Atlantic Alliance, London, 5-6
July 1990, par. 21, available at http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_23693.htm.

2
 Final Act, the Charter of Paris, and other relevant CSCE documents and thus permit the
CSCE to meet the new challenges which Europe will have to face.7

The Soviet Union broke apart the following month, in December 1991, and all the
successor states of the Soviet Union became members of what was then the Conference
on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE).

The initial statements in the early 1990s about NATO’s vision for positive peaceful
change employed the deceptively simple word “Europe” — the original term employed
to describe the scope of the CSCE, despite the participation of Canada, the United
States, and the Soviet Union.

According to the ambitious language of the 1991 Rome Declaration, “The peoples of
North America and the whole of Europe can now join in a community of shared values
based on freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law. As an agent of change,
a source of stability and the indispensable guarantor of its members' security, our
Alliance will continue to play a key role in building a new, lasting order of peace in
Europe: a Europe of cooperation and prosperity.”8

The assumption that the CSCE participating states would cooperate in pursuing shared
political and security ideals led to a distinction between the territory of the CSCE and
the rest of the world, and the introduction of a new term — the “Euro-Atlantic area.” In
NATO’s January 1994 Partnership for Peace (PfP) Framework Document, for example,
the objective of “the strengthening of security within the Euro-Atlantic area” concerns
subscribing states that “reaffirm their commitment to the Helsinki Final Act and all
subsequent CSCE documents.”9

In short, in NATO parlance, the “Euro-Atlantic area” has come to mean the territory of
the participating states of the OSCE. (The CSCE was renamed the Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in December 1994, effective 1 January
1995.)

Since the 1991 Strategic Concept there have been recurrent references to the idea that a
function of the Alliance is to serve as “one of the indispensable foundations for a stable
Euro-Atlantic security environment, based on the growth of democratic institutions and

7
North Atlantic Council, Rome Declaration on Peace and Cooperation, 8 November 1991, par.
13, available at http://www.nato.int/docu/comm/49-95/c911108a.htm.
8 Rome Declaration on Peace and Cooperation, North Atlantic Council, 8 November 1991,

paragraph 2.
9
North Atlantic Council, Partnership for Peace Framework Document, 11 January 1994, par. 1
and 2, available at
http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_24469.htm?mode=pressrelease.

3
commitment to the peaceful resolution of disputes.”10 This is the wording in the 1999
Strategic Concept, and the NATO Allies have related it to the Alliance’s post-Cold War
enlargement process.

Since the early 1990s, the Allies have reached out to their former adversaries and other
non-NATO countries via Partnership for Peace and other cooperative security
frameworks. The Allies developed Partnership for Peace primarily in order to
consolidate democratic progress in post-Cold War Europe. More broadly, they have
reached out to non-NATO countries in the Euro-Atlantic region and beyond via
Partnership for Peace, the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, the Mediterranean
Dialogue, the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative, and other cooperative frameworks in
order to pursue shared political and security objectives. Through outreach, partnership,
and enlargement the Allies have pursued the goal of creating what the 1999 Strategic
Concept called “a just and lasting peaceful order in Europe”11 — a phrase borrowed
from the 1967 Harmel Report. Moreover, partner countries have contributed
substantially to the conduct of NATO-led non-Article 5 operations in the Balkans,
Afghanistan, and Libya.

The most important elements in the Alliance’s transformation in the 1990s were the new
missions that have become known as crisis management and cooperative security. It
was also in the 1990s that the Allies defined an ambitious enlargement policy — clearly
a collective defense matter, though often considered by the Allies to fall under the
heading of cooperative security. Moreover, the Allies first began to consider other new
security tasks and challenges. For example, the first reference in a NATO communiqué
to what became the Alliance function of supporting European Union-led crisis
management operations came in July 1990.12 It was also in 1990 that the North Atlantic
Council first referred to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) as one
of the “new security risks and challenges of a global nature” facing the Alliance.13

NATO’s Main Contemporary Missions

The Allies have redefined NATO’s purposes and core tasks in multiple ways since the
end of the Cold War in 1989-1991. The 1991 Strategic Concept, as noted below,
identified four “fundamental security tasks,” while the 1999 Strategic Concept specified
five such tasks; and the 2010 Strategic Concept recast them as “three essential core
tasks.”

10 North Atlantic Council, Strategic Concept, 24 April 1999, par. 10, available at
http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_27433.htm (accessed 21 January 2010).
11 North Atlantic Council, Strategic Concept, 24 April 1999, par. 6, available at

http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_27433.htm (accessed 21 January 2010).

12 North Atlantic Council, London Declaration, 5-6 July 1990, par. 3.
13 North Atlantic Council, Final Communiqué, 17-18 December 1990, par. 15, available at

http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_23690.htm (accessed 21 January 2010).

4
According to the 1991 Strategic Concept,

NATO's essential purpose, set out in the Washington Treaty and reiterated in the [1990]
London Declaration, is to safeguard the freedom and security of all its members by
political and military means in accordance with the principles of the United Nations
Charter. Based on common values of democracy, human rights and the rule of law, the
Alliance has worked since its inception for the establishment of a just and lasting peaceful
order in Europe. This Alliance objective remains unchanged.14

The means by which the Alliance pursues its security policy to preserve the peace will
continue to include the maintenance of a military capability sufficient to prevent war and
to provide for effective defence; an overall capability to manage successfully crises
affecting the security of its members; and the pursuit of political efforts favouring
dialogue with other nations and the active search for a co-operative approach to European
security, including in the field of arms control and disarmament.15

To achieve its essential purpose, the Alliance performs the following fundamental security
tasks:

1. To provide one of the indispensable foundations for a stable security environment

in Europe, based on the growth of democratic institutions and commitment to the
peaceful resolution of disputes, in which no country would be able to intimidate or coerce
any European nation or to impose hegemony through the threat or use of force.

2. To serve, as provided for in Article 4 of the North Atlantic Treaty, as a transatlantic

forum for Allied consultations on any issues that affect their vital interests, including
possible developments posing risks for members' security, and for appropriate co-
ordination of their efforts in fields of common concern.

3. To deter and defend against any threat of aggression against the territory of any
NATO member state.

4. To preserve the strategic balance within Europe.16

The Allies were explicit in naming the main external factors that would affect their
performance of this fourth “fundamental security task”: “Even in a non-adversarial and
cooperative relationship, Soviet military capability and build-up potential, including its
nuclear dimension, still constitute the most significant factor of which the Alliance has
to take account in maintaining the strategic balance in Europe.”17

14 North Atlantic Council, Strategic Concept, November 7, 1991, par. 15.

15 North Atlantic Council, Strategic Concept, November 7, 1991, par. 19.
16 North Atlantic Council, Strategic Concept, November 7, 1991, par. 20.
17 North Atlantic Council, Strategic Concept, November 7, 1991, par. 13.

5
It is an indication of how fundamentally declared Allied policy changed during the
course of the 1990s that the 1999 Strategic Concept included no reference to “the
strategic balance within Europe.” Indeed, the only explicit references to Russia in the
1999 Strategic Concept concerned dialogue, cooperation, and partnership.

The Allies reworded their definition of the Alliance’s essential purpose in the 1999
Strategic Concept to encompass their continuing efforts to shape the broader
international security environment, and not only to ensure the safety of Allied territory:

NATO's essential and enduring purpose, set out in the Washington Treaty, is to safeguard
the freedom and security of all its members by political and military means. Based on
common values of democracy, human rights and the rule of law, the Alliance has striven
since its inception to secure a just and lasting peaceful order in Europe. It will continue to
do so. The achievement of this aim can be put at risk by crisis and conflict affecting the
security of the Euro-Atlantic area. The Alliance therefore not only ensures the defence of
its members but contributes to peace and stability in this region.18

Expressing an Alliance interest in contributing to “peace and stability” in “the Euro-

Atlantic area” represented an extension of the Alliance’s purview and responsibility, in
comparison with its practical goals during the Cold War. It was, however,
foreshadowed in the 1967 Harmel Report and in the 1990 London Declaration’s vision
of NATO as “an agent of change.” As noted above, the Euro-Atlantic area is usually
defined as encompassing the territory of the states participating in the Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe — that is, all the states of Europe and all the former
Soviet republics, plus Canada, Turkey, and the United States.

In the 1999 Strategic Concept the Allies listed five “fundamental security tasks”:

Security: To provide one of the indispensable foundations for a stable Euro-Atlantic

security environment, based on the growth of democratic institutions and commitment to
the peaceful resolution of disputes, in which no country would be able to intimidate or
coerce any other through the threat or use of force.

Consultation: To serve, as provided for in Article 4 of the Washington Treaty, as an

essential transatlantic forum for Allied consultations on any issues that affect their vital
interests, including possible developments posing risks for members' security, and for
appropriate co-ordination of their efforts in fields of common concern.

Deterrence and Defence: To deter and defend against any threat of aggression against
any NATO member state as provided for in Articles 5 and 6 of the Washington Treaty.

And in order to enhance the security and stability of the Euro-Atlantic area:

18 North Atlantic Council, Strategic Concept, April 24, 1999, par. 6.

6
 Crisis Management: To stand ready, case-by-case and by consensus, in conformity with
Article 7 of the Washington Treaty, to contribute to effective conflict prevention and to
engage actively in crisis management, including crisis response operations.

Partnership: To promote wide-ranging partnership, cooperation, and dialogue with other

countries in the Euro-Atlantic area, with the aim of increasing transparency, mutual
confidence and the capacity for joint action with the Alliance.19

The ambitious “security” purpose, as defined above, was consistent with the Harmel
Report vision of “a just and lasting peaceful order in Europe accompanied by
appropriate security guarantees.” The tasks of “consultation” and “deterrence and
defense” also represented continuity with the Alliance purposes articulated during the
Cold War. The “crisis management” and “partnership” purposes have constituted
significant departures from Cold War assumptions as to NATO’s role. However, both
can be seen as supportive of the long-term “security” vision. As noted above, the Allies
have developed extensive partnership policies to promote the pursuit of shared political
and security objectives within and beyond the Euro-Atlantic area.

In the 2010 Strategic Concept the Allies set out NATO’s purpose in even more general
terms than in the past, without limiting it by referring to “Europe,” as in the 1991
Strategic Concept, or the “the Euro-Atlantic area,” as in the 1999 Strategic Concept:

NATO’s fundamental and enduring purpose is to safeguard the freedom and security of
all its members by political and military means. Today, the Alliance remains an essential
source of stability in an unpredictable world.20

The Allies listed “three essential core tasks, all of which contribute to safeguarding
Alliance members,” in the 2010 Strategic Concept:

a. Collective defence. NATO members will always assist each other against attack, in
accordance with Article 5 of the Washington Treaty. That commitment remains firm and
binding. NATO will deter and defend against any threat of aggression, and against
emerging security challenges where they threaten the fundamental security of individual
Allies or the Alliance as a whole.

b. Crisis management. NATO has a unique and robust set of political and military
capabilities to address the full spectrum of crises – before, during and after conflicts.
NATO will actively employ an appropriate mix of those political and military tools to
help manage developing crises that have the potential to affect Alliance security, before

19 North Atlantic Council, Strategic Concept, April 24, 1999, par. 10, available at
http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_27433.htm; bold in the original.
20 North Atlantic Council, Active Engagement, Modern Defence: Strategic Concept for the

Defence and Security of the Members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, November 19,
2010, par. 1, available at http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_68580.htm.

7
 they escalate into conflicts; to stop ongoing conflicts where they affect Alliance security;
and to help consolidate stability in post-conflict situations where that contributes to Euro-
Atlantic security.

c. Cooperative security. The Alliance is affected by, and can affect, political and
security developments beyond its borders. The Alliance will engage actively to enhance
international security, through partnership with relevant countries and other international
organisations; by contributing actively to arms control, non-proliferation and
disarmament; and by keeping the door to membership in the Alliance open to all
European democracies that meet NATO’s standards.21

These task categories overlap in many ways. In the 2010 Strategic Concept, for
example, the Allies called for enhanced capacity-building efforts with non-NATO
partner countries under the heading of collective defense as well as crisis
management.22 Several non-NATO partner countries — linked to the Alliance via
bilateral and/or multilateral cooperative security frameworks — are engaged in
operations in Afghanistan under the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.
These crisis management operations, authorized under UN Security Council mandates,
originated in NATO’s invocation of the Article 5 collective defense pledge in response
to the terrorist attacks against the United States in September 2001.

While the first priority of the Allies necessarily remains the security of their national
territories and that of the Euro-Atlantic region, they recognized in the 2010 Strategic
Concept that, as noted above, “the Alliance remains an essential source of stability in an
unpredictable world.” In addition to the collective defense of their own national
territories, the Allies are concerned with crisis management in Europe (notably in the
Balkans) and beyond (above all, in Afghanistan). Some Alliance activities remain
limited to Allied territory in Europe and North America, while others extend to the
larger Euro-Atlantic region and beyond and involve partnerships with countries such as
Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea.

The increasingly broad geographical scope of certain Alliance activities reflects the fact
that the Allies face global security challenges: international terrorism; the proliferation
of WMD, delivery systems, and advanced technologies, including sophisticated means
of guidance and communications; threats to the security of energy supplies; and risks of

21 North Atlantic Council, Active Engagement, Modern Defence: Strategic Concept for the
Defence and Security of the Members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, November 19,
2010, par. 4, available at http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_68580.htm; bold
added.
22 North Atlantic Council, Active Engagement, Modern Defence: Strategic Concept for the

Defence and Security of the Members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, November 19,
2010, par. 19 and 25, available at
http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_68580.htm.

8
conflicts in the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific that could affect NATO’s security
interests. The Alliance is a permanent coalition of states with shared values and
security interests. While some security risks remain centered in the Euro-Atlantic
region, other challenges to these interests are increasingly global in scope.

The Allies have shown some restraint in their ever more expansive definitions of
NATO’s purposes. In October 2009, at the first of the seminars convened by Madeleine
Albright and her Group of Experts to advise the NATO Secretary General about the
content of the next Strategic Concept, the participants agreed that the Alliance’s future
tasks “are likely to include” the “stabilization of weak and fragile states” and “the
prevention of genocide.”23 In their May 2010 report the Group of Experts wrote that
“NATO may well be called upon” to deal with “the humanitarian consequences of a
failed state . . . or the dangers posed by genocide or other massive violations of human
rights.”24 In the 2010 Strategic Concept, however, the Allies did not employ the words
“humanitarian” and “genocide,” nor did they make any reference to failed or failing
states.25 The Allies nonetheless relied on UN Security Council resolutions that referred
frequently to “humanitarian” considerations and “the protection of civilians” to justify
their intervention in Libya in 2011.26

Of the three core tasks, cooperative security remains the most difficult to define.
According to Rob de Wijk, a Dutch analyst, “The object of co-operative security is to
anticipate potential conflicts and prevent them breaking out, or to actively strive to
suppress conflicts once they have broken out by means of joint international action
within the system. Co-operative security does not mean that member states are treaty-
bound to offer assistance. If that were the case it would be a question of collective, not
co-operative, security.”27

As de Wijk’s comment suggests, the Allies have since the 1990s usually taken care not to
confuse cooperative security with collective security. Indeed, they have generally used
the latter term with caution, because it has multiple meanings and because it implies a

23
NATO, “Highlights from the first Strategic Concept seminar in Luxembourg,” 16 October
2009, available at
http://www.nato.int/cps/en/SID-45306560-524A167A/natolive/news_58816.htm (accessed 24
September 2011).
24
NATO 2020: Assured Security; Dynamic Engagement, Analysis and Recommendations of the Group
of Experts on a New Strategic Concept for NATO (Brussels: NATO Public Diplomacy Division, 17
May 2010), p. 15 available at http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_63654.htm.
25 The words “genocide” and “humanitarian” are also absent from the November 2010 Lisbon

Summit Declaration, which likewise makes no allusion to failed or failing states.

26 UN Security Council Resolution 1970, 26 February 2011, and UN Security Council Resolution

1973, 17 March 2011.

27
Rob de Wijk, NATO on the Brink of the New Millennium: The Battle for Consensus (London:
Brassey’s, 1997), p. 143.

9
sense of mutual obligation greater than that involved in most cooperative security
efforts.28

The Allies and Alliance officials appear to have taken four courses with their preferred
term — cooperative security. First, they have used the term without making any effort
to define it, as in the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act.29 Second, they have given
examples of activities that, in their judgment, epitomize cooperative security. For
instance, in 1997 a NATO Assistant Secretary General said that “SFOR's successful
deployment of NATO and non-NATO forces in Bosnia . . . is the essence of the new
cooperative security order.”30 Third, as with the 2010 Strategic Concept, they have
listed specific activities as elements of cooperative security. In 1997, for example, the
NATO Secretary General catalogued the elements as Partnership for Peace, the Euro-
Atlantic Partnership Council, the partnerships with Russia and Ukraine, the
Mediterranean Dialogue, and the NATO enlargement process.31

Finally, they have offered vague visions of what cooperative security involves or could
lead to. In 1997, Javier Solana, then the NATO Secretary General, evoked “a new
cooperative security order for the Euro-Atlantic region” and said that it was “about

28
The three most common meanings of collective security are as follows: (a) the model of an
ideal international order championed most famously, though with some differences, by
Immanuel Kant and Woodrow Wilson, a pact against war by the community of states; (b) an
intervention against international aggression or internal conflict or disorder with the implicit or
explicit approval of a major-power consensus, as with a UN Security Council resolution
authorizing the use of force; and (c) an intervention against international aggression or internal
conflict or disorder without the approval of a major-power consensus. For a more extensive
discussion, see David S. Yost, “NATO’s Contributions to Conflict Management,” in Chester A.
Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson, and Pamela Aall, eds., Turbulent Peace: The Challenges of Managing
International Conflict (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2001), pp. 590-
592.
29
“The North Atlantic Treaty Organization and its member States, on the one hand, and the
Russian Federation, on the other hand, hereinafter referred to as NATO and Russia, based on an
enduring political commitment undertaken at the highest political level, will build together a
lasting and inclusive peace in the Euro-Atlantic area on the principles of democracy and
cooperative security.” Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security between
NATO and the Russian Federation, Paris, 27 May 1997, available at
http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_25468.htm.
30
Admiral Norman Ray, Assistant Secretary General for Defence Support, “Security through
NATO in the 21st Century: Vision to Reality,” Opening Remarks at the SACLANT/RUSI
International Security Symposium, London, 9 October 1997,
http://www.nato.int/docu/speech/1997/s971009a.htm.
31
Javier Solana, “NATO's Role in Building Cooperative
Security in Europe and Beyond,”
Remarks by the Secretary General of NATO at the Yomiuri
Symposium on
International

Economy, Tokyo, Japan,
15 October 1997, available at
http://www.nato.int/docu/speech/1997/s971015a.htm.

10
building security within societies, creating the conditions of stability in which respect
for human rights, consolidation of democratic reforms and economic patterns of trade
and investment can flourish.”32 In 2012, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the current NATO
Secretary General, extended the cooperative security vision beyond the Euro-Atlantic
region to the entire world:

Our economy is globalised. Our security is globalised. And if we are to protect our
populations effectively, our approach to security has to be globalised too. This is why
cooperative security is fundamental to the Alliance’s way of doing business. It means
NATO must be able, and willing, to engage politically and militarily with other nations,
wherever they may be, and with other international organisations, such as the United
Nations and the European Union.33

Rasmussen’s definition implies that cooperative security means any political-military

cooperation by states and international organizations. Although the French scholar
Vivien Pertusot and other experts have argued for a more precise definition of
cooperative security as a form of interaction distinct from security cooperation,34 the
Allies and high-level Alliance officials have not propounded a clear-cut definition of
cooperative security. Nor have they drawn a clear distinction between cooperative
security and security cooperation.35 The predominant tendency has been to equate

32
Javier Solana, “NATO's Role in Building Cooperative
Security in Europe and Beyond,”
Remarks by the Secretary General of NATO at the Yomiuri
Symposium on
International

Economy, Tokyo, Japan,
15 October 1997, available at
http://www.nato.int/docu/speech/1997/s971015a.htm. For an even more ambitious vision of
the potential of cooperative security, see Admiral Norman Ray, Assistant Secretary General for
Defence Support, “Security through NATO in the 21st Century: Vision to Reality,” Opening
Remarks at the SACLANT/RUSI International Security Symposium, London, 9 October 1997,
http://www.nato.int/docu/speech/1997/s971009a.htm.
33
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, “NATO – delivering security in the 21st century,” Speech by the
NATO Secretary General, Chatham House, London, 4 July 2012, available at
http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/opinions_88886.htm.
34
To quote Pertusot, “Partnerships are based on cooperative security as outlined in the new
Strategic Concept. This notion remains very poorly understood. We define it here as an
institutionalized or non-institutionalized arrangement, involving a group of states who pursue
dialogue and cooperation on a wide variety of issues, primarily concerning security. This
definition assumes that they can all share the same interpretations of the security challenges,
whether internal or foreign, and thus cooperate to increase the level of confidence and trust
among them, and to mitigate hypothetical conflicts, divergences, and misunderstandings.”
Vivien Pertusot, NATO Partnerships: Shaking Hands or Shaking the System?, Focus Stratégique no.
31 (Paris: Security Studies Center, Institut Français des Relations Internationales, May 2011), p.
23. For an even broader definition, see Gareth Evans, “Cooperative Security and Instrastate
Conflict,” Foreign Policy, no. 96, no. 3 (Autumn 1994), p. 7.
35
Pertusot holds that security cooperation is a more comprehensive concept than cooperative
security. In his view, the latter is “a much more narrowed-down concept.” Cooperative

11
cooperative security with all the forms of outreach, dialogue, partnership, and
cooperation listed under that heading in the 2010 Strategic Concept.

As noted above, the Allies have placed the NATO enlargement process under the
“cooperative security” heading, even though it is oriented toward the acceptance of
Article 5 collective defense commitments. Such commitments — legally binding
pledges of mutual defense — imply the acceptance of obligations much more profound
and existential than those in, for example, partnership frameworks such as the
Alliance’s Mediterranean Dialogue. The Allies have nonetheless lumped NATO
enlargement together with dialogues and partnership activities with non-Allies
involving no more than a vague willingness to cooperate temporarily. The Alliance’s
broad approach to cooperative security does not require shared political values, only a
willingness to exchange views and participate in specific activities, based on a
circumstantial coincidence of security interests or an assessment of net advantage in the
interaction.

Interdependence and Balance among the Three Core Tasks

The Allies profess continuing commitment to the three core tasks. At the Chicago
Summit meeting in May 2012, the Allies declared, “Our 2010 Strategic Concept
continues to guide us in fulfilling effectively, and always in accordance with
international law, our three essential core tasks — collective defence, crisis
management, and cooperative security — all of which contribute to safeguarding
Alliance members.”36

As this statement suggests, the three core tasks defined in the 2010 Strategic Concept
can be regarded as interdependent sources of security. In principle, the Allies strive via
cooperative security measures to shape the security environment and thereby prevent
crises. This may lessen the need for crisis management operations and diminish the
risk of a collective defense contingency. Conversely, collective defense fulfils the
bedrock requirement of security that first brought the Allies together — and keeps them
together — and that provides the basis for crisis management interventions and
cooperative security activities. Moreover, the tasks overlap in some ways. Partner

security, Pertusot maintains, is driven principally by “common interests” and “a common

understanding of the challenges and issues at stake.” The states involved may, despite their
differences, “find solutions to security problems by cooperating with potential enemies . . . in a
win-win game scenario.” However, Pertusot adds, “no solidarity binds the members” of a
cooperative security arrangement, and they retain “flexibility” as to whether to participate in,
for example, a specific NATO partnership activity. Vivien Pertusot, Cooperative security and
NATO partnerships: what means for what ends? Diplôme privé d‘études supérieures (Paris:
Institut de Relations Internationales et Stratégiques, 2 October 2009), pp. 18, 19, 23.
36 North Atlantic Council, Chicago Summit Declaration, 20 May 2012, par. 2.

12
nations and organizations (such as the European Union and the UN) contribute to
NATO-led crisis management operations, as in Afghanistan, and crisis management
operations could in some circumstances become collective defense contingencies.

Where does countering terrorism figure among NATO’s purposes? In both the 1991
and 1999 Strategic Concepts, the Allies stated that terrorism could affect their security
interests.37 Moreover, in the 1999 Washington Summit Communiqué the Allies called it
“a serious threat to peace, security and stability that can threaten the territorial integrity
of States.”38 In September 2001, the terrorist attacks against the United States led the
Allies to invoke Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty for the first time in history. This
suggests that — in some cases, at least — countering terrorism could be regarded as a
collective defense task rather than a new function for the Alliance.

What was new in September 2001 was the discovery that a non-state group could
mount such a destructive attack against a state. This was almost certainly not what the
authors of the North Atlantic Treaty had in mind in 1949 when they referred in Article 5
to the possibility of an “armed attack.” The Allies maintain that Operation Active
Endeavor — the maritime surveillance effort in the Mediterranean undertaken in
response to the September 2001 terrorist attacks — is a collective defense action under
Article 5, and they have reported it to the UN Security Council as such.39

At the same time, the Allies have given new meaning to their collective defense
commitments. Without in any way abandoning the traditional meaning of collective
defense (protection of the national territory of Allies against “armed attack”), the Allies
have in some circumstances blurred the distinction between Article 5 (collective
defense) and non-Article 5 missions. They have, for example, extended security
commitments to non-Allies, welcomed the participation of non-Allies in an Article 5
mission (Operation Active Endeavor), and conducted a nominally non-Article 5 mission
(leading the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan under UN Security
Council mandates) in order to prevent the re-emergence of an Article 5 threat.
Moreover, some experts have discerned a tendency toward a certain
“deterritorialization” of the Alliance’s collective defense mission in conjunction with the
emergence of a more “proactive” and “anticipatory” concept of Article 5 requirements.

This redefinition of collective defense is discussed in Chapter 2, together with other

issues that illustrate the changing dimensions of collective defense — missile defense,
cyber security, space operations, energy security, terrorism, and WMD proliferation.

37 North Atlantic Council, Strategic Concept, 7-8 November 1991, par. 12, available at
http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_23847.htm (accessed 21 January 2010);
and North Atlantic Council, Strategic Concept, 24 April 1999, par. 24.
38 North Atlantic Council, Washington Summit Communiqué, 24 April 1999, par. 42, available at

http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_27440.htm (accessed 21 January 2010).

39 For background, see Yost, NATO and International Organizations, pp. 55-57.

13
To what extent is there a conflict or tension between the Alliance’s original and
enduring purpose of collective defense and its post-Cold War crisis management
functions? This study suggests in Chapter 5 that the dichotomy between expeditionary
and territorial defense capabilities has been over-stated. The continued development of
expeditionary capabilities is a priority for both collective defense and crisis response
contingencies. Certain tensions among the three core tasks have nonetheless become
manifest. For example, the fact that Russia has become the Alliance’s partner in the
NATO-Russia Council and other cooperative security endeavors has not eliminated
concern about Russia as a potential aggressor in some of the new NATO Allies in
Central and Eastern Europe. This tension and others are discussed in this study.

Signs of tension among the core tasks are often accompanied by calls for a more
appropriate balance among them. In February 2012, for example, the Norwegian

Minister of Defence, Espen Barth Eide, deplored the decreased attention to collective
defense in relation to non-Article 5 crisis management operations and warned that
trends could “lead to a further weakening of the core capability to defend ourselves
both against traditional and asymmetrical threats.” In his view,

We must continue recognising the importance of the Alliance’s operational engagements.

We should continue to use the Alliance when the UN and the global community request
it. But the pendulum has swung too far. We have to find a sustainable balance.40

In March 2012 the NATO Secretary General used “balance” imagery in comparing
NATO’s conduct of its missions to riding a bicycle:

the key to success on a bike is to keep it in a regular, forward movement, . . . and the same
goes for our transatlantic alliance. And another key to success on a bike is balance. . . .
[T]he right balance is also the key to the continued success of our NATO Alliance.41

While everyone can endorse the principle of balance, its concrete applications in specific
circumstances remain contentious. Resources are finite, and choices must be made
among multiple preferences and priorities. The Allies have attributed three core tasks
to NATO, but they have not always agreed on how to perform them.

40
Espen Barth Eide, Norwegian Minister of Defence, “Transatlantic ties in times of financial
austerity,” speech at the Leangkollen Security Conference, 6 February 2012, available at
http://www.regjeringen.no/en/dep/fd/whats-new/Speeches-and-
articles/minister/speeches-and-articles-by-minister-of-d-2/2012/transatlantic-ties-in-times-of-
financial.html?id=671826
41
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO Secretary General, “NATO 2020 -- Shared leadership for a
shared future,” speech at the Brussels Forum, 23 March 2012, available at
http://www.nato.int/cps/en/SID-40AEB457-0F83E57E/natolive/opinions_85443.htm

14
Since the end of the Cold War, NATO’s most visible day-to-day activities have
consisted of cooperative security and crisis management. The institutionalization of the
Alliance’s cooperative security vision began with the North Atlantic Cooperation
Council in 1991. Non-Article 5 crisis management activities began the following year.
In 1992 the Allies transported humanitarian assistance to Russia and other former
Soviet republics, monitored the air approaches from Libya, and began enforcing the
maritime arms embargo and monitoring the no-fly zone affecting the warring parties in
the former Yugoslavia.42 The Allies adopted in practice the argument of Senator
Richard Lugar and others in the early 1990s that NATO had to go “out of area or out of
business” by assuming new tasks beyond collective defense.43

The original function of collective defense nonetheless remains the bedrock of the
Alliance’s cohesion. The mutual commitments to honor the pledge in Article 5 of the
North Atlantic Treaty constitute the foundation on which the Allies have undertaken a
balancing act — to maintain the credibility and effectiveness of this foundation and to
pursue the even more ambitious tasks of crisis management and cooperative security.

NATO’s Ability to Act Despite Internal Dysfunctions

The Alliance is an intergovernmental enterprise, a standing and highly institutionalized

coalition of independent sovereign states; and it cannot take action unless all the
member states agree to act — or at least to let certain Allies act in NATO’s name and
make use of its shared assets, such as communications and headquarters facilities.

Because the Alliance is a permanent coalition of sovereign states, each Ally can define
its own status in relation to NATO’s institutions. France has historically provided the
most distinctive example. For decades some French politicians, civil servants, military
officers, and analysts pointedly distinguished between the Alliance, referring to the
collective defense coalition established by the North Atlantic Treaty in 1949, and NATO,
meaning the many institutional mechanisms the Alliance has set up over the years,
including the civilian International Staff, the Defense Planning Committee, the Nuclear
Planning Group, the integrated military command structure, the International Military
Staff under the Military Committee, and various agencies, boards, committees,
organizations, schools, and research centers. France has since 1949 participated fully in
the work of the Alliance’s supreme decision-making body, the North Atlantic Council,
which was established by Article 9 of the North Atlantic Treaty. In 1966, however,
President de Gaulle withdrew France from NATO’s “integrated military structure” and

42
NATO’s Operations 1949-Present (Mons, Belgium: Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers
Europe, 2009), available at
http://www.aco.nato.int/resources/21/NATO%20Operations,%201949-Present.pdf.
43 Senator Richard Lugar cited in Stephen S. Rosenfeld, “NATO’s Last Chance,” Washington Post,

July 2, 1993, p. A19.

15
demanded the removal of most NATO facilities from French soil, including the political
and military headquarters, which were moved to Belgium.44

From 1966 to 2009, France pursued an à la carte and selective approach to participation
in NATO institutions other than the North Atlantic Council; and France did so to a
greater extent than other member states. France alone defined the meaning of its “non-
integrated” status during this period, and modified it at times of its own choosing — for
example, deepening its participation in deliberations of the Military Committee from
1992 on, in conjunction with the Alliance’s operations in the Balkans. France made
further adjustments in its status in relation to shared institutions in 1995, when it
decided to return to regular participation in the Military Committee. It was not until
2009, however, that France chose to abandon its “non-integrated” status in relation to
the military command structure; and France has continued to abstain from participation
in NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group.

In 1995, in the Alliance’s official Study on NATO Enlargement, the Allies discussed three
distinct approaches to participation in NATO institutions. “There are currently three
forms under which Allies contribute to NATO collective defence: full participation in
the integrated military structure and the collective defence planning process [a
reference to all of the Allies except France and Spain]; non-membership of the
integrated military structure but full participation in the collective defence planning
process together with a series of coordination agreements providing for cooperation
with the integrated military structure in certain defined areas [a reference to Spain]; and
non-participation in the integrated military structure and collective defence planning
but cooperation with the integrated military structure in more limited defined areas
under agreements between the Chief of Defence and the Major NATO Commanders
(MNCs) [a reference to France].”45

The Allies, including France and Spain, agreed in 1995 that new Allies should not
devise further variations on participation: “As a general principle, we should avoid
new forms of contribution to NATO collective defence which would complicate
unnecessarily practical cooperation among Allies and the Alliance's decision-making
process.”46 Spain maintained its special status with reference to NATO institutions

44
Scholarly studies include Michael Harrison, The Reluctant Ally: France and Atlantic Security
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981); Philip H. Gordon, A Certain Idea of France:
French Security Policy and the Gaullist Legacy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993);
and Anand Menon, France, NATO and the Limits of Independence (Basingstoke, England: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2000).
45
Study on NATO Enlargement, 3 September 1995, par. 47, available at
http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_24733.htm.
46
Study on NATO Enlargement, 3 September 1995, par. 47, available at
http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_24733.htm.

16
from 1986 to 1997, and (as noted above) France has since 2009 participated in most
NATO institutions.

All Allies continue to demonstrate their sovereignty and autonomy, however, by their
choices as to what capabilities and resources to contribute to NATO-led operations and
activities and by the restrictions (or caveats) they place on the employment of their
forces in operations. Moreover, while all 28 Allies have negotiated precise cost shares
for their contributions to NATO’s three common budgets (called the civil, military, and
NATO Security Investment Program budgets), there are many specific funding
arrangements to which fewer than 28 Allies contribute.47

In the eyes of some observers, one of the Alliance’s dysfunctions is its consensual
decision-making structure, which can involve lengthy and contentious deliberations in
the North Atlantic Council, the Military Committee, and many subordinate committees.
According to General James Jones, who served as SACEUR in 2003-2006,

The 350 committees in NATO behave as if they see themselves as mini-NACs — little
versions of the North Atlantic Council that must operate on the same consensus system as
the NAC itself. This means that slow and painful lowest-common-denominator decision-
making prevails. The principle of consensus has been stretched to its limit. Consensus
should not be regarded as necessary at the committee level. The committee chairman
should note dissenting views and move the business on to the next stage in the decision-
making process. The NAC, over time, has surrendered its prerogatives as a decision
maker to committees, especially to its financial committees. There are too many
committees, and they are much too slow to act.48

As noted in the NATO website, “This principle [of consensus] is applied at every
committee level, and demonstrates clearly that NATO decisions are collective decisions
made by its member countries.”49

In other words, there is no “voting” in NATO deliberations in the sense of decision-

making via a majority rule principle. Because it is sometimes difficult to reach
consensus, the Allies have over the years come up with several methods to achieve at
least the appearance of consensus. These methods have included avoiding certain

47
For background on NATO funding arrangements, see NATO, “Paying for NATO,” last
updated 14 December 2010, available at
http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_67655.htm; and Carl Ek, NATO Common Funds
Burdensharing: Background and Current Issues, RL30150 (Washington, D.C.: Congressional
Research Service, 10 March 2011).
48
David S. Yost, “An Interview with General James L. Jones, USMC, Retired, Supreme Allied
Commander Europe (SACEUR), 2003-2006,” in Research Paper, NATO Defense College, no. 34
(January 2008), pp. 3-4, available at
http://www.ndc.nato.int/download/publications/rp_34.pdf.
49
“Consensus decision-making at NATO,” last updated 26 October 2010, available at
http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_49178.htm (accessed 7 May 2012).

17
sensitive topics in some communiqués, dealing with them in vague terms satisfactory to
all Allies, repeating previously agreed wording, employing formulas such as “the Allies
concerned” to subtly separate some Allies from specific policies,50 using the word
“appropriate” to obscure disagreements,51 and attaching footnotes in which some Allies
have reserved their national positions regarding particular decisions.52

When action has not appeared urgent, Allies have on some occasions postponed
decisions by calling for further study of contentious questions.53 In some cases, in order
to preserve a modicum of harmony and defer difficult choices, Allies have
compromised and “kicked the can down the road” by establishing policy reviews
and/or new committees.54 In actual operations, as noted in Chapters 4 and 5, Allies
have revealed their distinct views regarding agreed Alliance policies by defining
contributions of resources on a national basis and placing restrictions on the usability of
their forces.55

The argument that future collective defense and crisis management contingencies may
require greater agility and less “micromanagement” by committees comprised of
representatives from each Ally has to date failed to lead to substantive change. The
consensus system has remained in place because the political foundation of the Alliance
is respect for the sovereignty and autonomy of each Ally. From this perspective,

50 The phrase “the Allies concerned” was featured six times in the 1991 Strategic Concept and
twice in the 1999 Strategic Concept.
51 The word “appropriate” functions as a consensus-builder, at least in drafting communiqués,

in that no Ally is likely to argue for replacing the word with “inappropriate.” Employing the
word often signals that an issue remains less than fully resolved but the Allies wish to present a
facade of consensus. The Allies used the word “appropriate” seven times in the November 2010
Lisbon Summit Declaration.
52 In the early and mid-1980s Denmark and Greece attached many footnotes to paragraphs in

communiqués dealing with intermediate-range nuclear force (INF) issues.

53
For example, at the Riga Summit, the Allies announced, “At Prague we initiated a Missile
Defence Feasibility Study in response to the increasing missile threat. We welcome its recent
completion. It concludes that missile defence is technically feasible within the limitations and
assumptions of the study. We tasked continued work on the political and military implications
of missile defence for the Alliance including an update on missile threat developments.” (North
Atlantic Council, Riga Summit Declaration, 29 November 2006, par. 25.)
54 Some observers have seen two of the 2010 Lisbon Summit decisions in this light: the

launching of the Deterrence and Defense Posture Review (DDPR) and the establishment of the
Weapons of Mass Destruction Control and Disarmament Committee (WCDC).
55
One of the most striking “red card” incidents in the history of the Alliance was the June 1999
decision by British General Sir Michael Jackson not to follow General Wesley Clark’s orders
regarding the Russian forces at the Pristina airfield, even though Clark was the SACEUR. For
accounts of this incident, see Clark, Waging Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Future of Combat
(New York: PublicAffairs, 2001), pp. 375-403; and Jackson, Soldier: The Autobiography of General
Sir Mike Jackson (London and Toronto: Bantam Press, 2007), pp. 255-275.

18
decision-making by consensus is a source of strength.56 Moreover, it can be argued that
the Allies identified the appropriate means to hedge against the risk of a rapidly
evolving threat during the Cold War, when they agreed to transfer authority over
certain capabilities, such as parts of the integrated air defenses in NATO Europe, to
SACEUR in peacetime.57

That the consensus system works as well as it does may be attributed in part to the
urgency of taking decisions in order to protect the shared interests and values of the
Allies. Crises and other major international events force the Allies to define agreed
policies. In the absence of such events, summit and ministerial meeting deadlines
concentrate the minds of national leaders and subordinate officials. Consultations “in
the corridors” at NATO Headquarters are continuous, and national delegations are
usually familiar with the views of their counterparts before formal meetings of the
North Atlantic Council and subordinate bodies begin. Informal compromise-building
often leads to functional consensus through the “silence procedure.”58

In short, the consensual decision-making system is cumbersome, but it performs with a

surprising level of effectiveness. It is dysfunctional only in relation to an ideal of
centralized efficiency and agility that is politically impractical.

The same might be said of the Alliance’s personnel system for the International Staff.
As Kestutis Paulauskas, a Lithuanian expert on NATO, has observed, the “selection of
top officials is a political and sometimes highly politicized matter” and the “distribution
of posts is to some extent a reflection of Allies’ comparative political weight, as well as
an instrument of indirect influence upon decision shaping within NATO’s
bureaucracy.”59 This pattern entails inefficiencies, in that some critical posts are filled
on the basis of nationality rather than through an idealized merit system. Similarly,
assignments in the International Military Staff reflect “national quotas,” and the Allies

56 For a balanced and well-informed analysis, see Leo G. Michel, NATO Decisionmaking: Au
Revoir to the Consensus Rule?, Strategic Forum no. 202 (Washington, DC: Institute for National
Strategic Studies, National Defense University, August 2003).
57 David S. Yost, NATO Transformed: The Alliance’s New Roles in International Security

(Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1998), pp. 59-60.
58
Under the “silence procedure” a draft text is distributed to all the Allies and regarded as
agreed unless an Ally “breaks silence” by objecting to its wording before a specified deadline.
Maintaining silence signifies approval or at least acquiescence. “Breaking silence” obliges the
Allies to engage in further consultations in pursuit of consensus.
59
Kestutis Paulauskas, “NATO at 60: Lost in Transformation,” Lithuanian Annual Strategic
Review 2009-2010 (Vilnius: General Jonas Zemaitis Military Academy of Lithuania and the
Institute of International Relations and Political Science of the University of Vilnius, 2010), p. 52.

19
have taken multiple criteria into account in the “flags to posts” bargaining as to which
nations’ officers will fill specific billets in the command structure.60

A countervailing consideration is the fact that certain appointments are made on

political rather than meritocratic grounds in all governments. The NATO personnel
systems can be seen as advantageous precisely because they reflect the “political
weight” of specific Allies and promote their satisfaction with the policy implementation
structure.

A more serious dysfunction of the Alliance has become apparent since the end of the
Cold War, however. This has been the tendency of the Allies to make political decisions
to take action without making sure that these decisions will be backed up by national
commitments of capabilities and resources. This dysfunctional behavior was evident in
the uneven contributions to the Alliance’s intervention in the Libya conflict in 2011, but
it has been perhaps most visible and persistent in the NATO-led operations in
Afghanistan since 2003. The example of the Combined Joint Statement of Requirements
(CJSOR) stands out. In 2009, shortly after he stepped down from serving as SACEUR,
General John Craddock pointed out that, “since mission inception, NATO nations have
never completely filled the agreed requirements for forces needed in Afghanistan.”61

The same pattern — national failures to meet collectively agreed commitments — has
recurred with Operation Active Endeavor in the Mediterranean and Operation Ocean
Shield off the coast of Somalia. Commitments of forces and resources remain in
national hands, and national contributions are not determined until after a political
decision to act. On many occasions Allies have watched and waited upon the decisions
of fellow Allies before deciding whether and how (and how much) to contribute to a
specific operation — or a particular sub-set of an ongoing activity.

While the Allies are clearly not prepared to surrender any of their national sovereignty
and autonomy, they have recognized the dysfunctional quality of this behavior. As part
of the 2010 reform of the Alliance’s committees, the Allies established the Operations
Policy Committee (OPC). The OPC is supposed “to provide coherent and timely advice
to the North Atlantic Council, to which it reports directly,” and “to enhance
collaboration between the political and military sides of NATO Headquarters.” One of
the OPC’s virtues is the fact that it “meets regularly in so-called ISAF and KFOR format,
i.e., with non-NATO member countries that contribute troops to the International

60
Karel Kovanda, “Preparing for Membership,” in NATO Review, Special Issue, Interpreting
Prague, Spring 2003, p. 27, available at
http://www.nato.int/docu/review/pdf/i1_en_review2003.pdf (accessed 11 May 2012).
61
General John Craddock, interview with Arnaud de Borchgrave, “‘Caveats’ neuter NATO allies,”
Washington Times, 15 July 2009, italics in the original; available at
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jul/15/caveats-neuter-nato-allies/.

20
Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan and the Kosovo Force (KFOR) in
Kosovo.”62 A similar operation-focused “decision-shaping” format for meetings
involving Allies and non-NATO contributors was established for the NATO-led
Operation Unified Protector in Libya in 2011. Whether this committee reform can
effectively address the dysfunction in question remains to be seen, however. National
control over force and resource contributions will remain.63

Conclusion

Whether the Alliance can maintain its cohesion and perform its tasks effectively is a
question of fundamental importance for U.S. and international security. NATO has
been for over 60 years the principal mechanism by which certain key powers of Europe
and North America have engaged in political-military cooperation to ensure their
security.

Despite the rather motley and sometimes dysfunctional character of the organization, it
has been relatively successful in aggregating power and achieving fundamental
objectives. Its problems are serious, but surmountable and manageable with political
will. Its assets — above all, the transatlantic convergence of values and security
interests — are greater than its problems. While the Allies are unlikely to achieve all
their aspirations, notably regarding the vague vision of “cooperative security,” they
may continue to meet fundamental goals and even devise greater ambitions — if they
succeed in mustering the necessary vision and political will.64

NATO’s internal disputes, divisions, and dysfunctions should be put in historical and
comparative perspective. To assume that NATO was more united during the Cold War
than it has been since would not be true to the historical record. Divisions and disputes
(over spending, force deployments, nuclear strategy, relations with Moscow, etc.) led
frequently to a crisis atmosphere and to declarations that the Alliance’s end was near.
The Cold War Allies were usually divided over various issues, and evidence of
fragmentation was obvious.65

62 NATO, “Operations Policy Committee,” last updated 14 December 2010, available at

http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_69312.htm
63 The two paragraphs above are based on the author’s interviews with British and French

experts in Brussels, 24 and 25 October 2011.

64
As Rafael Biermann has observed, “NATO’s institutional decline is reversible. NATO has
mastered many ups and downs throughout history.” Rafael Biermann, “NATO’s Institutional
Decline in Post-Cold War Security Governance,” in Charlotte Wagnsson, James A. Sperling and
Jan Hallenberg, eds., European Security Governance: The European Union in a Westphalian World
(London and New York: Routledge, 2009), p. 58.
65 Similarly, there were caveats during the Cold War, but they were less visible than those in, for

example, the operations in the Balkans and Afghanistan. NATO during the Cold War was
oriented mainly toward deterrence and defense preparedness, in contrast with the Alliance’s

21
It would at any rate be impractical to measure quantitatively the degree of discord in
NATO during a particular phase of the Cold War and then compare it with the
Alliance’s degree of internal disarray during a particular post-Cold War crisis. As
Martin Wight noted, “every generation is confronted by problems of the utmost
subjective urgency, but . . . an objective grading is probably impossible.”66

conduct of multiple operations since 1990-1991. As examples of Cold War caveats, one might
consider the refusals of Denmark and Norway to accept the presence in peacetime of foreign
military bases or U.S. nuclear weapons on their soil, and France’s insistence on a policy of “non-
automaticity” with regard to participation in the defense of Central Europe against Warsaw
Pact aggression and its decision not to accept a place in the “layer cake” array of Allied force
deployments on the inter-German border.
66 Martin Wight, International Theory: The Three Traditions, edited by Gabriele Wight and Brian

Porter (London: Leicester University Press for the Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1991),
p. 6.

22