12 March 2008
NATO Is Confronting New Responsibilities in a New Era
The NATO mission remains the same
Washington -- NATO's security mission today essentially is unchanged from the day it was founded -- providing for the defense of its members. "But how NATO fulfills this mission is evolving," says a senior U.S. diplomat.
NATO is confronting new responsibilities in a new era and must adapt. "It is now evolving into its 21st-century role: defending the trans-Atlantic community against new threats and meeting challenges to our security and values that are often global in scope," Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried says.
Part of the challenge for three U.S. presidents -- George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush -- has been to transform NATO from a Cold War to a 21st-century profile, Fried said during a Senate hearing. In the process, the security alliance has expanded membership to 26 nations and could add three more at the Bucharest, Romania, summit in April, he said. Expansion creates greater regional security and strengthens the growth of democracy and prosperity, Fried said.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing March 11 to evaluate NATO enlargement and the effectiveness of the alliance leading up to the April 2-4 summit. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden said the alliance faces several key decisions -- enlargement with the addition of Albania, Croatia and Macedonia, and its continuing security missions in Afghanistan and Kosovo.
"We always say that a summit is 'critical.' But I think this one really is -- it's critical to the construction of Europe, to the war in Afghanistan and to the future of the alliance itself," Biden said.
Fried testified that 15 years ago no one would have been able to predict the far-reaching changes for NATO. "So we must be modest about predicting the future challenges NATO will face, and the way NATO will adapt to them."
Since the early 1990s, NATO has expanded the alliance of 16 countries to 26 by the middle of this decade and has expanded its mission well beyond its region.
Today, NATO is:
• bringing security and stability to Afghanistan,
• maintaining security in Kosovo and Bosnia,
• supporting and training peacekeepers in Africa,
• training Iraqi security forces,
• providing humanitarian assistance in Pakistan after an earthquake there, and
• patrolling shipping in the Mediterranean to prevent terrorism.
In addition, Fried said that NATO has established partnerships with more than 20 countries in Europe and Eurasia, seven in North Africa and the Middle East, four in the Gulf, and has global partners such as Australia, Japan, New Zealand and Singapore. He also said there is an effort to build a new relationship with Russia.
But Fried said NATO must strengthen its capacity in three key areas -- an expeditionary force to make it more usable and deployable against new and diverse threats; a comprehensive capability to better integrate military and civilian activities; and a missile defense capacity to protect alliance territory and populations against emerging missile threats.
"Many of these new capabilities are being tested in Afghanistan -- which is also where we are learning how to better integrate civilian and military efforts," he said.
NATO members are expected to endorse a new cyber defense policy at Bucharest that will enhance security for sensitive infrastructure, such as communications and computer networks, and allow allies to pool resources. A new focus on energy security also will be discussed to determine how NATO can help lessen the most immediate risks and threats to the energy infrastructure of its 26 members, he said.
Finally, Fried said, missile defense will be discussed during the summit as a capability that must be further developed. The NATO Treaty requires the allies to provide for the collective defense of its members, he said. "It does not allow for exceptions when the threat comes on a missile," he added.
"NATO has been studying missile defense for years, and we expect that at the Bucharest summit, NATO will take further steps to acknowledge growing missile threats, welcome U.S. contributions to the defense of alliance territory, and task further work in strengthening NATO's defenses against these new threats," he said.
Fried said Russian President Vladimir Putin will attend the Bucharest summit and this offers an opportunity and a challenge.
"The opportunity is to renew efforts to work together on issues where NATO and Russia really do have common interests -- from nonproliferation, counterterrorism, to border controls and counternarcotics with respect to Afghanistan. The challenge, however, is to make sure that NATO takes decisions on issues on their own merits -- based on what is good for the alliance and good for the issues at hand -- without undue pressure from any outside actors," Fried said.
The full text of prepared statements for the hearing is available on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Web site.
