Confronted with the re-emergence of an old rival in the east and new dangers to the south, this week’s Nato summit in the UK has taken on unexpected importance.
The Russian intervention in Ukraine has breathed new life into an alliance whose purpose has been continually questioned since the end of the Cold War. For Nato, the sense of a renewed mission in Europe coincides with the winding down of its active operations in Afghanistan. The task facing the heads of government in Cardiff is to configure the alliance to deal with a rapidly changing and increasingly uncertain security environment.
The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 appeared to remove the central rationale for Nato’s existence. Despite this, the alliance managed to reinvent itself by projecting its power beyond Europe. Since September 11, 2001, Nato has seen itself as an organisation with global responsibilities. The creation of a Nato command for the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) in Afghanistan in August 2003 was a major departure from the traditional mission of the alliance. With the advent of “out-of-area” operations, its strategic focus moved from the defence of a specific geographical region to a more functional emphasis on problems such as counter-terrorism and post-conflict stabilisation.
Nevertheless, the legacies of Nato’s involvement outside Europe are questionable at best. As combat operations against insurgents in Afghanistan have been scaled down, Nato has planned to leave a smaller force in Afghanistan to train and advise the Afghan security forces. However, the problem remains unresolved due to former Afghan president Hamad Karzai’s obstructionism and the political stalemate following the disputed election in Afghanistan in June. In the absence of an agreement, the Cardiff summit could decide to authorise a total pullout from Afghanistan. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Nato secretary general, recently warned that all troops could be withdrawn “if there isn’t a legal basis for our continued presence”. The Isaf force currently numbers 44,000, with the majority of these from the US. The Obama administration still wants a complete withdrawal by the end of 2016.
Similarly, Nato's Operation Unified Protector in Libya, while successful in helping overthrow the Qaddafi regime in 2011, only succeeded in establishing a fractious transitional government that has seen its authority disintegrate amid fighting by rival tribal alliances.
There is also uncertainty over the future of Operation Ocean Shield, which was launched in August 2009 to conduct anti-piracy operations off the Horn of Africa. Ocean Shield will be concluded at the end of this year. While Nato will continue to provide training and advice, there is a risk that pirate attacks will be renewed given the persistence of poor governance in Somalia.
As ISIL spreads its influence across state borders and central authority breaks down in Syria and Libya, it is unclear how the West will react. Among the Nato member states, Turkey is the most fully alert to the danger posed by ISIL after militants kidnapped 49 of its citizens in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. This continued hostage crisis has constrained Ankara's response to the militants. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's president, has previously facilitated supplies to the forces fighting against the Assad regime and had been reluctant to close the border with Syria, but could now be compelled to do so. Mr Erdogan has also been unwilling to adopt a confrontational approach given the continuing hostage crisis, and has asked the US not to intervene against ISIL.
On a rhetorical level, Nato still sees itself as a defender of global values. In a speech in Krakow in early April, Alexander Vershbow, Nato’s deputy secretary general, observed that Russia’s intervention in Ukraine “rips up the rule book of interstate relations that we have painstakingly written since the end of the Second World War”. In reality, the western alliance is retrenching and taking a more pragmatic view of what it can achieve given its patchy record outside Europe. In the aftermath of the economic crisis and the problems bequeathed by its interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, western powers are focusing on security problems closer to home. The new era for Nato reflects a more modest role in global affairs. The post-Cold War era, based on an assumption of western hegemony, is drawing to a close.
Addressing an audience in Warsaw in June, Barack Obama condemned Russia’s intervention in Ukraine and declared that the “days of empire and spheres of influence are over”. Nato’s retreat into the comfort zone of meeting a familiar challenge from the east suggests otherwise. Nato will maintain its work with selected partners, as exemplified by the 2004 Istanbul Cooperation Initiative, which sought to build relations with the Gulf Cooperation Council. The alliance’s military infrastructure will also be offered in support of humanitarian missions when appropriate.
But the era of full-scale counter insurgency and nation-building missions such as that in Afghanistan is over. This leaves many unanswered questions about how Nato might deal with the kind of threats posed by ISIL and other extremist organisations. Although the alliance will redeploy its resources to meet the growing challenge from Russia, a sense of “intervention fatigue” elsewhere is very evident.
In the absence of a unified response to the extremist threat that is now pushing against Turkey’s borders, Nato needs to reconsider how it might meet the security challenges it faces on Europe’s southern flank.
Stephen Blackwell is an international politics and security analyst