NATO's new strategic concept

Introduction

NATO's new Strategic Concept has not been headline news for quite a few months. Actually, the odd thing was that it ever made the news at all. It is not, for all the numberless drafts it went through, the most gripping of documents. And I am not aware that there were many public complaints about the old Strategic Concept. Certainly, the headlines from the 1997 Madrid Summit focused on the decision to invite Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic to join NATO, rather than the decision to 'examine and update' the 1991 Strategic Concept. What nobody foresaw was that debates about Alliance philosophy, high policy, and even terminology would become entangled with real – and difficult – decisions in the Real World.

I want to divide my article into three parts. First, I want to address why we needed to rewrite the previous documents and what we wanted from the new text. Secondly, I will say a little about the process which produced the new Concept. Finally, of course, I will comment on the key issues which we had to resolve and the outcome of these.

A necessary concept?

But, before discussing what was wrong with the previous Strategic Concept, I would like to answer a more fundamental question. Does NATO need a Strategic Concept at all? It is a pity that we do not ask this basic question about many more of the documents produced by the Alliance – it would save several forests and many unnecessary hours in committee rooms. In fact, it is not entirely obvious that a new Strategic Concept was necessary. We could have concluded that the successive Summit Declarations and Communiquιs were sufficient to define Alliance strategy.

For example, the 1994 Brussels Declaration set out the high level policy that has guided our relations with the Partner countries of Central and Eastern Europe; and it set out the Alliance's offer to support peacekeeping and other operations under the authority of the UN. Similarly, the 1997 Madrid Declaration set out very clearly the Alliance's policy on enlargement. Such documents – taken together with others such as the NATO/Russia Founding Act – could be said collectively to define the corpus of Alliance strategy.

Indeed, we could have argued that such an approach would make it easier for NATO strategy to evolve gradually to respond to a changing world. However forward looking, any single document will inevitably risk becoming outdated at least in technical respects. For example, the 1991 Concept referred to the Soviet Union, which collapsed a few days after its publication (which demonstrates that the Soviet leadership read and understood it, even if NATO's public did not). It also referred to the European Community and to the CSCE. But something would have been missing from an Alliance without a Concept.

I will argue in a moment that the Concept serves a number of good purposes. But, in my view, its real importance is to demonstrate that the Alliance still has a purpose; that that purpose is relevant and worthwhile; and that it commands the support of the now nineteen member nations.

That was also the purpose of the old, 1991, Concept. Its authors recognised that the Cold War had reached the end – even if, not surprisingly, they only had a dim view of how the strategic environment might look ten years ahead. And they did a good job. In many respects, it has stood the test of a difficult decade. But, in addition to the technicalities, there were reasons why it needed more substantial change.

Solid foundations

First, NATO policy had evolved and developed in areas that were either not covered by the 1991 Concept, or were covered in what was now seen as inadequate depth. The development of Partnership for Peace is an obvious example of an area that was simply not covered in 1991. But equally in 1991 NATO had not undertaken any form of non-Article 5 operation; nor had membership been extended to former Warsaw Pact countries. These were significant changes which required full treatment in the new Concept.

Secondly, an often-missed feature of the Strategic Concept is its role as a defence planning document. It gives higher level guidance to NATO force planners on the types of forces the Alliance needs to undertake its missions which is cascaded down through the detailed planning system. The 1991 Concept emphasised the role of static forces for territorial defence. I hope I might be forgiven for saying that we in the UK expected that a re-think might produce similar conclusions to our own SDR about the needs of the changed strategic environment. It would certainly have been a little awkward if the Strategic Concept debate had produced significantly different conclusions to the SDR!

But the biggest reason for writing a new Strategic Concept was to make sure that the foundations of the Alliance were solid. Nobody could accuse the NATO of the 90s of being a static Alliance. Every summit spawned at least one new initiative and several new acronyms. During the 90s, NATO was forever breaking new ground. Making friends with old enemies. Even conducting its first real military operation in Bosnia in 1995.

But was there a coherent theme to all this? To rephrase Acheson, NATO had lost an evil empire but had it also lost a role? Some of the questions that the Strategic Concept needed to answer were: Who is the enemy now? Does NATO need an enemy? Is NATO a military organisation or a political club?

The UK's objectives in the updating of the Concept were clear; we wanted a document that explained in clear and publicly accessible terms the purpose – and continued relevance – of the Alliance. We wanted a document which gave proper emphasis to the new developments in Euro-Atlantic security, such as non-Article 5 operations. Partnership and European Defence, whilst at the same time retaining the indispensable Alliance role in collective defence and as the forum for trans-Atlantic consultation. And we wanted a document which – as far as was possible – would stand the test of time over a number of years: we wanted it to set out the big picture and the long-term trends (so far as we could identify them); we did not want it to focus unduly on issues that might have been high profile during Spring 1999 but which were ultimately of short-term duration.

Having outlined some of the reasons for wanting to update the document, let me turn briefly to the process. The bureaucratic methods of the Alliance might strike many as uninteresting, but I think it is worthwhile highlighting some of the features of the process.

Getting rid of the Cold War feel

The decision to update the Concept was taken at Madrid in June 1997. This gave us almost two years until the next Summit. It seemed plenty of time for what the Communiquι described simply as an 'examination and update as necessary' of the 1991 document. Most people within the Alliance did not envisage more than minor redrafting. After all, the commitment to a review had been prompted not by a radical internal rethink but rather as an offshoot of the negotiation of the NATO/Russia agreement.

Once into the exercise, however, it soon became apparent that a fuller rewrite was necessary: the new paragraphs and minor redrafting of existing text that were initially proposed to reflect individual developments read well in isolation, but the overall picture was hardly that of a forward-looking Alliance. The Russians had a point – there was a Cold War feel to the document.

The work was undertaken by the Policy Co-ordination Group which is the principal advisory body to the North Atlantic Council on politico-military matters. All the then 16 Allies were represented on this Committee (as were the three invited countries). During the course of the work, Russia was briefed through the NATO/Russia Permanent Joint Council, as was Ukraine through the NATO/Ukraine Commission.

The Group began by considering Alliance policy thematically. This led to a series of think-piece papers. Principal amongst these papers were: NATO's raison d'κtre (including potential risks and challenges to the Alliance, and core security tasks); new operational requirements (including the treatment of non-Article 5 operations and the mandate question); European Security and Defence Identity (ESDI), Enlargement, Partnership; and NATO/Russia and NATO/Ukraine.

NATO International Staff produced a first draft of a new Concept for circulation to Allies in September 1998. Following this, debate on the issues and detailed discussion on the language for the new Strategic Concept began in earnest. I think it is worth turning now to focus on these and how they were resolved prior to agreement of the final document some seven months later.

The most difficult group of issues revolved around non-Article 5 missions – i.e. operations which are not concerned with collective defence. This was hardly surprising. NATO's willingness to undertake such operations is arguably the most significant development in Alliance high policy since the 1991 Concept was published. It raises large questions about the role, scope and tasks of the Alliance which are inadequately answered in that Concept which is still heavily focused on collective defence. And as events in Kosovo unfolded, the Alliance found that answering those questions was not a purely theoretical exercise.

Let me say at the outset, nobody disputed that the Alliance remains an organisation whose fundamental concerns are still with the collective security and, if necessary, collective defence of its members.

But, as with the SDR, it was soon apparent that building security in the new strategic environment potentially involved a much wider range of tasks than envisaged during the Cold War. And also implied significant change in the way NATO's forces might be used and therefore in how they should be structured.

How far does NATO's interests go?

One of the biggest red-herrings – over which lot of ink was spilt, by outside commentators as well as inside the Alliance – was about the geographic limits of NATO action. NATO's security interests and its potential area of operations had always extended beyond its borders. That is where the traditional, Cold War threat came from. Equally, the Partnership for Peace (PfP) programme has been intended to build security throughout Europe. And, since 1995, NATO has been deployed in Bosnia.

The debate was therefore about how far NATO's interests might extend in the new stategic environment and in what circumstances – and under what authority – it might undertake non-Article 5 operations beyond its borders. This legitimate debate rapidly got caught up with the day-to-day politics of the real world. Some critics suggested that NATO was seeking to become a 'global policeman' or – worse – to lend a spurious international respectability to US superpower aspirations. Such questions seemed unreal to insiders, given the requirement for consensus decision-taking. Nevertheless, some outside commentators, particularly in the US, sometimes seemed willing to stretch the theoretical possibilities quite a long way.

Internally, the key was the so-called 'mandate' issue – the legal basis for non-Article 5 operations. Here there was also an obvious link between events in the real world and work in Brussels – although it sometimes appeared that the drafters of the Strategic Concept had failed to notice.

In some ways, it was odd that this became a serious issue. After all, everyone agreed that the Alliance would only act – indeed could only act – if all its members agreed that there was a proper basis in international law. The difficulty was agreeing on an abstract formula which would cover all the circumstances in which the Alliance might choose to act.

Initially, some Allies were inclined to argue that a UN Security Council Resolution – as in Bosnia – would always be necessary for non-Article 5 operations. Others, including the UK, saw a UN Resolution as highly desirable in many circumstances but did not regard it as the only possible legal base and wanted to retain flexibility. Various clever formulae were devised but none commanded universal assent – they were either too narrow or too wide.

Meanwhile, the world moved on. In October 1998 NATO approved an ACTORD for possible air operations in Kosovo without an explicit UN SCR, although on that occasion Milosevic backed down temporarily. Then, in spring this year, we had a clear example of the risks in making NATO action entirely dependent on a UN mandate, when China vetoed the renewal of the UNPREDEP mission to Macedonia for trivial political reasons.

Perhaps we should have followed the 1991 precedent and said nothing in the Strategic Concept, leaving the issue to be addressed on a case-by-case basis. But it was too late for that approach. Amazingly, language was not finally agreed until the morning of the Washington Summit – after NATO had begun military action against Serbia without a Resolution.

The final language is a good outcome – and a triumph for common sense. It first sets out the overriding principle that NATO action will be consistent with international law. It then simply notes that NATO in 1994 offered to undertake operations under the authority of the UN Security Council and that the Alliance had taken subsequent decisions with respect to operations in the Balkans.

The debate on partnership and co-operation was rather more straightforward. NATO had already established, in 1997, a special relationship with Moscow, and Partnership for Peace was thriving. But the question of whether NATO's outreach agenda should be given the status of a fundamental task alongside collective defence gave rise to many of the same concerns as the debate on peace support operations, i.e. how far did NATO's writ run, and to what extent should the Allies' commitment to outreach be allowed to shape the composition of NATO's forces, perhaps at the expense of collective defence?

The UK answer: Outreach is at the core of collective security

The UK's answer was clear: as outreach and the building of new and more constructive relations with the countries must be written into the new Concept, for the same reasons as outreach activities are now firmly written into MoD's own corporate objectives. Quite simply, it is a core element in preserving the collective security of the Alliance. Once Allies were agreed in principle that NATO has a role to play in furthering security and stability beyond NATO's borders, we had to agree on how to reflect non-Article 5 responsibilities within the definition of NATO's fundamental tasks, whilst retaining the key elements of the 1991 Concept.

Some Allies, for historical or geographical reasons, placed greater emphasis than others on the role of collective territorial defence in the Alliance's planning. But the final text represents a good balance. The fundamental tasks relating to security, consultation and territorial defence remain, and are almost word-for-word the same as the 1991 Concept; but to this we have included the two further tasks of crisis management (or conflict prevention) and Partnership. These debates also had significant implications for the size, structure and composition of NATO's armed forces.

As well as being a public and political statement of NATO's aims, the Strategic Concept also has to guide NATO's military planners in developing the kind of forces which NATO is likely to need for the operations of the future. The guidance on force posture in the 1991 Concept still largely reflected Cold War thinking and placed emphasis on the requirement for forces for conventional territorial defence. The UK – and a number of other Allies – were keen to see the new Concept recognise the need for forces to undertake a much wider spectrum of missions than before, including beyond Alliance territory.

We therefore wanted proper emphasis given to forces that were deployable, mobile and flexible, and sustainable through rotation for prolonged operations. These forces also had to be equipped with highly accurate and modern weapons systems. In all, exactly the qualities which the UK had emphasised in its Strategic Defence Review the previous year, and which NATO itself was seeking to promote through the Defence Capabilities Initiative launched at the Washington Summit. The result was the endorsement of the need to shift structures and capabilities yet further from static defence towards the requirements of deployed operations – requirements which the Kosovo campaign has underlined.

Let me briefly mention one area of the Strategic Concept which did not change, except in drafting detail. There was a consensus that the Alliance's philosophy of nuclear deterrence remains as valid as it was in 1991, although recognising – thankfully – the reduced salience of nuclear weapons in today's strategic context.

The place for European Defence

Finally, I had better say something about European defence issues, which were an important theme at the Washington Summit although, strictly, they were not central to the Strategic Concept. Nevertheless, the UK was understandably at the forefront in wanting the full range of documents agreed at Washington to reflect the fresh impetus that the Prime Minister has put into European defence, and also to set the agenda for the NATO aspects on the way ahead.

Three overlapping sets of sensitivities were raised during the European defence debate. First from all non-EU Allies (including the North Americans), who needed to be convinced that the further development of ESDI would reinforce NATO, and not act as a distraction from or duplication of efforts within NATO. Secondly, the specifically European non-EU allies, by now comfortable with the arrangements developed since 1996 for NATO support for WEU-led operations, needed to be convinced that the shift of focus towards the EU following the Franco-British initiative at St Malo, would fully respect their concerns.

Thirdly, within the EU allies, there were some who would have preferred to place emphasis on the development of thinking on European defence within the EU, before the subject was treated in NATO: it was not for NATO to dictate how European Defence would develop. The answer we got back at Washington was the right one: a welcome for the development of European defence; a commitment to strengthening the arrangements by which NATO would support European operations, and a strong endorsement of the importance of a NATO-based defence. The final text of the Strategic Concept fully backed this approach.

So, to conclude, the new Strategic Concept is a remarkably good basis for taking the Alliance into the new century. Its development was, at times, a rather frustrating process. That said, and despite it having to be agreed by consensus amongst all 19 Allies, it does not – by and large – read like a document drafted by Committee. It is perhaps a little dry. But, with the exception of the first sentence of paragraph three – which will be a perpetual puzzle for grammarians – it is written in a reasonably clear and accessible style. It portrays a forward-leaning Alliance which had adapted to the post-Cold War security environment and which is looking to develop further to meet the challenges of the future. It is a good outcome for all Allies and for the Alliance.

Richard Hatfield's feature article is based on a presentation he gave to RUSI, The Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies in London. You can find out more about RUSI @

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