NATO, 'brain dead' no more
Military alliance is finally rethinking its strategic concept.
The Nato logo | Tobias Schwartz/AFP via Getty Images
By Rose Gottemoeller
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Rose Gottemoeller, a former deputy secretary-general of NATO, is Payne distinguished lecturer at Stanford University.
A year after French President Emmanuel Macron declared NATO "brain dead," the military alliance has finally come up with a worthy response to and a blueprint for how it can step into the future.
A new report, "NATO 2030," carried out by experts from across the alliance, lays out a series of recommendations that can put us back on track. It's about time.
The crux of the problem was a tension at the heart of the alliance: NATO has always been operationally agile. But it was failing to adapt to significant shifts in politics.
In 2014, for example, the alliance quickly took defensive steps to respond to the Kremlin's military aggression in Crimea, readying itself for reinforcement and a forward presence in the Baltic States, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria. Every single NATO member came forward with military forces, in case Russian action called for a rapid response.
I was always proud of those decisive early decisions, which were beginning to bear fruit when I arrived as deputy secretary-general in the fall of 2016. They were so at odds with what I had heard about NATO — that it was slow when it came to making urgent decisions and couldn't get its act together in case of need.
Less than one year after I arrived, in July 2017, the battlegroups in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Poland were certified for action. Units from all over NATO, from Albania in the south to Norway in the north, were ready to fight together. Should Moscow have contemplated an attack, NATO in its entirety would have responded — a powerful deterrent to a potential aggressor.
But NATO's political stance did not mirror that decisive action. The alliance was saddled with a strategic concept that dated back to 2010. It described the strategic environment in a way that was far removed from the reality: "Today, the Euro-Atlantic area is at peace, and the threat of a conventional attack against NATO territory is low."
This characterization was hugely at odds with the quick and efficient military steps that NATO was taking, but some allies shied away from messing with it. Neophyte that I was — I had little experience with NATO when I first arrived — I would regularly ask why we didn't adjust the concept.
The answer, invariably, would be: "Let's take the urgent military steps we need and not open that can of worms." Too many NATO members had different views of what the top security priorities should be, and debating a new concept would be too divisive. So NATO continued to make efficient progress on the military front, but its political underpinnings were lagging far behind.
French President Emmanuel Macron called NATO out on this failing a year ago, with his searing criticism that the alliance was "brain dead." He argued forcefully that new challenges, even threats, were coming over the horizon and that NATO would not be ready for them. Because U.S. President Donald Trump's America was turning its back on the alliance, he said, Europe needed to start thinking more as a geopolitical power, capable of acting independently of Washington.
Allied leaders picked up this challenge at their London meeting last December, launching a year-long study to see if NATO could do better. If the recommendations in "NATO 2030" are accepted, not only will alliance members take a fresh look at the alliance's strategic concept, they will also confront head-on the global challenges coming at them.
One of the greatest of these challenges is the sharpened competitive environment, with the persistence of Russia as a military power poised to do mischief on NATO's periphery.
The rise of China is also a focus of the report, not because NATO would relocate to the South China Sea, but because China is increasingly active in Europe. It is, for example, buying up control of transport infrastructure in a way that could hamper NATO's freedom to operate.
But, as the report notes, NATO should also seek opportunities to work with both countries. When it comes to Russia, the long-standing approach stands: The alliance has to be clear-eyed about the need to deter and defend, but also to look for ways to engage. Where China is concerned, NATO should develop a political approach, focused in the Euro-Atlantic space, that recognizes China's new role in the world.
The report also lays out how the alliance can adapt its decision-making to succeed in this new strategic environment. The strength of NATO is its insistence on consensus. However, sometimes allies could take a flexible approach within the consensus rule, allowing certain members to step forward for missions that other allies may not want to join.
Such "coalitions of the willing" inside NATO could be a potent tool for putting together well-planned operations with well-trained and disciplined troops. In this way, they would lighten the military burden on large allies such as the United States, the United Kingdom and France.
So, one year later, Macron has his response: NATO is not brain dead, but thinking hard about the future. For Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, "NATO 2030" has put a host of good recommendations on the table; he now simply has to choose among them.
NATO's self-reflection is also good news for U.S. President-elect Joe Biden as he enters office. It shows NATO can become a more autonomous and effective alliance, one that is less dependent on American military power. The alliance will be more capable of standing up for itself in the world and, likewise, of standing with the U.S. when needed.
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