NATO Secretary General focuses on the Strategic Concept end-game

First reactions to his draft strategy said to be “very positive”

By Ben Thomas and Ian Davis

The NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen used his monthly press briefing earlier today (in advance of the joint foreign affairs and defence ministerial meeting taking place in Brussels later this week) and an address last Friday (to an event organised by the German Marshall Fund) to sketch the direction of NATO’s forthcoming Strategic Concept.  When questioned during the briefing as to the first reactions among member states to his initial draft of the Strategic Concept he replied, “very positive”.  

In his earlier speech, Mr. Rasmussen began by telling the audience that NATO was “the most successful alliance in history” and he was adamant throughout that NATO remains the only institution within which Europe and North America can discuss security issues. However, he also argued that NATO must upgrade key capacities to combat future threats, and that future challenges to security would increasingly come from irregular sources such as terrorism and cyber warfare: “there are fewer military threats to our territory, but more challenges to our security”, he said.   

In order to be able to deal with such threats the Secretary General highlighted three areas in his speech where NATO needs to transform or upgrade capabilities. The first, modernising defence and deterrence capabilities, would see NATO forces moving away from static defence postures and towards a mobile force with the ability to deploy “across and beyond” Alliance territory. Equally important to this vision, Mr. Rasmussen stated, was a working missile defence system which could, if Russia can be successfully brought onboard, stretch “from Vancouver to Vladivostok”.  

However, when pushed at the press briefing to clarify whether such ‘pre-emptive defence’ would necessitate a UN mandate, he fell back on generalities while insisting that the new Strategic Concept “will make clear that NATO operates according to the principles of the UN Charter”. And on Russian involvement in missile defence, the Secretary General confirmed that he had not yet heard from the Moscow regarding their participation at the Lisbon Summit, but that any decision made on missile defences at the Summit would be accompanied by an offer to Russia to cooperate.

The second key transformation envisioned in the Secretary General’s speech is the need for NATO to upgrade crisis management responses through a comprehensive approach to the building of security. Mr. Rasmussen argued that the lack of political progress in many NATO operations meant that “our military operations often operate in a vacuum”, and explained that closer work with civilian partners, both on the ground and at the strategic level, was needed.

The third pillar of the new vision sees NATO reaching out to develop “deeper, wider political and practical partnerships with countries around the globe”. Especially important to this vision is the desire to give non-NATO partners a “structured role in shaping missions”, reflecting the importance of countries such as Japan to current NATO operations. This approach forms part a desire to encourage greater regional cooperation in problem solving, effectively taking the worst of the geo-political burden away from the United States. At the press briefing he emphasised that this also meant further developing relationships with countries like India and China that are currently not part of existing partnership structures.

Taking this message further Mr. Rasmussen also warned NATO member states against making large-scale reductions in armed forces, claiming that “cuts can go too far”. In a message aimed squarely at European members, Mr. Rasmussen argued that Europe must start pulling its weight in order to remain relevant, and explained that whilst cuts were needed, actions should not be taken that could undermine NATO’s ability to defend its security.  At his press briefing he also focused on reforms within NATO, suggesting that “we can manage with three” agencies (rather than the 14 at present) and calling for NATO to be “more effective and more cost effective”.

However, Mr. Rasmussen was optimistic about NATO’s ability to enact change, and insisted that NATO’s fundamental values remained essential to security. In a message to the Eastern European members he pledged that collective defence would remain a binding commitment, although he stressed that increasingly defence does not begin and end at NATO borders. Equally, he was positive on the future of operations in Afghanistan, stating that “I have no doubt that we will succeed”, and was optimistic that the right lessons would be drawn for the future. At the press briefing he said that he expects the Lisbon Summit to agree a ‘conditions-based’ outline schedule for transition to Afghan lead: which would commence at the beginning of 2011 “or by July 2011 at the latest” with an expectation of it being completed by 2014. One of the key benchmarks, the Secretary General said, was for 300,000 Afghan soldiers and policemen by October 2011.