Excited by the debate on NATO’s Strategic Concept

This week, I have my first lecture ever on NATO. The host was the parliamentary group and the foreign policy committee of the Socialist Left Party. I am grateful to Peter for input, and to Kristoffer for providing background information.

One week earlier, the NATO road show with Madeleine Albright and here group of old and wise visited Oslo. I was not there, but I (and Pavel) attended a presentation with Jamie Shea from NATO’s policy planning unit in Brussels. He went through the process and reflected on what he thought were the key issues: new members; expanding partnership agreements; international operations; a return to old focus on home areas. Remarkably, he did not talk about Afghanistan in his presentation, apart from a remark that there was little need to do so, as the new NATO strategy would sort that out.

Reading up for my own presentation, I realized that Shea had carefully read a RAND study that I also found quite useful, particularly in outlining the US perspective. I was surprised to realize that across the five possible future avenues that RAND outlines for NATO’s future, the Afghan experience (and possible failure) pops up as a key factor. Unlike Jamie Shea (who I have always found interesting and outspoken), I did emphasize Afghanistan in my presentation.

The Norwegian perspective is interesting here. Since last year, Norway has started to argue – rather aggressively – that there is a real tension between focusing NATO on the home areas and focusing on out of area operations. This runs counter to the common argument that near and distant missions require the same capacities, and that there is compatibility between the two. The risk, for those who see NATO as critical to Norway’s security, is that US interest in the home areas (for Norway: the high North) is limited. It was noticeable that out of three issues on Stoltenberg’s notepad when he met Obama during the Nobel visit, there was one issue that was barely mentioned at the joint press conference: The High North (whereas Afghanistan and Climate change was).

The Strategic Concept process has stirred some debate in Norway. Janne Haaland Matlary criticized the new minister of defense, Grete Faremo, for bringing up a false tension. Peter Burgess, in an article in Dagbladet, went further, and said that Faremo did not only downplay the extent to which new threat are found outside the territory of the transatlantic alliance, but also that she fails to take into account the whole range of new security threats, ranging from health to cyberattacks (this was before Clinton’s remarks on China and Google). Peter is regularly lecturing and commenting on the strategic concept.

I am convinced that the debate on NATO’s new strategic concept is one of the most important debates that are unfolding right now, with potentially huge implications for international interventions and peacebuilding globally. I recommend the RAND report and the larger litterature list on the NATO homepage. Enjoy the read ! Engage with the debate!