Georgia Conflict Forces NATO Rethink
Georgia Conflict Forces NATO Rethink
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NATO defence ministers will on Thursday hold their first in-depth discussion on how the 26-member alliance should respond militarily to Russia's new challenge to the west following its recent conflict with Georgia.
Over the past decade, NATO's central focus has been on meeting challenges outside the alliance's home territory, above all confronting the Taliban in Afghanistan. But at a summit in London on Thursday and Friday, defence ministers will start questioning whether NATO needs a strategic rethink, putting more focus on the organisation's traditional commitment to defend European members from attack.
Today's informal summit of 26 defence ministers was convened well before the August conflict between Russia and Georgia, and will focus mainly on what NATO member states can do to increase and co-ordinate defence spending.
However, senior figures at NATO headquarters in Brussels expect several member states, especially the east Europeans, to call for the alliance to do more to underpin their territories' defence against a resurgent Russia.
"Nobody will be asking for a wholesale strategic rethink that reduces NATO's commitment to Afghanistan," said a senior NATO official. "But some states may be looking to strike a new balance between NATO's current focus on expeditionary operations and the need to defend NATO territory."
The official said NATO could underpin security of the Baltic states by conducting more exercises in the region, undertaking contingency planning and re-examining its command structure.
In an interview with the Financial Times ahead of the summit, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, NATO secretary-general, said the alliance's article five commitment for mutual defence of all members states, including the Baltics, should not be put in doubt. "There is nothing wrong with article five," he said. "NATO is ready for all eventualities and that is as relevant for Talinn, Riga and Vilnius as it is for any other NATO capital."
But he said recent events in Georgia underscored the need for defence ministers to discuss frankly why many NATO members were not doing more to boost defence spending. "If we have an informal benchmark of 2 per cent GDP [gross domestic product] for defence spending and only six of the 26 NATO allies meet that informal benchmark, then there is something wrong with the alliance," he said. "I cannot ask nations to suddenly jump to the 2 per cent . . . But I want to tell them that if we do not embark on a path that will bring us in stages to more defence spending, then this alliance may not be able to do what it is supposed to do."
On Tuesday, Vladimir Putin, Russia's prime minister, said his country's defence spending would grow by 27 per cent in 2009.
Tomas Valasek, a defence expert at the Centre for European Reform in London, said discussion on how NATO responded to Russia could lead to serious tensions over the alliance's strategic role.
