Приоритеты трансформации НАТО

In short, at age 60, NATO has become such an indispensable part of the international security environment that it is hard to imagine that it ever could have been otherwise. And yet it was. The initial duration of the 1949 Washington Treaty was modestly set at 20 years, by which time, it was assumed, the post-war recovery of Western Europe would have been completed and the transatlantic defence pact become obsolete.

Few of the people who were present at NATO’s creation would have dared to hope that this Alliance would not only outlast the Cold War conditions that brought it into being, but indeed thrive in a radically different security environment.

The reason why NATO turned from a temporary project into a permanent one is not difficult to fathom. It is because the logic of transatlantic security cooperation is timeless. The need for Europe and North America to tackle security challenges together remains as pressing today as it was 60 years ago.

So does the need for a transatlantic institutional framework which allows for political consultation, joint decisions, and common action. Only NATO can provide this framework.

As NATO enters its seventh decade, it needs to overcome a series of challenges that are more difficult and complex than anything it has ever faced before.

When our Heads of State and Government meet at NATO’s 60th Anniversary Summit in Strasbourg, France, and Kehl, Germany, on 3 and 4 April, they will no doubt highlight the Alliance’s historic achievements. Indeed, the Summit venue itself testifies to NATO’s success in facilitating Europe’s post-war reconciliation.

But while past achievements may inspire confidence for the future, they cannot substitute for new thinking and new policies. As NATO enters its seventh decade, it needs to overcome a series of challenges that are more difficult and complex than anything it has ever faced before. The Strasbourg/Kehl Summit must therefore not be confined to self-congratulatory statements. On the contrary, this Summit is a key opportunity to move NATO’s evolution another major step forward.

Three challenges stand out.

The first challenge is Afghanistan. To make a success of our engagement there, we need to better match our ambitions with the means that we are willing to deploy. I sincerely hope that all Allies would be able to step up their contributions. We have had considerable success in training and equipping the Afghan National Army, and we must build on that progress. The ability of the Afghan Police to play its role in providing security and stability is essential.

There is a lot more that we – and the international community as a whole – can do on the civilian side – in helping the Afghans to build functioning institutions, to fight crime and corruption, and get a better grip of the narcotics problem. What we must guard against at all cost is individual nations taking a narrow view of their specific role in a particular geographical or functional area. It is vital that we all keep our eyes on the overall picture, and continue our engagement in Afghanistan as a common, transatlantic endeavour.

The overall picture stretches well beyond Afghanistan. It includes the wider region, and especially Pakistan, with which we must deepen our engagement. Moreover, we must get our military and civilian institutions to co-operate much more closely and more effectively. In other words, we need to further instrumentalise a truly comprehensive approach – and not just in Afghanistan, but also in response to other urgent, transnational challenges. The UN-NATO Joint Declaration which UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and I signed last September should help us to move in that direction.

The second major challenge is our relationship with Russia. The conflict in Georgia last August has invited many different interpretations. It has also raised some serious questions about Russia’s commitment to a positive relationship not only with its own neighbours, but also with our Alliance.

Clearly, we are not going to let Russia derail NATO enlargement. That process is central to our aim of consolidating Europe as an undivided and democratic security space and, hence, it is not negotiable. But the NATO-Russia relationship is too valuable to be stuck in arguments over enlargement or, for that matter, over missile defence or Kosovo.

We need a positive agenda that befits the great importance of both Russia and NATO to European and indeed global security. Afghanistan is one key area where we have obvious common interests and a greater chance of meeting those interests when we work together. But there are other areas as well, like the fight against terrorism and piracy, and the need to counter the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. In other words, the time has clearly come to give a fresh impetus to our relationship, and our next NATO Summit offers an excellent opportunity for the Allies to underline their commitment in this regard.

The third challenge is dealing with new threats. We have seen these past few years that cyber attacks or the interruption of energy supplies can devastate a country without a single shot being fired. We are also witnessing the return of piracy as a serious security challenge, as well as the first “hard” security implications of climate change, notably in the High North. At the same time, Iran’s nuclear programme highlights the pressing challenge of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

We need to better define NATO’s role in meeting these challenges. NATO may not provide all the answers, but that should not serve as excuse for inaction. We must make the best possible use of the Alliance’s unique value as a forum for transatlantic political dialogue, and as an instrument for translating political decisions into concrete action. After all, threats don’t wait until we feel that we are ready for them.

a new Strategic Concept will need to reconcile the Alliance’s core purpose of collective defence with the many requirements associated with out-of-area operations.

The Strasbourg/Kehl Summit is an opportunity to demonstrate that the Allies are able to muster the necessary political will, imagination and solidarity to meet these various challenges. But the Summit must do even more. With a new US Administration settling in office, and with the prospect of France taking its full place in NATO’s integrated military structures, the Summit is also the perfect moment to launch an update of the Alliance’s Strategic Concept.

Based on the “Declaration on Alliance Security”  which is to be agreed at the Summit, a new Strategic Concept will need to reconcile the Alliance’s core purpose of collective defence with the many requirements associated with out-of-area operations. It will need to emphasise NATO’s role as a unique community of common values and interests, and avoid the temptation to push regional or national agendas at the expense of our common purpose and objectives. And it will need to make clear NATO’s strong desire to engage with the UN, the EU and other international actors, as partners, in a comprehensive approach to the security challenges of our time.

These challenges are fundamentally different from those that brought NATO into being 60 years ago. But as long a there is a solid transatlantic relationship, and as long as this relationship rests on strong institutional foundations such as NATO, we will be able to shape events and not be their victims. The Alliance’s 60th Anniversary Summit is a perfect opportunity to reaffirm this timeless logic.

Decision time: NATO's hard choices

Charles Kupchan of the Council of Foreign Relations outlines where NATO has to make some difficult decisions that will be essential to its future

NATO’s anniversary summit is likely to be dominated by the ongoing mission in Afghanistan. And rightly so. NATO’s ability to forge a coherent strategy, allocate burdens among members, and shore up domestic support for the mission are vital to the alliance’s ability to enhance security and stability in Afghanistan – a goal that will serve as a litmus test of NATO’s effectiveness.

But even as the alliance confronts this immediate challenge, it must also open a searching debate about three over-the-horizon issues that it can no longer afford to push off: its relationship to Russia; its decision-making rules; and the scope of its global ambitions.

On all three issues, NATO members should be guided by realism and sobriety.

With Russia, NATO must seek to avert the continuation of zero-sum competition, instead mapping out a practical vision of programmatic cooperation.

On decision-making, NATO must acknowledge that its growing membership makes reliance on consensus ever more unwieldy, necessitating adoption of a more flexible approach to governance.

As for its global aspirations, NATO must nip such ambitions in the bud, realizing that efforts to turn the body into a worldwide alliance of democracies promise to speed its demise, not its renewal.

Whatever the merits of NATO enlargement – and they are many – the expansion of the alliance has unquestionably come at the expense of its relationship with Russia. To be sure, Russians themselves bear primary responsibility for the recent backsliding on democracy as well as their bouts of foreign policy excess – the war in Georgia most notable among them.

But the perception among Russia’s leadership and its public alike that NATO’s eastward expansion impinges on their country’s security and prestige has certainly not helped matters. Appropriately, NATO seems prepared to put on hold for now its commitment, agreed upon at last year’s Bucharest summit, to offer membership to Georgia and Ukraine. But the mere prospect of Ukrainian and Georgian membership continues to contaminate NATO’s dialogue with Russia.

The way out of this bind is to find a formula for encouraging Moscow to become a stakeholder in Europe’s security order, making Russia a participant in rather than an object of NATO’s evolution. The Cold War has been over for two decades; it is high time for NATO to make a serious effort to bring Russia into the post-war settlement. Moscow may well decline the offer in favor of estrangement with the West. But at least NATO will have done its best to avert that outcome.

With Russia, NATO must seek to avert the continuation of zero-sum competition

At this point, the immediate goal is not finding the precise formula for reaching out to Moscow, but beginning a strategic conversation that makes clear that NATO members are sincerely committed to anchoring Russia within the Euro-Atlantic community. The conversation can begin by exploring ways to make more of the NATO-Russia Council. NATO members should pick up on Moscow’s call for fresh thinking about a “new European security architecture.” This dialogue must be backstopped with concrete strategic cooperation on issues such as missile defense, access to Afghanistan, and diplomacy with Iran.

Ongoing enlargement also forces the issue of the need to reform decision-making in an alliance that has 26 members and counting. As its ranks grow in number and diversity, continued reliance on consensus may well become a recipe for paralysis. Reinforcing the need for reform is the changed strategic landscape in which NATO operates – one whose complexity has attenuated the solidarity that NATO enjoyed during Cold War.

The sharp disagreements that have arisen over Afghanistan, over the urgency of offering membership to Georgia, and over relations between NATO and Russia are not fleeting differences that will soon disappear. Rather, they are by-products of the inevitable divergence of interest and threat perception that has accompanied NATO’s adaptation to the post-Cold War world.

The key question for the alliance is not whether such differences can be overcome, but whether they can be tolerated. Like it or not, NATO is growing more unwieldy and a consensus more elusive.

Such divergence of perspective among member states hardly spells NATO’s fracture, but it does mean the alliance must adjust accordingly how it reaches decisions. Members are unlikely to give up the consensus rule on matters of war and peace. However, on most other issues, it is time for the alliance to forge a more flexible approach to decision-making. NATO should also consider various forms of opt outs to ensure that the intransigence of individual members on specific issues does not stand in the way of effective action.

Finally, members would be wise to begin addressing the calls – coming primarily from American voices – to extend NATO’s reach beyond Europe and transform the body into a global alliance of democracies. Recasting NATO’s relationship with Russia and reforming decision-making require careful deliberation. The proposal for NATO to go global does not; it should be readily dismissed.

NATO has its hands full in Afghanistan; indeed, its ability to prevail remains open to question. With the Afghan mission so straining NATO’s resources and cohesion, it is hard to imagine that the alliance is ready to take on additional commitments further afield. NATO should by all means forge strategic partnerships with countries and regional groupings willing to contribute to the common cause; the help of non-members in Afghanistan is more than welcome. But making NATO the institution of choice for dealing with conflicts around the world is a bridge too far.

NATO’s sixtieth anniversary comes at a time of challenge and strain for the Alliance

In the Balkans, Caucasus, and Europe’s far east – as well as in Afghanistan – NATO has much unfinished business. It had better focus on completing these tasks before packing up for new missions in Kashmir or the Gaza strip. Moreover, extending NATO membership to the likes of Japan, Australia, and Israel would not only prove uniquely contentious for the alliance but also saddle it with commitments likely to go unmet.

To be sure, NATO has an important role to play beyond Europe; it is already developing linkages in the Mediterranean. But prudence requires that NATO focus primarily on helping others help themselves – providing assistance and training, serving as an institutional model, on occasion partnering with local states in limited missions – all to the service of standing up other security organizations around the globe that can be as successful in their own regions as NATO has been in Europe.

NATO’s sixtieth anniversary comes at a time of challenge and strain for the alliance. Against the backdrop of the mission in Afghanistan, NATO would be wise to consolidate its gains by reaching out to Russia, updating its decision-making to reflect its broader membership, and recognizing the limits of its own success.

Charles A. Kupchan is professor of international affairs at Georgetown University and Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations

Генри Киссинджер: Шанс для нового миропорядка

ИноСМИ ("The International Herald Tribune", США) 
Январь 13, 2009

Сегодня, когда  новая американская администрация  готовится приступить к исполнению своих обязанностей в обстановке серьезнейшего финансового и  международного кризиса, крайне нелогичными  кажутся утверждения о том, что  неурегулированный характер международных  отношений сам по себе создает  уникальную возможность для созидательной  дипломатии.

В такой возможности  присутствует мнимое противоречие. С  одной стороны, финансовый кризис нанес  мощнейший удар по репутации Соединенных  Штатов. Если американские оценки в  области политики зачастую оказывались  противоречивыми, то рекомендации США  в области мирового финансового  порядка никто, в общем, не оспаривает. Но сейчас во всем мире распространилось разочарование по поводу того, как  США этим порядком управляют.

В то же время, масштабы бедствия уже не позволяют остальному миру прятаться за спиной американского  господства и американских провалов.

Каждой стране придется задуматься над тем, какой она  внесла вклад в возникший кризис. Каждый будет теперь изо всех сил  стремиться устранить те условия, которые  привели к краху. В то же время  каждому придется посмотреть правде в глаза и признать, что проблемы кризиса можно преодолеть лишь совместными  усилиями.

Даже самые богатые  страны столкнутся с сокращением  имеющихся ресурсов. Каждому государству  придется пересмотреть свои национальные приоритеты. Если возникнет система  совместимых приоритетов, то появится новый мировой порядок. Но если разные приоритеты согласовать и выверить не удастся, то произойдет катастрофа, и этот миропорядок расколется на части.

Крах нынешней мировой  финансовой системы совпал по времени  с многочисленными политическими  кризисами в различных точках планеты. Никогда прежде в самых  разных уголках мира одновременно не происходило такого большого количества изменений, о которых тут же становилось  известно всем благодаря современным  средствам коммуникации. Альтернативой  новому международному порядку является хаос.

Финансовый и  политический кризисы на самом деле тесно взаимосвязаны, потому что  в период экономического процветания  возник раскол между экономической  и политической организацией нашего мира.

Мир экономики стал "глобализованным". Его институты проникли повсюду, и действует он, исходя из того, что глобальный рынок является саморегулирующимся механизмом.

Финансовый кризис показал, что это только мираж. Он продемонстрировал отсутствие глобальных институтов, способных смягчать удары  и изменять тенденции. И неизбежно  возникает следующая ситуация: когда  испытывающее удары кризиса общество обращается к национальным политическим институтам, они в своей деятельности руководствуются главным образом  внутренними соображениями, а не интересами мирового порядка.

Каждая крупная  страна пытается решить встающие перед  ней проблемы в основном самостоятельно, откладывая коллективные действия на потом, когда натиск кризиса ослабеет. Так называемые пакеты экстренной помощи появляются поштучно, отдельно в каждой стране. И в целом, те внутренние кредиты, которые стали причиной краха, благодаря им просто подменяются казалось бы неисчерпаемыми государственными кредитами. И пока они не дают ничего, кроме сдерживания возникающей паники.

Международный порядок  в политической и экономической  сфере не возникнет до тех пор, пока не появятся общие правила, по которым смогут ориентироваться  и сверять свой путь разные страны.

В конечном итоге, гармонизации политической и экономической  системы можно добиться лишь двумя  способами: создав международную политическую систему регулирования тех же масштабов, что и мировой экономический  порядок; или сократив охват экономических  институтов до таких размеров, когда  ими смогут управлять существующие политические структуры, что может  привести к новому меркантилизму  на региональном уровне.

Новое глобальное соглашение по образу и подобию Бреттон-вудского - это самый предпочтительный вариант. И роль Америки в такого рода предприятии будет определяющей. Это парадокс, но американское влияние будет огромным, если сопоставить его со скромностью нашего поведения. Нам следует откорректировать ту добродетельность и праведность, которая была характерна для позиций и действий Америки по многим направлениям, особенно после распада Советского Союза.

Это эпохальное событие  и последовавший за ним период почти непрерывного экономического роста заставили слишком многих приравнять мировой порядок к  принятию американских схем и замыслов, включая наши внутренние предпочтения.

В результате этого  возник некий неустранимый унилатерализм (на который постоянно жалуются европейские критики). Это своего рода настойчивый консилиум, требующий от стран доказывать свою пригодность к вступлению в международную систему - иными словами, свое соответствие американским предписаниям.

Со времен инаугурации  президента Джона Кеннеди (John F. Kennedy) полвека тому назад, в Америке не было ни одной новой администрации, на которую возлагались бы столь огромные надежды. Случай беспрецедентный: все главные актеры на мировой сцене открыто заявляют о своем стремлении к преобразованиям, которые навязал им глобальный кризис, причем преобразования эти они хотят осуществлять во взаимодействии с США.

Экстраординарное  воздействие избранного президента на представления человечества - это  важный элемент в формировании нового мирового порядка. Однако оно лишь предоставляет  возможность, но не определяет курс.