In a just released Atlantic Council-Foreign Policy survey, experts voted Greece as the country they were most likely to “kick out of NATO.” Heads of state, ministers of defense and foreign affairs, a head of intelligence, plus current and former members of Congress were among the dozens of expert respondents from the U.S., Canada, and Europe.
 
As international leaders converge on Chicago this week for the NATO Summit, the Atlantic Council and Foreign Policy partnered to ask about the relevance and future of the world’s most powerful alliance. None of the respondents thought NATO should cease to exist or that the United States would be better off leaving the Alliance, but they were less certain that NATO can adapt to a changing geopolitical and military landscape—and just who will foot the bill for future operation.
 
Some key findings:

•    More respondents think NATO should not intervene in Syria, with one stating, “Are you kidding? NATO does not have the resources: no will, limited skill, no tools.”
•    Respondents are nearly split equally on the question of whether or not Al Qaeda will return to Afghanistan once the International Security Assistance Force mission ends.
•    Most participants believe that the European members of NATO could not have conducted the Libya operation without US assistance.
•    Almost all of the respondents feel NATO should have offensive cyber capabilities.

Read the entire survey results and see the full list of respondents athttp://www.acus.org/event/atlantic-councilforeign-policy-survey-future-nato.

From Barry Pavel and James Joyner, the New Atlanticist:  [T]his is no time for routine. The atrocities in Syria are ongoing. Unrest continues to bubble across the Middle East and North Africa. And the threat of an Iran crisis looms, which from its outset would directly involve NATO members in the neighborhood (Turkey) or with forces in the region (United States, Britain).

In light of all this, the Gulf Cooperation Council countries in particular are practically begging NATO to deepen its outside relationships. (NATO also needs to formalize partnerships with Australia and other key Asian players.) At a minimum, NATO must initiate greater outreach regarding air, missile defense, and maritime operations with the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and other Gulf countries who are interested in operational links to NATO.

At the Chicago summit, the Obama administration can exert leadership to make inroads on areas where consensus is emerging.

Moving ahead on “smart defense” requires an agreement on which capabilities must be maintained by all allies and which can be shared responsibilities, with some providing capabilities that all can rely upon if needed.

On Afghanistan, maintaining Lisbon’s 2014 timeline may no longer be possible, but Chicago should at the very least result in an agreement to follow a NATO timeline, not one set by the domestic politics of individual allies.

On cyber security, allies need to move toward common standards for national cyber assets to ensure continued interoperability. On partnerships, NATO should engage in structured outreach at multiple levels to its Gulf partners who already have joined NATO military operations.

Finally, NATO should formalize the reality made clear by the Libya operation and set forth procedures for “coalitions of the willing” among NATO members to employ alliance command and control assets in the absence of unanimous participation.

If Obama can push NATO on these critical points, and help foster consensus, there is some hope that NATO will remain as relevant to protecting US interests in the 21st century as it was in the last.

Barry Pavel is director of the International Security Program and James Joyner is managing editor of the Atlantic Council. This article originally appeared in The Christian Science Monitor and is part of a series of New Atlanticist pieces on NATO’s 2012 Chicago Summit.

From Franklin D. Kramer, the New Atlanticist:  [T]here are questions on both sides of the Atlantic. From the European perspective, does the United States as the transatlantic leader have a strategic approach that will be effective in the new global world? And from the United States perspective, does Europe have an interest and the capability to engage in and shape the new security environment?

This question is raised most clearly in the context of the very difficult security environment the NATO nations face to their southeast… .

There are good reasons for the Alliance to orient its activities in this direction. One NATO country—Turkey—faces an immediate, very complicated security environment on its borders with Syria, Iraq, and Iran. Likewise, Afghanistan is an obvious continuing high priority for the Alliance. But the reality is that the entire region from Syria to Pakistan is a cauldron of instability, including energy and maritime security in the Arabian Gulf; nuclear proliferation from Iran; the Israeli-Palestinian problem; internal instability in Iraq; insurgency and civil war in Syria; and, as noted, Afghanistan plus Pakistan, presenting overlapping but differentiated challenges. In terms of “active threat, right here, right now,” it is the issues of instability in the Greater Middle East that present the most clear set of problems to Alliance countries… .

The NATO Summit offers an opportunity to solidify the transatlantic bargain for this part of the world. In theory, this has already been done. The NATO Strategic Concept agreed to at Lisbon provides a framework on which a transatlantic effort in the Greater Middle East, and South Asia can be built. The concept provides that the “Alliance is affected by, and can affect, political and security developments beyond its borders [and] … will engage actively through partnership with relevant countries.” It goes on to state that “Instability or conflict beyond NATO borders can directly threaten Alliance security, including by fostering extremism, terrorism, and trans-national illegal activities.”

The words of the Strategic Concept are entirely congruent with, though not as explicit as, the United States defense strategy. But just as the earlier Cold War concept of flexible response needed periodic enhancement, the words of the current Strategic Concept —while only sixteen months old — are no longer enough. It will be important to establish that NATO and United States defense strategy are, in fact, congruent. To do so, the Alliance should take three steps.

The first action would be to issue at the NATO Summit an appropriate political declaration focusing on the Greater Middle East and South Asia. Second, as a mechanism to give substantive strategic content to the declaration, the Alliance should support the formation of a Strategic Consultative Group for the region. A Strategic Consultative Group will not displace bilateral activities nor would it be the only multilateral venue. What it would do, however, is focus the Alliance on a key theater in which its interests are at risk. And it would be an affirmation of the transatlantic bargain in the context of the most immediate challenges for both Europe and the United States. Third, the Strategic Consultative Group should be tasked to propose a longer term strategy utilizing all elements of national power for this arena, including the theater involving Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Central Asian countries; the Iranian problem and the issues of deterrence and potential containment in the Gulf; and the issues raised by Syria.

Franklin Kramer is a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council and a former Assistant Defense Secretary for International Affairs. This piece is part of a series of New Atlanticist pieces on NATO’s 2012 Chicago Summit.

From the Daily Star:  The foreign ministry on Saturday accused Turkey of provocation with its talk of asking NATO to help protect its border with Syria, saying such action went against the U.N.-backed peace plan.

“Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign Minister Ahmed Davutoglucontinue to make provocative statements aimed at aggravating the situation in Syria and harming bilateral ties,” foreign ministry spokesman Jihad Makdisi said.

“It is disturbing that Erdogan threatened to bring in NATO to protect its borders with Syria. This demonstrates a lack of a genuine commitment to the terms of the (Kofi) Annan plan and policies of good neighborliness.”

Makdisi also accused Erdogan of hosting armed groups “that do not believe in the political process”.

On April 9, four Syrian refugees and two Turks, a policeman and a translator, were wounded in the Kilis refugee camp in southeastern Turkey when they were hit by gunfire from across the border… .

Davutoglu too said Thursday that Turkey is considering “all possibilities in order to protect national security” if the violence continues to bring tens of thousands of Syrian refugees into its territory.  (photo: AFP)

From Hurriyet Daily News:  Turkey warned Syria today not to repeat border violations, implying that it could use force to protect its border and call on NATO to respond to a potential Syrian attack. 

“We have strong armed forces. We will carefully continue to take steps to this end. But Syria must be aware of the fact that in the event of a repetition of these border violations, Turkey’s stance will not be the same,” Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said in an interview with Al-Jazeera, Anatolia news agency reported. 

The border violation Erdoğan referred to took place two weeks ago when Syrian security forces opened fire on Syrians fleeing to Turkey. Turkey brought the case before the international community, which denounced Syrian forces’ attack. 

“In the event of the continuation of border violations, we will take necessary steps as a NATO country.

When we take this step, Article 5 of NATO, which counts an attack on a member country as one made against all the alliance, will be activated. I hope things will not go to that point,” he said.  (photo: Umit Bektas/Reuters)

From Kurt Volker, the Christian Science Monitor:  In 1993, US Secretary of State Warren Christopher began consultations with European allies to gauge their level of support for military force. But instead of assuring that the United States was prepared to lead the charge, he asked allies whether they were prepared to implement the plan, without committing the US either way. (“Leading from behind” is what one might call this today.)

Sensing the US was not prepared to lead implementation – President Clinton had won the election just six months earlier on the slogan, “It’s the economy, stupid” – allies demurred.

Within a week, the Bosnian Serb parliament rejected the plan, and shelling resumed. The war raged for two more years, with the Bosnian enclaves of Gorazde and Zepa falling to ethnic Serb forces, their majority Bosniak populations forcibly expelled.

Then, in July 1995 in Srebrenica, Bosnian Serbs murdered more 7,000 Bosniaks in one, systematic slaughter. It was at that point that the West finally acted. To his lasting credit, President Clinton then determined that the US would lead. NATO used air power to suppress Bosnian Serb attacks on Sarajevo, and within months had committed to military implementation of the Dayton peace accord, driven to conclusion by American über-diplomatRichard Holbrooke. By December 1995, some 60,000 NATO troops were en route to Bosnia to implement the peace plan, 20,000 of them American.

What was the difference between May 1993 and July 1995? In terms of Western implementation – nothing. We did in 1995 roughly what we would have done in 1993, had we acted. But in terms of human cost – tens of thousands of lives were lost.

And that is the key lesson. Eventually, the West was willing to act. But it took a “catalyst” of thousands of lives lost in a single massacre to convince us to do what we could have done years before. Would it not have been better to have acted sooner and saved thousands of lives?

As we look back over recent decades, there have been a surprising number of mass-murder conflicts. Bosnia, Kosovo, Saddam Hussein’s attacks on the Kurds in Iraq, and Libya, to name a few. In each case, outside powers intervened at some point to stop the killing. The results – while imperfect – nonetheless saved thousands of lives and laid the groundwork for future settlements.

And of all these recent conflicts, which is the one we regret the most? Rwanda, where some 800,000 people were killed and the West did nothing.

This is the perspective one must bring to the conflict now raging in Syria… .

What is missing, therefore, is not an understanding of the case for intervention, or even a means to intervene, but a “catalyst” that justifies and forces action. If that catalyst occurs, the US and others might act. And then America and its friends should ask themselves why they did not act sooner, and prevent the very catastrophe that spurred them into action.

Kurt Volker, a former US ambassador to NATO, is a professor of practice at Arizona State University and a senior fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.  (photo: Getty)

From Celil Sagir, Zaman:  Turkey has blocked Israel’s participation in NATO’s upcoming Chicago summit in a sign of Turkey’s determination to prevent its new foe from cooperating with the alliance following a deadly ship raid.

Turkish and Israeli relations worsened in May 2010 and have remained strained since then after Israeli naval commandos stormed the Mavi Marmara, a ship carrying humanitarian aid to breach Israel’s Gaza blockade, killing nine Turkish civilians.

Turkey said it will not allow Israel, a member of the Mediterranean Dialogue, a NATO outreach program with seven non-NATO nations, to take part in the alliance’s new “Partnership Cooperation Menu (PCM),” during a NATO meeting in Brussels last week attended by Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu.

Because of Ankara’s veto, Israel will not attend the NATO summit due to take place from May 20 to 21 in Chicago, an important diplomatic summit to be hosted by US President Barack Obama.

According to information obtained from Turkish diplomatic sources, Davutoğlu reacted to the criticism raised by some NATO members in the Brussels meeting who claimed bilateral problems should not be brought to the alliance by underlining that Turkey cannot consider a country which killed Turkish citizens in international waters as a partner.

Davutoğlu reminded the members that Turkey was a country that rescued citizens of other NATO member countries who were detained by Israel during the Mavi Marmara raid. “Go and tell Israel to apologize for the incident and to pay compensation for the Turkish citizens whom it massacred,” Davutoğlu said… .

A senior diplomatic source said Turkey’s bargaining power is too strong. “We [Turkey] are blocking Israel in many areas. We avoid contact with Israel in any international meeting,” the same source said.

Another diplomatic source emphasized that NATO-Israel relations could not be restored until Turkey-Israel relations are normalized. 

From Hurriyet Daily News: Some ministers of the allied countries including the United States, France and Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen indirectly criticized Turkey for bringing its bilateral problems with Israel to the NATO platform. Some ministers went so far as to vow to veto the participation of Egypt, Mauritania, Algeria, Morocco and other partner countries in the activities of the Mediterranean Dialogue if Turkey continues to do so against Israel, something they called “a violation of NATO’s values.”

Criticism from Davutoğlu

In response to such statements, Davutoğlu harshly criticized his counterparts sitting around the same large table. “You are talking about being partners and partnership values. But partners, first of everything, should act like partners, so that we’ll treat them accordingly,” was the main message Davutoğlu delivered to his NATO colleagues. He elaborated:

- The army of a country which you call a partner killed our citizens upon a political order given by its administration. We do not call this kind of country a partner.

- Turkey evacuated from Israel not only Turks but citizens from many countries, after they were detained by Israeli forces due to Mavi Marmara incident. It also evacuated citizens of all nationalities from Libya and Syria without making distinction. Our expectation from all allied countries is to pay the same respect to our citizens as we do to yours.

- I assure you that Turkey will be the first country acting to protect the citizens of NATO countries in a similar incident. We believe in the notion of solidarity in NATO much more than the discrimination some of you have expressed.  (photo: Reuters)  (via @WPReview)

From Celil Sagir, Zaman:  Turkey has blocked Israel’s participation in NATO’s upcoming Chicago summit in a sign of Turkey’s determination to prevent its new foe from cooperating with the alliance following a deadly ship raid.

Turkish and Israeli relations worsened in May 2010 and have remained strained since then after Israeli naval commandos stormed the Mavi Marmara, a ship carrying humanitarian aid to breach Israel’s Gaza blockade, killing nine Turkish civilians.

Turkey said it will not allow Israel, a member of the Mediterranean Dialogue, a NATO outreach program with seven non-NATO nations, to take part in the alliance’s new “Partnership Cooperation Menu (PCM),” during a NATO meeting in Brussels last week attended by Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu.

Because of Ankara’s veto, Israel will not attend the NATO summit due to take place from May 20 to 21 in Chicago, an important diplomatic summit to be hosted by US President Barack Obama.

According to information obtained from Turkish diplomatic sources, Davutoğlu reacted to the criticism raised by some NATO members in the Brussels meeting who claimed bilateral problems should not be brought to the alliance by underlining that Turkey cannot consider a country which killed Turkish citizens in international waters as a partner.

Davutoğlu reminded the members that Turkey was a country that rescued citizens of other NATO member countries who were detained by Israel during the Mavi Marmara raid. “Go and tell Israel to apologize for the incident and to pay compensation for the Turkish citizens whom it massacred,” Davutoğlu said… .

A senior diplomatic source said Turkey’s bargaining power is too strong. “We [Turkey] are blocking Israel in many areas. We avoid contact with Israel in any international meeting,” the same source said.

Another diplomatic source emphasized that NATO-Israel relations could not be restored until Turkey-Israel relations are normalized. 

From Hurriyet Daily News: Some ministers of the allied countries including the United States, France and Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen indirectly criticized Turkey for bringing its bilateral problems with Israel to the NATO platform. Some ministers went so far as to vow to veto the participation of Egypt, Mauritania, Algeria, Morocco and other partner countries in the activities of the Mediterranean Dialogue if Turkey continues to do so against Israel, something they called “a violation of NATO’s values.”

Criticism from Davutoğlu

In response to such statements, Davutoğlu harshly criticized his counterparts sitting around the same large table. “You are talking about being partners and partnership values. But partners, first of everything, should act like partners, so that we’ll treat them accordingly,” was the main message Davutoğlu delivered to his NATO colleagues. He elaborated:

- The army of a country which you call a partner killed our citizens upon a political order given by its administration. We do not call this kind of country a partner.

- Turkey evacuated from Israel not only Turks but citizens from many countries, after they were detained by Israeli forces due to Mavi Marmara incident. It also evacuated citizens of all nationalities from Libya and Syria without making distinction. Our expectation from all allied countries is to pay the same respect to our citizens as we do to yours.

- I assure you that Turkey will be the first country acting to protect the citizens of NATO countries in a similar incident. We believe in the notion of solidarity in NATO much more than the discrimination some of you have expressed.  (photo: Reuters)  (via @WPReview)

From Joshua Foust, the New Atlanticist:  This past week, however, firefights near Syria’s border with Turkey have raised the prospect of another way to intervene: NATO. The Syrian military has fired repeatedly at Syrian refugee camps and other emplacements inside the Turkish border. While no one died this time, several Syrians and Turks were injured.

In response, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has suggested he might invoke NATO’s Article V in response to the Syrian barrage – attempting to mandate NATO involvement in the conflict. Article V of the Washington Treaty, which governs NATO conduct, states that alliance members will treat an attack against one member as an attack against all members, and respond accordingly – up to and including the use of armed force.

Article V has only been invoked once in NATO’s history – in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Previous violent security crises involving NATO members, including the 1974 war between Greece and Turkey in Cyprus, did not rise to the level of Article V. If Erdogan invokes the treaty provision over some artillery exchanges – and the rest of NATO agrees – it would be anunprecedented use of the treaty to intervene in a civil war… .

Prime Minister Erdogan may very well gain support from some European states to increase security assets along the Turkish-Syrian border. But no matter the threat of spillover from Syria into Turkey, NATO’s ability to meaningfully affect the situation is, at best, very limited. And the bigger currents within European defense circles – contracting, scaling back, and reducing forces and so on – mean that even if NATO wanted to do something, in all likelihood it couldn’t.

This has profound implications for Europe and the Middle East. NATO has been a bulwark of stability since its founding in 1949; after the Cold War, it transitioned from opposing the Soviet Union to assisting the political transition of the former Warsaw Pact countries (many of whom have since become NATO members). Now, however, NATO is drifting between the lofty ambitions of the new strategic concept announced in the 2010 Lisbon Treaty and the messy reality of drastically curtailed defense budgets and a limited appetite for adventurism.

The end result is that when a member state, like Turkey, is facing a serious threat along its border, NATO will have a very limited capacity to actually assist in rallying to its defense. This doesn’t mean the alliance is done with, but it does mean that NATO requires some serious thinking and strategic planning to match its ambitions with its capabilities. As it stands now, the two are just too mismatched for it to be of much help to anyone.

Joshua Foust is a fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. He is a member of the Atlantic Council’s Young Atlanticist Working Group, and used to work as a civilian cultural advisor for the US Army. This piece originally appeared on PBS.org.

Although not on the official agenda of today’s meeting of NATO Foreign and Defense ministers, the continuing violence in Syria forced NATO leaders to discuss the issue and its impact on the alliance.

When asked if Syria had been discussed by the assembled NATO leaders, Secretary GeneralAnders Fogh Rasmussen responded that “we [NATO] have no intention to intervene in Syria. We’re not considering taking action.” In regards to how NATO would respond to a request by Turkey to invoke the alliance self-defense clause, Article 5, Ramussen replied; “if there is a request from any Ally to consult on a security situation we have the very clear rule, it’s also clearly stated in our Strategic Concept, that we are prepared to consult on any issue that may be raised by any Ally. But so far we have not received a request.”

Rasmussen’s statements were consistent with NATO’s efforts to avoid becoming entangled in another Middle East conflict. After Afghanistan and Libya, the West is weary of war and would rather the larger international community, the UN in particular, deal with the geo-strategic and humanitarian complexities of Syria.

Nevertheless, not long after Rasmussen’s press conference, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton boldly and explicitly linked NATO to the violence in Syria. Rather than trying to keep the topic of Syria at arms length from NATO and the consultations of its Foreign and Defense ministers, Clinton declared;”make no mistake about it; this conflict is taking place right on NATO’s border. We saw, just last week, the shelling across the borders into Turkey and into Lebanon. Our NATO ally, Turkey, has already suffered the effects of not only the influx of refugees that it is very generously housing, but also having two people killed on their side of the border because of Syrian artillery.”

According to Clinton’s description, the spillover of violence across Syria’s border with Turkey is not a hypothetical issue that NATO can avoid, but a serious and pressing security concern for the alliance. Furthermore, Clinton acknowledged that the topic was receiving widespread attention behind the closed doors of today’s ministerial meetings. “Syria was a subject of conversation among many of our allies today. Every country in NATO is watching the situation with concern.”

Clinton’s forward leaning language connecting NATO to the situation in S\yria may have been a result of bilateral conversations with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. After all, it was only a few days ago that Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan responded to violence across its border with Syria with the warning that “NATO has a responsibility to protect Turkish borders,” According to CNN, last Monday, Clinton and Davutoglu discussed creating a buffer zone in Syria. In the words of one US official, “It would be correct to say this idea is getting another look in the last week or so,” Clinton and Davutoglu may be closer to agreement on this after today’s discussions at NATO headquarters.

Clinton’s language today at NATO may be the most aggressive expressed yet by the Obama administration on Syria. According to Clinton, “we are at a crucial turning point. Either we succeed in pushing forward with Kofi Annan’s plan in accordance with the Security Council direction, with the help of monitors steadily broadening and deepening a zone of non-conflict and peace, or we see Assad squandering his last chance before additional measures have to be considered [emphasis added].” 

Last week, the Assad regime was warned by Erdogan, the Prime Minister of Syria’s most powerful neighbor and NATO’s 2nd largest army. Today the Assad regime was warned by the Secretary of State of NATO’s largest army. Whether intervention in Syria is wise or not, we can not deny that unless the Assad regime backs down, the likelihood of Western action in Syria is higher after today than ever before.  (photo: Reuters)