BACKGROUND: NATO’s difficulties are well known and are part of the larger set of issues plaguing the Transatlantic relationship among the allies. Nevertheless, it has consistently evolved since the 1990s into an organization whose main functions are crisis management, collective security, and peace and stability operations. This transformation is abundantly clear in NATO enlargement, the ongoing operations in the former Yugoslavia, and the military reforms taking place at varying speeds within the members’ armed forces. It is also very clear that NATO’s geographical scope is expanding as well. All the members of the CIS are members of the Partnership for Peace and the Euro-Atlantic Political Committee (EAPC). Joint exercises with NATO members and their armed forces are a regular occurrence and even before 2003, other NATO members like France, Germany, Turkey, and England were participating in the war against terrorists either in Central Asia or in Afghanistan itself. Turkey, for example, led the ISAF operation before handing it off to Germany and Holland, the current leaders. Likewise, NATO has also functioned as a kind of security magnet for Georgia and Azerbaijan who have both indicated their desire to join NATO at some point and to obtain protection from threats to their territories and their energy platforms and pipelines. Therefore the groundwork has been laid for the expansion of NATO’s missions to include the peace and stability operation inside Afghanistan. Nevertheless this move must be seen as signifying a dramatic and even qualitative change in NATO. For all the divisions within the alliance, there is no dissent to speak of regarding the necessity of fighting terrorism and stabilizing Afghanistan. As Iraq shows, its used to be and still is the case that “out of area-operations” in the Middle East were the most contentious issues that divided the allies from each other. This was true in 1956 in the Suez operation which triggered a major crisis in the alliance, as it is about the current Iraqi operation. However, at the Prague summit last year the allies agreed to a declaration and communiqué that essentially accepted the principle of out of area operations and pointed the way to the new operation inside Afghanistan. While the serious differences over Iraq are real; they are not disputes over NATO conducting missions in areas that hitherto were regarded as off limits to the alliance as such if not to individual members. Not surprisingly, the acceptance of NATO’s role in Afghanistan has also led the United States to seek to cajole its allies into establishing a similar NATO peace and stability operation in Iraq. As of this writing that issue has not yet been resolved. But the effort to obtain allied support for such an operation shows how NATO’s role as provider of collective security and as leader of peace and stability operations is growing in the wake of the transformation of international relations.

IMPLICATIONS: There are two other potential outcomes of this move into Afghanistan. First, there is no doubt that the Russian government and military, in the wake of Iraq and rising unhappiness about the American and Western presence in Central Asia, have substantially intensified their pressure upon Central Asian regimes to subordinate their armed forces to a Russian-led collective security treaty organization that is supposed to act as a counterbalance to NATO in the area and where Moscow would represent local governments while also effectively abridging their sovereign capabilities with regard to defense. NATO’s growing readiness to entertain the idea of being a security provider to the region and not just to Afghanistan suggests that not only the local regimes will resist Moscow’s efforts to subordinate them, but that NATO’s leading members and the organization as a whole will do so as well. Second, beyond the fact that NATO is becoming a factor in the provision of security throughout the Muslim world and might conceivably be called upon to do so in the event of conflict in the CIS, is the fact that Russia’s ties to NATO are apparently improving. But if a true strategic partnership with NATO is to be forged, one condition will surely be that Russia stop trying to block NATO’s missions, and even more importantly, curtail its efforts to undermine stability in Central Asia such as the launching of coups and support for insurgents. These actions are inherently destabilizing and have immense potential for blowing back threats not only upon Russia but also upon NATO members as we have all too tragically seen.

CONCLUSIONS: NATO’s move into hitherto inaccessible and closed areas both represents and portends major changes in the structure of security institutions and in their responsibilities. The Islamic world as a whole as well as the CIS will no longer be in principle off limits to Western security organizations and are irrevocably part of their security agenda. By displaying its readiness to participate in new missions like peace and stability operations and to do so in new areas, NATO has dramatically multiplied the number of effective contributors to security in areas that desperately need it. In this respect NATO also contributes to a possible trend to multilateralize security in Afghanistan and Central Asia, and to help prevent any single foreign player from becoming the sole regional security manager, a task beyond any state in today’s world. Such multilateralization is the only answer in the long run to the questions of how foreign states must deal with threats to their interests in and around Central Asia. This multilateralization both strengthens local regimes in the knowledge that hey will not be left alone to face grave threats and that they will not be left to the mercies of foreign big brothers either. Therefore those of us who are concerned for Central Asia’s and the Middle East’s security must welcome and encourage this trend.

AUTHOR’S BIO: Professor Stephen Blank, Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, PA 17013. The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of the U.S. Army, Defense Department, or the U.S. Government.