The NATO summit in Bucharest was meant to be a celebration of France's full return to the fold and a show of long-term commitment to stabilising Afghanistan. Instead it turned into a particularly rancorous dispute about matters closer to home: how far and how fast NATO should continue to expand, and how it should deal with a more aggressive Russia.
The meeting became a battle of wills between Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, cast in a naysaying role that is usually reserved for French leaders, and George Bush, attending his last NATO summit and hoping to be remembered for extending “the circle of freedom”.
On the face of it, the issue was arcane: whether Ukraine and Georgia should be upgraded from “intensified dialogue” with NATO to a “membership action plan” (MAP), essentially a promise to join NATO after meeting a set of political and military benchmarks. But to many, particularly America and ex-communist states, this was a question of principle: NATO had to keep its vow to welcome fragile democracies, and should give no veto to Russia, especially in its current aggressive mood.
Germany says Russia's president-elect, Dmitry Medvedev, should get time to settle in without being forced into a spat with NATO. “What is the rush?” asked one senior official. Earlier the French prime minister, François Fillon, said his country opposed granting MAP “because we think it is not the right response to the balance of power in Europe”. Britain, too, was sceptical. But observers reckoned that, should Germany yield to American pressure, other resistance would melt.
At a bad-tempered foreign ministers' meeting on the opening night, Germany's foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, told colleagues Georgia would not be fit to join until it had resolved the “frozen conflicts” over two Russian-backed statelets on its soil. Condoleezza Rice, his American opposite number, retorted that these conflicts were “not Georgia's problem, but Russia's”. She added that Germany's own NATO membership in 1955 had come at a time when that country was divided.
After much haggling, the allies declared that the two countries “will become members of NATO” eventually—but that a decision on MAP would only be taken by foreign ministers in December. Even that could be a humiliation for the Georgians, whose volatile president, Mikheil Saakashvili, privately compared anything short of MAP to appeasement of the Nazis.
Even the enlargement that was supposed to be straightforward—expanding membership of NATO (and later of the European Union) to the Balkans—turned ugly because of an old row over Macedonia's name, shared by a Greek province. Macedonia had agreed to the formulation “Republic of Macedonia (Skopje)”; Greece wanted a compound formula such as “Upper Macedonia” or “New Macedonia” and blocked the invitation. The allies said Macedonia would join once the issue of the name had been settled.
NATO invited Croatia and Albania, boosted ties with Montenegro and Bosnia, and offered Serbia a friendly hand. Franco-American friendship took a big step forward as France offered more troops to fight the Taliban and signalled its intention to return in 2009 to NATO's integrated military structure. Mr Bush compared Mr Sarkozy's arrival with the “latest incarnation of Elvis” and endorsed an EU plan to develop stronger defences.
With Vladimir Putin due to join the summit on April 4th, and then to host Mr Bush the next day in the resort of Sochi, the American president was balancing the need to maintain working relations with the Kremlin while not being seen to yield to threats. “The cold war is over. Russia is not our enemy,” said Mr Bush, restating his assurance that America's plan to set up its missile-defence shield in Poland and the Czech Republic was not aimed at Russia.
To America's delight, its allies embraced missile defence, recognising its “substantial contribution” to their security, and agreeing to seek ways to extend a shield to countries like Turkey. American sweeteners—offering to accept Russian liaison officers, promising not to switch on the system until a threat (from Iran) emerges, and holding out for Russian participation—impressed European sceptics.
Yet at its core, the dispute within NATO is about the renewed threat from Russia. Members of “old Europe” may hope to avoid a clash with the Kremlin, but many countries of “new” Europe say the struggle has already begun. For them security lies in expanding the frontiers of what was once the transatlantic alliance to the Black Sea and ultimately to the Caspian.
Even its strongest advocates recognise that such expansion raises questions about the purpose of the alliance: should it be mainly a military organisation, or a political club of democracies? Radek Sikorski, the Polish foreign minister, questioned whether the promise of mutual defence from armed attack enshrined in Article 5 of NATO's charter was becoming “diluted”.
Mr Sikorski wants NATO to move military infrastructure east. He complains that NATO hesitates even to make intelligence assessments of perils from Russia. Others want more attention to non-conventional threats, given last year's cyber-attack on Estonia, blamed on Russia. “We do a disservice to Russia by not taking it seriously,” said Toomas Ilves, Estonia's president.
http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10981434
JPTF 2009/03/29
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