NATO's new role

NATO has now to take over some more US responsibilities for global security, whose bailiwick remains universal. But the US requires ancillaries and cannot alone do all the chores. NATO is required to make itself more agile in promoting global security and should acquire the capability of quickly intervening in 'structural interventions'. Afghanistan and Iraq interventions were supposed to be structural interventions. A larger number of such interventions are visualised in which the NATO is required to move into them quickly and to get out quickly. What happens if a crisis is not resolved by, or despite, quick movement out of the NATO troops?

What will fill the gap that would result from situations of popular resistance such as Iraq and Afghanistan have exhibited would be considered presently. We will go into them presently. Let's grasp the basic idea first. NATO was an alliance against a specific enemy, viz. the Soviets. The Soviets having disappeared, the question is: what is NATO's function now? Shouldn't it disband itself the way Warsaw Pact did? However, the Americans wanted NATO enlarged and got it. This recent expansion was due largely to American influence in which old NATO members somewhat reluctantly acquiesced in the membership of several East Europeans and move eastward. Now the Americans, it seems, are asking it to move further eastward and southward into Asia and Africa to tackle frequent crises.

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Why would NATO's older members respond with alacrity to the manifest American desire for a rapid action force for the entire globe in which NATO should share the occupations with American troops? The design is that NATO must become a rapid deployment force for structural interventions in the rest of the world. Question arises: why would old NATO countries automatically approve any structural intervention, without consulting their own national interest? Doubtless the US thinks it has to maintain global security that ensures its political, economic and strategic supremacy. But what would the other NATO members want to do with, say Iran? May be the next structural intervention is in Iran because the Iranian nuclear programme is perceived by America as a threat to global security.

Smaller NATO nations' motivation remains to be considered. Why would the entire NATO membership, east Europeans included, act exactly as America wants them to? Why would they intervene in distant lands in Asia and Africa? They may get some of their soldiers killed. That may not be popular among their populations. What specific national interest of other NATO members would be served thereby?

The central concept, global security, preserves stability or status quo. America is obviously moved by the 'necessity' of remaining world leader, as their Neocon thinkers perceive. They assume the entire west to be a monolith: There are no differing interests or strategic considerations. This assumption is so wide, it is hard to take it seriously. Not that it is entirely unrealistic. The rest of the west is certainly a beneficiary of the way the world works both in economic and political spheres. And America is the main guarantor. It appears to be demanding a price for its continued services to rich nations.

Now what is the NATO being really asked to do. As noted, it has to have a large rapid deployment forces for deployment abroad as and when the Americans desire. But the concept of getting into a crisis requiring strategic interventions and getting out quickly looks uncommonly like what the Americans wanted to do in Iraq and Afghanistan. The American forces need to be relieved of the tedium of daily policing the occupied country. Would the NATO do the policing for the US? That occasions some doubt: if the Americans find policing occupied territories unappealing, so would most NATO troops and governments behind them. There is however a hint here.

Clearly the NATO forces would be among those that would get out quickly after initially changing a regime, whether or not it works or it involves longer-term policing and suppression of the popular resistance. This is where a new idea has been introduced. NATO has to make alliances with other democracies. So far the names heard are of Australia, Japan, South Korea, India and similar others. Then, behind these semi-NATO members, a new grouping is emerging: non-NATO allies of the US; this tribe may become more numerous and it may hold the forts for the longer term. America is designing a two or three tier system of intervention: let GIs and NATO troops do initial job and then it is handed over to the yeomen.

But situations in Afghanistan and Iraq are unmitigated disasters. The daily killings in Afghanistan may be less than the daily toll in Iraq, but the phenomenon is the same. What will any friend of America achieve? Troubles began as nationalistic popular resistance, and insofar as Iraq is concerned, it is mutating into civil war and worse. Western analysts have somehow not sifted facts and traced where do the equipment and funding for the Iraqi insurgents are coming from? Curiously one had not heard of stopping the funding of Zarqawi's men.

Nearer home, factors that are creating tension between Pakistan and Kabul, in the first place, and Pakistan and Britain and America, in the next, are known. It is obvious that what Karzai or a British Army colonel said cannot be far different from what the American generals and Karzai have been saying for over a year. Is American displeasure of Pakistan for not doing enough vis-à-vis Taliban without effect? The key concept remains global security. Pakistan being US ally -- of sorts, at any rate -- is sure to be asked to act to share the burden. But many in Pakistan ask as to what is there for Pakistan in the American quest for global stability and security (status quo)? The global security means the US remaining the top dog.

Hyperpower's dominating the world is for its own benefit. Is that also in Pakistanis' interest? Most countries will ask: what is there in the US leadership for us? For Pakistan's military rulers, the kind of largesse that the Americans have made available after 9/11 is sufficient reason for yoking Pakistan to American chariot. But how many Pakistanis share this view? Not many in fact. Pakistanis have no desire or credentials for fighting the terrorism that George Bush and Tony Blair have enunciated. It is an unending war against an Islamic ideology that appeals to many Pakistanis. Pakistan cannot be an ardent supporter of the Americans, given the texture of politics in Balochistan, NWFP's FATA areas and the climate of opinion, not to mention the military's option of using some terrorists in Kashmir.

Many Pakistanis, particularly the left-liberal fraternity, face a profound threat from what masquerades as Islamic extremism of many hues. That is a structural threat that cannot be fought with force alone. Government, bureaucracy and Army are, in different ways, part of the problem. Not even paramilitary or police forces are of any use. It is a battle for the hearts and minds of the people. Let rationalism provide the framework for ideological battles to be fought.

As for the NATO's new role, one wonders how the proud nations of Europe and Asia would simply go on running errands for Americans.

MB Naqvi is a leading columist in Pakistan.