Identity Crisis

Afghanistan and the reevaluation of NATO
According to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s founding documents, member nations “are determined to… promote stability and well-being in the North Atlantic area.” Almost sixty years later, NATO is mired in longstanding and unprecedented involvement in Afghanistan, a nation far outside the organization’s geographic sphere. Founded during the Cold War era, NATO’s original purpose was to promote democracy and oppose Soviet expansion. As NATO’s first mission outside Europe, the conflict in Afghanistan presents a new challenge for the alliance, forcing it to evaluate its post–Cold War role on the world stage. The Afghanistan mission has permanently altered the international understanding of NATO’s role and has created a need for NATO to redefine its aims and modes of operation as a 21st century entity.
NATO’s New International Role
Because the Afghanistan invasion is such an unusual mission for NATO, some ask whether NATO should be permitted to stabilize Afghanistan or should be limited to confronting security threats within and directed against European member states. As Douglas Feith, U.S. Under Secretary of Defense for Policy at the time of the Afghanistan invasion, told the HPR, “That’s an ancient debate. NATO took on this mission. Now, it has to succeed.” Not everyone fully agrees, however, that NATO’s mission in Afghanistan merits unconditional support. Andrew Bacevich, professor of international relations at Boston University, shared with the HPR his belief that the “NATO mission is misguided and entirely inappropriate… It has been developing out-of-area missions [and has been] failing in this respect. NATO should go back to its founding goals to protect itself.” As Bacevich implies, nowhere within NATO’s founding documents does a clause explicitly support an out-of-area mission such as Afghanistan. This lack of clarity suggests that, if it plans to be involved in other missions like Afghanistan, perhaps NATO should reconstitute itself in order to formally justify such intervention in the future.
Why NATO Is Needed
While Afghanistan may technically lie beyond NATO’s official purview, the U.S. military certainly depends upon NATO’s presence as an ally there. According to Bacevich, because of the United States’ military presence in Iraq, its “own capacity is at its farthest limits. We cannot [fight in Afghanistan] by ourselves. We need NATO.” P.J. Crowley, Senior Fellow and Director of Homeland Security at the Center for American Progress, also noted the need for NATO’s military presence in Afghanistan. He told the HPR that while the United Nations “chooses to contribute the forces, NATO is different. It’s a standing military and political alliance,” a unit which can more effectively contribute in Afghanistan than the U.N.
Challenges to NATO’s Effectiveness
Nonetheless, the presence of NATO also comes with certain disadvantages. NATO troops have different guidelines for engagement than the U.S. military. Bacevich notes, “risks that both members are willing to take vary greatly. The lack of risk of some of the European countries compromises the effectiveness [of the mission].” Despite the varying capabilities and commitment of member nations, however, each ally can somehow contribute to the mission. As Crowley stated, “it is appropriate for [the United States] to push for a sustained contribution from all members on the Alliance,” even if that contribution comes in the form of, for example, police training rather than military engagement. Feith more specifically criticized the disparity in contributions from member nations. As he explained, when NATO sends in troops, “they subject them to caveats,” which sometimes dictate that when “countries send their troops over, if [the troops are] patrolling and come under rapid fire, [they should] escape and return to [their] base” rather than fight back. It is difficult to view NATO troops as completely effective when these caveats and other limitations make full military engagement difficult. Ultimately, the frustrations presented by the politics of the Alliance create obstacles that are nonetheless outweighed by the necessity of NATO’s presence in Afghanistan.
Tomorrow’s NATO
NATO’s mission in Afghanistan has already begun to reshape the organization. Its past pretenses are outdated, and NATO has had a unique opportunity to test its influence beyond Europe. In a world of increasing interconnectedness, the Alliance should remain involved in international peacekeeping in order to effectively protect Europe. However, if it is to be effective in future out-of-area missions, NATO must reevaluate its operating principles in order to create a more contemporary and effective military doctrine.