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Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa
ISSN: 1647-7251
Vol. 2, n.º 1 (Spring 2011), pp. 44-52
NATO'S NEW STRATEGIC CONCEPT: A CRITICAL VIEW
Rafael Calduch Cervera
He is a Full Professor in International Law and International Relations, and Director of the Faculty
of Information Sciences (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), Director of the Complutense Institute
of International Studies and a member of the Governing Council of the Universidad Complutense de
Madrid. He has held various academic positions, including that of Professor “Jean Monnet” in the EU
Institutions Course, Director of the Master Degree in International Relations and Communication,
Director of the Specialised Course in International Information on Southern Countries (Universidad
Complutense de Madrid), and Area Coordinator for Central and Eastern Europe in the Master offered
by the Centre for Advanced Defence Studies (CESEDEN). He is a Doctor in Political and Economic
Science (Universidad Complutense de Madrid). He was awarded the honour “Cruz al Mérito
Aeronáutico con distintivo blanco” ("Cross of Aeronautical Merit with white emblem”).
Abstract
The changes that followed the adoption of the previous NATO's strategic concept in 1999 forced a
review of its goals, threats and risks, as well as a new look at the capabilities of the organization
at a time dominated by the economic crisis and cuts in its members’ defence budgets.
On this occasion, the development of a strategic concept begun with a proposal made by a
commission of experts, and a public debate which transformed the final text into a diplomatic
document, not into a true useful document capable of guiding strategic planning over the next
decade.
These differences between the goals established by the document and the actual resources
available to NATO were noted immediately with regard to the crisis management system, for
which the organization does not possess the structures and civil means. It is not clear either that
this limitation can be solved through cooperation with the EU. The involvement of NATO in the
international mission in Libya will be the first test to ascertain the validity and effectiveness of
this new strategic concept.
Keywords
NATO; New Strategic Concept; Defence; World Security, Crisis Management
How to cite this article
Cervera, Rafael Calduch (2011). "NATO’s new strategic concept: a critical view”. JANUS.NET
e-journal of International Relations, Vol. 2, N.º 1, Spring 2011. Consulted [online] on date
of last visit, observare.ual.pt/janus.net/en_vol2_n1_art4.
Article received in April 2011 and accepted for publication in May 2011
JANUS.NET, e-journal of International Relations
ISSN: 1647-7251
Vol. 2, n.º 1 (Spring 2011), pp. 44-52
NATO’s new strategic concept: a critical view
Rafael Calduch Cervera
45
NATO'S NEW STRATEGIC CONCEPT: A CRITICAL VIEW
Rafael Calduch Cervera
1. The need for a new strategic concept for NATO
The important changes that took place in the International Society since the Strategic
Concept was formulated at the 1999 Atlantic Council, in Washington, suggested the
revision and update of the objectives, resources, and capacities of the Alliance for the
first decades of the 21
st
century.
1
The jihad terrorist attack on 11September 2001 in the United States, followed by the
attacks of 11 March 2004 in Spain, and on 7 July 2005 in the United Kingdom, stood
out as a major impact among the main changes leading to the formulation of the New
Strategic Concept. A revision of NATO's priorities, directly related to jihad terrorism,
already took place in the Prague Summit (2002) to discuss the threat of international
terrorism.
2
It is also important to keep in mind the effect of the expansion of the Alliance to
Central and Eastern European countries, which not only translated into a significant
increase in its members, with the consequent complication of the system of decision by
consensus, but also generated a new dynamic in the relationship with Russia and
increased the importance of some existing threats, such as international organized
crime.
NATO's participation in the ISAF (International Security Assistance Force in
Afghanistan) is of no less importance and has been decisive in finding the capabilities,
as well as the limitations, of expeditionary operations the Alliance may undertake in the
years ahead.
The reappearance of piracy in new geopolitical scenarios, such as the waters of the
Indian Ocean and the coast of Somalia, have served to restore maritime security, which
had been ignored or postponed in prior strategic concepts, as one of the Alliance's
priorities.
However, by themselves, these events would not have been enough to lead to the
formulation of a new Strategic Concept. The political impulse created with the United
States Administration of President Obama and the need to make NATO’s future
compatible with the changes introduced by the Lisbon Treaty on Foreign Policy and
1
NATO's 1999 Strategic Concept is available at:
http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_27433.htm (viewed on 07/04/2011)
2
See the Declaration of the Prague Summit available at:
http://www.nato.int/docu/pr/2002/p02-127e.htm (viewed on 07/04/2011)
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Vol. 2, n.º 1 (Spring 2011), pp. 44-52
NATO’s new strategic concept: a critical view
Rafael Calduch Cervera
46
Common Security, particularly in its diplomatic and military dimensions, was also
fundamental.
3
All this takes place in an environment of acute international economic crisis which is
forcing Alliance governments, particularly those of hegemonic countries, to revise their
own national defence strategies, as was recently the case in the United Kingdom.
4
2. The elaboration process of the New Strategic Concept
The difference in the strategic concepts devised in 1991 and 1999 and the elaboration
process of this new concept demonstrate that the Allies were fully aware of the need to
involve public opinions in its preparation in order to guarantee the political legitimacy of
the final document, albeit at the expense of sacrificing the conceptual rigor and the
precision of contents required by this type of document.
In accordance with the position of the Alliance, the elaboration of the strategic concept
took place in three phases with occasional overlapping.
A. Reflection Phase (July 2009 – March 2010)
It included the creation of a team of 12 experts, presided by United States Ambassador
Madeleine Albright, who prepared a draft copy following comparing their initial analysis
with the opinion of experts from all allied nations at five seminars on: General
Questions; NATO Associations; Transformation of Structures, Strengths and Capacities;
Integral Approach to Crisis Management
5
;
B. Consultation Phase (September 2009 – March 2010)
At the same time, the team of experts consulted with all allied governments with the
goal of comparing the results of the analysis and the seminars with official positions, in
an attempt to find topics and points of agreement among all members to allow for the
preparation of its final report.
3
Texts of the European Union Treaty and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union can be
found at: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/JOHtml.do?uri=OJ:C:2010:083:SOM:EN:HTML (viewed on
07/04/2011)
4
See A Strong Britain in an Age of Uncertainty: The National Security Strategy (2010) available at:
http://www.analisisinternacional.eu/archivo/viejos/ID13.ppdf and also Securing Britain in an Age of
Uncertainty: The Strategic Defense and Security Review (2010)
inhttp://www.analisisinternacional.eu/archivo/viejos/ID14.pdf (viewed on 07/04/2011)
5
The team of experts included: The Honorable Madeleine K. Albright (United States); Mr. Jeroen van der
Veer (The Netherlands); Ambassador Giancarlo Aragona (Italy); Ambassador Marie Gervais-Vidricaire
(Canada); The Honorable Geoff Hoon (United Kingdom); Ambassador Ümit Pamir (Turkey); Ambassador
Fernando Perpiñá-Robert Peyra (Spain); Ambassador Dr. Hans-Friedrich von Ploetz (Federal Republic of
Germany); Mr. Bruno Racine (France); Ambassador Aivis Ronis (Latvia); Professor Adam Daniel Rotfeld
(Poland); Ambassador Yannis-Alexis Zepos (Greece).
The report prepared by this group is available at:
http://www.nato.int/nato_static/assets/pdf/pdf_2010_05/20100517_100517_expertsreport.pdf (viewed
on 07/04/2011)
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C. Draft of the New Strategic Concept and final negotiation (September
November 2010)
The report submitted by the Team of Experts and officially presented to NATO's
Secretary General served as the basis to the latter’s writing of a proposal submitted to
the governments for negotiation and, finally, to the document approved in the Lisbon
summit on 19 November 2010.
6
3. Core tasks and principles
The New Strategic Concept, like previous ones, reiterates that the Alliance's ultimate
aim lies on the community of values that rules its members and which aims to defend
the principles of: individual freedom; democracy; human rights, and Rule of Law.
To this end, there are four different categories of core tasks which NATO must be able
to carry out and have an impact on:
1. Collective defence;
2. Crisis management;
3. Collaborative security;
4. The continuous process of reform, modernization, and transformation.
4. The international strategic environment: threats and risks
As in all strategic formulation, once the fundamental principles and tasks have been
determined, it becomes necessary to define the set of threats and risks the Alliance
must confront in the next few years.
As was the case with the documents mentioned above, it is recognized that the threat
of a generalized attack, of conventional or nuclear nature, against the allied nations
constitutes a very unlikely, although not impossible, scenario. Such threat is no longer
linked to the military capability of the former Soviet Union or the transition processes of
European communist countries that gave rise to the war in the Balkans.
There are four threats that were not included in previous strategic documents: cyber
attacks; missile attacks against the population or territories of allied nations; organized
delinquency and serious environmental and public health issues.
However, just as important as the new strategic threats included in this document, are
those identified in the 1999 strategic concept document and which were removed from
the current document: the collapse of political order that results in failed states; the
policies of oppressive regimes and economic chaos. It appears clear that in face of the
changes the Arab world is experiencing and the effect of the crisis on some allied
countries like Greece, the United Kingdom, Spain, and Italy or Portugal, one would
think that such omissions are not reasonable.
6
The text of the New Strategic Concept is available at:
http://www.nato.int/lisbon2010/strategic-concept-2010-eng.pdf (viewed on 07/04/2011)
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ISSN: 1647-7251
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NATO’s new strategic concept: a critical view
Rafael Calduch Cervera
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5. Means and capabilities
Once the threats the Alliance must address were identified, with more or less accuracy,
the New Strategic Concept established the means and capacities deemed essential to
carry out its main tasks.
The principal means are as follows:
1. A combination of conventional and nuclear forces;
2. Establishing strong conventional forces, mobile and deployable in defensive and
expeditionary terms;
3. The joint undertaking among allies of training, exercises, and planning and
exchange of information;
4. The participation of all allied nations in the planning of nuclear actions, the
storage of nuclear forces during peacetime, and the formulation of command,
control and consultation dispositions;
5. The cooperation with Russia and other Euro-Asian partners;
6. The planned coordination of national cyber defence capacities and the adoption of
a NATO centralized protection system against cyber attacks;
7. A coordinated analysis of terrorist attacks among allies and the adoption of
adequate military capabilities in the fight against terror.
8. The upkeep of defence requirements, despite the crisis, so that the FAS have the
necessary means to carry out the missions assigned;
9. Adoption of a general position by NATO in face of the emergence of new threats;
The availability of such means must support the development of the following Alliance
capacities:
1. The ability to maintain major joint operations concurrently with several minor
operations to guarantee collective defence and to carry out crisis management from a
strategic distance.
2. The ability to defend populations and allied territories against ballistic missile
attacks;
3. The capability of effective defence against threats and attacks with NBDR weapons;
4. The ability to prevent, detect, defend itself against and recover from cyber attacks;
5. The capability to detect and defend itself from international terrorism;
6. The ability to contribute to energy safety, including the protection of critical
infrastructures, traffic areas and supply lines;
7. The capacity to evaluate the impact of the development of new technologies on
security.
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6. Security through crisis management - An impossible task for NATO?
One of the most problematic aspects of the New Strategic Concept concerns crisis
management, identified as one of the Alliance's core tasks.
In effect, after stressing that crisis and conflicts presume a direct threat to populations
and territories of the Alliance, and that the experiences in the Balkans and Afghanistan
command the adoption of a comprehensive approach that includes prevention, post
conflict management, stability and reconstruction through the use of political, civilian,
and military means, the strategic document recognizes that NATO's superiority lies on
its military capabilities. It recognizes that the organization just aspires to reach an
appropriate but modest civilian crisis management capability that will allow the
Alliance's military forces to have a linking instrument with the civilian means employed
on the ground by other players and international agencies.
7
Without question, NATO lacks an adequate political-civilian structure to assume the
leadership of crisis management in its civilian and humanitarian aspects, but, above all,
to lead the stabilization and reconstruction processes that follow armed conflicts.
Neither is it likely that it will, in the short term, develop that structure with a sufficient
degree of efficacy to replace or complement the one available in the framework of the
United Nations or the European Union.
Under similar circumstances, the inclusion of this central task forces the Alliance to
collaborate with those institutions or, alternatively, to accept that humanitarian and
civilian reconstruction tasks be assigned to military forces. This second alternative
presents the risk of causing mission failure as a result of the armed forces' lack of
preparation to perform this type of tasks. This constitutes a strategic dilemma whose
consequences should have been carefully evaluated prior to its inclusion in the final
document with the clear intention of making it a politically correct document in the face
of public opinions.
7. Critical assessment of the New Conceptual Strategy in the light of
the new system of world security
An adequate assessment of this New Strategic Concept requires not only a
consideration of its content, but also a comparison with the new system of world
security, which has been developing in the last two decades, in order to evaluate its
adequacy, or lack thereof, to that system.
Since the break-up of the Soviet Union and the multinational intervention in Iraq
following the invasion of Kuwait, world security has, little by little, evolved from a
bipolar system with nuclear deterrence towards a system of collective security through
interventionism promoted by the great military powers.
7
Center for Security Studies (ETH-Zurich) - Comprehensive Approaches to International Crisis
Management.- CSS Analyses in Security Policy, vol. 3, no. 42 (October, 2008), available at:
http://kms1.iisn.ethz.ch/serviceengine/Files/ISN/93229/ipublicationdocument_singledocument/460f9c24
-18c1-45fa-8e14-62b9c0a37682/en/css_analysen_nr42-2008_e.pdf (viewed on 07/04/2001)
Centro Internacional de Toledo para la Paz - Civilian Dimension of International Crisis Management in
Spain: Commitments, Alternatives and Advantages.- CITpax Document no.5 (February 2006). See:
http://www.fride.org/download/OTR_CrisisMang_ENG_feb06.ppdf.pdf (viewed on 07/04/2011)
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On the one hand, the increase in the number of peace missions promoted by the United
Nations which followed, which continues to enjoy political legitimacy and legal
exclusivity, has reinforced the collective dimension of world security.
8
Notwithstanding, it is also evident that the collective security of the United Nations
cannot always be applied, either because it is prevented by the veto system
preponderant in the Security Council or because countries, particularly the super
powers, are not always willing to contribute with the troops the world organization
requires.
The increase in the number and duration of peace missions has brought about the
increasing need to involve regional powers in the decision process and execution of
such missions. We often see the presence of troops from India, Brazil, Pakistan, South
Africa, Canada, Spain, The Netherlands, Portugal, and other countries in these
missions, strengthening and complementing the duties of troops from the United
States, Russia, the United Kingdom, or France.
Likewise, the geo-strategic, political and economic interests of the great powers do not
always coincide with those of the rest of the international community. In similar
circumstances, and in face of the inability to achieve the approval of a Security Council
Resolution that backs its military actions, international interventions have become
generalized, whether unilateral or collective, and directed at defending the interests of
those powers in a certain country or region.
The cases of Kosovo (1999); Iraq (2003); Enduring Freedom (2001) in Afghanistan or,
more recently, Lebanon (2006) and Georgia (2008), more than any argument, illustrate
the reality of the interventionist dimension of the current system of world security.
NATO has defined its strategic performance in this international context in some cases
in accordance with pragmatic criteria, such as in the military intervention in Kosovo,
and, on other occasions, in accordance with international legality criteria, such as in the
case of ISAF.
In the light of the Alliance's evolution in the last two decades, we may and should
conduct an assessment of the new strategic document pointing out three essential
characteristics: a) its political and declarative scope; b) its vagueness; c) and its
incomplete nature. .
In a strict sense, it is not a strategic document, at least not in line with its
predecessors, as it does not have a section on "directions for the forces of the Alliance"
that specifically includes such relevant aspects as: specific missions military forces
must carry out, directives for the disposition of forces, quantitative and qualitative
characteristics of conventional and nuclear forces needed; command structure; etc.
8
For an analysis of the evolution experienced by the United Nations doctrine regarding peace missions,
see the General Secretary documents:
An Agenda for Peace. Preventive diplomacy, peacemaking and peace-keeping. (17 June 1992). A/47/277
- S/24111
Supplement of “Un Programa de Paz”: Documento de posición del Secretario General presentado con
ocasión del cincuentenario de las Naciones Unidas. (25 January 1995). A/50/60 S/1995/1.
Un mundo más seguro: la responsabilidad que compartimos. Informe del Grupo de alto nivel sobre las
amenazas, los desafíos y el cambio.- Asamblea General (2 December 2004) A/59/565.
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It is possible to argue that all these aspects will be included in the documents leading
to the development of the New Strategic Concept. However, one must agree that their
absence from the main document minimizes its importance and presupposes a change
in position regarding the Alliance' strategies of 1991 and 1999.
It is also a vague document since, as we mentioned, it ignores active threats that had
been acknowledged in previous documents; it includes environmental and health
threats, for instance, whose management is primarily of national character, as the
current nuclear disaster in Japan has proved, without specifying the means available or
coordination criteria to follow; it mentions a system of crisis management without
specifying the entities, procedures or civilian capacities required. And, finally, it refers
to the need for a complementarity of functions with the European Union, particularly
regarding crisis management and collaborative security, without making any reference,
nor even of general character, to the directives under which such complementarity
should be carried out.
Finally, for a series of reasons, it is an incomplete document. First of all, it does not
draw from the lessons learned from the experiences in the Balkans and Afghanistan to
determine the political and strategic criteria necessary to establish the reach and limits
of the missions in which NATO intervenes. Secondly, there is not a precise and
differentiated strategic assessment of the regions that neighbour the Alliance, such as
the Maghreb, the Caucasus, and the Middle and Far East. Neither is there any mention
of some missions that, on account of their frequency, their importance and their mixed
nature (defensive and expeditionary) should have been explicitly recognized, such as
the rescue missions and protection of citizens of Allied nations residing in areas of war
conflict or disaster situations. Last but not least, there is the omission of the
relationships the Alliance must maintain with organizations such as OSCE or what to do
in face of proposals, such as the one formulated by Russian President Medvedev for
establishing a European Security Treaty.
8. Conclusions
As a final assessment, it is necessary to point out that the New Strategic Concept
reflects with great accuracy the set of strengths and weaknesses that currently affect
NATO.
With regard to the strengths, the following stand out:
1. The capacities, organization (High Commands) and military experience that make
NATO the most effective organization that has existed in the last half century;
2. A good part of that efficacy is due to the participation of three of the major military
powers in the world which, besides, benefit from a combination of conventional and
nuclear means;
3. That has given NATO not only an incredible and effective dissuasive ability, but also
a proven capacity of power projection at regional and world levels.
However, the Alliance also presents some considerable weaknesses which, with time,
have limited its international protagonist role and increased doubts regarding its reason
for existing in face of the development of new multilateral provisional coalitions as
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NATO’s new strategic concept: a critical view
Rafael Calduch Cervera
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medium or long-term strategic alternatives. Among these weaknesses, the following
stand out:
1. The military hegemony historically held by the United States, which has hindered
the development of military capacities of European allies and their political will to
assume the roles imposed by regional and world defence, at a time when Washington
increasingly shifts its strategic priorities towards the Pacific, not towards the Euro-
Atlantic region;
2. The insufficient institutional development of the Alliance's political structure in
relation to its military structure, which has continuously incapacitated NATO to take on
and adapt to the new world strategic and diplomatic situations;
3. The increasing discrepancy of geo-strategic interests among the allies which,
together with the system of decision by consensus, is creating an internal political
blockade which will become even more complex with the adherence of new members,
such as the Ukraine or Georgia.
If these weaknesses are not recognized and no attempt is made to overcome them, the
formulation of new strategic concepts will not solve NATO's already large tendency to
become a mere military management agency without a political will and vision of the
future. Notwithstanding, this is something that can be avoided despite the 2010New
Strategic Concept.