What's NATO For?

Keep the Russians out, the Germans down and the Americans in." During the Cold War, that simple slogan pretty much summed up NATO's purpose as far as Europe was concerned. Those days are long gone. This week the leaders of the 19 North Atlantic Treaty Organization member countries gather in Prague to embark on what's meant to be the alliance's most ambitious enlargement yet: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia — all armed with more will than power — are expected to get invitations to join. But with more terrorist attacks and a war against Iraq on the horizon, the top priority for NATO isn't enlargement, but transformation: in the post-Sept. 11 world, what exactly is NATO for?

Last year's terror attacks inspired the alliance to invoke for the first time Article 5 of the NATO treaty, the clause mandating common defense. But the air went out of that historic gesture when the Bush Administration all but ignored it, steering well clear of NATO command structures for its attack on Afghanistan. The U.S. has waged the military war on terror largely on its own, and shows every sign of doing the same in Iraq. If it comes to war against Baghdad, America will doubtless have key allies at its side, but NATO itself is not likely to be central to the endeavor. "NATO as a war-fighting machine is dead," says French defense analyst François Heisbourg. "It would do well to stop pretending that's what it is." As George W. Bush and U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld travel to Prague this week, those who still believe in the alliance are trying to figure out not just how NATO can get back in the game, but what that game might be.

The Balkan wars showed how ill equipped the Europeans were to fight a war, even one in their own backyard. Things haven't improved much since then. Currently the U.S. spends $376 billion on defense — 3.5% of its gdp — while all the other allies together spend some $140 billion — an average of less than 2% each. "The Americans are already too advanced to work with many Continental forces," says Julian Lindley-French, senior fellow at the E.U. Center for Security Studies in Paris. Only four other countries — France, Norway, the U.K. and (marginally) Portugal — have upped their defense budgets this year, according to a senior NATO official. The French have done so not because the Americans want it, but to keep up with the British.

While it's true that the alliance no longer needs to fight the wars of old, it may not yet be ready to address the newest dangers. "NATO needs to pivot from an inward focus to an outward one, because the greatest threats we face are no longer from within Europe, but from the region stretching from North Africa to Central Asia," says Nicholas Burns, the U.S. ambassador to NATO. "The big threat is the nexus of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction."

In Prague, NATO will commit to transforming itself into an alliance that can respond rapidly to that threat. It needs fewer tank brigades and more special forces; fewer regional air bases and more long-range aircraft; a leaner command structure with fewer static commanders and more mobile ones. Last May, alliance foreign ministers quietly lifted the taboo on "out of area" tasks; from now on, NATO would, if necessary, meet its enemies outside Europe — but it still lacks the means to do so. NATO Secretary-General George Robertson has been cajoling members to pony up the military hardware needed to put the relevance question to rest.

The alliance has already lost most of its credibility with the U.S. Starting in Kosovo in 1999, America chose not to hamper its strength by leashing it to NATO's creaky war-by-committee procedures. At the same time, many Europeans harbor concerns that a bulked-up NATO would stymie the E.U.'s attempts to act independently of Washington on security and foreign policy issues.