Airstrip One

Lost an enemy, yet to find a role - 23rd November 2002, 16.59

The usual veil of reportage and 'event' status obscured the significance of the NATO summit in Prague this week, if it had any. The alliance was enlarged, President Kuchma of the Ukraine gatecrashed, and the Belarussian Lukashenko promised to unleash a tide of prostitution and crime.

The summit was influenced by the arguments that have pervaded comment over the last year of a rising US/European split. The 20,000 man rapid reaction force proposal supported by the US/UKwas viewed as a rival to the EU's pretensions towards a military role - their objective of a force, 60,000 strong, focussed on fulfilling the Petersburg Tasks. Those powers that wished to develop a separate European defence entity viewed this new force as an American attempt to undermine their objective, although their own divisions and lack of financial support have arguably caused more damage.

This "transformation summit" and its new force did not provide a corrective to the prevailing perception that NATO lacks a purpose. The United States has downplayed the alliance because its geopolitical concerns now focus upon the Middle East and the 'war on terror'. The rapid reaction force was designed as a tool whereby the Europeans could assist the US in this task, increasing their importance in the future coalitions that would be constructed to fight specific enemies. Hence, NATO would now take on a global role and ratify a permanent force for 'out of area' operations.

The United States' immediate concern was to find allies for its long term plans for the Middle East. Ron Asmus, one of the architects of NATO enlargement, had found great support in the Bush administration for his willingness to imagine a cleansed Augean stables where sheikdoms and autocrats were replaced by democracies:

Ron Asmus, former assistant secretary of State who was the Clinton administration's point man for the first enlargement of NATO three years ago, stresses that "the existential threats we face today no longer come from Europe. They come from the Middle East. That's the central strategic issue of the next decade and more."

Asmus, a former strategic analyst at the RAND Corporation, has drafted a broad proposal to use the planned regime change in Iraq to establish a beachhead of democracy in the Middle East. The Asmus plan stems from Washington's deep frustration with the collapse of the peace process in the Middle East, partly because undemocratic Arab governments need the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli crisis, and some discreetly cooperate with extremist Islamism, as a way to divert reformist pressures within their own societies.

The plan, which has attracted keen interest inside the Bush administration, proposes to widen this democratic beachhead and transform the assorted near-feudal autocracies, sheikhdoms, theocracies and dictatorships that comprise the 23 Arab countries.

But as Asmus noted in an interview last month, the United States is no longer interested in Europe because the continent is stable and does not pose a major threat. If NATO cannot provide aid to the US war effort in the Middle East due to the opposition of its members, then it will decline into irrelevance.

As all decisions in the North Atlantic Council have to be consensual, it is not alarmist to state that the fate of NATO lies in the hands of the Europeans themselves. Given their record, an obituary is just around the corner.