NATO the Next Thirty Years: The Changing Political, Economic, and Military Setting by Kenneth A Myers

Author:Kenneth A Myers [Myers, Kenneth A]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367019235
Google: KzVkxgEACAAJ
Goodreads: 52270478
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-06-07T00:00:00+00:00

NATO's Responsibilities

In view of the preceding discussion, should NATO "redraw" its boundaries and extend them beyond the Tropic of Cancer to include areas such as the Middle East-Persian Gulf, the western Indian Ocean, and the South Atlantic? In strategic terms, the answer should be yes. However, in political terms, it is very difficult to imagine this happening, at least prior to a major crisis. One only has to think of the ambiguities about defense priorities that exist within the present NATO geographical structure to appreciate the point. Norwegians have a somewhat different perspective on the importance of Yugoslavia than the Italians; it is difficult for Turkey to appreciate the problems of Spitsbergen in view of Turkey's own immediate relationship with the Soviet Union.

Nevertheless, the political considerations do not mean that a greater cooperation and agreement within NATO on external threats is not possible, and several new strategic initiatives should be considered. Because of the geographical proximity of Greece and Turkey to the Middle East-Persian Gulf region, it makes sense to think of them as part of the Soviet Union's southern front, which stretches from the Adriatic to Pakistan. Within this catchment area lie many of the potentially most explosive issues that may involve NATO and Soviet military power. They include the Yugoslav succession, Cyprus and the Greek-Turkish animosity, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the unrest in Iran and Afghanistan, the future of Pakistan, instability in the Persian Gulf region itself, and the problems of the Horn of Africa. Thus a formal recognition by NATO's political leadership of the linkage between these "local" conflicts and overall Western strategic interests would go a long way toward breaking down the artificial military boundaries that assume that NATO's wartime responsibilities stop at Turkey's eastern border.

The Western industrial powers should also formally recognize that the ability of the Soviet Union to divide the alliance on oil access is the Achilles' heel of the alliance and that Middle East oil dependency is closely linked to the allies' overall military posture. Until the military threats to the oil are fully appreciated, no coherent military strategy for dealing with such threats will be forthcoming.

Beyond seeking a consensus on these issues, it seems unrealistic at this time to expect more explicit, extra-NATO military cooperation among the allies except on a bilateral basis. This means the major effort in this direction will have to remain a U.S. initiative. However, greater military cooperation should include cooperation between individual NATO members such as France and Britain, since both have military assets relevant to Persian Gulf contingencies. There may be no need to redraw NATO's institutional map at this stage, but, there is a need to accept the fact that the institutional map may be irrelevant in a future war since it no longer embraces all of NATO's major assets.

The other industrial allies, therefore, should accept the fact that the U.S., and to a much lesser extent French and British, contributions to a Middle East contingency serve the overall interests of the alliance and that adjustments in their own contributions to regional security will be required.

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