Defense of the West: NATO, the European Union and the Transatlantic Bargain by Stanley Sloan

Author:Stanley Sloan [Sloan, Stanley]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Published: 2016-10-14T04:00:00+00:00

Figure 7.1 ‘NATO Team’ by Kevin Kallaugher.

For its part, the Bush administration further fanned the flames of European concern when, in September 2002, the White House released a policy statement on the “National Security Strategy of the United States.” The paper focused on “those terrorist organizations of global reach and any terrorist or state sponsor of terrorism which attempt to gain or use weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or their precursors.” With regard to such threats, the document laid out an unambiguous strategy of preemption, saying “as a matter of common sense and self-defense, America will act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed.” It then added that “while the United States will constantly strive to enlist the support of the international community we will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense by acting preemptively against such terrorists.”17 Even though much of what the document said reflected realities of the contemporary security environment, it was widely interpreted as a unilateral assertion of rights beyond the accepted norms of international law, which could be misused by the United States or copied by other countries with destabilizing results.

The irony of success in Prague and continued enlargement

Just as Kosovo had been the uninvited guest at the 1999 Washington Summit, Iraq was the new dark cloud shadowing alliance leaders when they met in Prague, the Czech Republic, in November 2002. The Prague meeting fortuitously fell at a time when the United States, the UK, France, and Germany were still trying to develop a common approach to Iraq through the United Nations. This brief lull in the Iraq controversy helped produce a better environment for the Prague meeting. Somewhat ironically, the Prague Summit yielded significant steps forward for the alliance at a time when political relations in the alliance were headed for new lows. One suspects that the Bush administration and the European allies wanted to show that their differences over how to deal with Iraq would not prevent them from making the Prague Summit a success. Not only did the allies invite seven new members (Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia) to join the alliance—another major step toward a Europe “whole and free”—but they also took giant strides toward making NATO an important player in security well beyond Europe.

In anticipation of the summit, Czech Republic President Vaclav Havel wrote that for “the Alliance to define clearly the role it wants to play in the global campaign against terrorism, the Prague Summit will have to involve a fundamental re-examination of the way in which NATO operates. Moreover, it will have to set in motion a still more radical transformation of the Alliance in order for NATO to reaffirm its position as a key pillar of international security.”18

Havel’s goals for the summit were largely met. The leaders confirmed the decision to create a NATO Response Force intended to be capable of taking on virtually any military mission anywhere in the world. They approved reform of NATO’s

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