(Photo Ansa)   The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union with the annexed Warsaw Pact seemed to have decreed the extinction of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, commonly known as the NATO. Subsequent events have demonstrated not only that NATO is a vital organization, but performs a leading role in a globalized world, in which the requirement of security grows in areas that are not easily controllable. A fundamental testing ground for the future is represented by the presence of Afghanistan, which follows the intervention in Kosovo and other operations of stabilization. As one can deduce from the analysis of Professor Pasqualini, the prospects tend to broaden and the re-entry of France into the Organization is an indication.

On the occasion of the anniversary of the signing of the Atlantic Pact, 4th April, 2009, and the constitution of the NATO, specialized journals and numerous scholars in international relations (1) have made some reflections on an important event. Principally, they have sought to individuate, with detailed analyses, what transformations of this important defence organization must be faced in order to continue performing that strategic role of great competence – now, not only at the Atlantic-European level, which it has had up to recent years – and on what operations could the credibility of the Organization be staked.
Certainly, it is not easy to see what the future path, or paths, of the Atlantic Alliance will be. The times of the difficult decisions are imminent, but if we look at the past, we can be reasonably optimistic, considering the highly pragmatic flexibility that the Pact (and those who implement it) has demonstrated to know how to achieve. Principally because, for a period, the world had a relatively brief unipolar and no longer bipolar situation.
It is interesting to understand also the historical reasons, or better, the lessons learned of so much vitality for a Pact signed sixty ago, in very particular world conditions: a signature affixed only a few years after a conflict which had left all the nations either belligerent, victorious or defeated, and in difficult economic, social and moral conditions.
Paradoxically, the war, and the reconstruction entailed, always acts like a flywheel – difficult to start, but dangerous once started – of an economic situation that in some cases radically changes other situations at a strategic-regional level. New alliances can be created, just as those which were sought and effected at the end of the 2nd World War and consolidated in a defence Pact, which unites, over the Atlantic, the USA and Canada with States of a Europe only just emerging from the conflict.
The original State entities of the agreement in 1949 (2) were 12: in 2009 – sixty years later – there are 28 with the application of what is commonly called the “open-door policy”, which means the extension – upon invitation – of the Alliance, to those possible partners that accept the principles declared in the preamble and that present a professional preparation such as to guarantee an acceptable performance in the maintaining of security and world stability, when necessary.
It is difficult to establish the reasons for the long survival of a political-military Pact, but, undoubtedly, the open door policy, which has known how to adapt to the various historical phases of the post-war period, the bi-polarity, the implosion of the USSR, has been one of the determining factors: a pragmatic vision of the unwinding of the historical events which responded, in full, to criteria of geo-strategic analyses of great lucidity.
Also to be underlined is that, at the Washington Summit, in 1999, the implementation of a Membership Action Plan (MAP) was decided. A long-term course directed to give support to the States which prepared themselves (and prepare themselves (3) to enter the new Alliance. Above all, this preparation regards the parameters of the applied democracy and the modernization of defence instruments, to align them with the NATO operative standards.
Therefore, at the moment of the possibility of extension to the Balkan and Baltic States, which has had such different historical experiences in the recent past, a pragmatic help was foreseen to better prepare the eventual future members, trying to obtain also an agreement on a broad spectrum: the participation in a Plan of a State leaves the NATO free, however, to decide or delay the entry.To review the first important stages of the extension, it is necessary to remember that only three years after the signing of the Pact, in 1952, Turkey and Greece entered the Alliance. For the latter, it was necessary to see that Athens, at the end of a civil war, remained on the list of the Western democracies, avoiding its absorption by the communist world, constituting a resistant bulwark to that dynamic geopolitical surge of expansion towards the Mediterranean, which had also been a constant of the Tsarist Empire, well before the coming to power of the Marxist ideology.
The laical Republic of Turkey was a junction of notable importance, being a strategic hinge between the West and the Levant (of 19th Century recollections) and keeper, since 1936 (4) of the Straits: military convoys had to have its permission to transit and, therefore, the Soviet Fleet, always intent on passage to the ‘warm seas’, had to reckon with Ankara, to have the ‘green light’ to transit the only possible way of access to the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.
In consequence, Turkey was extremely important due to its geopolitical position, being next to a region which had presented, and still presents those dangerous problems of instability which puts the world stability and security at risk.
Turkey, heir of the Ottoman Empire, has always had a double ‘identity’, European and Asiatic and, therefore, in the sector of collective defence has revealed to be an important asset to NATO, even more when it went beyond its own original geographic limits of intervention.
In 1955, overcoming – after less than ten years from the end of WW2 – the extremely hard terms imposed by the peace treaties, West Germany became part of the Alliance: there could not be an effective defence system if the geographic centre of Europe was not a part of the Alliance. Here we see proof of the far-sightedness of the parties contracting the Pact: notwithstanding the then very recent story of desolation, war crimes and destruction that the Nazi Armed Forces had brought to the whole of Europe, the new Democratic Germany entered the NATO as an ally.
In 1990, with the elimination, a year before, of the Berlin Wall – given the ideology that those bricks represented – a reunified Germany was an integral and integrate part of an Alliance which after very few years had undertaken the interesting course of a further intelligent extension, to guarantee a necessary and hoped for survival.
Spain, another important hinge of the system, underway with a profound democratization after the death of Franco in 1975, entered the Alliance in 1982 “closing”, in this way, the Mediterranean in the framework of collective defence: Gibraltar and the Straits were assured to the Alliance.
The 90’s changed definitively the political-military order of a vast strategic region: the USSR dissolved like the Warsaw Pact; the Cold War had disappeared and NATO, perhaps, could have considered its role finished.
Also Yugoslavia started its course towards dissolution, which brought a new redefinition of the orders of Balkan Europe: the territorial decisions which had been taken after the 1st World War and maintained in large measure after the 2nd World War, were put in question and old ethnic and border problems arose once again.
In 1995, the first real discussions were started on the extension of NATO to these and other States which could and wanted to align themselves. First of all, accepting the values expressed in the preamble of the Treaty: that their political systems would be converted to the democratic way and that, principally, not to consider their own personal security in becoming members, but the security in toto of the “extended” strategic region, also constructing the instrument of the MAP, previously mentioned, as a dependable useful instrument in preserving the Alliance, favouring its rapid adaptation to the changed international conditions.
As well as the effective previous armed interventions in the Balkan framework (interventions in area) – still active – NATO decided to support and, therefore, collaborate with certain Countries which had belonged to the Warsaw Pact: Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland were invited to join the Alliance in 1997 – and, in fact, became members in 1999: States which had always been an integral part of Europe for culture and tradition in past centuries, but which, at the end of WW2, left in the area of Soviet influence, found their ties with the Western democracy brutally severed.
Bulgaria, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania entered NATO in 2004: other pieces of a new strategic “game”, which must also receive States of emerging importance in the Caucasian area.
In 2008, the procedures were started which would conclude with the entrance of Croatia and Albania, in April 2009, postponing the possible entrance of the FYROM (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia), while awaiting a political agreement with Greece, which contests the official denomination of that State, claiming the name of Macedonia for Greek territory.
Almost all of the Balkan Europe, ex-Warsaw Pact, have now become an integral part of the Alliance: in the future, also Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina should enter to guarantee the stability of the Balkan region, at the moment ensured by the same NATO troops. It is certainly too soon to speak of Serbia, but it cannot for long be excluded from NATO membership. The problem of independent Kosovo does not favour dialogue and constitutes a notable vulnus also in the increasingly delicate NATO-Russian relations.
In 2008, meetings with Georgia and the Ukraine were started: their access to the Alliance, however, is obviously not appreciated in Moscow, especially with regard to the former, due to the known events of the Russian-Georgian war. Therefore, and it has been repeated several times by the political analysts, one of the first serious and urgent problems to be solved is the NATO-Russian relations and, this means, USA-Russia, not being able to ignore that, at least for now, from most aspects, the United States is the more powerful partner.
This rapid synthesis, which merits greater in-depth study of military-diplomatic documents, confirms the flexibility that NATO has been able to demonstrate by adapting itself to the contingent strategic-historical moment and has decreed, for the most part, its survival, not without problems and risks.
The re-entry of France – which, in any case, has always participated with its contingents to the missions in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan, – into the integrated military structure (5) , is an important sign of the renewed confidence in the “collective defence”, which, this time, exceeds the geographical limited originally established – the Atlantic – to turn towards Countries of the Middle East, which although not having their coasts on the Mediterranean, have, however, considerable influence on this Sea: Iraq and Afghanistan.
The search for stability of the extended area Atlantic-Europe-Mediterranean continues to be concretized, which recalls, once again, that security in the Mediterranean, in the past, always wish for by the European powers which, with their joint efforts permitted earlier litteram inter-force missions (6) .
Therefore, the NATO extension entailed and entails at the present state a responsibility which is exercised prevalently outside area (7) , not only in the Middle East and first ramifications of Central Asia, but now also in seas considerably distant from the Atlantic. For example, the fight against piracy off the Horn of Africa with the Operation Allied Protector – still not very well known, but operative – which has already had some interesting successes (8) .It is impossible, in these brief pages, to make a more ample evaluation of what has been the modernization of a system of arms and operative standards, which have rendered the NATO instrument, also in this sector, very flexible and adaptable to the various situations of intervention and this is, among other things, the creation of Rapid Reaction Forces: from the first Allied Command Europe Mobile Force (AMP) of 1960 to the NATO Response Force (NRF) of these times. They have furnished, on various occasions of danger for a strategic region, rapid response such as deterrence, as well as defence, also ensuring the international context.
It is this rapidity of planning and projection (which must ensure also the right amalgamation between the multi-international Forces present) – which is, probably one of the most difficult professional challenges – but which guarantees, in its turn, the sure survival of the Alliance. It should be remembered that the Pact has a political-diplomatic part and a military part, without which the diplomacy could not implement the aims and objectives of the Pact itself.
According to the opinion of Charles Kapchan, of the Council of Foreign Relations, and many other scholars, analysts and political scientists, the challenges of the NATO are, at the moment, the situation in Afghanistan, the relations with Russia and the objectives of its global ambitions. It is also commented, in various places, that Kabul represents an important testing ground, perhaps, at the moment, the most important one, for the Alliance’s own validity.In effect, the military policy it follows in Afghanistan is one of the most pragmatic possible, with the constitution and training of local police, of local armed forces with groups of Afghan officers trained in the Crisis Response Group, to better face and combat the terrorism in their Country. This present extremely serious threat to international security is one of the objects of destruction for the Atlantic Alliance, both inside and outside its borders of intervention and which now, in concrete terms, no longer exist.
Furthermore, NATO has a series of programmes for both Iraq and Afghanistan, however, not all of a military character. For example, the Reconstruction Programmes with specialized mixed civilian and military crews, which can enable local civil forces to develop projects, to improve the economy, the education of the population, the national health until, alongside of the military efforts to combat terrorism, there are those efforts of a normal society whose only product is no longer opium, as it has always been in the past.
Afghanistan is a particularly complex and difficult testing ground if one considers its history, at least of the last two centuries. A territory alternatively invaded by some foreign power or other which, however, have never succeeded in occupying it in a lasting way, submitted to hard defeats by the local warriors and guerrilla warfare.The principal role decided by NATO (9) and implemented through the commission of the United Nations ISAF (International Security Assistance Force), is that of assisting the Government of Kabul in the exercise and progressive diffusion of its authority and influence through the Country, to lead to the defeat of the local and imported terrorism, with a concrete and valid reconstruction of the economy: perhaps the only possible way to win the Afghan challenge.
However, one should not stake all NATO’s validity on this one territory: the way that has been mapped out is one of the best, but history prompts only cautious optimism.
To follow the same course in Iraq is certainly the one closest to the solution of the problem of Iraqi stability.
Looking towards the future, we see that the challenges to international security are many and they must be handled also by NATO, on its own initiative or on a mandate of the United Nations.
In addition, let us remember what is written in the preamble of the Pact of 1949, as follows:
The parties in this treaty re-affirm their faith in the aims and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and their desire to live in peace with all peoples and all governments ……. and reasserted in Article 1: The parties commit themselves, as established in the Charter of the United Nations, to resolve any international dispute in which they may be involved, with peaceful means, in a way that does not endanger the peace, the security and international justice, and to abstain, in their international relations, from threats or the use of force in any way which is incompatible with the aims of the United Nations.
The Alliance has a strict tie with the United Nations, which has been even more consolidated recently, with the assumption of military and civil responsibilities inside and outside of its area. Looking at past history and of the events of the last decade, and not ignoring the serious problems and risks connected to it, NATO represents one of the best instruments consigned to the present governments, to ensure the maintenance of the security and international stability.