New strategic concept: From the Balkans to Caucasus and Beyond
NATO legitimacy have been questioned severely in the post cold war era. The war in former Yugoslavia seemed to offer no alternative mission in the future. The perpetuation of the Balkan conflict could have been a temporary solution since history proves that conflicts live as long as important bets are placed in their existence.
9/11 and the subsequent war on terror made this Balkan role of NATO insignificant and raised the bets for a new mission. NATO forces were to travel as far as Afghanistan where a group of terrorists succeeded to rule a whole country and threatened the western world with nightmarish holocaust. NATO Operation in Afghanistan proved to be a complete failure in what concerns the stability not only of the particular country but of the whole region.
These developments in addition to what is happening in Iraq pictures the obscene scenery of the western intervention in a world in which mass killing goes still unpunished as in Sudan or provoked by the said intervention.
Encouraged by all these brilliant achievements NATO wants to redefine its mandate and play a more global role in the World. And for that it hires the master of its first military intervention after the Cold War, ironically a Woman with east European origins, to do it. Madeleine Albright is certainly not the right person to change the Hawkish image that NATO has gained through the Kosovo issue.
NATO aspires to Global mandate through the management of global, universally recognized, risks. Cyber attacks, climate change catastrophes, terror and most important of all Energy security will be new tasks that NATO could be invested by exceptional powers to measure the gravity for the issues at stake.
As Jamie Shea responsible of the Political strategy of the Organization “Developing NATO's role in energy security involves important political aspects, such as developing the relationship with other organizations and Partners. It also involves the development of military options, such as an 'intelligence-driven' approach, that would suffer from a lack of coherence if treated separately.”
It goes beyond any doubt that such kind of investiture will give NATO the possibility to intervene practically to any country in the middle East or in the Caucasus area. By allegedly protecting the unencumbered flow of fossil treasures in valuable pipelines that cut across all politically hot areas of the World, NATO is fixing its new Agenda. In direct antagonism to the U.N. the military Organization will project to all globally sensitive matters its power configuration. In fact the question arises why on issues that the international community has not any problem to collaborate, one need a military alliance of the few to solve them.
Balkan wars had been a great test for the consolidation of 1999 Strategic concept that had been already implemented partially but more successfully in Bosnia. The extension of operations in Asia marked the new era. Piracy in the Gulf of Aden gives an idea of the new concept that is being forged by the Albright committee. It seems though that the most important issue on the new Agenda will be the Energy Security project. From that point of you NATO goes back to its familiar field. Russia holds the veins of the Gas provisions of Europe and Russia is still been perceived as a major threat by a number of Eastern European countries. These countries, especially the Baltic countries and Poland continue to live with the cold war ghosts. Negotiating the protection against these ghosts the promoters of the new strategic concept will find their most willing allies.
Balkan operations will certainly be downgraded as the recent visit in Kosovo by Admiral Mark Fitzgerald shows. The KFOR will be limited from 15.000 men 10.000men prejudging by that fact that the Serb-populated northern part of Kosovska Mitrovica will not be equivalent to South Ossetia in Georgia and that the ICJ Decision on the legality of the declaration of independence, will be favorable to the present Kosovo administration. Either way NATO leaves the mess to the European command keeping the valuable Bondsteel military base for its future missions.
The new Agenda looks forward into the forging of a strategic concept that goes well beyond its defensive European role. The limited article 5 was just about protection, the new concept will be an adequate tool of power projection into the limitless global arena. A question will remain pending. In a multi-polar world who will abide with western power projection rationale? Too much ado, one could argue, for reaffirming the old strategies of power that by its range threatens to amplify the existing security risks.
