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a CANADIAN SECURITY INTELLIGENCE SERVICE publication
February 1995
Unclassified
Editors Note:
The fact that the horror of open warfare has continued for over five years in what was Yugoslavia cannot be explained away by the facile notion that long-suppressed ethnic tensions finally erupted when the Soviet Union collapsed. As the author of this month's Commentary points out, a principal reason for the failure to halt, if not avert, the war may have been the lack of an agreement amongst the major powers as to what constitutes a new European security architecture. What follows is first, a brief history of some of the early attempts to sketch a blueprint for such an architecture (the 1990 Paris Summit; the 1992 Helsinki Meeting), a discussion of the post-Helsinki developments, and a concluding section on future prospects.
Christopher Anstis is a retired Foreign Service Officer and former professor at Royal Roads and Simon Fraser University. From 1989 to 1992, he was Canada's senior adviser at the CSCE negotiations in Europe.
Disclaimer: Publication of an article in the COMMENTARY series does not imply CSIS authentication of the information nor CSIS endorsement of the author's views.
International efforts have failed to avert or to halt the war in former Yugoslavia, largely because the major powers have not agreed on a post-Cold War European security order to develop strategies for dealing with Yugoslavia and other European crises. Why has this happened in Europe, where security organizations are the most developed? Will these institutions perform better as security managers in the future? Not likely. At least not until they stop quibbling over their respective jurisdictions and competencies and agree on a blueprint for a new European security architecture.
In December 1989, James Baker, the American Secretary of State, called for "a new Europe, a new Atlanticism" — a European architecture based on an overlap between NATO and European institutions. He cautioned that "this overlap must lead to synergy, not friction". Not as tidy as Cold War arrangements, the new architecture would evidently be a patchwork of institutions: the European Community (EC) and the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) as the embryo of a pan-European security structure, with NATO providing insurance against a resurgent Russia.
Even before the avalanche of events in Eastern Europe culminated in the implosion of the Soviet Union in 1991, speculation began on how to replace the alliance arrangements with a new European architecture. The post-Cold War era would need a system to ensure security through mechanisms for crisis-management and conflict-prevention, bolstered by potential enforcement action and a procedure for the peaceful settlement of disputes. Stability might be assured so long as the major powers accepted the system as a legitimate framework of international order.
It would not be easy to adapt security institutions to a Europe no longer divided. NATO's structures would have to be adjusted to reflect the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Central Europe and German unification. Western Europeans would want more say in security and defence issues, relying less on the United States after the demise of the Warsaw Pact. Differences would become more acute between the "Europeanists", those like the French who sought to develop the role of the EC in security and defence matters, and the "Atlanticists" , those led by the British who were anxious to preserve ties with North America.
Against this background, the search for the blueprint of a new security architecture focused initially on the CSCE. While some saw it as an artifact of the Cold War, conceived as a bridge-builder between East and West, others hoped it might become a concert of major powers like the Congress of Vienna at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Alternatively, many Eastern Europeans sought to develop the CSCE into a pan-European security system based on collective security. But Washington doubted that even a strengthened CSCE could deal effectively with important security issues due to its unwieldy membership and consensus rule; besides, it was dominated by the European Community.
At least there was broad agreement that the new European security order should make Europeans feel secure from possible Russian neo-imperialism and at ease in the company of Germany, now united and hence with the energy and inclination to devote time to doing something worthwhile internationally. As Henry Kissinger has observed, it was inevitable that once united, the Germans would become more assertive, even if their motives were the best. Kissinger argues that this assertiveness is a fact that Europe will simply have to learn to accept.
Friction soon developed over how to turn the CSCE into a permanent institution capable of managing crises and resolving disputes. Ambitious ideas such as a CSCE army were quickly discarded as other concerns prevailed. In NATO, the Atlanticists sought to ensure that a remodelled CSCE would not encroach on the Alliance's prerogatives. The Europeanists feared that the CSCE could inhibit the development of Western European security mechanisms — the "European Security and Defence Identity" (ESDI).
The lack of urgency attending the rebirth of the CSCE also reflected its low salience in the calculus of German unification. After Gorbachev conceded that a united Germany could remain in NATO, the CSCE was less important for anchoring Germany in democratic institutions. The Paris Summit thus became more symbolic than substantive — an occasion for celebrating the end of the Cold War rather than inaugurating a post-Cold War European security framework.
The refitted CSCE launched by the Paris Summit in November 1990 was not a flagship of European security. The CSCE would have a small permanent secretariat as well as a Council of Ministers and a Committee of Senior Officials to serve as the Council's agent. But the new CSCE Conflict Prevention Centre would have little say, even if the possibility of developing its role were left open. This was all that survived of ambitious plans to convert the CSCE into a pan-European collective security system subsuming the Cold War alliances.
Bush and Mitterrand jointly called for a review of NATO strategy on the same day that Paris and Bonn proposed that the emerging European political union should have a common European foreign and security policy. This launched the process which led to the landmark NATO and EC summit meetings in late 1991. NATO agreed in Rome to revise the Alliance military strategy while embarking on a new political mission. The EC agreed in Maastricht on a European Security and Defence Identity (ESDI) based on a strengthened WEU tied to the EC.
At their London Summit in June 1990, NATO leaders offered "the hand of friendship" to former adversaries in the Warsaw Pact. The allies proceeded quickly to revamp NATO's military strategy, although disputes prevented them from agreeing on a politico-military context in which to imbed it. France, in particular, questioned where the London Declaration was taking NATO. In their view, it was not the right organization to develop cooperation with former adversaries in Central and Eastern Europe — a more appropriate job for the EC. France tried to limit the Alliance's mission to the residual Soviet threat and to ensure that an emerging ESDI would not be subordinate to NATO.
Reaffirming its traditional missions of defence, deterrence and transatlantic consultation, the Alliance adopted two new core functions: assuring a stable security environment in Europe and preserving the strategic balance on the continent. Explaining that "multi-faceted and multi-directional risks" had replaced the monolithic Soviet risk, the allies retained common defence with the United States and insurance against potential Russian expansionism; but they could not agree on how NATO should maintain stability in Central and Eastern Europe, although many favoured a formal relationship between NATO and countries of the former Warsaw Pact.
Agreeing that such an institutional link could usefully add a political mission to the Alliance, but worried that NATO's primary military role might be undermined, Washington and Bonn called for a North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC). Comprised of NATO's 16 members and the former Soviet Bloc countries, it would meet at various levels to discuss issues of mutual interest. Bonn joined this initiative to keep Washington interested in NATO as a policy tool and to shore up non-military aspects of NATO in fending off popular German perceptions of it as redundant. Although the French saw the NACC as a mechanism by which Washington sought to retain its influence in Europe, they did not oppose it. In return, Washington went along with the French view at the Rome Summit that "adequate sub-strategic forces based in Europe ... will provide an essential link with strategic nuclear forces...."
By early 1992, most of ex-communist Europe had joined NACC. While it showed that NATO was "extending the hand of friendship" to them, the NACC did not meet their needs, failing to give them collective defence guarantees. NATO reform did not project security to the East nor did it really amount to a new strategy. Unable to reply adequately to a revised threat assessment, the new Alliance Strategic Concept was only a new way to achieve the old aim of countering a potential Russian threat. The search for NATO's new mission and the United States' role in it was not over. Most of NATO's political changes did not go to the heart of the post-Cold War alliance dilemma: how to define a new over-arching purpose that would enjoy public support and justify America's stake in European security.
The European Security and Defence Identity, or ESDI, was at the centre of the disputes which undermined NATO reform. The prospect that the United States' military presence in Europe might diminish as the Soviet threat receded prompted the Europeanists to look more to their own security. In October 1991, Paris and Bonn announced that they intended to form a "Euro-Corps". It was to be the nucleus of a European Army under the Western European Union (WEU) as the linchpin of European defence cooperation.
The Gulf crisis reassured Americans that NATO under their leadership remained the best way to manage Western defence and security issues; but the problems it incurred for the Europeans reinforced Franco-German proposals for a common EC foreign and security policy. Some saw the WEU as the core of an eventual European defence identity. The Atlanticists retorted that the Gulf experience confirmed that a common EC foreign and security policy was only a rhetorical exercise. But they also regarded the WEU as a less divisive approach to a European defence identity because the WEU was subordinate to NATO through its treaty clauses while the EC had little say over it.
The Europeanists led by France sought security and defence structures which would be formally and legally separate from NATO, although politically affiliated with it. They saw the WEU as the basis of an alternative defence organization. The Atlanticists, particularly Britain and the Netherlands, concerned to maintain NATO's prerogative in defence issues, hoped to retain ESDI within the Alliance. They viewed the WEU as a means for creating a genuine European pillar in NATO which would serve to ensure its survival.
The formulation at the June 1991 NATO meeting to the effect that ESDI should not evolve separately from NATO and that the EC should not caucus apart from NATO on security and defence issues was reaffirmed to the relief of the Atlanticists at the Rome NATO Summit in November 1991. Replying to Mitterrand who seemed to question the need for NATO, calling it a good Alliance "but not a Holy Alliance", Bush set his prepared text aside and challenged the Europeans: "If you have something else in mind, if you want to go your own way, if you don't need us any longer, say so". He thus made it clear at the Summit that Washington could accept the WEU as the European pillar of the Alliance but not as an alternative to it.
However, the careful compromise adopted at Rome did not include the prohibition proposed by some Atlanticists against any "duplication" of NATO tasks and machinery. The Europeanists advanced their cause a month later at the Maastricht Summit when they added a security and eventual defence role to the European Union in proclaiming that "a common foreign and security policy is hereby adopted" and in specifying that it "shall include...the eventual framing of a common defence policy, which might in time lead to a common defence." A declaration attached to the treaty clarified that the WEU member States aimed to develop it as the defence component of the European Union and as a means to strengthen the European pillar of the Atlantic Alliance.
In June 1992, the "Petersberg Declaration", issued by the WEU Council of Ministers, launched the WEU towards an integrated defence structure and outlined a plan for getting there. It was agreed, notably on a British proposal, that the WEU should have a variety of forces and headquarters rather than just a structure based on the Franco-German Brigade with its headquarters at Strasbourg.
Europe's special place in American foreign relations seemed to fade as the Soviet threat receded. With Germany trying to stay in the middle, Britain tried hardest to preserve Atlantic structures while France was determined to limit NATO's scope and to develop ESDI. London was anxious to avoid a major domestic security debate for fear of provoking more cuts in military spending. Bonn was concerned to preserve a fragile consensus on security policy — with 17 million Germans viewing NATO in a different way than their compatriots. Unconstrained by any real domestic debate on security and defence-related issues, only Paris had the ambition, power and will to take the lead in redefining the European security order.
The allies tried to respond to the post-Cold War situation which demanded a new institutional security structure. Friction among them was partly due to the outdated assumption that the United States should carry a disproportionate amount of NATO's defence burden in return for the leading position in political and strategic decision-making. Washington sought to replace a security system of opposing but stable blocs with new arrangements retaining the leading role of the United States in European security matters. The Americans wanted to keep NATO as the core of Western security and defence efforts under their leadership, while exploring modest changes to existing arrangements. In any case, congressional support for American involvement in Europe would greatly depend on a vigorous NATO.
Thus after the first round of negotiations to reform NATO and the EC/WEU, the outline of ESDI emerged in sharper detail, although the Western Europeans were clearly not ready to look to their own defence nor, conversely, to cut security links with the United States. A superficial reading of the agreements at Rome and Maastricht suggested the Europeans agreed that ESDI should complement but not compete with NATO. Yet, both NATO's new strategic concept and EC/WEU agreements at Maastricht allowed potential room for ESDI development outside of the framework of the Alliance.
Even as they watched suspiciously over each other's shoulder, rival security architects in the CSCE, NATO and the EC/WEU were overtaken by events. Exclaiming, "What a long way the world has come", Mikhail Gorbachev was right at the Paris Summit when he warned: "Militant nationalism and mindless separatism can easily bring conflict and enmity, Balkanization and even, what is worse, the 'Lebanonization' of different regions". The first crisis erupted in his own backyard in January 1991 as Soviet troops in Latvia and Lithuania tried to close early fissures in the fabric of a doomed Soviet Union. Mesmerized by the fear of territorial break-up and unable to reconcile it with the principle of self-determination of peoples, the West mostly took a perfunctory view of these events. Some members of the CSCE proposed an urgent meeting of its newly established Committee of Senior Officials to discuss the issue; but the Soviet Union threatened to deny consensus.
Despite the cruel irony of the circumstances, two days after the local Red Army garrison stormed the Vilnius television centre, running over 13 protesters with tanks, a CSCE meeting on the peaceful settlement of disputes convened in Valletta. The scene would often be repeated in the months ahead: unable to do much more than talk or adopt toothless declarations in the face of crises and conflicts, the CSCE would stand haplessly by.
The next crisis came soon enough. The first meeting of the CSCE Council of Ministers convened in Berlin in June 1991 issued a declaration of concern over events in Yugoslavia. Douglas Hurd, the British Foreign Secretary, said that "...for first time the 35 [CSCE] countries have issued an opinion on a member state with little diplomatic flummery". Hurd's comment that "this is a sign of what can happen when European states act as a sort of Congress of Europe" would prove ironic a few days later when war broke out in Yugoslavia, dramatically exposing the lack of progress in designing a new European security order.
The CSCE tried to deal with the Yugoslav conflict when its new procedures for reacting to unusual military activities and emergency situations were triggered. But as the first example of the incoherent and contrived response of the international community to Yugoslavia, the CSCE's "operational role" was soon over.
Shortly after becoming involved in former Yugoslavia, the United Nations accepted NATO's December 1992 offer to help out. NATO joined the WEU in monitoring in the Adriatic and loaned staff to UNPROFOR's headquarters. The Alliance subsequently agreed to enforce a no-fly zone over Bosnia as authorized by the United Nations Security Council in April 1993. It also became evident that more heavily armed forces than UNPROFOR had would be required to implement the Vance-Owen Peace Plan. Here was a chance for NATO to play an active role in peace-keeping "out-of-area".
While there was a real need for NATO, since carrying out the Peace Plan could be bloody, the Alliance was plagued with disputes over Bosnia, reflecting different commitments and interests. Disputes broke out over what action NATO should take and whether the United Nations or NATO/United States should command the enforcement operation. Allies concerned about the safety of their peacekeepers preferred to retain the mantle of neutrality provided by the United Nations. France did not want NATO to use Bosnia to enhance its post-Cold War stature. Britain did not want to send more troops. The Americans were ambivalent although there were reports that Washington might provide up to half of the 50,000 to 70,000 troops needed to implement the latest (Stoltenberg-Owen) Peace Plan. The Yugoslav crisis hindered rather than promoted the achievement of new European architecture. Instead of "interlocking", the EC and NATO discussed the same security issues in different forums.
If Yugoslavia confirmed that NATO was an alliance with no enemy, it revealed that the EC was an institution with little back-bone or credibility in "hard" security issues. Policy differences among the allies developed in NATO partly because the Alliance was late in using its consultative machinery. The failure of the Twelve to act in a timely and decisive way on the Balkan crisis was not due to lack of military capability but lack of political consensus. However, the Yugoslav experience strengthened the hand of the Europeanists in arguing again that the EC needed a common foreign and security policy to act decisively in defusing crises. But the Atlanticists retorted that differences over Yugoslavia among the Twelve were fundamental, not institutional: each member of the Community should be able to decide for itself how to pursue policies involving vital national interests.
The initial stages of the reform process left the CSCE in a more formal but still impotent state; NATO and the EC were competing over competence in security matters; and the WEU was caught between the Europeanists and Atlanticists. The United States had abandoned the Yugoslav crisis to the Western Europeans who tried to resolve it unsuccessfully through the CSCE and the EC. So entangled, it seemed unlikely that these institutions, despite their complementary functions, could interlock into a European security architecture.
As the last major episode in the first reform cycle of European institutional security, the CSCE convening in Helsinki during March-July 1992 would have to focus on ethno-nationalist tensions in view of events since the CSCE Paris Summit: explosion in Yugoslavia and implosion in the Soviet Union. In this context, empowering the CSCE to initiate peace-keeping actions would be a highly visible signal of political will to develop CSCE institutions and structures as part of the new European security architecture which, it was hoped, would become clearer in outline at the Helsinki meeting.
It did not. The results were so innocuous that the Helsinki Declaration adopted by the CSCE Summit in July 1992 even discarded the expression "European architecture". A reference to "mutually reinforcing institutions, each with its own area of action and responsibility", was the sole remnant of the notion that the CSCE could be the framework for "interfacing" European processes of security and cooperation.
Recognizing the need for early action to defuse crises before they erupted into conflict, Helsinki aimed at bringing political energy to bear quickly and to have available a panoply of classical measures for security management. But the CSCE peacemaking schema was drafted with little innovative spirit, involving few new responses and approaches to aggressive nationalism, minority problems and territorial disputes. In fact, the dynamics of CSCE peacemaking provisions adopted at Helsinki closely resembled, mutatis mutandis, Chapter VI of the United Nations Charter, particularly in addressing disputes among states rather than intrastate issues.
Helsinki adopted a Dutch proposal to appoint a CSCE High Commissioner on national minorities as an independent and impartial agent to help to reduce ethnic tensions before they could lead to conflict. Otherwise, Helsinki had no prescriptions to offer for dealing with the storm of minority issues leading to inter-ethnic and nationalist conflict in Europe. Despite the CSCE's preeminent role in setting norms and standards, there was opposition to any suggestion that the CSCE should revisit the principles of territorial integrity and self-determination of peoples to try to resolve the inherent contradictions which were affecting minority problems. Nor did Helsinki even address the issue of rights of minority groups due to the opposition of states such as France, Britain and the United States. They continued to insist that respect for human rights must be limited to individuals and not taken collectively for fear of legitimizing the claims of minority groups in their countries.
Past neglect of group rights was a nemesis for the architects of the post-Cold War security order at Helsinki. Despite the clamour over minorities in the wake of communism's failure, they continued to ignore minority rights and the need to deal with them through a comprehensive regime. They again refused to address the issue of whether minority rights constituted group rights or were simply aggregates of individual human rights. Insisting on the prerogative to deal with their own minorities, the British even reserved the right to deny the High Commissioner on National Minorities access to their territory.
This reassertion of sovereignty betraying the "post-Maastricht blues" was typical of the attitudes often adopted by the "old democracies" at Helsinki. Sovereignty was the real issue in the debate at the EC Summit in Maastricht over supranational versus intergovernmental approaches to European political union. At Helsinki members of the EC seemed to try to make up for sovereignty lost in relying on a non-European power for security while focusing on economics. They were more concerned to be seen by their publics to defend the Westphalian order than to elaborate a new European security system.
With this renewed assertion of the absolute right of states to run their own affairs without outside intervention, the CSCE did not cross a historic watershed towards building the post-Cold War security order at Helsinki. Faced with a new wave of nationalism which had driven them to fight two world wars in this century, the major Western players hid behind the sanctity of sovereignty as if they wanted to restore the nation-state to the pinnacle of the assumed international order. The CSCE did not rise to the challenges facing post-Cold War Europe. It failed to galvanize political will and to shake governments out of traditional ways of thinking.
This first cycle of European security reform has less remarkable for its achievements than for its failures: NATO still had no direct crisis management role in Central and Eastern Europe despite the Alliance's new core functions; Central and Eastern Europe countries still lacked real security despite consultations in NACC; and the CSCE was relegated to deal with "low security" issues. The EC/WEU was endowed with new competence in security and defence but it would take time to develop in the climate of political uncertainty caused by public backlash to Maastricht's ambitious designs and declining defence budgets. None of the competing institutions emerged as the preeminent European security organization or even as the keystone of a security system built of interlocking and complementary institutions.
From the outset there no vision that could adequately take into account diverse views of the NATO allies or account for changes in the European security situation. In the long debate about "architecture", the allies were preoccupied with defining the respective competencies of NATO, the CSCE and the EC/WEU — creating confusion and delay. Instead, they should have focused on redressing the balance of leadership in NATO and devising ways of developing institutional interaction based on overlapping memberships. As the German Minister of Defence, Volker Ruehe, insisted in his IISS 1993 Alastair Buchan Memorial Lecture, "There is no blueprint for political structures in the Euro-Atlantic area".
A task force on "The New European Order", set up by the North Atlantic Assembly because of "the alarming failure to make NATO's concept of 'interlocking institutions' a reality", concluded in May 1993 that:
A purported lesson of the prolonged Western inaction towards Bosnia-Herzegovina is that the international community must refine (this) concept.... The trauma of former Yugoslavia has taught us that the concept of interlocking institutions is either sheer nonsense or fundamentally premature. It may have even contributed directly to policy paralysis by inviting dilution of responsibility.
While Washington and Paris seem to have called a halt to their bureaucratic guerrilla warfare, which was a major obstacle on the route to a new European security architecture, it was not clear whether the truce was due to a strategic reappraisal due to corrected perceptions on both sides or whether it was just tactical. The tiff between France and the United States over enforcement action in Bosnia right on the eve of the NATO Summit in January 1994, suggested caution in evaluating the chances for a viable Franco-American rapprochement.
Although the CSCE was quickly bureaucratized despite its "overriding objective of a non-bureaucratic structure", the results of CSCE efforts in security management were not encouraging. Conflicts in ex-Yugoslavia (where CSCE missions had been expelled by Belgrade), Georgia, Tajikistan and Nagorno-Karabakh proved to be no more amenable to the traditional peacemaking procedures adopted by the CSCE than to those in the UN Charter. The report of the new CSCE Secretary General recorded little success, while in the case of Moldova there had been "no tangible progress" although an eight-man team was deployed there for over six months. And no wonder since mediation is unlikely to succeed so long as CSCE representatives insist, as in the case of Moldova, on the principle of territorial integrity over self-determination and on individual human rights over minority group rights as "CSCE doctrine".
As the NATO Secretary General put it: "The most urgent task of the Atlantic Alliance is to find ways to project the security and stability that its own members have enjoyed in the past four decades increasingly beyond its borders, and as far to the east of the Euro-atlantic area as possible". Woerner further explained that in projecting stability beyond its borders, the Alliance's first new role was to reach out to the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the new independent republics of the former Soviet Union. The second new role was to use NATO's unique political and military capabilities in dealing with instabilities in Europe through crisis management and support for peace-keeping.
An obvious way to revitalize NATO would be to project its security eastward by extending defence guarantees to countries of the former Warsaw Pact, accepting them — particularly the Visegrad states — as new members. Although this would help to alleviate security concerns in Warsaw, Prague and elsewhere about Russian resurgence, taking in some while excluding Moscow could create the kind of humiliation to drive wounded Russian pride further towards the far right led by Vladimjir Zhirinovsky.
This remained the crux of NATO's dilemma. Since it had no place for Russia, extension of NATO's guidelines area would run the risk of renewing Russian animosity and creating new tensions. In fact, extending NATO membership to Central and Eastern Europe against Moscow's wishes could further threaten the security of the new members. If NATO membership should be open to all, how could the Alliance avoid diluting its capacity for common defence. If membership should not be open to all, how could NATO avoid the perception that those excluded were potential enemies — which the Russians are. But the very region of likely conflict within and among states where NATO should be prepared to act in its collective defence and crisis management roles comprises areas in central and eastern Europe contiguous to Russia and in Russia itself. Adding to the Alliance's embarrassment, after Yeltsin stopped fishing for an invitation to join NATO, Moscow suggested that NATO and Russia jointly guarantee security in Eastern Europe. The key challenge, of making Russia something other than the perceived enemy, remains to be addressed.
[Readers will know that as of November 1993, the "EC" is the "EU", and that as of December 1994, "CSCE" is "OSCE" - Ed.]
It is by no means self-evident that even had an ideal security structure existed, it would have been able to surmount the three factors acknowledged to have made it so difficult to deal with the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia; namely, a) the premature internationalization of the looming crisis by recognizing certain of the constituent parts of the country; b) the concern, as the crisis developed, of challenging Russia's interests; and c) most important, however awkward and embarrassing the ongoing embroglio was and is to Western states, it has not been seen to engage their vital security interests to the extent they were prepared to bear the risks or financial costs of armed intervention and possible occupation of Yugoslavia. Current developments suggest that the prospects for agreeing on a new European security architecture are not good. An obvious question illustrates this point: After the disastrous experience with former Yugoslavia, which institution — NATO, OSCE or EU/WEU — would step up to take on the next major European security crisis or try to organize a concerted institutional response to it?
Seeking to confirm the enduring commitment of the United States to European security, President Clinton called for a NATO summit. But by late 1993, the main issue was less to reaffirm Atlantic ties than to reply to the relentless requests from central and eastern Europe for membership. Thus the Americans drafted the "Partnership for Peace" program as a response which they first revealed at a meeting of NATO defence ministers in October 1993.
At their January 1994 summit, NATO leaders delayed the entry of new members while positioning the Alliance to respond better to crises by adopting two schemes. Partnership for Peace envisages new NATO security relationships with former Warsaw Pact states and other CSCE members. It builds on the NACC (though it is open to all central and east European states as well as other CSCE members) but falls short of NATO membership, in calling for bilateral arrangements with NATO in such areas as defence budgeting, joint planning and exercises, direct military consultations, training and peace-keeping. "Partners" are to decide the pace of cooperation with NATO, which pledges to consult them in the case of a threat to their security (a faint image of NATO's article 4 consultation clause).
The second scheme, "Combined Joint Task Forces", would amalgamate forces from different branches of the armed services and from NATO and non-NATO countries in conducting joint military exercises and defusing crisis. The allies also decided to make NATO's collective assets available for WEU operations undertaken by the European allies in pursuit of ESDI.
These innovations seemed to provide a more flexible way of using Allied forces, thus avoiding the rigid structure which partly explained NATO's failure in Bosnia. They also appeared to answer the question of how NATO could fit into a security system of interlocking and complementary institutions. Former Warsaw Pact members would be able to cooperate more closely with NATO. Demands for a more independent European identity would be met, without establishing a large, separate military force as France and other Europeanists had hoped. Making NATO's assets available in this way would allow for "separable" but not "separate" military capabilities.
More of the Alliance's defence burden would thus be shifted to Europe in accordance with longstanding American views which the Clinton Administration had quickly reasserted in calling for the "reapportioning of the burden of collective security". This seemed to be an effort to place the trans-atlantic partnership on a new footing among equals — "the United States as a partner that supports the shaping of the new Europe, and a Europe that assumes greater responsibility for itself and for promoting world peace" , as Volker Ruehe put it.
Yet the January 1994 meeting of Alliance leaders was hardly the "historic turning point" that Manfred Woerner called it; even if the results were a welcome change from the trend to substitute image for policy which had marked NATO declarations as the Alliance cast about for a post-Cold War raison d'être. But how much of the new pragmatism was declaratory and how much was substantial? What amalgamation of forces would be needed to address the ethnic, religious and territorial disputes in Central and Eastern Europe? Might not "Partnership for Peace" and "Combined Joint Task Forces" be only political fig leaves to cover a further draw-down of American forces from Europe?
These two schemes are practical steps for applying joint forces in a flexible rather than rigid, institutional way. But what are these forces to do? Lack of political purpose is the most dangerous gap left in the security debate after the January NATO summit. Unlike the decision to pursue the political aim of detente as well as the military objectives of defence and deterrence adopted by NATO in the 1967 Harmel Report, it is not clear that the Alliance has reached a consensus on a new political vocation.
The concept of "Combined Joint Task Forces" is a step in this direction even if the press mostly overlooked it, preferring to focus on Alliance squabbling about possible air strikes against the Serbs. But as stated in the January 1994 Summit Declaration, the allies still have to "develop this concept and to establish the necessary capabilities" which may not easily be agreed on. Presumably, the "contingency operations" involving such task forces would require approval by the North Atlantic Council, as in the case of lending out NATO's collective assets to the WEU.
Such prior consultations could well be the scene of renewed disputation since it is not clear whether the new bargain on burden sharing means that Washington is willing to share leadership in the Alliance more equally than before. Besides, Paris still has its own security agenda for Europe.
The Budapest Summit of the CSCE was held from November 30 - December 1, 1994, at which time the forum became the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). Although several countries had advanced proposals for reforming the organization, including a Russian proposal for an all-European security group responsible for co-ordinating other security organizations such as NATO and the CIS, the members were unable to meet the challenge. The Russian suggestion to change the policy of consensus was not adopted — among other issues, blocking the move to give the OSCE first priority in dealing with crises in Europe before referring such cases to the UN. The Summit also failed to take a clear stand on Bosnia or the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, largely because f Russia's efforts to favour its own interests. (In January 1995, Moscow did agree to a fact-finding mission to Chechnya; the mission subsequently condemned the use of military force as "disproportionate and indiscriminate".)
There will be no European security architecture if the allies continue to view European security through the narrow prism of immediate national or institutional interests. Despite the flurry of suggestions from Moscow, the blueprint must obviously be mainly of Western design. Failing that, Europe would still lack a security organization with the necessary mandate, membership and military muscle or an agreed system of interlocking and complementary security institutions. As long as the major Western powers cannot agree on common policy or, depending on the implementation of the concept of Combined Joint Task Forces, an effective combination of military resources, there could be a long period of drift before new European policies result in an integrated military force. Central and Eastern European countries could continue to feel insecure. In this vacuum, ethnic and border disputes could expand, raising temptation in Russia to reassert control over the region.
The views expressed herein are those of the author, who may be contacted by writing to :
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