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COMMENT: NATO on South Asia’s doorstep —Tanvir Ahmad Khan

In 1991, as the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact faded into the mists of history, NATO faced an existential challenge. Today, it may be heading towards a role that embraces half the globe. Though no cause for an unwarranted alarm, it should help us understand the strategic climate of our times

NATO’s humanitarian mission to Pakistan has caused some apprehension in the host country and in India, where South Asia is increasingly considered as a legitimate zone of influence. Mir Waiz’s suggestion that NATO should oversee the demilitarisation of Kashmir will certainly add to Indian concerns. While the Pakistan government freely acknowledges a debt of gratitude to NATO, there have been vague, inchoate and nameless fears in Pakistan’s political class about its presence in the ‘sensitive areas’ of Azad Kashmir.

NATO is in a dynamic phase particularly in its expansion, its eastward march and the diversification of its role. Changes in its mission seem to be open-ended and may embrace more areas far away from the original north Atlantic area. When the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary were admitted to NATO as its full members, the then US secretary of state, Madeline Albright, defined this advance into the territory of the erstwhile Warsaw Pact as a process, not an ‘event’. Zbignniew Brzezinsky had earlier described their expected admission as the first deliberate stage with subsequent stages taking in the Baltic States, Romania and Bulgaria by 2005 and finally Ukraine.

I remember considerable concern about this ‘process’ in Moscow during that period. Conversations with state functionaries and the leading strategists would invariably indicate a red line beyond which Moscow would not countenance NATO’s expansion. It was, however, a receding red line. In 1996, one of Russia’s top leaders told me that it could perhaps live with the Baltic States joining the alliance but extending it to Ukraine would have serious consequences. In actual practice, Russia has tried to moderate NATO’s role by cooperating with it i.e. by joining the NATO-Russia pact in May 1997 and then the joint Russia Council in May 2002.

NATO has clearly been resolving a deep crisis about its own purpose. The German reunification in October 1990 sounded the death knell for the Warsaw Pact which was formally dissolved on July1, 1991.There was an intense debate on both sides of the Atlantic about any further need for NATO. It responded by developing a new rationale for its continuation. The new leaders of Central Europe were anxious to reclaim their lost European heritage severed by the Yalta agreements but they also needed help to overcome the centrifugal forces unleashed by the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union.

Czechoslovakia got divided into two separate states. The disintegration of Yugoslavia led to horrific wars and a virtual genocide. There was uncertainty about the nations on the eastern side of Europe’s traditional fault line embedded in the history of Roman and Byzantine empires. The reunified Germany had to be anchored (and contained) in a large economic and security architecture to pre-empt revival of the old German question. Nato would provide the security underpinning for the new political and economic order. In March 1999, NATO commenced an eleven week long bombing campaign against Serbia in what is known as the Kosovo war but which also aimed at eliminating a major hurdle to the new European idea. NATO opened its doors further in 2002, and on March 29, 2004 Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania. Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia were formally admitted to it. Albania, Macedonia and Croatia made it known that they were candidates as well.

The Western opponents of NATO’s enlargement used to argue that it would adversely affect the consolidation of democracy in Russia and encourage extreme nationalism under authoritarian rulers. Evidently, they lost out to others who wanted a strong Western influence right across the length and breadth of the entire Eurasian landmass stretching from Germany to China and Afghanistan. NATO was integral to this enterprise.

A second and lighter footprint of NATO through its partnership for peace programme now extends to 20 countries. The commonwealth of independent states (CIS) is an association through which Russia seeks to salvage its pre-eminent position in the old Soviet space. But 12 members of CIS including Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are also NATO’s partners-for-peace.

NATO was often regarded as the hidden fist behind a peaceful US-led drive for equal access to the vast energy resources of the successor states of the Soviet Union. On April 16, 2003, NATO came out of the closet and agreed to take command of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. Its troops have assisted in the creation of civil and military provincial reconstruction teams. NATO foreign ministers will take up in December a proposal to deploy 6,000 NATO troops in the south, including the troubled province of Uruzgan where a distinction between peacekeeping NATO troops and the US combat units battling an intensified Taliban resistance may get blurred.

The Dutch are reported to be reluctant to be drawn into the Afghan fray. Dissensions in the councils of NATO over Western military policy came to surface during the Iraq invasion which was strongly opposed by France and Germany. In fact, any military operation outside the Atlantic area is likely to be divisive. Similarly, President Putin seems to have drawn some dark conclusions from the creeping outreach of NATO. Recent developments in Shanghai Cooperation Organisation underscore Russian and Chinese security concerns.

The NATO contingent in our earthquake-stricken areas is a humanitarian project, not a forward-deployment of a military alliance. It cannot, however, be entirely de-linked from its larger political and security policies. Politically, it may well be considered as a payback for the large role assigned in the pacification of Afghanistan to Pakistan’s armed forces on our side of the Durand Line.

More significantly, it reflects NATO’s readiness to assume responsibilities far beyond those envisaged in the Washington treaty of April, 1949. Some Western politicians want it to become the main instrument of combating “Islamic terrorism”. In 1991, as the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact faded into the mists of history, NATO faced an existential challenge. Today, it may be heading towards a role that embraces half the globe. Though no cause for an unwarranted alarm, it should help us understand the strategic climate of our times.

The writer is a former foreign secretary

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