I have asked Professor Stephen Blank to write an article for Slovak magazine Euro-Atlantic Quarterly. He was very kind and he agreed. His piece was published in Slovak in 1/2009 edition and you can find it here in English.

NATO faces serious, even wrenching, questions that it must confront since postponing that confrontation only adds to the difficulty of overcoming those problems. To be sure, there are reasons for rejoicing in some recent developments, most notably France’s full reintegration into NATO. That step can only help revitalize NATO, strengthen its unity, and add France’s weighty voice to all future discussions of NATO activity.

But that action alone cannot and should not deter NATO from the profound reassessment of its future role that it must now conduct. In Afghanistan the fundamental basis of all NATO operations, the sharing of risk and of burdens among all the members, is being eroded. Increasingly members are either unwilling to contribute forces to to the deteriorating situation there or to allow their forces to participate along with their allies in combat operations. There is also a visible sense of a gap not just in capabilities which is an old story, but in threat assessments. When one remembers that the war in Afghanistan is the only contingency for which NATO’s Article V of the Washington Treaty has ever been invoked, this mounting unwillingness to face up to the universal threat of Islamic terrorism enhances not just the risks to the operation in Afghanistan, but also the credibility of NATO as a security provider and manager in Europe.

Here we must understand that the most critical outcomes of the 2008 Russo-Georgia war are first, that Russia can no longer be counted on to be a peaceful actor or to uphold the post Cold War status quo . Second, force has been used in Europe against a candidate for NATO membership, i.e. Georgia and its integrity and sovereignty have been unilaterally dismembered with impunity. That invasion demonstrated both divisions among the leading alliance members, as well as ineffectual, not to mention incompetent, negotiations that showed that neither the EU nor NATO could ensure that Moscow adhered to its agreements. Consequently some alliance members like Norway and Poland have publicly questioned whether or not Article V and the promise of collective defense against attacks are still credible guarantees of security. Furthermore the CFE treaty, to paraphrase Zbigniew Brzezinski, lies buried beneath the hills of South Ossetia.

Third, the provisions of the Helsinki treaty concerning both human rights and the unacceptability of the forcible redrawing of signatories’ boundaries have also been violated again with impunity. Fourth, Moscow threatens to introduce Iskander missiles into Europe that could signify the resumption of both a conventional and nuclear arms race. Fifth, Moscow does so while claiming an unfettered right to break treaties like the CFE treaty unilaterally, erect a closed sphere of influence in the CIS, and assign an inferior level of sovereignty to those states and other former members of the Warsaw Pact, essentially demanding a free hand for itself and revisions of Europe’s security architecture.

It does so because it perceives the divisions that exist within the alliance on numerous issues. These issues comprise Europe’s threat assessment, willingness to act cohesively against threats that are commonly understood, an unwillingness to challenge Russia’s efforts to undermine the sovereignty and integrity of former Soviet republics and satellites, weariness with expansion, discord between Washington and Europe, and an unwillingness to entertain the idea that the military still must play a vital role in ensuring international security. If these issues are not openly confronted and dealt with they will surely continue to corrode the alliance from within making it an alliance in name only where members share neither a common threat assessment nor a willingness to defend each other. Neither is that a concern only for so called out of area operations like Afghanistan. Russia’s war with Georgia underscores the urgency for both NATO and the EU to realize that security within Europe itself has been compromised and must be restored.

Neither European alliance can pretend that it can simply wait for Ukraine to overcome its gridlock or for Georgia to come to terms (as many would like) with Russia and renounce her territorial integrity. For NATO and the EU to be relevant they must meet the security challenges of today and tomorrow in Europe if not out of area. Neither can NATO allow its operations in Afghanistan to end in defeat for the consequences of that outcome are incalculable but almost wholly negative. The genius of the framers of the 1989-91 settlement was that they recognized the ultimate indivisibility of European security. The old Polish slogan, for our security and yours, underscores that fact. Consequently Europe cannot today revert either explicitly or implicitly to a situation where Russia has a sphere of influence where it can act as it pleases while European security organs are enfeebled and ridden with paralyzing divisions. Just as was true of the United States in the 1860s, “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” And if the common European home invoked a generation ago by Gorbachev is to stand, it can only stand freely and with credible assurances of security. Otherwise Europe will have neither a common house nor common security. Instead it will have a common insecurity. NATO’s great challenge remains what it was, to provide constructive leadership in the enduring challenge of ensuring European security.