Expanding NATO would be more than a military move. It would confirm the independent and ‘European’ status of the Central European states. Even countries, like Ukraine and probably the Baltic states, which would not (initially at least) be on the right side of the ‘line’ that NATO would draw on its eastern border, have now lost out. It has been well argued that ‘merely having NATO close at hand… would affect the political psychology in the belt of states between the Baltic and the Black Seas, imparting more confidence to their liberal political forces’.[89] All these developments would have tended to put European peace on a much sounder footing.
They are all the more desirable because the Gulf War demonstrated something which I had already believed necessary — namely that NATO forces must be able to operate ‘out of area’.[90] The range of potential serious threats is now truly global. That does not mean that NATO forces should be deployed whenever some local crisis in a far-flung country occurs. But it does mean that major regional threats must concern us. Some potentially serious risks are already apparent.
And where there is a clear case of aggression and our interests are involved, military interventions, whether under UN, NATO or other auspices, should be strong, swift and effective. Objectives must be clear, risks weighed and as far as possible countered and the resources deployed sufficient. Of course, every international crisis is different. Rules have to be adapted to circumstances. But the temptations to guard against are always the same — namely, ill-thought-out goals, too much reliance on total consensus before action, and the use of insufficient force.
Unfortunately, in their different ways all the major military interventions carried out under UN authority since the end of the Cold War have suffered from some or all of these problems. The Gulf War left Saddam Hussein in power with sufficient weapons and resources to terrorize the Kurds and the Marsh Arabs and continue to test the international community’s resolve. This crucial misjudgement was principally the result of a lack of clarity about objectives and excessive emphasis given to the search for international agreement rather than victory. But at least Desert Storm was effective in ensuring that Iraq yielded up Kuwait.
As I have suggested earlier, in spite of the personal qualities and, on occasion, the heroism of some of those involved, little can be said in praise of the international intervention in the former Yugoslavia. The justification for intervention was at least as clear as in the case of Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. A well-armed aggressor — Serbia initially acting under the institutional guise of Yugoslavia — attacked first Slovenia, then Croatia and finally Bosnia. But what should have been a clear policy of arming the victim and assisting him with air strikes on military targets was distorted into a peacekeeping and humanitarian venture.
This policy was an illusion. There was no peace to keep. Hence the humanitarian force would either fail to aid the victims or come into conflict with the aggressors. A Western diplomacy that forswore effective military action had no real power to force an aggressor to negotiate seriously, and an arms embargo, impartially applied, meant in effect intervening on the side of a well-armed aggressor against an ill-armed victim. In fact, there is hardly a moral principle or a practical rule which has not been broken in handling this crisis: it should at least provide the next generation of statesmen with a case study of what not to do.
Was it shame at events in Bosnia and Croatia which prompted the UN, under American leadership, to intervene in Somalia in December 1992? No one could criticize the humane impulse to step in and relieve the appalling suffering created by — what was in this case accurately described as — civil war. But insufficient attention was given to the political and military problems involved. It soon became clear that the humanitarian effort could not enjoy long-term success without a return to civil order. But there seemed no internal force able to supply this.
Hence, the intervention created its own painful choice: either the UN would make Somalia into a colony and spend decades engaged in ‘nation-building’, or the UN forces would withdraw in due course and Somalia revert to its prior anarchy. In the former case, since the Americans have no taste for imperial ventures, the UN would have to vest any new trusteeship either in a local power like the Egyptians or in a former colonial power, presumably in this case the Italians. If this is unlikely to happen — and it is — then the job of feeding the hungry and helping the sick must in future be left to civilian aid agencies and private charities. Military intervention without an attainable purpose creates as many problems as it solves.
The combined effect of interventions in Bosnia, Somalia and, indeed, Rwanda has been to shake the self-confidence of key Western powers and to tarnish the reputation of the UN. Yet a dangerous trend is increasingly evident: over the last few years, culminating in the latest intervention in Haiti in September 1994, the Security Council seems prepared to widen the legal basis for intervention. We are seeing, in fact, that classically dangerous combination — a growing disproportion between theoretical claims and practical means. All this may have further unwelcome consequences in the longer term.
If there is now a threat approaching the gravity of the Cold War, it is that of Islamic fundamentalism. The concern of policy-makers is certainly justified. The implications for Europe, the Middle East and Russia alike if more moderate or secular Muslim countries should fall under Islamic extremist regimes are indeed serious.
But it is one thing to estimate a danger, quite another to know how best to overcome it. The West has in the past disastrously misjudged the political potential of Islam. It has been well observed that: ‘The two Middle East countries most torn apart by violence and civil strife since the mid-1970s were among those previously regarded as the most stable, modernized, and Western-oriented — Lebanon and Iran.’[91] There is a risk that in discussing ‘fundamentalism’ we will come to regard conservative-minded Muslim countries as inevitable hotbeds of Islamic revolution. Yet the success of Islamic parties does not always reflect the religious commitment of their supporters; rather, it reflects the fact that communism is now discredited, leaving Islamic oppositions to benefit from discontent with the incompetence and corruption of existing governments. In fact, the umbrella of ‘fundamentalism’ shelters a range of distinct and often mutually opposed phenomena, from Gulf and Lebanese Shiites with links to Iran, to the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, to the mish-mash of elements woven together in Colonel Qaddafi’s ‘Third Way’ — quite apart from many pious Muslims who are only ‘fundamentalist’ in that they are seeking a return to austere Islamic practice.
Within the Islamic world, Iran has, of course, a special position. It has acquired — and continues to acquire — weapons of mass destruction from Russia, Ukraine, China, North Korea and elsewhere. It has moved into nuclear research. It has close links with terrorist organizations and seems to feel no inhibitions about intervening to achieve its objectives from Lebanon to Argentina. And in addition to these material threats, Iran is the standard-bearer of a kind of Islam that is both revolutionary and traditional and that puts it at odds with most Arab rulers. Like Revolutionary France, Iran is the bearer of what Burke called an ‘armed doctrine’. The international community has no ideal way of dealing with this phenomenon. But the best available model seems that of containment.
89
William E. Odom, ‘Strategic Realignment in Europe — NATO’s Obligation to the East’, in NATO — The Case for Enlargement, Institute for European Defence and Strategic Studies, 1993.
90
I had spoken to this effect at the North Atlantic Council in Turnberry in June 1990. See