A NEW NATO?

May 5, 1999
		The leaders of the 19 NATO nations gathered in Washington, DC to mark the alliance's 50th anniversary and discuss the the war in Kosovo. But even as the Alliance celebrated that milestone, some foreign policy experts wonder if NATO will survive to see another 50 years. Ivo Daalder, former director for European Affairs on the National Security Council staff, and Doug Bandow, former special assistant to President Reagan, answer your questions

Return to the NATO Forum Index Is NATO obsolete? Is NATO's future dependent on US policy? Can the new Alliance stay united? Will the war spell the end of NATO? Will NATO get involved in more internal matters like Chechnya?   NATO at 50 coverage Strikes in Yugoslavia Coverage NATO Documents: Strategic Concept The Alliance for the 21st Century The Washington Declaration Kosovo Communiqué     The Official NATO 50th Web Site NATO US State Department Serbian Ministry of Information	Sean Cooper asks: Will NATO's war against Yugoslavia lead to the Alliance's demise? Doug Bandow of the Cato Institute responds: There's no reason why NATO cannot survive as a defensive organization with its more limited, traditional purpose. But allied bungling in Kosovo makes it difficult to imagine survival of the attempt to expand NATO's purpose to peacekeeping/peacemaking outside of members' territories. And that is all to the good, since proposals that NATO get involved in North Africa and the Caspian Basin are genuinely frightening: such roles for the alliance would generate large costs and risks by involving the West in volatile conflicts without easy answers. Nor would there be many benefits from "success," whatever that would be. Ivo Daalder of the Brookings Institution responds: No. But the outcome of the war will be decisive for determining the Alliance's future role in European security. If NATO succeeds in achieving the objectives it has set forth -- a verifiable ceasefire, the removal of Serb security forces, the deployment of an international security force, the return of all refugees, and self-government for the Kosovar Albanians -- than NATO will have acted on the vision of its future role allied leaders just last month endorsed during the Washington summit. NATO will have taken a major step toward extending security and stability into the most unstable region of Europe. It will have stood up and defended the fundamental values that unite its members and motivate many aspiring members in Europe. And it will have made it less likely that other tyrants in Europe will act in the manner that Milosevic has, for fear that NATO might respond with overwhelming force. Failure, however, will have large consequences for NATO's future purpose as well. While it will not lead to NATO's demise, it will ensure a return of NATO to a minimalist purpose -- essentially a defensive one designed to hedge against the possible return of a Soviet-style threat to it territory. Since that threat is unlikely to materialize in the foreseeable future, a return to this minimalist vision will ensure that NATO becomes increasingly marginal in the foreign policies of its major members. The Kosovo war, in other words, is a defining moment for NATO and Europe's future security.