NATO’s Emerging Challenges and New Missions
A Southern Strategy for NATO
(Tuesday, December 15, 2015)
Thank you very much for inviting me to this Conference, where I would like to bring the experience of a country that is affected by the possible effects of all the traditional and new challenges stemming from the Southern flank of NATO: political and institutional instability that could generate new “failing States”; social unrest; sectarian divides; uncontrolled mass migrations; radicalism and eventually terrorism.
The recent evolution of thesecurity scenario has forced all global and regional actors, including NATO and Allies like Italy, to have a thorough reflection on the need of adapting our policies and instruments to tackle effectively the emerging threats coming from the MENA region.
Italy has constantly contributed to the internal NATO debate through a very pro-active approach and also with a few specific documents, in particular the national “Food for thought Paper”in support of the definition of a “Strategic-level Guidance” for NATO adaptation to the South. In fact, we feel that Italy’s geopolitical and geo-economic projection to the Southern shores of the Euro-Atlantic space puts it in a special position to exert a leading role on these issues.
The adoption by Allied Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the Strategic Guidance basically aims at defining the framework to adapt the Readiness Action Plan – the biggest effort of reinforcement in the recent history of NATO – to the specific security needs of the Southern Flank. The document will then provide the NATO military authorities with guidelines for their planning of military activities related to this region.
But besides giving the expected, practical inputs to NMAs, both the Italian FFT and the Strategic Guidancehave the merit to highlight some general principles, that can be the pillars upon which it is now possible to build a true and comprehensive “strategy” for the South. All these principles have been agreed and now just need to be developed into concrete lines of action througha systemic vision.
First of all, there are no doubts that the emerging challenges to Euro-Atlantic security originating from the South are very complex and constantly changing. As a consequence, it is widely acknowledged that they require a holistic and multi-faceted response strategy. Hard security remains an essential element of this “package” but it cannot be sufficient, since Force clearly is not and cannot represent a long-lasting and sustainable solution to the regional crises. We rather need political solutions and, as our Minister of Foreign Affairs Gentiloni recently pointed out, a “positive agenda” for the entire region.
Furthermore, we need a higher degree of flexibility: the Alliance must be ready to adapt quickly to further evolution. Echoing a British “mantra”, we could say that it has to be “adaptable by design” rather than create new fixed infrastructure and assets.
Second, if we shift from the immediate response to a longer term perspective – to use the NATO vocabulary, to the “long-term adaptation” – our approach should be based on a more modern concept of a “Deterrence for the 21st Century” (formula that enjoys a sort of “US copyright”…). It is true that some of the “Southern threats” are difficult to deter, but this should not prevent us from making a conceptual effort to adapt and at the same time keep credible our deterrence policy.
In fact, one of the basic ideas that informs both the abovementioned Italian FFT paper and the NATO Guidance is that also these threats – and not only those coming from the Eastern Flank of the Alliance – are truly “hybrid” in nature. Daesh and possibly other terrorist organizations can be defined as “non State actors with State-like capabilities”, blurring the lines between conventional and unconventional security.
This implies that the traditional anti-terrorist policies must be complemented with more conventional instruments (including the use of military force, as the activity of the Global Coalition confirms). For instance, we can deter this specific category of “non State actors” by reinforcing our expeditionary capacity (and capabilities); by modernizing the maritime and air component of the RAP; by affirming our “information dominance” in the region through ISR capabilities; by strengthening our Strategic Communication policy; etc..
And we should invest more on cyber. The extremely volatile nature of the cyber domain makes it compelling for the Alliance to remain ”ahead of the curve” and capable of understanding the evolutionary trends in this field, such as Daesh’s growing potential and capacity of using also cyber space. As recognized by the Enhanced Cyber Defence Policy approved at the Wales Summit in 2014, we should adequately address our capability gaps from education and training to cooperation with Partners, organizations, industry and academia. In particular, the issue of capability development remains key.A “Cyber Defence Pledge at 28”would then be a significant deliverable for the Warsaw Summit, which should reaffirm our sound, collective commitment to cyber-defence across the Alliance.
The third principle is the recognition that our Southern Strategy should be developed through a synergic and coordinated use of all the three “core tasks” of the Alliance, as defined in the 2010 Strategic Concept. Collective defence, crisis management and cooperative security must be simultaneously implemented to reach a stronger impact. We can certainly emphasize one of the tasks more than the other ones composing the “mix”, but all three are necessary.
For many years we have been repeating that NATO can address challenges from the South mainly, if not solely, through cooperative security. It is certainly true that our partnership policy and instruments can play a key role in boosting our neighbors “resilience” to these challenges, thus creating a sort of “security outpost” on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea. Our capacity building, interoperability and training activities are very valuable to this end. We therefore support all the new ideas forwarded by our Secretary General on strengthening our assistance to partners in specific areas such as counter-terrorism, counter-IED, military border control. Yet, we need to recognize that we devote only a tiny 1% of NATO Budget to partnerships and that only one quarter of this money is allocated to our Southern partners. The new plans for 2016 are not changing this imbalance. Besides better shaping the partnerships activities to the needs of Southern partners, we barely need to increase the financial and human resources that we spare for them. And there is another partnership tool that we can exploit to a much bigger extent, namely the political dialogue. It is very “cost-effective” and can hugely help us to improve our understanding of the emerging challenges, to foster our “situational awareness” and to deepen our knowledge of our partners’ need.
But as I said, we cannot neglect the importance of crisis management and collective defence instruments, including the shaping of modern and specific “contingency plans” for defending Southern Allies from direct attacks by both State and non-State actors.
The maritime component of the Alliance, which has a very specific relevance when dealing with the emerging challenges from the South, proves particularly functional to addressing comprehensively and simultaneously the Alliance’s three core tasks. If Operation Ocean Shield, which is contributing to the significant anti-piracy effort in the Western Indian Ocean (thus also supporting to our energy security), remains a valid example, we strongly encourage the transformation of Operation Active Endeavour in a full Maritime Security Operation (MSO) as a deliverable for the Warsaw Summit.
The evolution of OAE could, first of all, contribute to enhancing maritime situational awareness. In this sense, cooperation with partners and international organizations should provide significant added value. In the case of the Mediterranean Sea, for instance, this could translate into more synergic efforts with EU’s Operation Sophia. Moreover, the transition of OAE could allow NATO to address the full range of taskings described in the Military Authority’s MSO concept, thus making it more respondent to address the complex and multi-dimensional,hybrid dimension of the threats emanating from the South. Of course, this should occur in coherence with relevant international legal provisions, as well as with NATO’s overarching efforts, including in the framework provided by the Readiness Action Plan.
Indeed, the fourth and last principle states that NATO is normally not the only responder to these threats, and in many cases not even the best placed. Therefore, our Alliance clearly needs to develop cooperation with other international actors, including the United Nations and the main international organizations.
In this context, the European Union can play a very special role, as a “unique partner” (as it is stated in the Wales Communiqué) and as major “deterrence provider” against hybrid threats. As I pointed out, the very nature of these threats makes this partnership almost natural, taking into account the complementarity of our organizations and their potential added value. Therefore, here we need to think more innovative. We have very clear legal constraints and we cannot deny a certain degree of reluctance on the EU side to engage directly with an organization which is widely perceived as a purely military instrument. Therefore, pragmatic solutions (high-level and staff-to-staff contacts) are more than welcome, although a gradual shift from simple “de-confliction” to more ambitious “co-ordination” is not only desirable but somehow also necessary, at least in a longer term perspective, including for practical reasons (i.e. to optimize our limited resources).The slow but visible trend in the European Union towards the strengthening of its security dimension – development of the CSDP activities, redesign of a “Global security strategy”, enhancement of the security-related aspects of the capacity building through the European Neighborhood Policy – could certainly increase the risks of overlapping. We have to turn these risks in opportunities forcloser collaboration.
To do so, it is essential for NATO to re-discover the great potential of its political dimension, vis-à-vis both the further strengthening of the transatlantic link and the relationship with regional and global partners.
After the end of the Cold War, the Alliance cultivated the ambition to be a “hub of global security”, based on the network of its cooperative connections. This ambition can still be valid in the 21st Century, provided NATO can prove to be not only an effective instrument, but also a functional actor in a broader international framework.