NATO’s normative divide
Close observers of NATO have for many years worried that the vast discrepancy in defense spending between the United States and its partners might mean that the alliance can no longer fight together. After the 1999 Kosovo conflict, for example, a number of voices noted that U.S. pilots sometimes had difficulty operating jointly with less ...
Close observers of NATO have for many years worried that the vast discrepancy in defense spending between the United States and its partners might mean that the alliance can no longer fight together. After the 1999 Kosovo conflict, for example, a number of voices noted that U.S. pilots sometimes had difficulty operating jointly with less advanced NATO air forces. In 2002, NATO formally identified this capabilities gap as a critical challenge. The Libya operation, and recent European austerity measures, have intensified concerns about an alliance growing apart militarily.
Close observers of NATO have for many years worried that the vast discrepancy in defense spending between the United States and its partners might mean that the alliance can no longer fight together. After the 1999 Kosovo conflict, for example, a number of voices noted that U.S. pilots sometimes had difficulty operating jointly with less advanced NATO air forces. In 2002, NATO formally identified this capabilities gap as a critical challenge. The Libya operation, and recent European austerity measures, have intensified concerns about an alliance growing apart militarily.
Tom Parker of Amnesty International (and formerly of British intelligence) has a related but different concern: that alliance members are not only increasingly divided in terms of how they can fight, but also over how they should fight:
Britain, Poland, Italy and Germany are among America’s closest military partners. Troops from all four countries are currently serving alongside U.S. forces in Afghanistan, but they are now operating within a very different set of constraints than their U.S. counterparts.
The European Court of Human Rights established its jurisdiction over stabilization operations in Iraq, and by implication its writ extends to Afghanistan as well. The British government has lost a series of cases before the court relating to its operations in southern Iraq. This means that concepts such as the right to life, protection from arbitrary punishment, remedy and due process apply in areas under the effective control of European forces. Furthermore, the possibility that intelligence provided by any of America’s European allies could be used to target a terrorism suspect in Somalia or the Philippines for a lethal drone strike now raises serious criminal liability issues for the Europeans.
The United States conducts such operations under the legal theory that it is in an international armed conflict with Al Qaeda and its affiliates that can be pursued anywhere on the globe where armed force may be required. But not one other member of NATO shares this legal analysis, which flies in the face of established international legal norms. The United States may have taken issue with the traditional idea that wars are fought between states and not between states and criminal gangs, but its allies have not…
NATO cannot conduct military operations under two competing legal regimes for long. Something has to give—and it may just be the Atlantic alliance.
Read the whole piece here.
David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist
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