The 2010 NATO Summit kicks off in Lisbon today. Source: NATO
1999. The year the euro was established. Gates’ personal fortune surpassed $100bn. Napster was born. Jay-Z delighted fans with lyrics such as “More money, more cash, more hoes (what)”. NATO intervened in Yugoslavia, attacking a sovereign country for the first time. It was also the year that NATO adopted its most recent “Strategic Concept”.
And how times have changed.
I’m here in Lisbon for the 2010 NATO summit (thanks to the Atlantic Council’s Young Atlanticist Summit), and there’s a buzz in town. Lauded as one of the most crucial in the organisation’s 61 year history, 28 Heads of State will arrive today to approve the alliance’s new mission statement for the next decade – the 2010 Strategic Concept.
With tightened belts, cuts on the horizon, and Joint Command Lisbon (one of the three main subdivisions of NATO’s Allied Command Operations) facing potential closure next year, the Portuguese are anxious for the Summit to be seen as a success, already touting it as the “Lisbon Compact”.
So what is it all about? As with many multilateral organisations, the pace of global change has outstripped the pace of reform. With a widened membership pool with diverging interests, and a distinct lack of unifying threat, NATO has been struggling to keep itself relevant, especially given many allies’ lukewarm if not frosty interest in committing more blood and treasure to the primary effort in Afghanistan.
Expectations for the Strategic Concept aren’t high. Although Madeleine Albright, former US Secretary of State, and her “twelve apostles” submitted their experts’ report to Secretary-General Rasmussen in May, many expect it to have been diluted significantly in order to secure approval from alliance members. Nevertheless, it will almost certainly include reaffirmation of Article 5 (collective defence, which led to NATO involvement in Afghanistan post 9/11), which will please the Baltics, and Ukraine and Georgia – both potential candidates for membership.
Other discussions taking place will cover missile defence (Germany and France are currently sparring on this), command structure reform, development of the comprehensive approach (bringing together civilian & military resources in stabilisation), and the NATO-Russia Council (with President Medvedev attending for the first time since the 2008 Georgia row).
Perhaps more headline-grabbing will be the discussion of the transition plan in Afghanistan – the shift of security responsibilities to the Afghan authorities bringing NATO’s combat operations to an end by 2014. How this drawdown is structured and what role members will have in achieving this is unclear. More on this later…
Quite a bit on the agenda indeed, and with shrinking budgets and expanding challenges, consensus will be much more difficult to achieve compared to 1999, and few expect anything radical. 11 years on, even Jay-Z’s optimism also seems to be waning, with his latest tune lacking the 90’s materialistic aspirations of his “more money, more cash, more hoes (what)” hit. As a rework of Alphaville’s “Forever Young”, the lyrics may be particularly pertinent for many in both Lisbon and Afghanistan this weekend.
“Let us die young or live forever,
We don’t have the power but we never say never.
Sitting in a sandpit,
Life is a short trip,
The music’s for the sad man.”
Jay-Z’s tune has certainly changed, but the next few days will show us if NATO has too.
