Abstract
When members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) started to wind down their decade-long operation in Afghanistan, the ‘what now’ question loomed high. How would a military alliance endure when, for the first time in 20 years, it lacked an operation? A soul-seeking period followed, and it was nothing new to NATO. It had even been given a death sentence on several occasions in the past. With the end of the Cold War and the fall of the common enemy, scholars prophesied that the organization would not live long enough to see another decade. Looking back, NATO not only survived, but with ‘out of area’ operations, new strategic concepts and enlargement, the Alliance managed to adopt to new security challenges.
This time, the existential exercise got an abrupt end as Russia broke the European post-Cold War security order and annexed parts of a bordering European state. NATO members, meeting for the Wales summit in 2014 to define the future role of the alliance, now had to think again. Could NATO return to the continental barracks and once again focus its efforts on deterrence and European territorial defense?
A newly published edited volume on NATO is of great relevance to this topical debate. NATO’s Post-Cold War Politics – the Changing Provision of Security, edited by Sebastian Mayer, offers a refreshing take on NATO from an institutional perspective.
The main ambition, as outlined in the introduction, is to investigate the causes and consequences of NATO’s institutional changes. The focus on NATO as an institution – its rules, bureaucratic units, staff and practices – is a welcome contribution since the already scarce research on the alliance has largely overlooked such aspects. In the introduction, a framework of analysis is laid out based on the suggested concept of internationalization: ‘a process by which national procedures of planning, decision-making, or implementation of a policy area are linked with – or shift to – international organizations and thus enhance their significance’ (p. 3). The editor argues already in the introduction that NATO, since the end of the Cold War, has expanded its role and now performs in a more political role and carries out substantial and multifaceted operations including humanitarian assistance, peacekeeping and police training. The implication of this ever more multifaceted role is the incremental transfer of power to NATO’s international bureaucracy at the expense of member state influence (p. 19). Subsequent chapters, to varying degrees, set out to investigate how the suggested process of internationalization has affected the way in which security is provided for among NATO members. As examples, chapters delve into how NATO dealt with the challenges created by the end of bipolarity, the development and standing of the consensus rule within the alliance, the changing role and impact of the Secretary General role of the organization, and the way informal political forums and networks affect policy-making. In the final chapter, Mayer revisits the arguments and convincingly discusses how NATO as an international organization has been strengthened by mechanisms of internationalization. However, he also outlines the limits of this development in regards to member state power and contrasts it with ‘informalization’ – best exemplified by ad hoc coalitions of the willing that may or may not make use of the legitimacy-enhancing platform NATO offers.
The book offers a wide palette of insights into the inner workings of NATO and the various ways in which its bureaucratic life both strengthens and constrains the influence of its principals. The concept of internationalization, however, is not an obvious heuristic enabler of the analysis in the book. Firstly, it is not all clear why a very general – and until the rise of ‘globalization’ – widely used term for the increased international exposure is suited to capture a very particular form of institutional change. Indeed, would not the concept of institutionalization have captured the changes to international security cooperation that NATO members have experienced? Secondly, making one possible causal effect of the mechanism under study – that internationalization enhances the significance of international organizations – part of the definition is slightly problematic, especially since one of the aspects under scrutiny is the actual ability of institutional changes to affect security provision.
But the terminology aside, the empirical and theoretical analysis that comes out makes for a hugely relevant contribution. Its timing also allows for an interesting hypothesis. If the more multifaceted and less territory-bound tasks of post-Cold War NATO have increased the influence of its bureaucracy, will the current u-turn towards collective defense and focus on European territorial integrity revise this trend? Will we see ‘renationalization’ instead of internationalization with member states regaining control as the organization – at least in the short term – goes ‘back to basics’?
The book also holds relevance for current political debates. The costs and benefits of alliance membership are today debated among members as well as partners. Sovereignty costs, in particular, are too often discussed in overly simplistic terms: either they are negligible due to the unanimity rule or they are pervasive due to US dominance. The insights that this volume offers on the nuanced and multifaceted ways in which modern international security organizations translate state preferences into action would be much welcomed to the political discussion.