Beyond borders

By Ondřej Ditrych and Vít Střítecký

On Nov. 19 and 20, NATO member countries' heads of state and their guests (Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai) met in Lisbon to agree on a new strategic concept for the alliance, discuss burning political issues of the day - like the future of the campaign in Afghanistan - and to give a clearer shape to the trans-Atlantic ballistic missile-defense project and a "fresh start" in relations with Russia as the key outside power in the Euro-Atlantic space.

The summit brought no revolution. But neither was it insignificant. The importance of the new strategic concept in particular should not be underestimated. It is a strategic framework that envisions a modern defense of members' territories and populations rather than their external boundaries, one that is streamlined, rational and effective, as dictated both by the global security environment and member states' budgetary constraints.

The most burning political issue of the day was, of course, Afghanistan. No breakthrough was forthcoming, however. Instead, the original deadline for a significantly reduced presence, set by the Obama administration, was postponed until 2014 - as Harvard's Stephen Walt called it, a case of "kicking the can down the road."

This was the third top-level summit between NATO and Russia since 2002, when such summits were formalized. The result is an agreement on future cooperation in missile defense (though the systems are to remain separate), fairly unspecified increased cooperation on Afghanistan (where Russia seems to see NATO's unconvincing performance as a rising challenge to its own security), and the pledge for development of a Helicopter Maintenance Trust to make up for NATO's chronic lack of helicopter capability.

The alliance's open-door policy toward countries such as Georgia is not much of an issue anymore; since the Bucharest summit two years ago, this has been more lip service than anything else. But tensions remain, most notably over implementation of the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe arms-reduction treaty of 1990.

Long awaited, NATO's new strategic concept, the third since the Cold War's end, passed and was made public. Titled "Active Engagement, Modern Defense," it reconfirms the common defense pledge. The privileged role in the modernized defense and deterrence is to be played by a new ballistic missile-defense system. While not built from the scratch, but rather integrating existing systems, including the U.S. European Phased Adaptive Approach and expanding the existing architecture currently used for the protection of "combat theaters" to cover member states' territories, it will be the most significant alliance investment in the years to come.

Another major buildup in capacity is expected in the area of cyber security. On the other hand, expensive expeditionary missions are less emphasized than previously. Out-of-area conflict management remains a key role that NATO assigns itself in the new strategy document, but it gives it considerably less stress than the previous one (1999), which basically confirmed the existing practice developed in the 1990s. To be sure, within the concept of modern defense and deterrence, NATO aims to continue to reach out beyond its borders, but this time through intensified political partnerships.

At first reading, the new concept may look less like a groundbreaking strategic document and more like a nuance of NATO's operational framework reflecting current domestic political demand and the economic crisis. After all, the threats are defined similarly to the last concept (while, ironically, terrorism is given hardly more stress than it was before 9/11). And as critics were early to point out, the alliance again allegedly succumbed to the pressure of political correctness and failed to name its adversaries.

But looking deeper, one finds more. The "modern defense" in the title of the concept refers to a phenomenon going far beyond a general reference to progress or technological innovation. The concept instead reflects a shift from the understanding of security as territorial defense that was a constitutive element of the former concepts. Gone is the stress placed on defending the borders between inside and outside as it was implicitly contained in the formerly dominating concept of "out-of-area" missions. The current concept instead underscores territorial protection, focusing on the security of civilian population and critical infrastructure dispersed within the alliance boundaries.

This strategic shift has at least two major advantages. From the political point of view, it unburdens the political decision-making process as it makes it easier for politicians to argue in favor of investments aiming at protection of a variety of systems used daily by their states' populations. Essentially, the importance of this issue increases within the context of economic crisis. From the strategic point of view, the issue of protection allows for connection of the so far disparate agendas of, for example, civil protection, cyber security and missile defense. Their common ground lies in putting forward the notion of resilience of the societies in the Euro-Atlantic area no matter where the threats arise.

Following this line of reasoning, it is not surprising the current concept differs from the former strategic frameworks in its emphasis on the role of modern technologies. Although this could be seen as a typically 21st-century cliché, the agenda highlighted in the concept is clearly connected with rational, technologically driven responses.

As for the missing adversaries, it is important to read the concept not only as a strategic framework but also as a communication directed both inside and outside the alliance. On the inside, it legitimizes NATO's continued role in providing for security as protection. On the outside, it structures preferences and choices of actors that may bear threats to the alliance but without constraining them by defining them as adversaries, which would of course politically limit ways in which the alliance and its members could react. Less a consequence of one member state's obstinance and more a rational, cold-blooded strategic calculation, the concept creates a predictable environment where no one is reified as an adversary, but at the same time, no one should "doubt NATO's resolve" when threats emerge to the member states' security. The boundaries of the unacceptable are set clearly enough.

Finally, while the interpretation of the actual content of the concept is obviously essential, it is also very interesting to see which issues have been to an extent neglected in the new concept. As noted above, it has rationally re-conceptualized the catchword for the post-9/11 security: international terrorism. Instead of looking for an indefinable enemy, the concept focuses on the possible security impacts and increased resilience, precisely in line with the above-discussed shift from defense to protection. Also, the concept has very little to say about energy security, an issue rather dear to Czech foreign policy (and treated in this country mostly in its geopolitical dimension). Here, a too-general reference to "vital communication" serves to highlight the need for increased societal resilience instead of useless or outright counterproductive securitizing of external actors.

- The authors are both research fellows at the Center for International Security at the Institute of International Relations Prague.