Too many conflict regions demonstrate the paltry, ineffective evolution of our international bodies, writes Tony Kinsella
AFGHANISTAN PUT a severe crimp in Britain's Raj, mortally wounded the Soviet Union, and may be Nato's undoing. An impressive record for this crossroads of cultures, a testament to the dogged fighting skills of its peoples, and a warning about structural over-reach.
Nato's primary operation today is the UN-mandated International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. The alliance's structural flaw is that it remains essentially a military organisation in a world where military responses can only offer parts of a solution.
The ISAF was created as a UN-mandated force in 2001 to assist the new Afghan authorities. Its initial role was the provision of security in and around Kabul while acting as midwife to the new Afghan national army and police force. The US-led anti-Taliban war continued, theoretically separately, in southern and eastern Afghanistan.
In 2006, the ISAF took over responsibility for the whole of Afghanistan, and now involves about 60,000 personnel from 26 Nato and 14 other countries, including Ireland. US, British, Canadian, Australian and Dutch forces continue an active counter-insurgency war in Afghanistan, while Germany and other contributors refuse to budge beyond their original assistance mandates.
Sarkozy's France painfully straddles both, and recriminations between the allies are never far below the surface.
Any "solution" will have to be a largely Afghan one and will have to include elements from the growing insurgency. It will also have to include major investments which demonstrably and quickly improve the lot of ordinary Afghans.
The most effective counter-insurgency operation possible can only hope to deliver a window of political and economic opportunity. Nato has yet to show itself capable of delivering effective counter-insurgency. Even if it did, it is ill-equipped to manage the political opportunity and incapable of delivering the economic one.
The alliance's growing insistence on war, and the slow creep of its gunships across the frontier into Pakistan, is a recipe for disaster. Disaster for Afghanistan, for Pakistan and for Nato.
Nato was founded by the North Atlantic Treaty of 1949. It was not, initially, the main defensive body for western Europe. The 1950 French plan for a European Defence Community, in which a rearmed Germany would be subsumed into a transnational European force, was scuppered by an unlikely alliance of sovereignty-defending Gaullists and pro-Soviet communists.
Nato stepped into the breach from 1952 onwards, when the organisation as we know it began to emerge. The first Nato secretary-general, Lord Ismay, pithily described its goals as being "to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down".
In 1952, with an ailing Josef Stalin still ruling the Kremlin, keeping the Russians out was a goal to which many in western Europe could easily subscribe. Since the first Soviet atomic bomb in 1949, the American nuclear umbrella had looked increasingly leaky. Maintaining significant US forces in Europe spared US presidents the dilemma of "sacrificing New York for Hamburg".
In the immediate aftermath of the second World War, "keeping the Germans down" was seen as an entirely reasonable security goal. Moscow naturally saw Nato as a threat, a theme relayed by communist parties and many on the left. While this was, and remains, an understandable Russian point of view, Nato is actually a defensive structure.
Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty commits each signatory state, in the event of an armed attack on one or more of them, to take "individually and in concert with the other parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force . . ."
Since Nato has no forces of its own, its response to any crisis depends on the national decisions of its members. Article 5 of the treaty has only once been invoked - by the other members of Nato to offer assistance to the USA following the September 11th attacks. Assistance which, it must be noted, the Bush administration largely declined.
Growing European integration since the founding of the EU, the dissolution of the USSR and the relative decline of US power combine to render Lord Ismay's goals irrelevant. Nato has been searching for a new role since the end of the cold war. There was a moment in the early 1990s when serious consideration was given to Russia joining the alliance, forming the kind of collective security structure visionaries such as Swedish prime minister Olof Palme had long advocated. A lack of vision in many capitals unfortunately allowed that moment to pass.
The collective role is now being, partially, carried out by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), born out of the 1970s' detente process. Ireland joined in 1973. It now includes 56 nations from Europe, the Caucasus, North America and Central Asia.
OSCE observers are our only neutral eyes in Georgia today, and a reinforcement of their role, probably with EU assistance, offers a ray of hope in the Caucasus. Russia has made it abundantly clear that it would see Georgian or Ukrainian membership of Nato as a direct threat to its own security. While some in Tbilisi and Kiev believe that Nato membership would counterbalance Russia pressures, it could also destabilise both countries.
There are those, either foolhardy or foolish, in Washington, London and elsewhere who view this as an opportunity to offer security guarantees which neither Nato nor its members are capable of honouring.
If Nato, like an old soldier, fades away in a dusty Afghan sunset, some will rejoice and others mourn. Many will feel more insecure.
The EU, the OSCE and the UN offer instruments for addressing our collective security challenges, but linger somewhere between underdeveloped and inadequate. We need urgently to strengthen them. The bad news for some in Ireland is that opting out is no longer a valid option.