NATO Should Be Changed – NATO 2.0: Life After Brain Death – News

Seldom has an interview provoked such high diplomatic waves as that of the British magazine “Economist” with French President Emmanuel Macron: In November last year, Macron had attested nothing less than “brain dead” to the NATO defense alliance.

A year later, proposals from a group of experts to breathe new life into NATO were presented. NATO foreign ministers have now discussed the expert report for the first time and a decision is not expected until 2021 at the earliest. One of the most sensational proposals is the relaxation of the principle of unanimity.

So far this has been the case with NATO at all levels. Each Member State has the right of veto not only at meetings of heads of state or government and ministers, but also at meetings with officials, diplomats and experts.

Only the so-called duty of assistance is binding on all 30 NATO countries: if one is attacked, the other must assist. But there is also no automatism, each state decides for its own military operations.

Lack of raison d’etre

Macron’s comparison of “brain death” stems from a less than original intuition: NATO may be militarily suitable, but it has lost its original raison d’etre. Because with the Soviet Union 40 years ago, even the enemy image of NATO vanished into thin air.

It is true that with Russia, China and Islamist terrorism there has been new enemy images. But there is no consensus among NATO states on their assessment.

All the more so as NATO states are increasingly confronting each other as parties to conflict. The dispute between the two NATO states, Greece and Turkey, over the production of natural gas in the Mediterranean has almost intensified. Many other NATO states have strongly condemned the Turkish invasion of Syria, as well as the acquisition of Russian weapons by Turkey.

But NATO could decide anyway – nothing. The principle of unanimity increasingly condemns NATO to do nothing.

Not revolutionary

The expert group therefore now proposes a softening of the principle of unanimity. It should continue to apply at the level of heads of state and government and ministers. But below that, at the level of generals, diplomats and experts, majority decisions should be possible in the future.

NATO states could no longer block such unpleasant proposals and decisions in advance and discreetly at a low level, but they should put all their political weight on the scale.

The reform would not be revolutionary, because NATO states would still have the veto right in the last resort. However, Turkey and Hungary have already spoken out against any softening of the principle of unanimity.

Sure to fail

With the reform, NATO would become a little more public, more lively. But not all Member States think this is a good thing. Many see NATO only as a kind of life insurance, a military defense pact that has so far also served its purpose with the principle of unanimity. Because never since NATO was founded has a member state been attacked militarily.

In early 2021, heads of state and government will address reform proposals at a NATO summit in Brussels. Relaxation of the unanimity principle is likely to fail due to the unanimity principle.

Sebastian Ramspeck

International correspondent, SRF

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Sebastian Ramspeck is an international correspondent for SRF. Previously he was a correspondent in Brussels and worked as a business journalist for the news magazine “10vor10”. Ramspeck studied international relations at the Graduate Institute in Geneva.