The New Missions
PEACE SUPPORT OPERATIONS
41. Peacekeeping and peace support operations are
currently the most pressing and immediate challenges faced within
NATO, with the Alliance embarking on military intervention in
Kosovo. As well as having force structure repercussions, as discussed
above, such missions offer—
... a highly practical way of integrating former
Warsaw Treaty Organisation countries into NATO structures or restructuring
their armed forces so as to be compatible with NATO forces, and
this in itself is a major confidence and security building measure.
It holds particularly true for relations with Russia.[83]
Neither NATO's Implementation Force (IFOR) nor its
Stabilisation Force (SFOR) in Bosnia and Herzegovina[84]
involved exclusively NATO forces, but for a variety of political
reasons accommodated non-NATO (and in some cases even non-PfP
member) forces. These included not only Russia, for which special
command and information arrangements had to be devised in theatre,[85]
but also contingents from Egypt, Jordan, Malaysia and Morocco.
42. Yet, while NATO's available capacity for projecting
stability contains remarkable, but highly specialised weapons,
beyond its military capability its competences for peacekeeping
may be more limited. Our witnesses stressed the importance of
the organisation recognising the limitations of such operations—
Peacekeeping forces cannot pursue war-fighting goals,
... cannot deliver just solutions, ... cannot punish aggressors,
... cannot defend territory, ... cannot enforce passage of convoys
everywhere all the time, ... cannot stop ethnic cleansing.[86]
One might add that NATO is not a channel of economic
aid; it cannot generate large-scale employment, help restructure
non-defence industries, support democratisation through grants
to democratic political parties, send out social workers, or build
multi-ethnic communities. It cannot police all the villages of
Bosnia and Herzegovina, protect all returning refugees, or help
integrate other ethnic minorities throughout Eastern Europe. NATO
is not capable of making Eastern Europeans rich, of preventing
reactionary movements in Russia, or of converting peoples to democracy
whose culture has never experienced it in the past.
43. As the Secretary General of NATO has said, the
Alliance is not the only player in the peace support game. The
international community has to be involved in the Balkans in those
areas where NATO is not competent—
... without such a comprehensive approach we will
never get beyond treating the symptoms only. We must do more than
protect the peace ... We must create the conditions for reconstruction,
the climate for reconciliation ... That is why the entire Euro-Atlantic
community—its nations and institutions—must become
engaged ... In short, what the Balkans need is a 'Partnership
for Prosperity'.[87]
44. NATO can contribute to this comprehensive approach
by creating an environment of stability in which these other things
can happen. As our witnesses told us, what NATO can do by its
presence as a peace support force is—
... first of all alleviate suffering ... [and] ultimately
create the conditions in which there can be some peaceful settlement
of the problem.[88]
But, as the Secretary General stressed, this mission
only makes sense in a much wider political context; and it demands
feats of cooperation and coordination which will prove quite as
demanding, in their different way, as the requirements for waging
total war. General Sir Michael Rose told us that—
... the tragedy for Bosnia ... is that NATO did not
see it as part of its role in 1991 when it wrote its new strategic
guidelines to get involved in peace support operations beyond
the border of its member states. Today of course the situation
is very different ...[89]
We expect to see the new Strategic Concept clearly
outline NATO's competences for peace support operations and its
plans for cooperation with other organisations to pursue lasting
peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area.
We note the important work being done by NATO on Infrastructure,
Logistics and Civil Emergency Planning in working with humanitarian
aid agencies and relevant government agencies, and hope that this
work will be pursued further.
83 Evidence, not published Back
84 See
First Report, Session 1997-98, op cit Back
85 Q
240 Back
86 Q
189 Back
87 Speech
at the Royal United Services Institute, 9 March 1999 Back
88 Q
189 Back
89 Q
194 Back
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