NATO must focus on core mission with Russia remaining relevant, says Heritage scholar

To ensure that the Russian threat remains front and center to the alliance’s core principle of preserving its members’ territorial integrity, NATO must realize it can’t do everything, the report argues. From extraterritorial forays like the NATO training mission in Afghanistan to global counterterrorism, Luke Coffey, co-author of the report, told the Washington Examiner that NATO’s scope must be renewed and narrowed.

“What is needed is a full review of NATO and the future of NATO,” said Coffey, noting the litany of global events that have taken place since NATO’s 2010 Strategic Concept.

Those include the Arab Spring, the fall of Libya and the Syrian civil war, the Russian invasion of Crimea, the militarization of the Arctic, and the coronavirus pandemic, to name a few.

“It’s woefully out of date, and that’s why I think that NATO needs a new strategic concept that can guide the alliance to deal with the right challenges of the 21st century,” he said.

In June, NATO kicked off a process called NATO 2030 to define the alliance’s objectives. The announcement is part of a “reflection period” that began in December.

“This is an opportunity to look at how our alliance will be 10 years from now,” a NATO official told the Washington Examiner.

“Russia continues its military activities unabated, ISIL and other terrorist groups are emboldened, and both state and nonstate actors promote disinformation and propaganda,” the official said.

The official added that China’s race for economic and technological supremacy and heavy military investment increases the competition over democratic values and way of life.

That broad goal is precisely the problem, says Coffey.

“NATO is sort of lacking that main strategic focus,” he said. “NATO doesn’t need to be everywhere in the world doing everything.”

Hybrid threats like terrorism and misinformation are best handled by individual states, he writes.

In the report, “NATO in the 21st Century,” with co-author Daniel Kochis of the Davis Institute, Coffey said exercises that address issues such as freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, fighting terrorism in the Sahel, or confronting hybrid threats that rely on law enforcement and legislation are simply beyond the scope of the alliance and will doom it to failure.

“NATO as an institution, as an intergovernmental security alliance, was designed to defend the territorial integrity of its member states,” he said. “Let’s put ships in the Black Sea first before putting ships in the South China Sea.”

NATO said its NATO 2030 effort is about making the alliance more global.

“Making NATO a more global alliance means working even more closely with partners — countries and organizations alike — to defend the rules-based international order and our core values in a world of increased competition,” the NATO official said.

Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg named a group of five men and five women to provide ideas. The group will incorporate feedback from civil society, the private sector, and youth worldwide and make recommendations at the 2021 NATO heads of state meeting.

A new ‘imperial Russia’

Coffey pointed a finger squarely at Russia as the threat to NATO that still needs urgent attention.

“What we see today is an imperial Russia, not a Soviet Russia,” said Coffey, noting how past Soviet doctrine called for spreading communist ideology.

“In imperial times before the Soviet Union, during the time of the czar, it was about maximizing Russian influence throughout the area, whether it’s economic, military, security, trade, religious means. That was the main goal — to maximize the power of the Russian state.”

In his report, Coffey outlined a focus within the alliance’s borders to include the regions of the Baltics, the Balkans, and the Black Sea. The regions are precisely where Defense Secretary Mark Esper said rotational troops will increase following the drawdown of 12,000 troops from Germany announced in July.

But that is unlikely, Coffey said.

“We should not bolster the U.S. presence in the Baltic Sea or the Black Sea regions at the expense of the U.S. presence in Germany,” he said. “These rotational plans are aspirational right now, for the most part.”

Coffey argued that Russia’s “compatriot policy” to protect anyone with a connection to Russia is dangerous because it applies to people in NATO countries.

“It’s not necessarily an ethnic link,” he said. “That’s any person outside Russia’s borders that has some sort of historical, ethnic, linguistic, religious, cultural connection to Russia.”

Coffey said this does not rule out a low-level military intervention in the Baltics or exploiting ethnic Russians in any NATO country for Russia to achieve its ambitions.

“When Russia goes into a place like Crimea, which the international community has recognized as being part of Ukraine, Russia isn’t seeing itself as taking something that belongs to someone else,” he said. “Russia sees itself as taking something that actually belongs to it.”