NATO Will Likely Be Fine

That was my overall impression last week, at the end of my day at the alliance's Brussels headquarters. The Public Diplomacy Division treated our little delegation of scholars very well (my own tax Euros at work), most of all by introducing us to a series of significant and approachable NATO officials, from the Netherlands and elsewhere. But let's not forget the 1GB NATO flash drive that was waiting for each of us at the conference table, or the NATO ballpoint that doubles as a flasher--in NATO-blue light. I'm not quite sure what I was really expecting from the visit, even though we received the agenda ahead of time. The chance for boilerplate presentations and stock answers is always there, after all. However, in the course of the visit I was increasingly pleased with the level of discussion, even though on no issue (be they the future orientation of the alliance, relations with Russia, or the new strategic concept) did anyone have clear, unambiguous answers. But that, of course, was why it all worked, why the whole thing was encouraging: today's world, and this growing alliance of currently 28 different members, does not allow for many clear, unambiguous answers. You do need an overall idea of what's going on and where you'd like to go--a strategy; a process by which you can reach workable approaches to problems; and you have to have intelligent people--honest about the inevitable problems, conflicts, and failure--committed to make things work. If our visit is any guidance, the alliance does not lack the latter (perhaps the most important element); NATO's identity seems to embody a cumbersome but inevitable and generally productive consensus-seeking process; and by the end of the year there may well be a new strategic concept that does justice to both the way the alliance has been changing recently and an international environment that has changed significantly, not just since the end of the Cold War, but since the late 1990s. Downsides to the visit? Well, Powerpoint presentations (inevitable, we were told, when soldiers talk) take the life out of meetings, and it would have been nice also to meet an American, the U.S. being in a league of its own in NATO. Oh, and nobody remembered my contribution from the early 1980s to our victory in the Cold War. That sucked.