Transatlantic Currents

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  Building Future Transatlantic Interoperability Around a Robust NATO Response Force

  Charles Barry

  Interoperability is as much or more about human teamwork than it is about compatible machines and processes. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) operational deployments, without respite since 1992,1 have spawned a nascent culture of multinational planning and operational teamwork among a host of militaries. This coalition culture is emerging in the same way as the joint operations culture has grown across the U.S. military since the watershed Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986.

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  Widening Gaps in U.S. and European Defense Capabilities and Cooperation

  Charles Barry and Hans Binnendijk

  This assessment is a synthesis of recent research projects at the National Defense University (NDU). These projects included consultations with think tanks, the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Allied Command Transformation, the International Staff and U.S. Mission, and U.S. Military Delegation at North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) headquarters, Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), and U.S. European Command (USEUCOM). Document analysis included review of the 2011 Capability Surveys from the NATO Defense Planning Process and Defense Intelligence Agency reports on allied capability projections. We conferred with U.S. Defense Attachés and Office of Defense Cooperation representatives in key European capitals. Finally, we have spoken with representatives of Allies in Washington, at NATO, and in capitals in order to understand as much as possible the factors bearing on their future capabilities decisions.

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  NATO Reassurance and Nuclear Reductions: Creating the Conditions

  Hans Binnendijk and Catherine McArdle Kelleher

  The first point in the preface of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Strategic Concept reconfirms the bonds between NATO nations to defend one another under Article 5. This was a response to the requirement by some Central and Eastern European (CEE) states that reassurance of Article 5 remains fully operative. The fourth point in the preface commits NATO to the goal of creating the conditions for a world free of nuclear weapons.1 This includes further reductions of U.S. nonstrategic nuclear weapons (NSNW) deployed in Europe. It also implies mutual reductions and closer cooperative relations with Russia

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  NATO and the ICC: Time for Cooperation?

  Ulf Haeussler

  Following the wars in the Balkans, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) established solid cooperation, whereby NATO supported ICTY in its quest to bring persons indicted for war crimes (PIFWCs) to justice. NATO Headquarters has provided substantial material used as evidence in various ICTY cases. NATO members have participated as witnesses to ICTY. Personnel of the NATO-led operations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as Kosovo, have detained and handed PIFWCs over to ICTY personnel who arrested them based on indictments issued by the tribunal’s prosecutor. The solid working relationship, while possibly temporarily challenged, was not put in serious jeopardy when the ICTY prosecutor investigated NATO’s conduct of operations during Operation Allied Force (also known as the Kosovo Air Campaign). The investigation did later clear NATO of the allegations of war crimes levied against it.

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  Protecting NATO’s Advantage in Space

  Gregory Schulte

  During the Cold War, space was the private reserve of the two superpowers. But American allies drew great benefits from U.S. investment in space. For the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), it was the “high frontier” from which we could support collective defense and project power with near impunity. Today, space is a shared domain in which we operate together with more and more countries—friends and allies as well as potential adversaries. I

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  NATO and the Arab Spring

  Isabelle François

  The public debate that surrounded the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)–led operation in Libya gave an impression of an Alliance in trouble. There is, however, a good story to tell. The United States, as the host of the May 2012 NATO Summit in Chicago, may wish to present the case for a new type of operation and call for a strategy review on Libya in order to develop a balanced approach to Allies’ possible contributions to stability in North Africa and the Gulf region.

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  Whither the Medvedev Initiative on European Security?

  Isabelle François

  From a Euro-Atlantic perspective, relations with Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union have proven challenging. On numerous occasions, the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have reached out to the Russian Federation in an attempt to build a cooperative security framework. While inroads have been made over the years, the overall relationship has been hit or miss, leading to regular resets of bilateral U.S.-Russia relations and periodic efforts by NATO to reengineer its relationship with Russia. In 2011, in the wake of an upswing following the U.S.-Russia reset policy launched by the Barack Obama administration and the positive spin on NATO-Russia relations in the aftermath of the 2010 Lisbon Summit, experts and decisionmakers already wonder whether the reset will continue to move forward or whether relations with Russia will again run aground on longstanding differences. For most of the successful results in the past two decades, there have been downturns. In reality, the Euro-Atlantic community and Russia have collectively failed to create a European security framework addressing shared challenges through common responses for the post–Cold War era. Some ambitious attempts have raised hopes, but none has led to building the community of trust needed to lay the past to rest once and for all. T