NATO's new mission

The forthcoming NATO Summit in Prague offers NATO an opportunity to review its role in international security. Any decisions taken should have one objective in mind: to ensure that NATO remains a relevant security arrangement in times when the security climate is changing at a very rapid pace.

Membership invitations to seven central and eastern European countries to join NATO will allow the transatlantic Alliance to project stability throughout the European continent and thus formally heal Cold War divisions. At the Prague Summit NATO's invitation to Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia to join the Alliance will extend NATO's political and military influence to the entire European continent.

It will thus force NATO to develop further co-operative ties with three main actors on its new eastern flank - Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. NATO's aim should be to project stability in this area of the world by contributing directly to initiatives that seek to promote regional stability.

The NATO summit also offers an excellent opportunity for the Allies to review the state of transatlantic relations and to try and define the contours of a new security agenda. The task at hand is to define a common transatlantic security agenda that seeks to find ways of maximising existing security assets.

NATO's main objective must be to avoid the current transatlantic perceptual security gap that has manifested itself of late in the debate on Iraq from developing into a policy gap.

A concerted effort must also be made to address the capability gap that exists between Europe and the United States in the military sector. It is clear that the Europeans are not prepared to cough up the necessary budgets to create their own military forces.

They should therefore agree on a mission statement that envisages them making use of American military hardware and only seek to develop military programmes that can be financed by current budget estimates.

It is also in NATO's interest to cast a strategic eye south. NATO should immediately seek to become more engaged in Mediterranean affairs by outlining a new Mediterranean policy that aims at projecting stability across the Mediterranean. Numerous factors are already contributing to an increase in instability in this part of the world.

They include the collapse of the Middle East process, the increase of terrorist activities in the region, the proliferation of all types of weapons and the ever-increasing north-south economic divide.

An increase of NATO's attention towards the Mediterranean should not primarily seek to increase its military capability in the area. NATO's main focus should rather be to strengthen its political credentials in the Mediterranean. Its military capability should only be on stand-by to back international diplomacy in places like the Middle East, and not to precede diplomatic overtures.

If the US and Europe do not want any eventual military operation in Iraq to further fuel the already negative Arab World perception of the West they must couple an attack against Iraq with a renewed effort to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This time around the transatlantic community of states must be prepared to make a long-term commitment of a few decades to the Middle East region to ensure that any permanent peace settlement is respected. Committing NATO as a guarantor of such a peace settlement will immediately boost the credibility of any renewed peace process and eventual settlement. It will also highlight the essential role that NATO continues to play in contemporary international relations.

Having won the Cold War, NATO must avoid becoming a victim of its own success. If NATO does not become more engaged in security challenges in regions adjacent to Europe, it will quickly become a post-Cold War security dinosaur. A renewed effort to address security risks in the Mediterranean is a good place to start. This should be NATO's post-Prague mission.

Dr Calleya is an international relations analyst.