Web edition Vol. 47 - No. 4 Winter 1999 p. 12-15

Redefining NATO's mission in the Information Age Joseph S. Nye, Jr. Dean of the Kennedy School of Government, former US Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs (1994-95) Kosovo demonstrated how the "CNN effect" - the free flow of information and shortened news cycles - has a huge impact on public opinion, placing some items at the top of the public agenda that might otherwise warrant a lower priority. Political leaders in democratic countries are finding it harder than ever to maintain a coherent set of priorities on foreign policy issues and to determine what is in the national interest. Joseph Nye assesses how power is distributed in the world today, following the end of the Cold War and the onset of the Information Age, and suggests what criteria might help guide NATO policy in the new strategic environment of the 21st century. Kosovo is a dramatic example of a larger problem - how should NATO define its mission in the Information Age? During the Cold War, containment of Soviet power provided a North Star to guide NATO policy. NATO's official job was simple and well-defined: deter the Warsaw Pact from launching an invasion against member states. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, what should be the limits of NATO's mission? With the Kosovo crisis, NATO fired its first shots in anger in a region outside the Alliance's treaty area, on declared humanitarian grounds. What criteria might NATO draw on to guide policy on the threat, or use, of its force in the new strategic environment of the 21st century? The world in the Information Age We need first to have a clear sense of the distribution of power in the Information Age. Some people see the end of the bipolar world leaving multipolarity in its stead, but that is not a very good description of a world in which one country, the United States, is so much more powerful than all the others. On the other hand, unipolarity is not a very good description either, because it exaggerates the degree to which the United States is able to attain what it wants. Instead, power today is distributed like a three-dimensional chess game. The top military board is unipolar, with the United States far outstripping all other states. The middle economic board is multipolar, with the United States, Europe and Japan accounting for two thirds of world product. However, the bottom board of transnational relations that cross borders outside the control of governments has a more dispersed structure of power. This complexity makes policy-making more difficult. It means playing on several boards at the same time. Moreover, while it is important not to ignore the continuing importance of military force for some purposes, it is equally important not to be misled by military unipolarity into thinking that US power is greater than it is in other dimensions. The United States is a preponderant, but not dominant, power. Another distinction to keep in mind is that between "hard power" - a country's economic and military power to coerce - and "soft power", the ability to attract through cultural and ideological appeal (1). The Western democratic and humanitarian values that NATO was charged with defending in 1949 are significant sources of soft power. Both hard and soft power are vital but, in the Information Age, soft power is taking on more importance. Massive flows of cheap information have expanded the number of transnational channels of contacts across national borders. Global markets and non-governmental actors play a larger role. States are more easily pen-etrated and less like the classic realist model of solid billiard balls bouncing off each other. As a result, political leaders find it more difficult to maintain a coherent set of priorities in foreign policy issues and more difficult to articulate a single national interest. Different aspects of the Information Age cut in different directions in terms of NATO members' collective interests. On the one hand, a good case can be made that the information revolution will have long-term effects that benefit democracies. Democratic societies can create credible information because they are not threatened by it. Authoritarian states will have more trouble. Governments can limit their citizens' access to the Internet and global markets, but they will pay a high price if they do so. Singapore and China, for example, are currently wrestling with these problems. The "CNN effect" On the other hand, some aspects of the Information Age are less benign. The free flow of broadcast information in open societies has always had an impact on public opinion and the formulation of foreign policy, but now the flows have increased and shortened news cycles have reduced the time for deliberation. By focusing on certain conflicts and human rights problems, broadcasts pressure politicians to respond to some foreign problems and not others. The so-called "CNN effect" makes it harder to keep some items off the top of the public agenda that might otherwise warrant a lower priority. Now, with the added interactivity of activist groups on the Internet, it will be harder than ever for leaders in democracies to maintain a consistent agenda of priorities. Global parochialism Are communications technologies producing a single cosmopolitan village, or a jumble of global villages? The added interactivity of activist groups on the Internet is making it more difficult for democratic leaders to maintain a consistent set of policy priorities. (Reuters photo - 60Kb) Another problem is the effect of transnational information flows on the stability of national communities. The Canadian media guru, Marshall McLuhan, once prophesied that communications technologies would turn the world into a global village. Instead of a single cosmopolitan village, they may be producing a jumble of global villages, with all the parochial hatreds that the word "village" implies, but also with greater awareness of global inequalities. Global economic forces are disrupting traditional lifestyles, and the effects are to increase economic integration and communal disintegration at the same time. This is particularly true of weak states left in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet empire and the old European empires in Africa. Political entrepreneurs use inexpensive information channels to mobilise discontent, provoking the emergence of either sub-national tribal communities, repressive nationalism, or transnational ethnic and religious communities. This in turn leads to increased demands for self-determination, increased violence, and violation of human rights - all in the presence of television cameras and the Internet. The result is to put a difficult set of issues on the foreign policy agenda. Different classes of security risks William Perry and Ashton Carter have recently suggested a list of risks to US security, (2) which can also be profitably applied to NATO's strategic interests: The "A list" of threats on the scale that the Soviet Union presented to Western survival; The "B list" of imminent threats to Western interests (but not survival) such as was seen in the Gulf War; The "C list" of important contingencies that indirectly affect Western security, but do not directly threaten Western interests, such as the crises in Kosovo, Bosnia, Somalia, and Rwanda. It is striking how the "C list" has dominated the US foreign policy agenda and that a "C list" crisis precipitated NATO's first military action in its 50-year history. Carter and Perry speculate that this is because of the absence of "A list" threats since the end of the Cold War. But another reason is the ability of "C list" issues to dominate media attention in the Information Age. Dramatic visual portrays of immediate human conflict and suffering are far easier to convey to the public, than "A list" abstractions like the possibility of a "Weimar Russia" or the potential collapse of the international system of trade and investment. Yet, if these larger strategic issues were to turn out badly, they would have a far greater impact on the lives of most ordinary citizens of NATO countries. The "C list" A US soldier keeps guard from a defensive position in Mogadishu, Somalia, in June 1993. (Reuters photo - 49Kb) The reality of the Information Age is that "C list" issues in which human rights are a key factor, like Somalia, Bosnia and Kosovo, force themselves to the foreground because of their ability to command attention. But a human rights policy is not a strategic policy: it is an important part of foreign policy. During the Cold War, this often meant that the West tolerated human rights abuses by regimes that were crucial to balancing Soviet power - for example, in South Korea before its transition to democracy. But the greater attention being devoted to humanitarian concerns often diverts attention from "A list" strategic issues. Also, since moral arguments are used as trumps, and pictures are more powerful than words, arguments about trade-offs are often emotional and difficult. The problem with such cases is that the humanitarian interest that instigates the action often turns out to be a mile wide and an inch deep. For example, the American impulse to help starving Somalis (whose food supply was being interrupted by various warlords) vanished in the face of dead US soldiers being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. This is sometimes attributed to a popular reluctance in America to accept casualties. But that is too simple. Americans went into the Gulf War expecting some ten thousand casualties, but there was more at stake then than simply humanitarian issues. More properly expressed, Americans are reluctant to accept casualties when their only interests are unreciprocated humanitarian interests. Ironically, the reaction against cases such as Somalia may not only divert attention and limit willingness to support "A list" interests, but may also interfere with action in more serious humanitarian crises. One of the direct effects of the Somalia disaster was the failure of the United States, along with other countries, to support and reinforce the United Nations peacekeeping force in Rwanda that could have limited a true genocide in 1994. Lessons for the Alliance The official memorial site dedicated to the victims of genocide in the village of Ntarama, Rwanda, where 5,000 people were killed in April 1994. (Reuters photo - 90Kb) There are no easy answers for such cases. We could not simply turn off the television or unplug our computers, even if we wanted to. The "C list" cannot simply be ignored. But there are certain lessons to be drawn and prudently applied that may help integrate such issues into the wider strategy for advancing the national interest. First, there are many degrees of humanitarian concern and many degrees of intervention such as condemnation, sanctions targeted on individuals, broad sanctions, and various uses of force. NATO should save the use of force only for the more flagrant cases. Second, when the Alliance does use force, it is worth remembering some principles of "just war" doctrine: the cause should be just in the eyes of others; we should be discriminating in our choice of means to avoid unduly punishing the innocent; our means must be proportional to our ends; and, there should be a high probability (rather than wishful thinking) of good consequences. Third, NATO countries should generally avoid the use of force, except in cases where our humanitarian interests are reinforced by the existence of other strong strategic interests. This was the case in the Gulf War, where the West was concerned not only with the aggression against Kuwait, but also with energy supplies and regional allies. Fourth, public reaction to humanitarian crises may differ from one democracy to the other. Therefore, NATO should welcome the idea of combined joint task forces that would be separable, but not separate, from the Alliance and encourage a greater European willingness and ability to take the lead on such issues. Fifth, we should be clearer in our definition of, and responses to, genuine cases of genocide. The West has a real humanitarian interest in not letting another Holocaust occur. Yet, we did just that in Rwanda in 1994. We need to do more to organise prevention and response to real cases of genocide. Unfortunately, the Genocide Convention is written so loosely and the term so abused for political purposes, that there is a danger of it becoming trivialised. But a strict historical interpretation based on the precedents of the Holocaust and Rwanda in 1994 can help to avoid such pitfalls. Lastly, NATO countries should be very wary about intervening in civil wars over self-determination. The principle is dangerously ambiguous; atrocities are often committed on both sides ("reciprocal genocide"); and the precedents can have disastrous consequences. None of these criteria solve the problem of how to determine NATO's mission in the Information Age. But better consequences will flow from a starting point in which the Alliance's values are related to its power, and in which any humanitarian mission is rationally pursued within prudent limits. Footnotes: Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power (New York Basic Books, 1990, chapter 2). Ashton B. Carter and William J. Perry, “Preventive Defense: A New Security Strategy for America (Washington, D.C., Brookings Institution Press, 1999), pp. 11-15.