"NATO - Coming to a war near you..."

NATO Countries in addition to the U.S.

Though it may be suspected they did not appreciate it at the time, heads of state attending the November 2002 NATO Summit in Prague effectively signed up to the Alliance's world - and those of their defense forces - being turned upside down. No longer is the Alliance to wait for the threat to come to it - now, in the words of NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson, its aim will be to "deal with threats from wherever they may come".

This transformation has many implications, but for NATO nations' defense forces it means that all of them, not just some, will have to be prepared to 'go places and do things' on an unrestricted, global canvas. Militarily, these forces will have to be able to fulfill a range of new tasks in conjunction with a range of non-traditional allies or partners. As a result of the summit, parent national administrations have not only accepted that their forces should in principle become involved in global missions, but also that in practice they should be equipped and most particularly should train accordingly.

This may have been universally assented to in Prague, but in numerous farewell addresses before his successor took over at the end of 2003, Lord Robertson felt driven to highlight the political and materiel changes still required of individual nations for their professed commitments to progress beyond mere lip service.

Typically, at the Welt am Sonntag forum in Germany in early November 2003, he pointedly told delegates, "The non-US NATO countries have lots of soldiers, but far too few of them can be deployed." Putting it more bluntly, he said, "The overwhelming part of [these] 1.4 million soldiers are useless for the kind of missions we are mounting today.

"The reasons are many and various. Some countries have legal or constitutional constraints on where they are able to deploy their forces, especially if they are conscripts. Other countries do not have the capabilities required to deploy them abroad and supply them where they are. Others again say they cannot afford to do so. Or their governments lack the political leadership to argue the case for doing so with parliaments and publics.

"The harsh unavoidable truth is that if our governments are to continue to take on political commitments to do more militarily, in Afghanistan or in Africa or anywhere else, then they must improve the usability of their armed forces."

Aside from its adoption of a global role, the Prague outcomes included an agreement that NATO should be further enlarged, another seven nations (Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia) joining the existing 19 with effect from May 2004; that it should have a role in combating terrorism and weapons of mass destruction; and that it should 'transform'. The justifications were to ensure the Alliance retained its relevance in a fast-moving world; to enable it to handle new technologies and threats; and to rectify capability gaps (mainly those between the US and the other NATO partners).