NATO, Israel Draw Closer
Mideast Tumult Forces Rethinking
Of Alliances, but Hurdles Loom
February 14, 2006; Page A6
The idea is as logical as it is radical: The notion of Israeli membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is bubbling to the surface after recent events that have crystallized the threats to Israel and how common they are to the dangers confronting the U.S. and Europe.
Iran's accelerated race to develop nuclear weapons, the electoral triumph of Hamas -- the Palestinian group committed to destroying Israel -- and the violent reaction to Danish cartoons depicting Muhammad have galvanized those who want the West to respond firmly and visibly to an escalating threat from Islamist extremism.
The majority of NATO's 26 members still firmly opposes Israeli membership as too polarizing both within the organization and among Mideast players. Belgium and France, for example, are far from ready for territorial defense of Tel Aviv. For their part, Israeli leaders, after years of self-reliance, are divided on whether to trust any security guarantee other than their own -- particularly if it comes from Europeans, whom Israelis consider traditionally pro-Arab and historically anti-Semitic.
Yet membership or not, three recent developments are driving an ever-closer relationship between the world's mightiest and most successful security organization and the Mideast's most threatened and militarily capable country. By this spring, senior alliance officials say, Israel is likely to sign a historic Individual Cooperation Program with NATO encompassing commitments that include counterterrorist-intelligence gathering, military cooperation and civil-emergency planning.
What's driving the shift:
To paraphrase Willie Sutton on why he robbed banks -- "because that's where the money is" -- NATO is focusing increasingly on the Mideast because that's where the problems are. Alliance members increasingly see the threat as civilizational rather than territorial, and although Israeli membership isn't in the cards yet, they are warming to the idea of closer institutional ties with democratic partners outside of Europe such as Australia, Japan and Israel.
Under the radar, Israel has deepened its relationship with NATO over the past year after Jaap de Hoop Scheffer's first visit by a NATO secretary general to Israel last February. It participated in three military exercises in 2005 and has provided valuable intelligence to Operation Active Endeavor, the aim of which is to block delivery of missiles and weapons of mass destruction to terrorist-supporting countries such as Iran, Syria and North Korea. This year, Israel will increase its participation in the operation and place a liaison officer at NATO's naval headquarters in Naples, Italy.
The cartoon controversy has been a wake-up call to Europeans, who increasingly view the danger from Islamists to be much broader than an anti-U.S. phenomenon. Europeans are coming to see the threat as geographically closer to them than to the U.S. and domestically more dangerous because of extremists within their unintegrated minority populations.
The growing possibility of a showdown with Iran over its nuclear program also has sharpened the logic of Israeli membership. Israel viewed Iranian weapons as an existential threat even before President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's call to wipe Israel from the map. The West may have to provide its own military deterrent to Iranian nuclear capability if it expects Israel to constrain itself from pre-emptive strikes.
Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) has said the only thing worse than using the military option against Iran is a nuclear Iran. "By the same token," says Uzi Arad, an Israeli intelligence veteran, "The only thing worse than Israel being a member of NATO may be Israel not being a member of NATO" if one wants a self-confident Israel that acts as a stabilizer instead of an element of risk.
Mr. Arad now heads the Atlantic Forum for Israel, a private initiative which for almost two years has worked to create political constituencies in Europe and Israel for a closer relationship. Ronald Asmus, a senior State Department official during the Clinton administration who is credited by Mr. Arad with being an "intellectual godfather" of closer NATO-Israel links, says arguments against membership remind him of the initial opposition to NATO enlargement to former Soviet bloc states or the alliance assuming its first missions beyond Europe.
The fear then, as now, was that such steps would overextend the alliance and provoke an anti-Western backlash. Opponents to NATO change, driven often by a reluctance to take on new responsibilities, have been proven wrong. "The greater the threats to Israel's existence, the more we need to step up our commitment," says Mr. Asmus, now executive director of the Transatlantic Center of the German Marshall Fund in Brussels.
Yet it is the ideas of former Spanish Prime Minister Jos Maria Aznar that are gaining the most traction. Mr. Aznar in a recent interview mapped out a broader concept for NATO's future that begins with the idea that it must go global to tackle terror and thus take on partners with common interests and real capability. Aside from drawing in Japan, Australia and Israel as members, he also suggests special relationships with regional linchpins such as India.
In corporate lingo, these are "stretch goals" for an alliance that will balk for some time at the notion of non-European members. Yet support is growing for a "halfway house" relationship with global partners that builds off similar programs that led to the inclusion of former Soviet satellites.
"I am not against, but I think NATO isn't ready yet for Israeli membership," says Oded Eran, Israel's ambassador in Brussels, who has negotiated the closer ties. "I prefer to take the gradual path."
The global-partner approach isn't U.S. policy just yet, although people familiar with the matter say President Bush discussed the concept with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and U.S. Ambassador to NATO Victoria Nuland has brainstormed with colleagues about it.
"What we need to do," Ms. Nuland says, "is create a way for the 26 to have an ongoing political, operational and training relationship with the strong, democratic security providers in the world who share our values. The hope is to see NATO at the core of a global security community."
That's radical, logical and achievable.
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