why NATO shouldn’t disregard the Middle East

This next week, the leaders of the 31 NATO members will gather in Vilnius, Lithuania, for the summit of the alliance in 2023. The conference takes place at a crucial juncture for transatlantic security. The invasion of Ukraine by Russia has been going on for well over a year, and the counteroffensive has only lately started. The choices made during the summit may affect the general stability of the transatlantic area and beyond in the long run.

Without a question, Ukraine will be the summit’s main emphasis. Expect two significant topics to be covered in this context: Ukraine’s sustained military backing and prospective NATO membership. A future membership in the alliance was pledged to Ukraine at the NATO summit in Bucharest 15 years ago. Little progress has been achieved throughout the years, mostly as a result of the resistance of certain nations like Germany and France. In hindsight, one of the things that likely persuaded Russia to invade was putting Ukraine in this geopolitical limbo. Russia would have been unlikely to strike if Ukraine had been a member of NATO.

Nobody should anticipate that Ukraine will get an invitation to join NATO during the conference. To ask any nation to join the alliance while it is engaged in hostilities would need approval from all 31 members, which is impossible to do. Instead, anticipate that NATO will create a plan that eventually results in Ukraine joining. It would be interesting to see whether NATO can provide Kyiv a membership plan that fulfills its rather high expectations given that Kyiv wants to join NATO right now.

The continued and long-term military assistance for Ukraine is another topic that NATO members will consider during the summit. NATO nations have increased the quantity and variety of weaponry available for Ukraine’s self-defense during the previous 18 months. It was discussed whether to supply Ukraine anti-tank weaponry in February 2022. Currently, some of the most cutting-edge tanks in the world are being sent to Ukraine by NATO allies. Fighter planes and long-range missiles, on the other hand, have proven to be more elusive for Kiev. It’s possible that NATO countries will bring up the potential of giving Ukraine these more modern weaponry during the conference.

At the summit, the topic of military budget will also come up. A persistent problem for the alliance is the paucity of defense investment in Europe. NATO members agreed in 2006 that each should reach the goal of allocating 2% of their GDP to defense. However, very few members ever achieved this objective in the following years.

Following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, NATO gave its members until 2024 to abide by the agreement. Although NATO has seen an uptick in military expenditure each year since 2014, the overall picture is still dismal. Only seven members exceeded the 2 percent threshold for defense expenditure last year. A small number of other members may meet the criteria before the NATO summit in Washington, D.C., the following year, but the great majority won’t. The general state of the partnership will suffer as a result in the long run.
Observe Sweden as well. Finland and Sweden likewise filed NATO membership bids shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine last year. Both nations have maintained a policy of military nonalignment for centuries, refusing to join alliances like NATO. This was altered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Finland was officially accepted into the alliance in April. However, Turkiye’s reservations over the existence of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party in the nation have delayed Sweden’s application. In an effort to break this deadlock, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has been in frequent contact with the Swedish and Turkish presidents. Many people will be keeping an eye on the forthcoming conference to see whether Sweden joins the alliance.

Naturally, readers of Arab News will be curious about how much attention the Middle East and North Africa area will get during the next conference. Regrettably, it probably won’t. This shows how naive NATO is. NATO members share many of the same security worries as the nations of the MENA area, whether it is regional terrorism coming from extremist organizations or the possibility of nuclear proliferation in Iran. Furthermore, several of the nations in this area have already shown a readiness to work with NATO and have sent soldiers on operations under its leadership.

The alliance should be looking for ways to strengthen these connections. There have been some encouraging advances in the cooperation between NATO and the MENA region so far this year. A top Mauritania team visited NATO’s headquarters in Brussels only last week to discuss Sahelian security issues. A top NATO team visited Bahrain last month to talk about increasing military co-operation. Egypt, Tunisia, and Jordan are a few additional countries in the area that have received senior-level engagements this year.

There are a few simple things NATO can do to increase its participation in the MENA area, even if the alliance’s priority must remain the challenges in Eastern Europe. A NATO special envoy for the MENA region might be appointed, and the Mediterranean Dialogue and Istanbul Cooperation Initiative’s memberships may be aggressively expanded, among other actions.

NATO’s relationships with its Mediterranean partners—Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia—are based on the former, which was established in 1994. NATO’s ties with the Gulf nations are based on the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative, which was established in 2004. Only Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE accepted invitations to join the GCC, even though all six countries were eligible to do so.

The achievements of the Mediterranean Dialogue and the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative should be emphasized, and a meeting of both should take place at the heads of government level, at the summit in Washington next year that will commemorate the 75th anniversary of the creation of NATO.

The invasion of Ukraine by Russia last year altered European security in a level that had not been witnessed since the Second World War. NATO needs to increase European security while also keeping an eye out for potential dangers beyond the continent. The next summit has the potential to bring in a new age of regional peace and security with the appropriate leadership inside NATO. in addition to the Middle East and North Africa, not simply for Europe.