never before the NATO it had reunited its leaders with an active war on European soil waged by Russia. And this will be perhaps the main characteristic that marks the spirit of the Atlantic Alliance summit which is being held this week in Madrid. The largest political-military organization on the planet, with more than 1,000 million citizens in its territory, it is preparing to establish its new vision of the world without reaching out to Moscow, as it did 12 years ago, in the elaboration of a Lisbon Strategic Concept that is about to expire.
With the war raging in Ukraine, this week’s meeting will have a clear European profile. It could not be less in an EU in which 90% of its inhabitants live in a country of the Alliance, and which is preparing to bastion Ukraine as a defense system comparable to Western weapons: kyiv will say goodbye to the old Russian T-cars, and adapt to modern European tanks. The remote participation of the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky at the summit will be one of its central moments, and the future of the country, with general winter and marshal crisis waitinga great cause for concern.
Ukraine will not be the only great special guest at the summit. Neither is Sweden and Finland knocking at the door. Four NATO partner countries (partners, not allies, which is the title given to members) will also have seats: Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. It is not only about states that participate in the general principles of democracy and rule of law of which the alliance boasts: it is that in the antipodes of the North Atlantic they know very well another country that will be a great reason for discussion: China.
The Asia-Pacific quartet is another of NATO’s global strategic strongholds, and more so since, overcome the stage of “brain death” diagnosed by French President Emmanuel Macron, has woken up with a very proactive perception of the dangers that lie in wait for the West. The United States calls them “authoritarian countries.” The Madrid political communiqué may not use those terms, but the Strategic Concept that comes out of the summit will make it appear as if they had.
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This new Western strategy manual will also look towards Africa and the Middle East and will try to build the foundations for Western energy and technological autonomy that, at least in the military, emerges after closely checking the risks of globalization for vital supplies. from Europe and North America.
These are five main keys that will be discussed in Madrid.
New strategic concept
Depending on the source consulted, the advisors of 30 delegations from allied countries have already broken six, seven or eight drafts of the Strategic Concept of the alliance. That doctrinal document on geostrategy and principles of action will be the main document produced by the meeting of heads of government in Madrid, and will replace the one prepared in Lisbon in 2010.
The Spanish ambassador to NATO has said Miguel Fernandez-Palacios that “in NATO the Treaty is the bible, and the Strategic Concept is the catechism”. This manual, a document that usually extends between 12 and 15 pages, comes to have a life of about ten years, although in 2001 the fall of the twin towers in new york came to prove dramatically that any strategic approach can end up being relative.
The Madrid Strategic Concept will differ greatly from the Lisbon Strategic Concept in its approach to Russia. Twelve years ago, Moscow was the subject of a partnership with the alliance, in a northern planetary area of security and stability. He will now look at Russia in the lowest moment of its relationship with the West since the missile crisis of 1962. In addition, the document will interpret – yes, very carefully – the challenge posed by the chinese expansionand will place great emphasis on various forms of resilience of each ally: political, civil, energetic, cyber and technological. The Madrid document will teach much more the nuclear fang of the alliance.
There was a time, before 2014, when NATO and Russia did joint security maintenance operations; for example, in Syria. Even after Russia consummated its annexation of Crimea in 2014, NATO maintained a line of communication. Now it is broken, and the Madrid Strategy Document will be unequivocal in describing Russia as a threat in pure cold war parlance… with one difference: NATO cannot trust Moscow, but it does expect at least a predictable Russia.
Acknowledging, but not encouraging, Russia’s nuclear rhetoric, the alliance will oil its warheads, even though there will be no more missiles in Europe. And Madrid will predictably approve a greater deployment of Western troops on the eastern flank of NATO. Following the invasion of Crimea, the alliance set up four multinational battalions for the East (in the three Baltic republics and Poland). After the start of the invasion of Ukraine, the alliance doubled the number with battalions in Slovakia, Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria. Battalions are now expected to grow into 5,000-strong brigades, especially around the hot Kaliningrad belt. There will also be, as this newspaper reported, pre-assigned NATO army units for the defense of territories in the event of a Russian attack.
It will not be reflected in any statement that a hard core of allies is already leaning towards a negotiated solution (ceasefire, demilitarized zone…) for the war in Ukraine. It is not convenient for the alliance to reach December in this situation; Again, General Winter and hydrocarbons, his ally, play in favor of Putin… if he puts up with the non-payment of the Russian debt.
NATO leaders have already spoken about China in other meetings, but the Madrid summit will be the first to mention the great Asian power as an object of observation and procedure in the Strategic Concept. The Alliance does not leave the Atlantic, but it does consider that, in its territory, China deploys a huge strategic expansion; soft power expansion, commercial, delicate, but that affects key infrastructures for the defense of the allied territory. Among them, 5G communications technology, essential for the internet of things… and weapons.
“China does not come here with the tank and the frigate, but to open a store on Gran Vía”explained last week the former director of the CNI Felix Sanz Roldan at the International Seminar on Security and Defense of the Association of European Journalists. The problem for NATO is that this store is for telephony, chips, rare minerals and infrastructure.
All the military sources consulted for forecasts of the summit agree that the alliance will make an appeal to China, this one more forceful, to participate in the global limitation of the proliferation of weapons. The soon-to-be-first power develops nuclear weapons without accepting the international control frameworks that bind the traditional owners of these weapons, nor informing the international community.
In the 73-year history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Never has this political-military alliance looked so much at its southern flank as in the Madrid summit. In fact, in the Government of Spain that is one of the details that they are polishing to show it off. The southern European countries, which are going to be important contributors to the new effort on the eastern flank, want in exchange for NATO to become strategically aware of the danger from the south.
And above all, it is a Spanish need for NATO to have a “360-degree vision.” “Our collective security it also requires that the Alliance pay more and more attention to the challenges of the southern strategic direction”, said King Felipe in his speech on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Spain’s entry into NATO.
Although it is a lot, the so-called “southern flank” is not only the Sahel, the largest incubator of Islamic terrorism of the planet since the end of the war in Syria. It is also a key Maghreb to contain this terrorism and to supply gas to Europe, an area in which Russia and China have greatly increased their presence and influence. It is foreseeable that the Strategic Concept will become more aware of the terrorist challenge, calling for an intelligence exchange; he will talk about the second in the chapter on resilience.
The political sources consulted in the organization of the summit believe that a commitment to support to the Sahel countries which are NATO partners, among them very especially Mauritania.
The hour of resilience
Since September 2001, the NATO countries have been becoming aware that their action cannot be limited to building a wall of cars, ships and rockets against Russia. Traditional warfare, even its most modern and supersonic nuclear version, is no longer conceivable on its own without invisible artillery: cyberattacks, disinformation and hybrid campaigns in the so-called “grey zone”, the one where you don’t pull the trigger but fight and deal heavy damage to the enemy. The unmarked “little green men” who took Crimea for Russia hardly fired.
As the Secretary General of NATO has been advancing; Jens Stoltenberg, the council of the Atlantic Alliance will settle in Madrid a firm commitment to encourage the European defense industrybut also in order not to lose a key element of hegemony: throughout its history, NATO has always maintained a technological advantage against its rivals, and that it could now lose to China.
Technological and weapons resilience will be a topic of conversation that will not be able to avoid references to those baptized as “disruptive technologies”. NATO staffs have been thinking for a long time about cybersecurity based on quantum computingin autonomous weapon systems and in biotechnologycomplying with the defensive approach that detects any threat, with any origin and from any axis.