NATO and the Paris Attacks: Why There Will Not Be an Article V Response
Reporting on the aftermath of the Paris attacks has included a good bit of speculative (and not necessarily well-informed) commentary on whether or not NATO’s collective defense provision (Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty) would come into play. As of this writing, France has not requested that Article V be invoked in response to the attacks apparently directed and organized by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
Some commentaries assume that when a NATO ally is attacked the other allies are required to jump to their defense. In fact, Article V is carefully worded and limited, in no small part due to demands from the U.S. Congress protecting their prerogative to declare war. The passage therefore ensures that all allies are able to make their own sovereign decisions about how to respond to an attack on another ally. According to the text, if an “armed attack occurs … each [member state] … will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area” [emphasis added].
It also has been popular to suggest that the ally under attack — France in this case — can individually invoke Article V. In fact, while the ally under attack surely needs to suggest that it supports invocation, it is NATO’s North Atlantic Council (NAC) that must formally (and collaboratively) call for an Article V response. In other words, collective defense requires collective agreement.
In NATO’s long history, the allies have invoked Article V on just one occasion, and that came following the 9/11 attacks on the United States. Within 24 hours, the attack was addressed by the NAC. The council decided to invoke Article V only if it was determined that the attack was perpetrated by a foreign actor, and not an incidence of domestic terrorism. Many NATO member states have suffered from domestic terrorism over the years, but it does not fall under the collective defense provisions of the Treaty.
The Bush administration was initially uncertain whether or not it wanted NATO to get involved, but did not block consensus in the NAC. Later in September, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld made it clear that the United States did not want Article V to interfere with the U.S. response to the attacks, famously declaring that “the mission will determine the coalition.” NATO members did help monitor U.S. airspace and provided other supporting tasks while U.S. assets were directed toward Afghanistan. But no NATO mission directed at Afghanistan emerged until the Bush Administration decided it actually might need allied help there because of the resources they needed to divert to Iraq in 2003.
With that as background, it is interesting to speculate what considerations are currently influencing decisions in Paris concerning NATO’s potential role in France’s response to the ISIL attacks.
Even though France is a committed NATO member, it also remains protective of its national sovereignty (as well as of the facade of European unity on security issues). For example, that is why Paris preferred that the 2011 Libya operation not be taken over by NATO, but had to relent because it needed NATO (mainly American) support to complete the mission. The parallel here is that Paris cannot achieve its stated objective of destroying ISIL without a lot of help from other countries, starting with NATO allies — most notably the United States, the United Kingdom, and Turkey.
In this case, Paris may think (accurately) that a NATO mission growing out of the invocation of Article V would likely be dominated by the United States, particularly given that NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander (SACEUR) is, and always has been, American. French President Francois Hollande most certainly would like U.S. and allied support and cooperation but also would like to be seen as taking strong national action, not just as a member of a NATO operation. Paris has asked for European solidarity (which won’t produce any military assistance) and wants the United States and Russia to cooperate in the fight against ISIL.
The Russian angle may be the most difficult for the United States, and the alliance, to manage. Russia clearly could be helpful against ISIL but President Vladimir Putin has his own agenda, in both Europe and the Middle East. The northern NATO allies (particularly Poland and the Baltic states) remain primarily concerned about Russia’s agenda in Ukraine and beyond. They see Article V as much more directly relevant to the threats they perceive from Russia than the threat from ISIL. A discussion of Article V in the NAC today could in fact open the door for the northern NATO members to object to any cooperation with Moscow that would weaken the West’s defense against Russian aggression in their neighborhood. This potential complication and France’s national sovereignty concerns may mean that there will be no public consideration of Article V in NATO, even if it already is a topic of private discussion among the allies.
Stanley R. Sloan is a Visiting Scholar in Political Science at Middlebury College and a Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security at the Atlantic Council of the United States.
Photo credit: U.S. Mission to NATO
Supreme Allied Condista 
TAKE RAQQA BATTLEPLAN by Supreme Allied Condista
This is my political and military plan to put the squeeze on the so-called “Islamic State” / ISIS / ISIL / Daesh operational capital at Raqqa, Syria.
1) The Turkish army invades Syria with an armoured column west and south of the Euphrates and attacks Raqqa from the south, also blocking the east and west routes to Raqqa.
2) The Euphrates Volcano – a joint operations room for the Royava Kurds YPG / YPJ and the Free Syrian Army – cut off Raqqa to the north, bottling ISIS fighters up in Raqqa or in other bolt holes to the east and north of the Euphrates.
3) The Turks and / or the Euphrates Volcano YPG / YPJ / FSA take Raqqa, clearing it street to street, mopping up ISIS forces.
I appreciate that the Turks have not yet committed to invading Syria with their army and neither have the Euphrates Volcano, YPG / FSA asked for such Turkish intervention.
So I think it is really going to take NATO to suggest such a collaboration, because neither side would wish to admit needing the other to defeat ISIS, I expect.
Diplomacy is not my strong suit but if these forces can be persuaded diplomatically to work together then liberating Raqqa from ISIS should be straight-forward enough, militarily speaking.
NATO.
The NATO military alliance met recently at NATO Headquarters in Brussels, to consider a plea from Turkey for support.
TURKS
Well if I was leading NATO, Turkey would be getting some very forceful advice behind the scenes to quit treating the PKK the same as ISIS and encouragement to seek a cease-fire with the PKK and I’d be making that distinction clear publicly as I have already done.
Since NATO statements are only agreed unanimously then it is not surprising that Turkey would not agree to the following quoted statement for publication as “the view of NATO” but there is nothing to stop the NATO Secretary General making this statement in a personal leadership capacity, except for the fact that the Secretary General is not me, but someone else.
“Turkey has been quite wrong to try to paint ISIS and the PKK with the same brush, equally as “terrorists”, when the PKK have legitimate concerns about protecting Kurds from ISIS, although the PKK’s attack on Turkish police officers which broke the cease-fire was ill-advised and it is unsurprising that Turkey would label such attacks as “terrorists” and a unilateral ending of the cease-fire by the PKK. Ending the cease-fire was a bad move by the PKK because cease-fires are much easier to end than they are to resume.
So Turkey had a cease-fire with the PKK and rightly so but Turkey should never have had a cease-fire with ISIS, if indeed that’s what it had, it was quite wrong to have such a cease fire with ISIS.
Also, Turkey should be open minded about resuming a cease-fire with the PKK. Admittedly it takes two sides to make a cease-fire stick but at least a cease-fire should be possible with the PKK in the way it should not be possible with ISIS.
Otherwise, the suspicion will be that the Turkish state is being manipulated by those fascists who are not sincere about fighting ISIS but instead are using ISIS attacks as a pretext, conflating ISIS with anyone Kurdish or Turkish leftist, as a smokescreen for a far wider and undemocratic crackdown.”
KURDS
We are not doing the Kurds any favours by turning a blind eye to the PKK blunder providing Erdogan and the Turkish secret security fascists with the pretext for a crackdown they were likely trying to provoke – the July 22 killing by the PKK of 2 Turkish police officers.
Whatever the Kurds’ or PKK’s suspicions or personal convictions about Erdogan etc secretly sponsoring ISIS, it is not astute for the PKK to lash out at Turkish officers indiscriminately, because the case “Erdogan-backs-ISIS” has not been proven to NATO, to the US and allies or to the people of Turkey.
Least of all is that case made when Turkey provides the US with the use of airbases with which to attack ISIS.
Erdogan has played much too clever a game and has outwitted the PKK. They have fallen into his trap.
In future, Kurds should impress on the PKK the international political need to act with more political wisdom as prosecutors, proving their case of nefarious machinations of the secret security state of Turkey and its sponsorship of ISIS, while treating with respect those Turks, Americans, Europeans and others whom Erdogan’s secret plots have deceived.
ARM THE KURDS
We need to arm the Kurds, the Iraqi Kurdish army, the Peshmerga, and the Syrian Kurds militia, the YPG and the women’s protection units, the YPJ, defending their autonomous region of Rojava, in the north of Syria, alongside whom international volunteers, some from the United States, are fighting.
We need to arm all the Kurds, in Syria and Iraq, with heavy weapons, with better weapons, with the full range of equipment they need.
The other day, I read a report of a chemical attack on Kurdish fighters. So add gas-masks in their thousands to the Kurd’s equipment request list.
Congress has already budgeted for $350 million to fund the Kurds. That’ll make a huge difference for the better and I know the Kurds are so grateful for all they get.
Nevertheless more support for our friends fighting ISIL is going to be needed – I wish the US’s allies had given more – Germany has given more, other allies haven’t given as much as they might have.
I see a need for long-range wire-guided anti-tank missiles – such as the BGM-71 TOW, which, sadly, hasn’t been budgeted for. The anti-tank missiles which were given aren’t wire-guided and so the range is shorter but blowing up a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device from short range is extremely hazardous to say the least.
So the Kurds really like the longer-range wire-guided MILAN anti-tank missiles they get some of from the Germans. The US could supplement the Kurds supplies with hundreds of BGM-71 TOWs and they’d never be bothered by VBIEDs again!
I see the Kurds have a need for more M2 heavy machine guns – only 87 were budgeted for – because there is a world-war-1-style front line with the ISIS of 600 miles, the Kurds really need thousands of heavy machine guns!
The Kurds don’t have the heavy armour for mobile warfare so its often like trench warfare on the front lines and for that a great many heavy machine guns are essential.
The Kurdish militia in Syria, the YPG & women’s defense force, the YPJ, have been outstanding in the field versus the ISIS for the light arms they have. They’ve been helped a whole lot by the US air-strikes and I know they are so grateful for that air-support. The Syrian Kurdish fighters deserve our enthusiastic support with whatever equipment they can use.
They need sniper rifles, binoculars, night-sights, communication radios, unmanned aerial vehicles to watch enemy positions and movements and to direct mortar fire.
Even the Kurds AK47s are not up to modern standards for fighting on open terrain – fine for fighting in buildings and at close quarters – but the AK47 is not accurate at a distance so modern assault rifles with telescopic sights are needed.
Yes the US has generously budgeted to send just that sort of military aid, but we need to get it all out on the front lines as soon as possible and see what else is needed.
Supreme Allied Condista is a supporter of Condoleezza Rice.
1) Overall strategy – the West needs to apply the Bush Doctrine to all state-sponsors of terrorism – Saudi Arabia & other Gulf monarchies, Pakistan, Yemen, Egypt, Sudan, Iran and other dictator states – regime change them all.
2) Use stand off techniques more robustly – such as seizing control over state-sponsor-of-terrorism satellite-TV broadcasting (often supplied to Arab and North African state broadcasters by European satellite TV companies) and turning that propaganda weapon around and using it to promote democratic revolution through-out the region.
3) Impose the West as sole agents for all oil tanker export sales out of the Gulf. Seize all oil tankers exporting oil and sell the oil, depriving regimes of oil profits.
4) Now once you have an overall strategy in place, then you can look at specific military actions. Bombing prestige regime targets or threatening to if Al Baghdadi’s head is not on a spike within 48 hours.
5) Partition Iraq & Syria. Iraq looks like it has to go three ways – Shia, Sunni & Kurds. If the 3 new states all want to join up together in an Iraq confederacy or union of some kind of their own free will, that’s fine too.
6) Establish Western military bases in Iraq & Syria for training up the local armies. Better if we can supply them by sea or air rather than by long land routes which can have supply routes attacked by road side bombs and ambushes.
IMPLEMENTATION
So that’s my plan but whom to trust to carry it through?
Well I don’t trust anyone with my plan except myself, so I volunteer to be appointed NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe (or Deputy SACEUR) to carry my plan through to victory in short order.
For my political superior, I want to report to Condoleezza Rice.
So please appoint Condi as NATO Secretary General (I don’t know if she will accept this office or similar but NATO governments could ask her).
Anyway we need Condi, that’s clear. So long as I report through Condi to the NATO North Atlantic Council, no problem.