What is NATO - What was NATO - What does the Future Hold for NATO?

Summary of Nils Andrén's article in RSAWSPJ no 2 2001.

The above questions come naturally to a reader of A Close-up of NATO, by Ulla Gudmundson (NATO i närbild, Studentlitteratur, Lund 2000), a senior Swedish diplomat. On the Swedish scene it is a timely book. The Swedes will in the near future have to make up their minds on a possible future Swedish membership of the EMU. Mrs Gudmundson makes a point of being understood as a non-participant in the current political idealization or bedevilling of this issue. She is knowledgeable and perspicacious, within the limits set by the official Swedish view.

Her purpose is to describe and analyse NATO as she has experienced it during her years with Partnership for Peace (PfP) and the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC). Her place of observation is the Swedish embassy in Brussels. An important point is that NATO is, primarily, a political organization. Its structure and activities have been formed and continue to be formed by the game of politics and the interests of its member states. The focus is on the last decade, after the end of the Cold War. The author also provides the necessary substantial historical background on the formation of NATO and of its operation during the Cold War.

An important chapter deals with the relations and mutual roles of NATO and the EU. The author quotes a letter from her father: "If I were an American, I would be very upset by the lack of gratitude on the part of Western Europe." A valid point, and not only for the Swedes, is the necessity to seriously consider the playing down of too far-reaching European ambitions. "It was no longer a matter of building a European collective defence in competition with NATO but an ability of crisis management supplementing that of NATO." NATO will remain necessary for the more demanding tasks of this kind.

The final chapter deals with unaligned Sweden and the new NATO - basically a story of successful cooperation. It could perhaps be interpreted as a cautions intimation that membership, after all, need not be dangerous for Sweden’s future liberty of action.