Why and How NATO Should Adapt to a New Mediterranean Security Environment

Terrorist Threats and Spillovers

On November 13, 2015, a series of coordinated terrorist attacks shook Paris. Within five days, France’s flagship Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier had left its home port in Toulon and sailed to the eastern Medi­ter­ranean to conduct airstrikes on ISIS. The carrier then passed through the Suez Canal to assume the command of the US task force in the Gulf (CTF-50) in counter-terror­ism operations. Around the same time, then-French Prime Minister Manuel Valls told parliament that France could be at risk of a chemical or biological terrorism attack. In fact, only one year earlier, a laptop cap­tured from a Tunisian ISIS operative in Syria revealed the terrorist group’s plans for using weapons of mass destruction, includ­ing efforts to weaponize bubonic plague.

Similar patterns – namely ISIS connections or time spent with ISIS fighters in the Middle East and North Africa – were pres­ent in the 2016 Brussels bombings, the 2016 Berlin Christmas market truck attack (the Tunisian perpetrator was linked to an ISIS cell in Libya), the 2016 Ataturk Airport attack in Istanbul, and the 2017 Istanbul nightclub shooting, among many others.

The one and only time that the Alliance invoked Article V – the collective defense clause of the North Atlantic Treaty – was in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, less than 24 hours after al-Qaeda targeted NATO territory. Thus, NATO had acknowledged that the fight against terrorism was one of its duties. In October 2001, NATO’s Stand­ing Naval Forces kicked off Operation Active Endeavour in the Mediterranean, a counter-terrorism effort conducted in compliance with Article V.

There is little room for optimism regarding the terrorism challenge in the south. Al‑Qaeda was largely the product of the Afghan jihad in the 1980s, which attracted 5,000 to 20,000 foreign fighters according to various estimates. The Syrian jihad, on the other hand, mobilized up to 40,000 foreign fighters, with some 7,000 of those being from NATO countries. In other words, the real fallout from the Syrian jihad re­mains to be seen in the coming decades.

Failed and fragile states have become vectors for terrorism in the Euro-Mediter­ranean region. Syria and Libya may never function as “states” in a Weberian sense again, as militancy could turn into “insti­tutionalized warlordism” in these countries.

NATO should grasp this trend in a geo­politically holistic way. Due to global demo­graphic trends, intrastate conflicts increasingly tend to take place in urbanized areas. Coupled with the growing lethality of mod­ern firepower, overwhelming migrant in­fluxes will accompany each urban warfare case from now on.

Terrorist activity across the southern Medi­terranean is complex in nature. Tuni­sia has a problematic home-grown mili­tancy issue, and this jihadist potential has found a safe haven in Libya amidst the collapse of the Libyan state. Open-source intelligence suggests that training camps established in Libya were used to dispatch Tunisian foreign fighters to Syria. The mili­tancy issue in Libya also threatens Egypt’s Western Desert area and overstretches Egyp­tian security forces between the Libyan frontier and Sinai. In many cases, one can­not separate smuggling, terrorism, and violent extremism from each other in the southern Mediterranean. The Algerian national Mokhtar Belmokhtar, for example, is a key figure in al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb as well as an infamous champion of organized crime. He is known as “Mr Marl­boro” or “the King of Marlboros” due to his cigarette smuggling activ­ities.

Overall, NATO does not have an easy way out. Much like its close cooperation with eastern flank partners, for example Finland and Sweden, the Alliance needs to boost its engagement in the southern flank with its Mediterranean Dialogue partners. In fact, the Mediterranean Dialogue is a product of NATO’s post-Cold War efforts. Since its establishment in 1994, the regional security environment has gained completely differ­ent characteristics. At present, the Alliance needs to initiate tailor-made assistance pro­grams for border security, security sector reform, intelligence cooperation with NATO structures, humanitarian challenges, and counter-terrorism.

Furthermore, although the establishment of the NATO Strategic Direction South Hub (2017) is a milestone for the Alliance, the hub can only make a meaningful differ­ence if it can ensure the Mediterranean Dia­logue partners’ permanent engagements. Otherwise, this important effort might not be embraced by its target audience.

State-led Challenge: Russia as NATO’s Southern Neighbor

As these risks from non-state actors persist, NATO has a new and ambitious neighbor in the Mediterranean.

The intervention in Syria has fostered the Russian military’s combat readiness. Accord­ing to the Russian Ministry of Defense, more than 63,000 military per­sonnel – including 434 generals and more than 26,000 officers – served in Syria. This includes about 90 percent of the combat pilots who have flown missions over the Syrian skies and 60 percent of the strategic and long-range aviation crews who have taken part in operations. Furthermore, Russia has tested more than 200 weapon systems through its campaign. The Syrian expedition has led to fundamental im­prove­ments in the concept of operations. Long-range precision-strike capabilities provided by Kalibr land-attack cruise missiles remain the most notable achievement in this respect. In October 2015, the Russian Navy first used these high-end missiles from warships in the Caspian Sea. The missiles reportedly traveled some 1,800 km before hitting their targets in Syria. The strikes marked a significant success for Moscow. In December 2015 and March 2017, Russian Navy submarines also launched Kalibr mis­siles from the Mediterranean. Thus, NATO should be worried about the strategic ramifications of this trend. The Russian Navy can now use its relatively small vessels for long-range conventional strikes and commission its submarines to attack strategic targets deep in enemy territory without passing the nuclear threshold.

Finally, Moscow has turned the Hmei­mim Air Base into a “promotion path.” Most of the current or recent military district commanders have previously headed the Russian Group of Forces in Syria. More interestingly, General Sergei Suro­vikin – another former top commander of the Russian contingent – now serves as chief of the Russian Aerospace Forces, marking the first example in this regard, as General Surovikin is not an aviator. Likewise, General Andrey Kartapolov, now in charge of the newly established Political-Military Directorate (an in­formation warfare command), also made his way there through promotions at Hmeimim.

In brief, Moscow’s military gains in the Syrian expedition inevitably affect the over­all NATO–Russia balance.

NATO Needs a Stronger Mediterranean Posture

As reflected in the 2016 Warsaw Summit communiqué, the allied leaders have agreed on “projecting stability” on the south­ern flank. This strategy was based on the assess­ment that NATO members can be secure if their neighborhoods are stable. The Alli­ance learned this the hard way through the post-Arab Spring developments. In 2017, NATO officially joined the anti-ISIS coali­tion and, in the same year, the NATO Stra­tegic Direction South Hub was inaugurated in Naples.

Another pillar of NATO’s Mediterranean engagement is Operation Sea Guardian (OSG). The Alliance directly refers to the importance of ensuring maritime security to protect today’s globalized economy when explaining the geopolitical grounds for the OSG. Indeed, nearly 65 percent of Western Europe’s oil and gas consumption passes through the Mediterranean. The OSG also supports the European Union’s Operation Sophia to tackle the migrant crisis and human trafficking.

A stronger allied posture in the Mediterranean should be founded on an efficient maritime approach. NATO’s current mari­time strategy, approved back in 2011, falls short of addressing the complex problems discussed hitherto. The Alliance needs a comprehensive maritime strategy document to confront both state-led political-military ambitions – including the anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) challenge – and troublesome human security threats.

Key Findings and Policy Recommendations

During the Cold War, NATO protected democracies of the Euro-Atlantic area from Soviet expansionism. After 9/11, the allies had to tackle the global terrorism threat. Now, the pressing situation in the Mediterranean necessitates ensuring maritime secu­rity, confronting human trafficking, pre­venting a foreign fighter influx into NATO territory, and counterbalancing Russia’s aspirations.

NATO can only address human security problems and the terrorism challenge through a renewed cooperation model with its partners, because these risks are ema­nating particularly from the southern neigh­borhood due to instability.

When it comes to tackling state-led chal­lenges, the reconstruction of Syria remains the primary leverage of the West. In this theater, the West should be capable of deterring Russia from turning the eastern Mediterranean into its backyard, but it should also be conditionally willing to cooperate with Moscow to ensure a stable Syria that does not produce and export instability anymore because it is “too fragile to ignore.” As the SWP paper of Professor Volker Perthes (SWP Comment 7/2019) emphasizes, Europe may not like the mili­tary outcome in Syria, but compared to Iran’s agenda, Russia’s post-war design is not totally incompatible with Western interests.

Although Russia – largely – won the war in Syria, it badly needs Western sup­port to win the peace. The World Bank estimates that the reconstruction of the civil war-torn country will cost between $200 billion and $350 billion. Russia can­not reconstruct housing and infrastructure in the absence of an international consensus. If left unaided, Moscow could obtain a naval base, an air base, a war-criminal Syrian President who can never be fully rehabilitated on the world stage, and local warlord profiteers. Thus, through reconstruction efforts, the West should encourage installing an internationally acceptable administration in Damascus so that dis­placed Syrians in Europe (as well as Turkey, which is the only NATO nation bordering Syria) will not turn into permanent refugees.

Moreover, the West should ensure Syria’s full compliance with the chemical disarma­ment program – with the further aim of crippling the suspected biological weapons infrastructure.

Although there are many sources of pes­simism in the Mediterranean for NATO as it marks its 70th anniversary, there is also hope. After all, the Alliance’s top trait is adaptation.