GCC states don't need Nato centre

Reportedly, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) was studying the establishment of a new defence college for the Middle East in Rome, Italy.

According to General Raymond (Ray) Henault, the Canadian chairman of Nato's military committee, this proposal was a follow-up to the 2004 Nato summit held in Turkey that became known as the Nato Istanbul Cooperation Initiative (NICI).

It aimed to further equip Arab Gulf states with a sophisticated centre for strategic studies located in one of the six GCC countries. Will the GCC states be well served by such efforts?

Two years into the Cold War (1947-1991), the leading Western powers created Nato to prevent a Soviet military attack on Western Europe that mercifully never came.

In 1955, Moscow established the Warsaw Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance that became known as the Warsaw Pact, which collapsed six months after the demise of the Soviet Union in late 1990.

The Soviet Union's erstwhile allies, Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic, Hungary, Poland and Romania, all proud Warsaw Pact member-states, imploded as they embarked on modernising objectives that fostered freedom and prosperity.

Nato, for all practical purposes, lost its raison d'être, although an entrepreneurial spirit quickly substituted the nuclear "Soviet bear" with the Taliban, Hezbollah, Al Qaida and assorted marginalised Islamist groups as potential "targets of operation".

It is within this context that one must assess General Ray Henault's contemplated generosity to assist GCC states against emerging threats.

Nato was keen to place its newest centre in the Gulf, allegedly to strengthen existing ties, even though Jordan offered to host it. In fact, Brussels wished to shape a well-knit military network between its own members and GCC countries, to familiarise Nato troops with the region on an on-going basis, conduct joint military exercises with GCC partners, and coordinate equipment sales.

Henault was recently in Doha where he "witnessed the military exercise code-named Eagle Resolve 2007," and "participated in a conference on the possible areas of co-operation with the NICI".

According to press reports, he went out of his way to express gratitude to Major General Hamad Bin Ali Al Attiyah, the chief of staff of the Qatari Armed Forces, for the kind invitation.

Few doubt that important issues were discussed at the conference, including closer military ties that assessed areas of putative cooperation, perhaps modelled on Nato's evolving role in Afghanistan.

Yet it must be emphasised that Afghanistan remained a unique Nato experiment because the "International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) deployed in and around Kabul was sanctioned by the United Nations.

The last UN-authorised military intervention in the Gulf was the 1991 liberation of Kuwait from Iraqi occupation. As the 2003 intervention in Iraq illustrated, such an accord was extremely difficult to secure, and it be may be doubtful that the GCC countries perceived regional threats as Nato forces envisaged them.

Lesser tensions

Remarkably, and through its NICI arm, Nato aims to highlight, perhaps even define, GCC security concerns. Henault maintained that "the problems faced by the GCC countries and Nato were identical", even if GCC leaders went out of their way to lessen tensions.

Still, if Nato managed to persuade its six regional allies of the veracity that such claims implied, "the need to exchange information and expertise on weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and the possibility of terrorist attacks" would render closer training and coordination entirely understandable.

Nevertheless, and as is well known, Nato countries led by the United States and Britain enjoy special military and political relationships with GCC governments that will probably continue sine die.

It is also widely known that joint military training was a long established bilateral feature for all six member states dating back three decades or more.

Moreover, the GCC states purchased -and it is important to underline the word - hundreds of billions of dollars worth of sophisticated weapons from Nato countries to guarantee regional security.

What is different now, however, is Nato's desire to train GCC officers at the Military College in Rome and, in time, set the security agenda through a putative regional strategic studies centre. Towards that end, GCC leaders' alleged anxieties about Iran and of Tehran's eventual nuclear potential, are unnecessarily heightened to further set a discriminating security programme.

One can debate the merits of these endeavours but the GCC states may not necessarily be well served by such arrangements.

Although GCC governments are properly concerned by a variety of security issues, they may be better off with the creation of a few more universities, to equip their citizens with a different agenda: the knowledge to overcome the greatest security threat facing mankind, namely poverty.

With a few more centres of higher learning such as the American University of Sharjah or Sultan Qaboos University, to name just two of the better ones, GCC governments would provide their people with the critical institutions that will best empower young people over the long haul.

Another defence college or centre for strategic studies will have extremely limited utility and add little value.

Dr. Joseph A. Kechichian is a commentator and authorof several books on Gulf affairs.