La NATO e le partnership: un “serbatoio di coalizioni”?

The relation between the Atlantic Alliance and its partners has little directly to do with the role that the former can play in the war against transnational terrorism. However, it can exert a relevant influence on its political posture, especially affecting the consensus building process. Since mid-Nineties, the Atlantic Alliance has expanded its geographic scope. While enhancing its operational capabilities and allowing it to extend the reach of its “security umbrella”, this process has made more and more difficult the building of a “meaningful” consensus, i.e. a consensus that is not a mere juxtaposition of multiple national priorities. At the same time, it has deeply affected the Alliance’s structure, promoting the emergence of a sort of “star-shaped organization”, with a central core including the member countries connected in different ways to a loose network of partners, whose participation in NATO’s activities largely rests on the convergence of their mutual interests. This state of things somehow recalls the principle “the mission determines the coalition” that the US administration posed as a base of its security policy when Donald Rumsfeld was Secretary of Defence, in 2001-2006. In this perspective, the “star-shaped NATO” appears as a sort of toolbox, in which the assets of both members and partners can be assembled freely, according to the needs of the different missions and the interest that the subjects have in discharging them. A potentially dangerous situation if – as in present-day fragmented Alliance – no subject can play a balancing role and provide the political guidance that the United States have provided until very recent times.