International Regional
Security Organizations
Dr Khalil Hussein
Professor at faculty of law at Lebanese university
Director of studies at Lebanese Parliament
A dominant feature of post-World War II international relations has been the increase in number and activities of groupings of states that share common values or common historical and cultural experiences and come together for the purpose of improving their economic and social well-being or enhancing their national security. Although membership may not be confined to contiguous states, the fact that each organization focuses on a particular geographic area suggests why these groupings are designated "regional" (in contrast to "global" organizations of which the United Nations is the principal contemporary example).
Only those international regional organizations through which states seek security concern us here. Compelled by the contemporary scientific and technological revolution to acknowledge interdependence, states on every continent endeavor collectively to deter hostile threats to national existence and prepare collectively to respond to hostile acts should they occur. Most of the world is now included in a network of security arrangements, the names of which usually indicate the regions of principal concern: the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Western European Union (WEU), the Warsaw Pact arrangement in Eastern Europe, the Organization of American States (OAS), the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), the Arab League, the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO), whose name suggests the fact of some overlap in membership with NATO on the north and SEATO on the southeast. Youngest is the Organization of African Unity (OAU), numbering 32 members, whose charter was signed on May 25, 1963.
Establishment, Membership, Headquarters.
Oldest of the regional security organizations is the Arab League, established by a pact initialed on Mar. 22, 1945, by six states (Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Syria). Subsequent adherents (Yemen, Libya, Sudan, Morocco, Tunisia, Kuwait, Algeria) have extended the area of league activities into North Africa and in the Arabian Peninsula. Headquarters remain in Cairo. Failure to prevent establishment of Israel in 1946 indicated need for more effective coordination of Arab military efforts and resulted in signature on June 17, 1950, of a Joint Defense and Economic Cooperation Treaty, the only developed collective defense arrangement in which no major power participates. This will also be true of OAU defense activities now in the planning stage at Addis Ababa headquarters.
The United States and United Kingdom have, however, become involved in the security of an area bordering on the Arab states, not only through cooperation with Turkey in NATO and with Pakistan in SEATO, but also through CENTO, which involves these four states and Iran. The former Baghdad Pact organization, this group changed its name and headquarters (now in Ankara) when, after the 1958 revolution, Iraq withdrew on Mar. 24, 1959, from the founding agreement, concluded on Feb. 14, 1955. The United States participates as an observer, not a member, although its support is substantial in terms of military and economic aid and in civilian and military personnel.
Pioneers in regional collaboration, the 20 Latin American republics and the United States had behind them 60 years of cooperation on Apr. 30, 1948, when they signed the charter establishing the Organization of American States, through which most of their joint activities are now conducted. Two other documents are also basic to inter-American security arrangements: the Pact of Bogotá, outlining pacific settlement procedures, signed at the same time as the charter but in effect among fewer than half the OAS signatories; and the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, signed at Rio de Janeiro on Sept. 2, 1947, in which inter-American security commitments are rooted (some are, however, reaffirmed in the OAS charter). Headquarters of the OAS are in Washington.
Like CENTO as well as NATO, WEU, and the Warsaw Pact system, discussed more fully below, SEATO is a product of the cold-war environment. Established in the Manila Treaty of Sept. 8, 1954, after the French defeat in Indochina, the organization is concerned with strengthening the collective defense capabilities of a wide and disparate area under severe Communist pressure. Even so, the Western powers—the United States, United Kingdom, and France—failed to enlist the participation of key Southeast Asian states, and SEATO is concerned with the security problems of about one third of the territory and one fifth of the population of the area. Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Thailand are other members. Headquarters are located in Bangkok. Inasmuch as membership for South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos is incompatible with the Geneva armistice agreement of July 21, 1954, they were designated as under the SEATO "protective umbrella." Laos withdrew, however, with the assent of SEATO powers, when it was neutralized on June 23, 1962.
That support of regionalism is a keystone of United States foreign policy is seen in U.S. participation in organizations created to enhance the security of members located on all continents except Africa.
Commitments, Implementation.
In their commitments for reciprocal assistance, most of the security arrangements superficially suggest traditional alliances, a method of seeking security which antedates the modern state system. In addition to cooperation for defense and security, the OAS, Arab League, and OAU have economic, social, and cultural functions. All groups have been influenced by experiments with global collective security in the League of Nations and the United Nations.
These regional organizations by nature take account of the traditional threat to national security—armed attack by one government on another. Members pledge individual or collective assistance, including the use of armed force. Commitments are qualified, with each state interpreting its own obligations. The speed with which military action can now be initiated has, however, forced prior development of a collective capacity to resist armed attack. In the case of NATO this has been spectacular: Individual efforts have been reinforced by mutual aid, and the first substantial international force in peacetime has been created. Such steps not only enhance the prospect that treaty pledges will be honored in the event of attack, but, more importantly, have resulted in creating a deterrent capability of notable credibility.
Although NATO alone of the regional defense organizations has peacetime forces in being, a joint command has been established for Warsaw Pact forces, and plans for wartime military integration have gone even further in Eastern Europe. In January 1964 Arab League members created a unified military command headquartered in Cairo. The long-established regional security organizations all have permanent joint planning staffs, although coordination is less developed in the inter-American system. The military assistance programs of the United States and the U.S.S.R. have been a key to improving the equipment and training of their respective allied forces.
Postwar conditions have simultaneously compelled the regional security organizations to face new and subtle security threats not necessarily entailing the use of force. In varying degrees the organizational arrangements envisage mutual assistance in the face of "indirect aggression," i.e., political activities based in one state which aim at destruction of the political independence of another. Whereas the military threat remains and must be countered, an effective response to the newer forms of threat requires collaboration in a variety of activities designed to detect and combat subversion by strengthening political and economic stability. Although responsibility for dealing with Communist infiltration remains national, both SEATO and CENTO have elaborate programs to increase awareness of Communist activities and assist in the training of personnel to resist them.
Since 1959, when a Communist regime came to power in Cuba, the collective capacity of a regional security grouping to respond to indirect aggression has been severely tested in the inter-American system. Although OAS members vary in their assessment of dangers and their will to act responsibly, the system has thus far proved more effective than the United Nations in acting to contain Cuban-based subversive activities elsewhere in Latin America. Among the key developments was the first exclusion of a member from OAS activities. At Punta del Este, Uruguay, in January 1962, all other OAS members declared Cuba's Marxism-Leninism incompatible with the principles of the inter-American system, and two thirds of the members (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, and Mexico abstaining) voted to exclude Cuba from participation in the OAS. On July 26, 1964, in response to 1963-1964 Cuban efforts to subvert the government of Venezuela, the OAS foreign ministers voted 15 to 4 for mandatory severance of all sea transport between OAS states and Cuba as well as the breaking off of trade, except in food and medicine, and diplomatic relations. Three opposing states (Bolivia, Chile, Uruguay) later broke diplomatic relations with Cuba, leaving Mexico alone in maintaining ties.
Cuban policy has also led to OAS endorsement of military sanctions, the first such formal action taken by a regional security organization. United States quarantine of Cuba in 1962, in response to the installation of Russian missiles there, was followed by an OAS appeal to members (Uruguay abstaining) to take individual and collective measures, "including the use of armed force," to support the U.S. decision to prevent additional Soviet arms from reaching the island and achieve dismantling of missile bases there.
Unanimity or near unanimity in support of collective measures for the protection of representative government and human rights has not been easily achieved among the Latin American republics. A century's experience with U.S. unilateral intervention has made them suspicious of collective action—forceful or not, and for whatever reasons—as threatening national independence. The Cuban case, however, indicates a growing realization that collective measures are an approach to law and order rather than intervention and constitute the only effective international means of protecting democratic institutions.
Organs.
The increasing complexity of the security problem has required establishing permanent international institutions to facilitate the interpretation of regional no less than global arrangements. The principal executive organ is usually a council permanently in session at organizational headquarters; all members are represented on the council by specially accredited delegates of ambassadorial rank or by the local heads of diplomatic missions. Annual or semiannual meetings at the foreign-minister level rotate from one capital to another. Unanimity remains generally necessary for agreement, although, as in the Arab League or WEU, there may be exceptions for certain types of decisions. In the OAS no member has the power of veto, but no state is required to use force without consenting.
Civilian organs have proliferated to carry out the political, economic, and other nonmilitary functions of these organizations. Expert preparation in professional secretariats and sustained study by council committees have been required for these nonmilitary activities, and the experimentation with administrative structure of certain regional organizations may be expected to influence global institutions. At SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers in Europe), for example, individuals take part in decision-making on NATO matters as technical experts and not as spokesmen for governmental policies. At the WEU Assembly, the only official consultative assembly of an international security organization, members of national parliaments sit as individuals and not as government representatives.
Relationship to United Nations.
Regionalism has been viewed as partner and as rival of the United Nations, and there is a measure of accuracy in both positions. The security arrangements launched in the western hemisphere and in the Middle East before the San Francisco Conference (April 1945) were responsible for UN Charter provisions establishing a relationship between the United Nations and regional groupings. Articles 33 and 52 envisage utilization of regional arrangements for the pacific settlement of disputes either on the initiative of the states concerned or by referral from the Security Council, and both methods have been used. In 1958, for instance, the Arab League considered alleged U.A.R. intervention in Lebanon before referral to the Security Council. And in January 1964 the Security Council deferred to the OAS in the dispute between the United States and Panama.
On the other hand, with the exception of measures against former World War II enemy states, all "enforcement action" under regional organizations requires Security Council authorization (Article 53). None has yet been authorized, and Article 53 appears to have been substantially modified in practice by the March 1962 Security Council support of the position that OAS nonmilitary sanctions against Cuba did not require such authorization.
In light of great-power rivalry, and the consequent difficulty of securing the unanimity of permanent members that is required for Security Council substantive decisions, Article 51 of the Charter has assumed unexpected importance. It has opened the way to the proliferation of regional security organizations by acknowledging the "inherent right" of "collective self-defense" against armed attack and has thus allowed these agencies to act without Security Council authorization, as in the OAS' military sanctions against Cuba in 1962. The founding documents of the regional security organizations refer to the Charter, and most of them repeat the Article 51 stipulation that collective defense measures be promptly reported to the Security Council and cease when the council acts to maintain or restore peace and security. Because of their basis in Article 51 the regional security organizations are often called "collective defense organizations."
Chief in importance are the groupings directly concerned with the national security of the two superpowers. Through these groups both the United States and the Soviet Union have undertaken unprecedented commitments to their respective European allies.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Strongest in terms of collective capability, NATO is also the most highly integrated security arrangement in which the United States participates. It has evolved from the North Atlantic Treaty, signed on Apr. 4, 1949, in response to the consolidation of Russian Communist power in Eastern and Central Europe. The original signatories (Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States) were joined in 1952 by Greece and Turkey and in 1955 by the German Federal Republic.
In order to deter armed attack and prepare to meet it effectively should it occur in an area of crucial importance, NATO members have engaged in peacetime defense-planning unprecedented in extent and depth and have been organizing, training, and equipping a highly integrated nucleus of forces, heretofore achieved only under pressure of hostilities. Indirect aggression is to be met through consultation, which could result in a collective political or military response.
These aims have forced a proliferation of organs, although the treaty specifically envisaged only a permanent council and a defense committee. The North Atlantic Council, sitting in Paris, remains top organ in the NATO hierarchy; it is aided by the civilian Staff-Secretariat, most of whose members are seconded for a limited period of time from their national civil services. The chief civilian official, by virtue of his position as head of the Secretariat and chairman of the council, is the secretary-general—since Aug. 1, 1964, Italian diplomat Manlio Brosio. Council committees and working groups are concerned with an annual review of military plans, defense production, and infrastructure and also with economic, informational, cultural, scientific, and political questions. The latter activities have mounted in importance as the Communist threat has taken on political, economic, and propaganda aspects. Since the 1956 Suez crisis, members have sought increasingly to concert nonmilitary policies, with greatest success on questions involving relations with the Soviet Union. Matters outside the NATO area also receive growing attention.
The top military organs, the Military Committee and the Standing Group, meet in Washington. The chiefs of staff of all members constitute the Military Committee, principal military adviser to the North Atlantic Council. Whereas the committee ordinarily meets only twice annually, representatives of the chiefs of staff are in permanent session in Washington, as is the committee's executive agency, the Standing Group, composed of the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. In acknowledgment of the growing contribution of other Alliance members, notably West Germany, a German director was named to the planning staff of the Standing Group on July 1, 1964, and two deputy directors are now chosen from nonmembers of the Standing Group.
Best known of the three international commands is the European, extending from Norway to Turkey, with headquarters near Paris. The Allied Command Atlantic is headquartered at Norfolk, Va., and the Channel Command at Portsmouth, England. North American defense plans are in the hands of the Canada-United States Regional Planning Group, meeting alternately in Washington and Ottawa. The Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) and the Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic (SACLANT) have always been U.S. officers, currently General Lyman L. Lemnitzer and Admiral Harold Page Smith, respectively. The major commands are, in turn, subdivided geographically and headed by other NATO-member nationals. Although only SACEUR has permanently assigned peacetime forces, members have earmarked forces for assignment to the other commands for training purposes and in event of war.
Despite substantial successes, NATO is wracked by intricate problems, rooted essentially in the fact that the Alliance is a cooperative effort among 15 states having different as well as common interests and varying conspicuously in power and in global responsibilities. Crucial in resolving the issue of Alliance unity versus disunity is the current nuclear dilemma over nuclear proliferation and a NATO nuclear capability whose control is shared by participating states.
As principal nuclear powers in the Alliance, the United States has assigned to NATO European-based tactical weapons and three Polaris submarines for Mediterranean service, and the United Kingdom has assigned part of its V-Bomber force. Assignment brings the weapons under SACEUR's command in terms of defense planning. Decision as to their use remains national in each case. France, which seeks to develop a strategic nuclear force, has indicated the intention of keeping this force entirely under national control.
Since 1960 the United States has taken the initiative in seeking to devise a formula by which NATO would have at its disposition medium-range ballistic missiles to counter the substantial number the Soviet Union has deployed against Western Europe. In response to some European desires for greater participation in NATO's strategic nuclear deterrence, control would be shared among Alliance members. The current proposal is for a multilateral force (MLF) of surface ships internationally owned, manned, and managed, and committed without reservation to Alliance defense. Safeguards against any one participant's obtaining control of MLF weapons are designed to prevent nuclear proliferation.
Seven European allies (Britain, West Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, and Turkey) have indicated interest by joining the United States in negotiations. West German interest is notably conspicuous. France is hostile and threatens to follow MLF establishment by further reducing French forces committed to NATO. The British Conservative government's lack of commitment has given way to Labour's search for an alternative proposal, which was unannounced at the end of 1964. Although the U.S. scheme in its various phases has entailed the greatest degree of Alliance nuclear integration thus far proposed officially, it leaves untouched the principle of national ownership of non-MLF nuclear forces. Militarily, the proposal has been the subject of marked controversy, with many experts urging a combination of systems, surface ships, submarines, and land vehicles, to augment Allied Command Europe's nuclear capability. Politically, any proposal would appear to require considerable NATO reorganization. The conclusion is inescapable that the weapons revolution is forcing NATO members to decide between a future genuine community and continued national rivalry.
Western European Union
The Western European Union was established on May 6, 1955, to control West German rearmament and facilitate German entry into NATO; it has important ties with NATO. WEU gained new importance as the only official link between the United Kingdom and the Common Market members after the January 1963 rebuff by General de Gaulle terminated negotiations for British entry into the European Economic Community. In WEU they continue to exchange views on their economic relations and other matters.
Need for a German military contribution to Western defense was precipitated by fear of Soviet expansion in Europe as the Korean conflict mounted. But to be acceptable to Western Europeans in the light of Nazi successes early in World War II, this German contribution required control. In August 1954 the French rejected proposals to establish a European Defense Community entailing a European army with integrated German units. WEU then became the vehicle of such control, emerging from the Oct. 23, 1954, revision of the 1948 Brussels Treaty. In that revision, Germany and Italy joined the original signatories (Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom).
In order to secure limitation on German forces, the other continental members accepted levels for their forces. These can be increased only with unanimous agreement and on the basis of annual NATO review recommendations. All German contingents are NATO-committed, and SACEUR's inspections constitute the basis of the WEU Council's check on observance of limitations. The Agency for the Control of Armaments, which has developed inspection procedures adaptable to global arms control, assists the Council in activities designed, among other objectives, to prevent the manufacture of certain weapons by Germany (for example, atomic, biological, and chemical weapons, certain types of missiles, warships over a certain size, and strategic bombers). With the assent of SACEUR, restrictions on the production of guided antitank and air defense missiles have been removed. No opportunity has arisen to use WEU machinery to enforce the continental members' maximums, inasmuch as the continuing effort is to build up, not limit, the European contribution to Atlantic defense.
Britain participates in control arrangements. The British troops and arms qualifiedly pledged to the Continent at the time of revision of the Brussels Treaty are included in WEU supervision; other British forces are not. SACEUR and the WEU Council reluctantly approved the withdrawal, for financial reasons, of some of the pledged forces in 1957 and 1958. The importance of British participation should not be underestimated, in view of its overall military strength.
WEU organs include the Council and Secretariat, in London. Because of the need to cooperate closely with NATO, the Agency for the Control of Armaments functions in Paris, as does the Standing Armaments Committee, created to push arms standardization and joint production. An important spur to facing up to the military and political requirements of effective security has been the WEU Assembly. Created to receive annual reports from the Council, which it cannot hold accountable but with which it may disagree in whole or in part, the Assembly committees' reports and plenary debates have displayed knowledge and authority on complex military and political matters in the entire NATO area. Its forward-looking recommendations have influenced both national governments and international organs.
Warsaw Pact Security System.
Initialed on May 14, 1955, the Warsaw Pact consolidated and to a limited degree institutionalized an East European security system that was already collective as the result of the 23 bilateral Soviet-satellite and intersatellite alliances concluded from 1943 to 1949. Embracing all Communist regimes in the area except Yugoslavia, the pact made East Germany and Albania allies of the U.S.S.R. for the first time; pro-Chinese Albania now takes no part in pact activities.
Originally, the pact appeared to have greater political than military importance. Faced with West German entrance into NATO, the U.S.S.R. created a counterpart that it could offer to abandon, as it first did at the 1955 Geneva conference, in return for the achievement of a principal foreign policy objective: the establishment of an all-European security system and a consequent dissolution of NATO. (The abrogation of the pact would leave untouched the bilateral East European alliances.)
Another political function of the pact was the support it gave to the continued stationing of Soviet troops in Hungary (where they remain) and Romania (which they left in July 1958), following withdrawal from Austria in September 1955 under the terms of the Austrian State Treaty signed on May 15. Both the U.S.S.R. and Hungary cited the pact as offering legal grounds for the movement of additional Soviet troops into Hungary during the 1956 crisis, the only occasion on which the pact has been applied. The continued presence of Soviet troops in East Germany, Hungary, and Poland today rests not on the Warsaw Pact, however, but on bilateral agreements concluded with East Germany in September 1955 and with Hungary and Poland subsequent to the Hungarian revolution.
Recent evidence suggests that the pact has facilitated military collaboration as East European armed forces have been improving, and that it is being taken more seriously, militarily, by the Soviet Union. The fact that East European military affairs remain essentially in Soviet hands should not obscure the importance of formal intergovernmental arrangements as nationalism erodes monolithic interparty relationships.
Less is known of the experience of permanent Warsaw Pact organs than of their NATO counterparts. More has been disclosed concerning political than military collaboration. The principal political organ is the Political Consultative Committee, composed of all treaty signatories and assisted by the permanent international Secretariat in Moscow. High-level party leaders as well as government officials attend committee meetings (seven were held in the period January 1956-July 1963; none has been reported since). An initial concentration on European security problems was subsequently broadened to include attention to other areas and issues, among them the nuclear test-ban treaty. Until 1961 the Asiatic Communist regimes were associated with pact activities through attendance at committee sessions as observers.
In 1955 a Joint Command was established, headed since July 1960 by Marshal A. A. Grechko of the U.S.S.R., a first deputy defense minister and commander of all Soviet ground forces. His pact deputies, who do not serve at headquarters, are the defense ministers or other military leaders of signatory states who command their respective assigned national forces, a looser command arrangement than in NATO. A few non-Soviet officers serve at Moscow headquarters, probably more for liaison than for joint planning.
Periodic reports refer to high-level military meetings and joint maneuvers. Improved procedures for command, control, and communications have been evident in recent years, and attention has been given to meeting a nuclear attack. There has been no sharing of nuclear weapons. The projected integration of the forces of all signatories into the Soviet military system in time of war indicates a degree of military unification that goes beyond anything envisaged in NATO.
