NATO - Role Expansion

[CHIMO]

NATO Chief Criticizes Germany's Iraq Stance

NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer was in Berlin Monday, warning Europe and America not to oppose each other over the Iraqi conflict and stressing the need to build consensus within NATO.

The former Dutch foreign minister also stressed that NATO's role in overseas missions is set to expand.

"The demand on NATO to run missions will increase and not diminish," he said. "I doubt if all parliaments and all parliamentarians understand this."

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1564,1389734,00.html

Does anyone here know what this what the expansion of roles is? I would appreciate a heads up on this.
Thanks

[iverglas]

1. not firsthand ...

but I'm always curious. Some stuff from Foreign Affairs via google:

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&lr=&cr=countryCA&ie=UTF-8&safe=off&q=+site:www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca+nato+expanded+role+missions

and specifically:

http://www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/foreign_policy/nato/nato_crossroads-en.asp

NATO At the Crossroads: The
Future of Collective Defence

In the early nineties, US Senator Lugar summed up NATO's post-Cold War dilemma as "out of area or out of business". NATO in fact went out of area and into Bosnia, Kosovo, and Macedonia, to the point where neither the Balkans, nor Eastern Europe generally, are today considered out of area. All of the Balkans missions were sophisticated peace-support operations, but they were not collective defence under Article V of the Washington Treaty.

At the Washington Summit in April 1999 a new NATO was unveiled, an Alliance that would project regional stability through non-Article V peace support missions and through such essentially political initiatives as enlargement and Partnership for Peace. In the wake of September 11, that new role is no longer considered by many to be sufficient, - including in the eyes of Senator Lugar. Lugar returned to NATO recently, and his message was simple: if NATO did not re-make itself to be able to deal with "the intersection of terrorist cells and weapons of mass destruction" it could become irrelevant and lose US support.

In the post-September 11 world, defence against the new threats, including collective defence, has become a vital national interest for us all. While NATO will be expected to take on any new non-Article V peace support operations in the European region, it is the question of NATO's relevance to defence that is the real issue today inside the Alliance. That question has been posed by the US decision to use a coalition of the willing, not NATO, in its war in Afghanistan. However the US decision questions not NATO's relevance generally, - on this issue, the US Administration is quite clear. The real question is whether NATO is relevant, specifically, to US self-defence.

I suspect this gets to the heart of what it's about.

[iverglas]

2. another one

http://www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/foreign_policy/nato/nato_policies-en.asp

"Adapting and modernizing the Alliance to face 21 century threats"

And from NATO: http://www.nato.int/issues/eap/index.html

"Growing security challenges make it ever more vital for NATO Allies and their Partners to work closely together."