Enlarged Nato gets new lease of life for war on terror

Washington is to throw its support behind a revamped transatlantic alliance with a remit to combat terrorism and admit seven new members from ex-Communist states, a year after it sidelined Nato in the aftermath of 11 September.

As President George Bush travelled to Prague to meet leaders of all 19 Nato nations, he hailed the alliance's enlargement, arguing that "the Warsaw Pact is becoming Nato, slowly but surely". The US ambassador to Nato, Nicholas Burns, added that the two-day Prague summit, which opens tomorrow, "will launch a Nato transformed, with new military capabilities to defend us, new members to strengthen us and new relationships with Russia and other nations to unite us against common adversaries".

The high-flown rhetoric is significant. This week's meeting will extend Nato's sphere of influence inside the borders of the old Soviet Union, bringing into the fold Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania and Bulgaria. But it is also a test of US commitment to Nato, which looked irrelevant after it was excluded from Washington's war in Afghanistan.

Nato has been struggling to define its role ever since – all the more because it invoked its mutual defence clause for the first time in its history.

America has come down in favour of reshaping the alliance rather than allowing it to wither on the vine.

According to Nato's secretary general, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, there has been nothing short of a fundamental rethink in Washington. "I think they have changed their minds," he told The Independent. "I think they recognise the strength that comes from permanent coalition, and this is something that would help with American security."

Some fear the advent of seven new nations with limited defence budgets will be a mixed blessing for Nato, compounding the difficulty of taking decisions in an organisation that works by consensus. But in addition to giving the alliance access to areas of growing strategic interest, it has concentrated minds in the US. One European diplomat argued that the Americans "can't invite in seven new members then walk away", and added that, on key decisions "there is one dominant player in Nato – the US – which can usually whip the others into line."

At the heart of the new US plan for Nato is the creation of a 20,000-strong rapid response force able to operate anywhere in the world within one week.

Lord Robertson said he saw that as proof of American engagement. "There was a perception that America would no longer want to put in ground troops: Americans would be fighting in the skies, Europeans in the mud," he said. "There were indications, when the US said they would not put ground troops into East Timor or Sierra Leone, that the Americans were retreating back. The response force is the answer to that."

After a gloomy year of soul-searching, things are looking up for the alliance. In addition to the response force plan, Nato is to play a back-up role to the German and Dutch peace-keeping forces in Afghanistan – a possible prelude to alliance involvement in Iraq.

There is a new Nato partnership with Russia, and Lord Robertson has been approached by China with a request for dialogue.

Nato is revamping its Cold War command structure and has abolished 142 of the alliance's 467 internal committees. There has also been a change of heart from Washington, which had wanted Nato to end its peace-keeping mission in Macedonia. America is now keen to extend operations beyond the 15 December mandate.

Things also look better for Nato because they currently look bad for the EU's embryonic military capability. In the long term, Nato faces a classic squeeze if the US chooses to fight big campaigns alone or with selected allies, and the EU takes over smaller-scale peace-keeping operations.

But European ambitions are mired in a diplomatic stand-off, as Turkey – an alliance member and EU hopeful – blocks a deal guaranteeing the EU access to Nato's planning capabilities.

One issue bound to cause problems at the summit is the enormous imbalance between European and American military capabilities. On this side of the Atlantic there are gaping holes in areas such as precision-guided munitions and air-to-air refuelling. To get German peace-keeping troops to Afghanistan, the government in Berlin had to hire Antonov transport planes from Ukraine at a cost of $245,000 (£154,460) for each of the 160 required journeys.

Had the problem arisen between now and Christmas the planes would not have been available because they are under contract to Japanese electronic toy firms freighting goods to Europe.

Lord Robertson said he wanted to build an agency that would lease large numbers of big planes until European orders for the military transport aircraft, the A400M, were fulfilled. Achieving economies of scale is one example of where Prague will demonstrate whether Nato's "transformation summit" is rhetoric or reality.

As Lord Robertson put it: "I don't want vague priorities. What we need are specific political commitments to create capabilities within a time limit."