What on earth is the expansion of Nato

The alliance is throwing away what it is good at in favour of what it is least capable of

Critics of Europe can't have it both ways. You can't deride the Europeans for failing to get their act together on a common foreign policy and argue that the Continent is being driven by a remorseless push towards Euro-federalism. Either you don't want federalism and should therefore welcome the fact that the Europeans fall out every time it comes to a common issue, or you should want Europe to pull its weight in the world and welcome moves to bring the Union together.

Nor can you argue, as President George Bush seemed to be doing this week, that Europe needs to up its game on defence if it is to act as a power in the world and at the same time say that it has no right to its own voice on security issues if it differs from Washington.

Europe certainly does need to redefine its security objectives in the wake of 11 September. But does it need to accept that increasing dramatically its defence expenditure is the route it wants to, or should, take? The American equivalence of superpower status with military might is one that General de Gaulle would have recognised in his dream of an independent Europe and it is one that the president of the European Commission, Romano Prodi, seemed to support in his vision of Europe last week. But do the rest of us believe or want this?

Look where it's got the Indian sub-continent. India's folly in developing nuclear weapons has only been exceeded by Pakistan's stupidity in copying her. It has diverted resources from more productive ends in countries that can ill afford it and produced greater insecurity, not less.

Europe knows this better than most. The community was founded on the belief that the clash of national arms that wreaked such devastation in the 20th century should be replaced by the spread of economic progress. It has had problems in the Balkans, but given the previous half-century, the past 50 years have seen an astonishing achievement in the triumph of commerce over conflict. The end of the Cold War has seemed the culmination of the process.

The American argument is that all this has been changed by 11 September. Far from being able to relax now that the conventional threat from Russia has been removed, Europe needs to reorganise its defences and increase its spending to meet a whole new and more difficult threat from terrorists and rogue states. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation needs to change its focus but not its role.

Hence the latest effort to change the focus of Nato from being a nuclear and conventional defence association into becoming a largely political alliance that should include Russia as well as most of the countries of Eastern Europe.

But before we accept this change with great oohs and ahs of "who would have thought it 10 years ago, Russia and the West sitting round the same defence table", it might be worth thinking about exactly what we mean by this.

Terrorism as such is largely a police not a defence matter. In a sense the US was lucky that the origin of the attacks was in training camps in a country which could be readily bashed by hi-tech bombing. But the plot could just as easily be hatched (and indeed was partly) in the cafés of Italy and the mosques of Germany and Britain. Where would you have bombed then?

Of course you can, as Washington does, take the view that there are states that promote terrorism which should be brought to heel for the security of the world. But the definition of these states (Cuba, for example) is open to dispute. Nor do the Europeans agree on whether a punitive rather than emollient approach works better with countries such as Iran, Libya or Syria.

The other threat, of course, is of rogue states which could gain access to nuclear weapons, of which Iraq is given as the most obvious example. Here at least one is in the classic debate on deterrence. But even on this there is no real agreement between America and Europe on whether a Star Wars umbrella is more effective than straight deterrence.

On any of these counts, what is happening to Nato is a nonsense, and a dangerous nonsense at that. The organisation has always worked best as a command and control system for deploying weapons and men to defend Europe against attack. To say now that it is reinventing itself as a primarily political grouping that includes the old Warsaw Pact countries and Russia itself is simply throwing away what it is good at in favour of what it is least capable of. Look at its efforts in Bosnia if you want the example. If bringing in Russia is the object then a perfectly satisfactory arrangement is already in place in the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. If providing a nuclear umbrella against rogue states with the American finger on the trigger is wanted, then keep to the old organisation.

You won't hear any of this as Geoff Hoon and the defence ministers troop off to next week's Nato meeting, of course. Then it will all be speeches about new priorities and new arrangements. But do not be fooled. None of those present will have any real idea of what the nature of security needs to be in the future or even a definition of the threats it is supposed to securing us against. Nor will the general public. For it is a tribute to our times that the single most important issue of international affairs today is evolving with virtually no discussion in Parliament or the press.

a.hamilton@independent.co.uk