Nato is creaking

Nato is at risk. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's principal purpose is preserving the peace in Europe. In maintaining that peace it has been arguably the most successful international organisation to date. But as we approach its 60th anniversary in April, its historic effectiveness is now being put in jeopardy.

Defence secretary John Hutton has indicated that he would be willing for a European army to sit alongside Nato. This is not a proposal for new forces, simply a new organisation. By definition it will have different aims, and so will only deplete Nato and undermine its efforts. It would also deplete Britain's ability to use its national army. For every soldier under European Union command, there is one less soldier able to fulfil British military obligations.

As for Nato's fighting capability, its reputation has taken a heavy knock after involvement in Afghanistan. Isaf, its organisation there, has been crippled by the so-called national caveats of many of the members, which limit where individual armies can be deployed and their operational purposes.

Britain and the US, meanwhile, are increasingly of the opinion that without additional troops Afghanistan is at risk of becoming a failed state under Taliban control. Last summer the outgoing UK commander in Afghanistan, General Dan McNeill, said the force in Helmand alone needed to be increased by 50%. But other European and Nato troops are strongly opposed to increasing numbers.

Although President Obama has committed the US to a renewed push in Afghanistan, with at least two Nato countries planning to cut troops, his officials are becoming frustrated. Nations other than the US and UK make up more than 50% of the troops in Afghanistan, and a united approach is needed.

But the starkest threat to Nato's future is the continual pressure for it to advance its borders to the east. When the Warsaw Pact dissolved, there was an understandable wish to bring the new states under the umbrella of Nato - a process I was heavily involved in as a Foreign Office minister. Even then, however, western nations were extremely cautious about countries that would be difficult to defend.

In addition, a standard guideline was not to import into Nato any active disputes or feuds: the focus has always been and should always be increasing the stability of countries within its limit and on its border, and not adding to, or reinforcing, disputes and instability.

Not all nations within Nato took the same view. There is little doubt that successive US governments saw Nato expansion as a way both of expanding their own sphere of influence and of actively reducing that of the former Soviet Union and, in particular, Russia.

This is most starkly obvious in the case of Georgia. During the last year the relationship between Georgia and Russia has gone from poor to disastrous. The same sort of argument applies to Ukraine, especially given the frequent disputes that occur over pipelines and other resources.

The prospects are not all gloomy. The Russians have used the accession of Obama to get off their unwisely belligerent stance on missiles in central Europe. They have suspended plans to deploy short-range missiles in Kaliningrad, following Obama's decision to review the proposed US missile defence shield.

Nato as an alliance should use the fresh stance of the new American presidency to think again about exactly what we expect of the organisation. If we do that, I suspect that the national conclusion will be that we ask the most successful military alliance to be slightly less ambitious, but to be much more effective: to do less, but to do it better.

David Davis, a former Foreign Office minister and shadow home secretary.