Can NATO Be Involved in Responding to Paris Attacks? Looking at Article 5

By Luke Coffey

In light of the recent terrorist attacks in Paris, which resulted in at least 139 dead and another 350 wounded, there has been significant discussion about what role the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) should have, if any, in a response to the attacks. We asked Luke Coffey, the Margaret Thatcher Fellow at The Heritage Foundation, who closely follows NATO issues, what NATO’s options are.
Many commentators have been calling for NATO to invoke its Article 5 in response to the recent terrorist attacks in Paris. What is Article 5?
Article 5 of the 1949 Washington Treaty (also referred to as the North Atlantic Treaty) is NATO’s mutual defense clause. In a nutshell, the treaty states that an attack on one member is an attack on all NATO members. The treaty is vague regarding under which circumstances Article 5 can be invoked and this has been a topic of debate in recent years.
Has Article 5 ever been invoked?
In NATO’s 66-year history Article 5 has been invoked only once. It was invoked in early October 2001 in response to the 9-11 terrorist attacks against the U.S. that left almost 3,000 innocent people dead.
So what happened then?
In this case, invoking Article 5 resulted to two NATO-led military operations to help the U.S.
First was Operation Eagle Assist, which saw European surveillance plans helping to monitor U.S. airspace. This mission ended in April 2002. The second mission was Operation Active Endeavor, a counter-terrorism maritime mission in the Mediterranean Sea that continues today. Contrary to popular belief, the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan was not an Article 5 mission.
Will France invoke Article 5?
No single member in NATO can invoke Article 5 unilaterally. Article 5 can only be invoked when all 28 members of the Alliance agree to do so.
I do not think Article 5 should be invoked in this case. After all, NATO did not invoke Article 5 after the 2004 Madrid bombing, which left 191 dead and more than 1,800 wounded; the 2005 London bombings; or the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris last January. Arguably, Article 5 has already been invoked to fight terrorism after 9/11. Although al-Qaeda and the Taliban were specifically mentioned at the time, so was terrorism in general.
Are there things NATO can do even if it doesn’t invoke Article 5?
Absolutely. In fact, the vast majority of NATO’s military operations have not been carried out under the auspices of Article 5, including the NATO mission in Afghanistan, Libya in 2011, fighting piracy off the Horn of Africa, and operations in the Balkans. Even if NATO decides to take military action in Syria or Iraq, there is no reason why Article 5 has to be first invoked.
If the attacks in Paris warrant a military response against ISIS, it is probably better if France works with like-minded partners inside NATO instead of through NATO with NATO in command. NATO-led military operations in Afghanistan and Libya have shown that “war by consensus” inside the Alliance can be slow, frustrating, and not very effective.
Wouldn’t more military capability be made available if NATO invoked Article 5?
Not really. While invoking Article 5 might be symbolic, it is unlikely to lead to additional military capability. As a collective security alliance, NATO is only as strong as its individual member states. For years NATO members on both sides of the Atlantic have been slashing their defense budgets. This should be reversed immediately.
We should also recognize that many of the tools used in counter-terrorism operations are not military in nature and therefore are not under the purview of NATO, such as law enforcement operations, certain kinds of intelligence gathering, and immigration and refugee policies.
The best thing NATO members can do right now to help France is to work and cooperate collectively on these issues and if the time comes for a military response in Syria, then to work together multilaterally. Frankly speaking, right now NATO has enough on its plate deterring Russian aggression in central and eastern Europe.