I used to work for a US Department for War centre — here is why Nato is broken

The Ankara summit was meant to reassure the world that NATO is stronger than ever.

Mark Rutte, the Secretary General of Nato, pointed to rising European defence spending, greater burden-sharing and a larger role for European allies. The message was America may be stepping back, but Europe is stepping up.

Yet behind that show of unity lies a serious problem that Nato has fundamentally failed to solve.

Earlier this year the United States has handed over multiple NATO’s Joint Force Commands to European allies. Britain will lead Joint Force Command Norfolk, Italy will lead Naples, while Germany and Poland will share responsibility for Brunssum.

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This was presented as a sign of European strength. However, it exposed one of the alliance’s greatest weaknesses.

When these commands were led by American officers, they automatically benefited from the full weight of US intelligence. That included satellite imagery, signals intelligence and AI-enabled analysis capable of identifying threats and shaping battlefield decisions.

Now European officers are taking over, automatic access is disappearing.

Even the British commander at Norfolk, despite the UK’s exceptionally close intelligence relationship with Washington, will not receive “the full suite of intelligence” available to an American commander.

That means Nato is handing European officers responsibility for defending the alliance while giving them less information than their American predecessors.

A commander may hold the same rank, sit in the same headquarters and oversee the same forces, but without the same intelligence access, he is not operating with the same capability.

Meaning Europe has inheriting the commands but has not inherited the system that made those commands effective.

This problem will become more serious as artificial intelligence plays a greater role in analysing satellite images and battlefield information.

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Different countries use different systems. Those systems may be trained on different data, governed by different laws and designed to apply different standards.

One country’s intelligence system could identify an enemy target. Another could examine the same information and reach a different conclusion.

One report could recommend immediate action. Another could advise caution.

What is the Nato commander supposed to do when two allies present different versions of the battlefield?

At present, there is no clear answer.

Modern military operations depend on speed. Commanders cannot spend hours debating which national assessment is more reliable while missiles are being launched or troops are moving across a border.

Conflicting intelligence can lead to delay, missed threats and disastrous mistakes. It can also increase the risk of civilian casualties if allied systems cannot agree on what they are seeing.

Nato is meant to operate as one alliance. Yet its commanders may increasingly be forced to make decisions using fragmented national intelligence systems that do not agree with one another.

This is the issue that the Ankara Declaration should have addressed.

However, spending announcements cannot solve an intelligence crisis.

Buying more drones, surveillance aircraft and satellites may help Europe collect more information. It does not create a system for sharing that information or resolving disputes when national assessments conflict.

Nor does it answer the most important question: what access will European commanders have to the American intelligence that their US predecessors received automatically?

That is why Nato is broken.

Dr John Hemmings is the director of the National Security Centre at the Henry Jackson Society, previously working at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia Pacific Centre for Security Studies (DKI-APCSS), a US Department of War centre.

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