"... a way to pass off an essentially US-led operation as representing the will of the international community..."

WPR/ here

Last week, at West Point, President Barack Obama sounded a familiar theme that all recent U.S. presidents have lamented, when he said, "The burdens of this century cannot fall on our soldiers alone. It also cannot fall on American shoulders alone." Obama also reiterated time-honored propositions in his promise to "be steadfast in strengthening those old alliances that have served us so well," and his desire "to build new partnerships, and shape stronger international standards and institutions." The just-released 2010 National Security Strategy of the United States continues this approach, declaring, "Alliances are force multipliers: through multinational cooperation and coordination, the sum of our actions is always greater than if we act alone."

But like Aesop's fable about the mice deciding to put a warning bell around the neck of the cat, the task is easier said than done.

America's existing alliances are the proverbial "old wineskins" into which it is proving extremely difficult to pour in the "new wine" represented by the 21st century's security challenges. The post-World War II alliances forged by the United States were designed to blunt and thwart the possible "outward thrusts" of a Eurasian superpower into Western Europe, the Middle East and East Asia.......

The United States was the hub of this system of regional alliances, each one of which converged formally in Washington without actually interacting with each other.....

Since the end of the Cold War, Washington policymakers have been trying, with limited degrees of success, to transform Cold War alliances into post-Cold War partnerships able and willing to share the burden of globally defined security missions. Some states, to be sure, have been interested. New and prospective members of the Atlantic Alliance, for instance, have calculated that concrete demonstrations of support for U.S. operations in places like Iraq and Afghanistan would function as an investment toward continued U.S. interest in their own security.

But NATO as a whole continues to wrestle with the whole concept of "out of area" missions, and the forthcoming NATO Security Concept is still attempting to square that circle. In part, it is doing so by linking global missions to the defense of vital Euro-Atlantic interests -- for instance, the ongoing mission in Afghanistan or the anti-piracy operation off of the coast of Somalia. The 2010 NSS also takes a shot at this semantic sleight of hand, declaring that NATO ought to be able to address the "full range of 21st century challenges, while serving as a foundation of European security."

But this approach has not produced an equal share of European commitment to robust engagement all over the globe. If we compare the national troop contributions to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, as one example, the United States is by far the largest contributor, with more than 60 percent. And that is not including the distinct U.S. military command in Afghanistan that operates alongside ISAF.

NATO can continue to serve as a stopgap, but it is unlikely that the alliance as a whole will ever embrace the new role that Washington would like to see it adopt. Yet, as long as NATO continues to be viewed as the preferred "alliance of choice" for the United States, it makes it difficult to begin taking the long, hard, difficult steps toward building a new global security organization.

Stealing a term -- and modifying it to some extent -- from a proposal advanced by Amitai Etzioni in 2003, what might be some of the parameters of such a new "Global Security Authority"? They would include:

- States committed to a global, rather than regional, definition of security.

- A willingness to contribute proportionally based on a country's size and economic potential.

- A belief that the current configuration of global institutions and the world order that the United States was prepared to support and defend in the 20th century -- i.e., open societies lightly defended, open lines of communication, free trade -- is beneficial.

- A streamlined decision-making system for rapid deployment and use of power.

Unfortunately, any effort to "bell this cat" faces numerous obstacles. To begin with, we currently don't have an alignment of the factors capable of generating such a new security treaty. The further afield the threat or crisis from Europe, the less likely European states would want to be involved. Rising powers like India and Brazil might be interested in playing a more global role, and they might even be prepared to contribute, but not as long as the current international order is not seen as favorable to their interests. The United States itself is reluctant to share substantive decision-making authority with other states, particularly after the U.S. military's experience during the Kosovo war as well as continuing friction over rules of engagement between different allied forces in Afghanistan.

Ironically, given the opprobrium Democrats laid on the concept during the years of the Bush administration, the way forward may be to embrace and develop the concept of "coalitions of the willing." Not as a way to pass off an essentially U.S.-led operation as representing the will of the international community, as the idea was used in the run-up to the Iraq war, but rather as a way to forge discrete partnerships with specific countries bounded by clear geographic criteria for the purposes of specific missions.

The likelihood that Brazil, France, India and Nigeria would somehow all come together under the aegis of a "Global NATO" is nil. But what about a formal organization to combat piracy in the western Indian ocean, in place of the ad hoc coalition we currently have, for instance? It could lead to some of the benefits that traditional alliances such as NATO bestowed -- i.e., close working relations and moves towards greater interoperability -- but would not involve countries making open-ended security guarantees to each other, on the model of NATO's famous Article 5.

However, this doesn't seem to be the trend the administration is pursuing. Washington still seems committed to finding a single organization willing and able to take responsibility for the entire myriad of security challenges. So the president may call for "other shoulders" to help bear the burden of global security. But for the time being, he shouldn't expect many to be on offer.