NATO’s global partners: Awarded cooperativeness

The paper analyses the characteristics and evolution of cooperation between NATO and the countries which are neither situated in the Euro-Atlantic area nor are they involved in the Alliance?s multilateral programmes. The author focuses on the contribution of Japan, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea to the ISAF mission in Afghanistan, and how this operation has gradually built their cooperation with the NATO. Those countries had initially been defined in NATO?s official documents as the contact countries, only to be subsequently named in 2008 as they are known today - the partners across the globe, or simply global partners. Mongolia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq now are the global partners of NATO as well. The departing point of discussion in this paper is the thesis that the ISAF mission may be considered as the cradle of the Alliance?s new concept of global partnership. The author sorts all NATO?s global partners in two main categories: the ?real? and ?fictitious?. The real global partners are countries that really contribute to the NATO?s missions, such as Japan, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Mongolia. The fictitious global partners are those states that are actually the test area for NATO missions - Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as Pakistan, which has acquired the status of a partner due to its vital strategic position to the realisation of the Alliance?s mission in Afghanistan. The author concludes that the ?real? global partners are not viable for membership to NATO at this moment, but in the case of the strained relations between the United States and China the option of full membership cannot be excluded.