Nato leaders are set to debate the alliance's future this week, torn between US-led countries wanting to build a global security organisation and others who insist on a strictly transatlantic role.
Ahead of their summit in Riga, starting Tuesday, Nato Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer has emphasised that the alliance must not become a "global policeman", but that it should adapt to modern security threats.
A key document adopted in June is meant to prepare Nato exactly for that, allowing it to simultaneously conduct two large missions, involving some 60,000 troops, and six smaller ones, comprising up to 30,000 soldiers each.
It also guides their relations with the United Nations, European Union or non-governmental organisations, as Nato has undertaken missions outside its usual military vocation, like aid work in quake-hit Pakistan.
US President George W. Bush "sees Nato as having to deal with security in areas outside of Europe now," said senior national security adviser Judy Ansley.
"If you look to the threats of the 21st century, most of them are not right on the borders of Europe as they used to be during the Cold War," she said.
Britain and Denmark, as well as a number of former Soviet satellite states now in the 26-member alliance, have rallied behind that view, staunchly advocated by James Thomson, head of the US Rand Corporation.
"Nato could only thrive if it goes global," he said in Brussels this month.
At the other end of the scale, French Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie has voiced strong opposition to "diluting" Nato, which she says "must remain a Euro-Atlantic military alliance" under the Washington Treaty; the founder text dating from 1949 and the start of the Cold War with the former Soviet Union.
For the French, turning Nato into a coalition of democracies with global ambitions would send a bad signal, particularly to Asia.
"It would be very unwise to send such a message to the world, notably to China and India, that: 'it is the West against the rest'," agreed Daniel Keohane, defence expert at the Centre for European Reform think-tank in London.
Germany, Belgium, Greece, Spain and Italy also oppose, with certain differences in emphasis, any "globalisation" of the military alliance, diplomats there say.
Given the divisions, and the fact that Nato only takes decisions unanimously, the Riga summit is unlikely to see any "Global Nato" agreement, or a "global partnership" structure for non-members helping out in Afghanistan.
"There won't be any institutionalising of a new forum for discussion, but just closer co-ordination, particularly on operations, with contact countries" like Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea, a Nato diplomat said.
It is exactly the roles of these countries in alliance missions which makes old quarrels about doctrine outdated, according to Victoria Nuland, the US ambassador at Nato headquarters in Brussels.
"Remember that global partnership is a reality and out-of-area is a reality today in Afghanistan," where 37 nations provide some 32,000 troops being led by Nato, she said.
Ronald Asmus, from the German Marshall Fund, said the departure of US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld should improve defence ties, as it means Washington will stop using Nato as a "tool box" for its military ends.
"The Americans are coming back to alliances, they're coming back to work with partners and have come back to Nato," he said. "Afghanistan is the best example."
Yet Francois Heisbourg, at France's strategic research foundation, sees the operation there as symptomatic of a larger problem.
"Going 'out of area' as in Afghanistan, has helped keep Nato in business but in the process the alliance has become an 'a la carte' multilateral institution," he said.
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