NEWS ANALYSIS : NATO Fumbles a Chance to Find a Post-Cold War Role : Security: The Atlantic Alliance seems reluctant to take on overseeing the enforcement of the embargo on Iraq.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, facing the first test of its resolve to meet the new post-Cold War challenges, has passed up the opportunity to become a significant player in the Middle East crisis, a decision that raises unsettling doubts about its future role.

For months, leaders of the 41-year-old organization have been searching frenetically to find a suitable new role, now that the classic Cold War threat of a massive ground attack from the Soviet Union and its East European allies no longer seems credible.

One possible alternative, NATO members generally have agreed, might be to use the organization to coordinate the West’s response to increasing Third World threats to the security of the major industrial countries. The problem is clear--and the need is there.

With this in mind, U.S. officials have been urging that NATO take on the job of serving as the political force overseeing the enforcement of the new allied embargo of Iraq--a perfect case in which NATO could lend a hand and prove its worth in the 1990s, Washington argues.

But the Brussels-based alliance has proved reluctant to meet that challenge. Europeans contend that for the alliance to respond collectively to the Iraqi threat would involve a significant expansion of NATO’s charter, going far beyond its traditional job.

“Given the tenor of the determination (the alliance) has to deter war and avoid controversy, we would not do anything at this time that would be considered bellicose or saber-rattling at all,” a senior Bush Administration official laments.

“I would go so far as to say we would have to be attacked” before the alliance could get behind joint military efforts outside of Central Europe, he says.

Such reticence is disappointing to those who had broader visions for NATO. George Carver, former deputy CIA director, says NATO “hasn’t done much yet to vindicate” the hope that the alliance would rise to the new Third World challenge.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III, who pressed the American case at a NATO meeting Aug. 10, returned home unsatisfied. The ad hoc cooperation to which NATO allies so far have agreed “is not good enough,” a senior Administration official complains.

To be sure, it’s not as though NATO’s individual member countries have been unresponsive to the Iraqi threat. If anything, the major U.S. allies have been uncharacteristically forthcoming in supporting the embargo--and blockade--that the United States engineered.

British ground troops and aircraft are in Saudi Arabia alongside American forces, and Britain’s warships are plying Middle East waters. France, the Netherlands and Belgium have sent warships to help monitor ship traffic. And Canada has sent ships, planes and troops.

Even West Germany, whose constitution forbids the government to send forces to fight abroad, is sending navy ships to the Mediterranean, where they will stand in for those of other NATO allies who have dispatched their vessels to the Middle East.

But none of this has been done under the NATO banner and neither the alliance’s political staff nor its Brussels-based military headquarters has been mobilized to coordinate or command the allied forces.

Moreover, by U.S. standards, at least, the alliance has been timid even about defending its own members--such as Turkey, a fellow NATO member, which Iraq threatened to attack if Ankara shut down an Iraqi oil pipeline there.

Although Baker succeeded Aug. 10 in cajoling the allies to pledge themselves to defend Turkey if Baghdad invades, they adamantly refused to commit themselves to send NATO’s military forces to Saudi Arabia, even if U.S. troops were to come under fire.

Indeed, the allies have been so reluctant to act under the NATO banner that in spite of their promise to defend Turkey, they refused to send a small, specialized multinational unit called the Ace Mobile Force to back up their warnings to Baghdad.

The Ace force regularly trains in Turkey and is designed to serve as a “tripwire” to underscore NATO’s traditional assertion that an attack on one NATO flank country would be considered an attack on all of the allies.

For the Ace force to serve as a credible deterrent, it must be moved in during the early stages of a crisis, NATO strategists say. Now that tensions have risen to their current level, the alliance probably has missed its chance.

“NATO is not the kind of organization that does that sort of stuff,” says one senior Administration official who is deeply involved with the 16-member alliance. “It’s just not where we are in our evolution.”

Indeed, some experts fear that the United States may be pressing NATO too hard to take on such new demands so soon, to the point where it may actually be risking rending the organization’s political cohesion.

Washington has been the principal proponent of expanding NATO’s reach. Some observers say that it may actually be the only NATO member so inclined.

Robert Komer, a former senior Pentagon official who was responsible for U.S. relations with NATO, warns that Washington “would have a hell of a fight” if it insisted on committing the alliance to defend Saudi Arabia.

“There’s no reason at all to expect” NATO to respond more forcefully to the Middle East crisis, Komer declares.

U.S. officials concede that pushing NATO too hard now could strain the alliance in the short run, but they argue that the effort may not be entirely lost because the experience of considering the Iraqi crisis may help sharpen its outlook in future incidents.

“In the heat of a crisis like this, you’re not going to get NATO to adopt more out-of-area responsibility but this will concentrate their minds on the challenges ahead,” a senior Administration official says. “In the context of the NATO strategy review, the lessons of this experience will be noted and something will be done about it.”

Former CIA official Carver agrees.

“NATO has clearly got to adapt itself to the new world, and provide itself a military structure that can cope with external threats that directly affect Europe and NATO-wide vital interests,” he says.

Staff writer William Tuohy, on assignment in Jerusalem, also contributed to this report.