Five heretical questions about NATO

First, how will generational and demographic change affect NATO in the future?

Consider an 18 your old college student who asks, "Professor, what is NATO, and what is its purpose?"

Assignment: Devise a truthful and accurate two-sentence answer to this question that is not composed of vague and confusing euphemisms.

First, how will generational and demographic change affect NATO in the future? (It was not exactly a youngish crowd at the meeting). If you're 20 years old today, you were born the year the Berlin Wall came down. You were twelve years old when George W. Bush became President, which means you came of age in a period when the U.S. image in much of Europe sank to new lows. The various Berlin crises, "Flexible Response," the Euromissiles controversy, MBFR talks, and all the other familiar landmarks of NATO's glorious past are ancient (and largely irrelevant) history to the next generation. Is an alliance led by the United States really the only world that young Europeans can or will imagine? What about Americans who trace their ancestry to Asia, India, or Latin America, and whose famiy ties or economic interests lie elsewhere?

It might dampen the kind of ties that tended to link the US to Europe in the past in the way that the US is linked to Latin American and Israel today, but I think the US involvement stems from deeper roots. It's a very important part of the world that was deeply conflict-prone in the past, and like all Great Powers, the US policy is fundamentally conservative; we want things to stay as they are, and we're suspicious of any uncertainty and involvement that might weaken our position.

Second, why does anyone think that Europe is going to do more to provide for collective defense? The alliance has been arguing about "burden-sharing" since its inception, and we have both well-developed theories and sixty years of history demonstrating why the United States still bears most of the burden while Europe tends to "free-ride." A continent with a larger population and combined GDP than America, and with over a million men and women under arms, still can’t assemble the wherewithal to put 60,000 troops in the field and sustain them for any reasonable length of time. I'm not picking on them, mind you, because it's not obvious to me that Europe needs a lot more capability in order to be secure, especially with Uncle Sam devoting a much higher share of its GDP to defense. But given that NATO's European members have a declining and aging populations and face no imminent external military threats, does anyone seriously believe that they are going to take on a more equal share of the collective burden?

They would if the US forced them to. Of course, that would entail putting the Europeans into a position where they might

A)fracture, leading us back to intra-Europe rivalries like those of the past;

B)have greater strategic ties with Russia. We tend to forget that prior to the US's NATO and the advent of communism, Russia was very much a "European" power, competed in European great power contests, married its nobles and royalty to European nobility, and so forth;

C)develop a military and foreign policy that won't align with us easily.

As I said, the US policy is fundamentally conservative; we like things the way they are (or were back in the 1990s), and we're suspicious of real change.

Third, over the next ten to twenty years (at least), America's strategic attention is likely to be focused on the Middle East, Central Asia, and East Asia. In light of these priorities, what is the basis for close strategic cooperation between Europe and America? (Note that several NATO allies have already declared that they will be withdrawing troops from Afghanistan in the next year or so, just as the United States is ramping up). If the United States were one day to decide to make a greater effort to contain China (not a certainty, of course, but hardly a far-fetched possibility), would Europe join in that mission? What would be its interest in doing so? Wouldn't it be more likely to seek good relations with Washington and Beijing, and cultivate profitable economic ties with both sides?

Hard to say. I'm inclined to think that as long as Europe remains the economic power bloc that it is, the US will always be drawn to it. It has become part of our "neighborhood", so to speak.

Fourth, and following from the third point, why do so many people think that NATO can or should strive for common positions on literally dozens of contentious international issues? For example, a recent joint study by the RAND Corporation and the Bertelsmann Stiftung in Germany calls for major diplomatic efforts to "harmonize" positions across a whole range of problems, including terrorism, WMD, the Arab-Israeli conflict, Central Asia, the reform of Bretton Woods institutions, energy security, global poverty, and a whole lot more. But is there any reason to expect NATO to do this? If not, what is that point of making this level of agreement on that many issues the benchmark of alliance cohesion? Might we be better off picking the two or three most important issues confronting NATO's members, working hard to reach agreement on them, and agreeing to disagree on the others?

I blame this on the pro-NATO and quasi-imperialist folks, who are looking to preserve their tools of security influence, and looking for ways to use existing institutions for their own purposes. Realistically, NATO should have been either dissolved or heavily reconstructed in the years following the re-unification of Germany, but it wasn't, and now they've gone looking for a new role to keep it alive. Institutional inertia, and all that; these organizations tend to perpetuate themselves.

Fifth and last, is there are a point one can now foresee when NATO might actually end, or at least be recognized as essentially irrelevant? Back in 1998, I compared NATO to Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Grey: it appeared youthful and vigorous, continually holding meetings, exercises, summits, and subsequently managing to fight minor wars in Kosovo and Afghanistan (albeit without much actual coordination), but in reality, the alliance was growing old and tired. Perhaps that’s why the titles of so many recent studies of NATO use the prefix "Re-," as in "Renewing the Atlantic Partnership," "Revitalizing the Transatlantic Security Partnership," or "Alliance Reborn." If so many smart people think NATO badly needs repair, isn't that rather revealing?

NATO will have served its purpose when the Europeans finally unify their military and foreign policy into one supra-state effort. At that point, real possibilities for intra-European conflict will be moribund, and Europe can use its pull to move forward on its own.

Or, alternatively, NATO will be finished when the Russians are finally brought back into a European Security plan. At that point, the real reason why NATO has refused to die will cease to exist.

As a European I am confused by the common US assertion that Europe does not pull its weight militarily. While I am happy to concede it spend far less of its GDP on weapons that is because we are not in any great hurry to make enemies or impose our will by force. I do not feel threatened and feel we have adequate force to make any attack on us not worth the effort. The US pumps more and more money into a military that is already an order of magnitude large than needed to deal with any other state – or group of states. I had always assumed this was just an unwelcome side effect of the incestuous relationship between the armaments industry and successive US governments. Many Communist, and now Islamic, countries have a less charitable view as to why America is covering the planet with troops and weapons.

As to NATO I would prefer to see it allowed to fade away. I also see no need for a messy divorce but there is no Warsaw Pact block to counter. Militaries can train together and, should we be attacked by a common foe, fight together but as there is much I disagree with in US FP I would prefer we keep our distance, and don’t preclude being on opposite sides. An operation like Afghanistan should only be sanctioned by the UN. If that body can not be persuaded the cause is just and deserves blue helmets then no coalition can be legitimate. It is embarrassing seeing NATO being used to circumvent the authority of the UN.