3O.
Alternatives to NATO
As the focal point in this century of two world wars and the Cold War,
Europe has strategic importance for the United States. Inadequate security
arrangements can lead to disaster. Recent events demonstrate that existing
structures are not working. Current proposals for reform or expansion of
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, however, neither meet American
interests nor guarantee peace in Europe. New structures designed to provide
credible security and a constructive, mutually beneficial, transatlantic rela-
tionship are needed.
The 104th. Congress should
• encourage the integration of all European nations—including for-
mer European adversaries—into a new comprehensive European
security system;
• encourage the strengthening of European security organizations
such as the Organization for Security and Cooperation hi Europe,
the Western European Union, and the Eurocorps instead of
regarding NATO as the indispensable institution for managing
the security problems of post-Cold War Europe;
• discourage the emergence of new security blocs or divisions hi
Europe and avoid taking any action that might increase the risk
of that outcome;
• especially avoid any new security commitments in Europe, for
example, the expansion of NATO to include the nations of Central
and Eastern Europe.
NATO's Growing Irrelevance
In the 20th century two world wars have started in Europe and the
Cold War saw its most dangerous moments there. Given the probability
that any future war between European great powers would draw in the
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United States as a combatant, it is clear that the United States has an
interest in ensuring the existence of effective security structures in Europe.
History shows that when such structures are deficient (as was the case
before both world wars), conflict results; by contrast, when they are credible
and adequate to the task (as was the case with NATO up to the demise
of the Warsaw Pact), peace can be maintained.
Events since the fall of the Berlin Wall in L989 provide mounting
evidence that existing European security arrangements can no longer meet
the demands placed on them: disagreements within NATO, doubts about
the effectiveness of the OSCE, reductions in the U.S. troop presence in
Europe, compensating attempts to reinvigorate or establish purely Euro-
pean security institutions, misgivings about Russia's future course, the
conflict in Bosnia, the uncertain status of Eastern Europe and the former
Soviet republics, the Crimea dispute, and Russian activities in its "near
abroad" have combined to produce confusion. No one knows who is
protecting whom with which forces against what threats, or why. Those
are precisely the conditions that have led to tragedy in the past. European
security issues, therefore, merit serious attention from the new Congress.
A great deal of official and academic effort, time, and thought has
already gone into consideration of those matters. Unfortunately, much of
the work suffers from the same disqualifying flaw: asking the wrong
questions. Instead of looking at the real question of how to promote
security throughout Europe, analysts have concentrated on the narrow
bureaucratic issue of NATO's institutional survival. Secretary of State
Warren Christopher, for example, said at the December 1994 NATO
foreign ministers meeting that the central task facing the United States
was to make NATO "relevant for the future."
Treating NATO's continued existence as if it were the self-evident
starting point for European security arrangements gives priority to institu-
tional reform to bring the alliance up to date. The result has been the
creation of new bodies such as the North Atlantic Cooperation Council—
founded in 1991 on German and American initiative to facilitate coopera-
tion between NATO and the former Warsaw Pact countries—and the
Partnership for Peace—established in 1993 under American sponsorship
to allow military cooperation between Western and Eastern Europe. The
fact that the functions of those bodies remain ill defined and duplicative
indicates they have not solved the policy puzzle.
In the meantime, the credibility of the transatlantic alliance continues
to erode. In operational terms, the policy disagreements about Bosnia have
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landed a body blow. But other, long-term factors are also at work. For
budgetary reasons, Canada is in the process of withdrawing its troops
from Europe. The United States now stations barely 100,000 soldiers in
Europe, significantly fewer than the 150,000 that former NATO supreme
commander Gen. John Galvin described in 1991 as the absolute minimum
to provide a credible deterrent—and further reductions are likely. Through-
out Europe, military expenditures are contracting rapidly.
Stating those realities does not imply any slight of NATO's past perfor-
mance. When NATO's defenders describe the alliance as the most success-
ful in history, they are correct. But its past performance does not mean
that NATO remains the correct instrument for today's European security
needs. It was designed to be a defensive "high-intensity" alliance against
a known enemy's attacking a specified treaty area. That design is not well
adapted to today's problems. Tinkering with it just postpones the search
for effective solutions.
America's Real European Interests
To cut through the confusion, we need to return to basics. Before any
decisions can be made about future U.S. policy toward Europe, two key
questions must be addressed: what are American interests in the new post-
Cold War Europe, and how can they be most effectively advanced with
the least risk to the United States?
Those are deceptively simple questions, and the answers to the first
range far afield. Some see the protection of a multiethnic Bosnian state
as a vital American interest; others argue that Poland, Hungary, the Czech
Republic, and Slovakia all deserve the same security guarantees as the
United States offers to the current members of NATO; others go still
further and see any Russian encroachment on its neighbors—Ukraine, the
Baltic republics, the other nations in the near abroad—as a threat to
American interests. Conversely, other analysts—including those at the
Cato Institute—define American interests more selectively. According to
their view, the primary U.S. interest in Europe is to prevent the emergence
of a new hegemonic power—like Wilhelmine or Nazi Germany or the
Soviet Union—that might seek to exclude the United States from European
influence and commercial access and pose a serious military threat to
America.
Those different responses to the fundamental question about the nature
of American interests in Europe produce startiingly different policy pre-
scriptions—as has been seen most clearly in regard to Bosnia. This is
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not the place to attempt to reconcile those differences; instead, we need
to be more candid about the real-life implications of the various positions.
If they are to have any value, post-Cold War security structures in
Europe must be credible. Bosnia has shown that, when credibility is
lacking, it does not matter how much we spend on defense, how many
aircraft carrier battle groups are at our disposal, or how great is our arsenal
of smart laser-guided weapons. For that reason, it is essential that any
definition of America's security interest in Europe have a rigorous connec-
tion to the willingness of the American political leadership and public to
commit American money and American lives to defending that interest.
That willingness in turn depends on public support and a widespread
public perception that a specific commitment is in America's best interest.
Credibility was the strong point of NATO in the Cold War era; the
Soviets understood that any attack on NATO—whether inside the Arctic
Circle, over the north German plain,' or through the Black Sea—would
be met with massive counterforce. If that perception is absent (as it clearly
has been to the Serbian generals), strategic discussion degenerates into a
rhetorical exercise of little relevance to on-the-ground developments. There
is little merit (indeed there is positive harm), for example, in extending
NATO's security umbrella to the eastern borders of Poland and Hungary
if, as is palpably obvious, few Americans support the practical implications
of such additional "world policeman" commitments, namely, that young
Americans may be called on to die on the banks of the Bug and the Tizza
and that more, not fewer, troops will have to be stationed in Europe. That
is security by illusion and should be rejected.
If the debate on American national interests in Europe is conducted
using the more rigorous terms outlined here, many of the reasons now
put forward for American involvement will be unconvincing. Ethnic con-
flict; the treatment by neighboring states of expatriate minorities, such as
the Hungarians or Albanians; confidence building between Eastern and
Western Europe; and the like will no longer be considered the immediate
responsibility of the United States; they will fall to European institutions.
The American role would then be to provide advice and support, rather
than first-line leadership, financial resources, or military assets.
Europe's Own Security Resources
A lower profile U.S. policy would draw on the considerable resources
of modern Europe. In contrast to the extreme weakness of Europe at
the time of NATO's founding, Europe today represents a formidable
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geopolitical power center. The EU alone now comfortably exceeds the
United States in both gross domestic product and population. Along with
that increasing resource base, the military potential of the European mem-
bers of NATO has continued to grow. The combined numbers of European
tanks, armored combat vehicles, artillery, combat aircraft, and attack heli-
copters within the OSCE area significantly exceed those of the United
States and more than equal those of Russia.
In addition, institutional cohesion within the EU on political and security
matters has steadily increased. The Maastricht Treaty established formal
mechanisms for close political collaboration between EU members. The
EU has also taken steps to develop its joint military capabilities outside
the NATO framework. It has reinvigorated the WEU—to which all the
major EU nations belong—as the potential military arm of the EU. WEU
ships have already undertaken sanction patrols in the Persian Gulf and
Adriatic Sea. In addition, the French and Germans have formed the 35,000-
strong Eurocorps, and other nations such as Belgium and Spain have
expressed their intention to join. The Eurocorps may one day form the
basis of a European army.
The capability, and increasingly the command and control functions,
of EU military institutions are far from negligible. That is not to say that
they could handle a sustained war against a rearmed Russia, but they
certainly provide a foundation on which to build future independent Euro-
pean security structures for substrategic warfare.
Outside the EU, the United States can draw on the diplomatic strengths
of the 53-member OSCE. That organization enjoys a comprehensive Euro-
pean and North American membership and was the vehicle through which
the 1990 Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe was negotiated.
Although its consensual processes still impair its ability to address contro-
versial issues (as has been apparent with Bosnia), it has successfully
defused tensions between Russia and the Baltic republics and is at present
seeking to mediate the civil war in Ngorno-Karabakh. The OSCE has
experience in conflict prevention and resolution. Although it is still far
from a fully effective organization, the OSCE is a useful instrument through
which Europeans can take responsibility for their own conflict prevention
and mediation missions.
With greater responsibility for European security devolved to the Euro-
peans, the United States would concentrate on its traditional role of guard-
ing against the potential rise of a European hegemonic power. Thomas
Jefferson once said that the main American interest in Europe was to
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prevent the Continent from being dominated by a "force wielded by a
single hand." His insight enjoys continuing validity. In today's context,
it means that the United States should concentrate its energies on ensuring
that Russia's reintegration into the international community as a nonrevolu-
tionary force proceeds as successfully as that of Germany and Japan after
World War E.
An analysis of American interests along those lines radically redraws
the parameters of the European security debate. Specifically, it shows that
the main American interest in Europe lies not in reforming or expanding
NATO to provide "neo-containment" but instead in turning Europe into
a self-policing (rather than an American-policed) community. By concen-
trating on essentials while simultaneously strengthening European capabili-
ties, that approach would allow a continued phased withdrawal of American
forces from Europe.
Turning to the second question—how to advance American interests—
the immediate implication of an interest-based approach is that it becomes
necessary to look beyond NATO. That means ending the emphasis on
devising new missions for the alliance, for example, by developing a
"new strategic concept" (based around rapid reaction forces), "out of
area" deployment (outside the treaty-defined territory of the NATO mem-
ber states), or "peacekeeping" missions on behalf of the United Nations.
However reasonable those proposals may appear on staff papers in
NATO's Brussels headquarters, practical experience has shown that they
have little relevance to the problems encountered in the field. That produces
a dangerous security vacuum. As long as it continues, so does the risk
that Europe's ingrained tensions will once again boil over into general
conflict and that the United States will find itself fighting a war in Europe.
Features of New European Security Structures
Three strategic principles must be respected if the new structures are
to do their job.
Continentwide Application
Structures that divide Europe into security zones or "classes" are
intrinsically unworkable and will only breed confusion. If Ukraine has a
different status from Hungary, which in turn has a different status from
Germany—with, by implication, everyone looking over his shoulder at
Russia—no country will know where it stands. Credibility will.be totally
lacking, and there will be the political challenge of explaining to the
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American electorate why neighboring countries merit different degrees of
U.S. protection. Former French president Charles de Gaulle used to speak
of European security from "the Atlantic to the Urals." While the Warsaw
Pact existed, that was an awkward concept that seemed to undermine
transatlantic solidarity; but the United States should embrace it now.
Self-Policing
It is probable that many of the future challenges of European security
will be relatively small-scale in nature (compared to the massive conflict
written into NATO doctrine). To address those localized conflicts, struc-
tures need to evolve that allow rapid reaction from the countries closest
to the problem. Referring problems to the United Nations in New York
or NATO headquarters in Brussels is neither workable nor desirable.
European Responsibility
If new security arrangements are to be credible, it will be necessary to
establish lines of responsibility. The difficulty over Bosnia may be
explained in part by the fact that no single agency felt fully responsible.
Transatlantic recrimination has resulted. To frustrate any recurrence, the
United States should now unambiguously support the development of
indigenous European capabilities for European security. In areas such as
satellite intelligence and heavy air lift, the Europeans depend largely on
the United States. That situation needs to be addressed and European
dependence brought to an end. The Europeans themselves are sympathetic
to that view.
At present European security is hamstrung. NATO suffers from a crisis
of identity and will; Eastern Europe remains in limbo; the former Soviet
republics fear for their independence; in Russia suspicion that the West
is intent on encirclement breeds extreme nationalism and xenophobia;
petty tyrants everywhere seize the opportunity to ply their evil trade. Over
the long term those are ominous conditions. The last tiling that the United
States should want to do is to fight another major war in Europe. Getting
structures right today may help prevent such a tragedy. The 104th Congress
should assist the Clinton administration to conduct a thorough reassessment
of U.S. policy toward Europe.
Suggested Readings
Carpenter, Ted Galen. Beyond NATO: Staying Out of Europe's Wars. Washington: Cato
Institute, 1994.
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Carpenter, Ted Galen, ed. The Future of NATO. Special issue of Journal of Strategic
Studies 17, no. 4 (December 1994).
Clarke, Jonathan G. "The Eurocorps: A Fresh Start in Europe." Cato Institute Foreign
Policy Briefing no. 21, December 28, 1992.
"Replacing NATO." Foreign Policy (Winter 1993).
Haglund, David et al., eds. NATO's Eastern Dilemmas. Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1994.
Harries, Owen. "The Collapse of 'the West.'" Foreign Affairs 72 (September-Octo-
ber 1993).
Sestanovich, Stephen. "Giving Russia Its Due." National Interest 36 (Summer 1994).
—Prepared by Jonathan G. Clarke
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