Abstract
What should the new administration do about NATO? Four issues stand out: NATO expansion, NATO-led military operations in the Balkans, future transatlantic burden sharing within the alliance, and missile defense. On all four, you, the next president, will have to make important decisions, whether you want to or not.
Before addressing each of these subjects, it is worth remembering a broader strategic point: NATO remains very important today. The end of the Cold War and the emergence of a generally stable Western Europe during the second half of the twentieth century may have diminished the acute military need for the alliance. But given the absence of a natural leader within the European security order, and the slow pace at which European security cooperation is developing on the continent itself, it remains stabilizing and sensible to keep the United States firmly linked to Europe through a mutual defense pact.
The alliance also helps give U.S. defense policy international legitimacy. Washington can often act with the acquiescence and cooperation of 18 other democratic countries in operations such as the 1999 war against Serbia. Criticisms of a supposedly hegemonic United States would multiply if Washington did not consult with, and often act with, most of the world's other industrialized democracies. NATO may or may not be absolutely essential, but it is a wise investment and sound policy tool to retain in the post-Cold War era.
Nato plans to consider adding new members to the alliance in 2002. In membership decisions, Washington basically calls the shots. Since adding members means adding more countries that the alliance might have to defend under its Article V security guarantees, the NATO member with the greatest ability to project military power is the alliance's natural leader on the subject.
The United States is NATO's preeminent military power by any measure. And when it comes to projecting military power beyond the borders of the 16 members that won the Cold War together, it is dominant, with net capabilities that exceed the combined means of all of the other allies by nearly a factor of 10. Thus, Washington has primary influence over decisions on expansion–and primary responsibility for getting those decisions right.
The toughest issue for 2002 concerns the Baltic states. Some see these small countries as deserving protection after decades of oppression, and also wish to support their moves toward democracy and market economics with NATO membership. Others may share these sentiments at one level, but worry that offering membership to the Baltic states prematurely could stoke Russian fears of the alliance, and further set back an already strained relationship between Russia and the West. Given the enormity of the stakes involved in the latter relationship, you should oppose NATO membership for the Baltics (or any other former Soviet republic) in 2002.
“Working with Russia on matters of nuclear security and allowing Russia to consolidate and strengthen its democracy matter far more to the overall state of the continent (and indeed, the planet) than rushing a security commitment to the Baltics that is probably not needed in any event.
Your new administration probably should add more countries to NATO, given the momentum of events and the promises made to aspiring members in the past. But it should content itself with adding a couple of countries in central and southern Europe–perhaps Slovakia, Slovenia, and/or Romania–this time around.
“What about NATO in the Balkans? This became a visible issue in the 2000 presidential campaign, when candidate George W. Bush advocated a major lessening of the U.S. commitment to the NATO-led peace implementation missions there, as a way to relieve the global burden on an overworked U.S. military and push the allies toward a fairer sharing of the collective Western military burden.
“What your administration should recognize is that the U.S. commitment to the KFOR and sfor operations in Kosovo and Bosnia is already much reduced. Today there are only about 15,000 U.S. troops in all of the Balkans–in contrast to well over 20,000 in 1996–even though a second mission in the region was added in Kosovo in 1999. U.S. troops constitute less than 20 percent of the NATO total in the Balkans today.
Of the four military services, only the army is particularly strained by the mission there–and even its burden is limited in scope, involving just over two brigades out of 30 in the active-duty force.
That said, it is true that U.S. military forces are overstrained by the sum total of their worldwide responsibilities, and that the United States does far more globally for common Western security interests than do its allies. Moreover, Bosnia is moving toward a semblance of military stability–even if political rapprochement between the three parties remains a distant prospect and the economy remains weak. It may be possible over time to cut back the U.S. military presence even more (it is already down by two-thirds from its 1996 peak).
But it would be a mistake to cut U.S. forces there precipitously, and a huge mistake to abandon the NATO-led operation in Kosovo. Despite the fall of Slobodan Milosevic, Serbs and Kosovar Albanians remain fundamentally at loggerheads over which side has the right to be sovereign in Kosovo. Under these circumstances, any weakening of the NATO commitment to Kosovo's security would run a risk of reigniting war. At a minimum, the U.S. military almost certainly needs to maintain its modest presence in Kosovo throughout your first term.
Even though non-U.S. NATO members are comparable to the United States in wealth and population, and even though they collectively field more troops than the U.S. armed forces, they are far less capable militarily–especially for operations beyond their own borders.
Some, including William Cohen, the Clinton administration's defense secretary, argue that the European partners (and Canada) do not spend enough on their armed forces. In some cases, they are surely right that our allies should spend a bit more. But their argument ignores a political reality–that most of the allies almost certainly will not. In addition, it misses the broader point: Europeans could be much more capable without spending more money, if they would spend it more efficiently.
Consider this: The U.S. Marine Corps alone, with about 170,000 active-duty forces and a budget of around $10 billion a year, can project about as much combat power intercontinentally as all the NATO allies combined, even though those allies' aggregate defense spending is more than 15 times greater than that of the Marine Corps. Even if one adjusts for the fact that the Marine Corps enjoys the use of some military assets provided by the other services, it remains some 10 times as efficient as the allies at preparing for expeditionary warfare.
Thankfully, a number of European countries are taking steps to correct the problem. They are doing everything from ending military conscription, to purchasing more airlift and sealift, to working together under European Union auspices to set up command structures and military planning mechanisms that could allow them to project more power as a group.
The position of the United States on this matter should be clear: We should support any and all reasonable steps by the allies to improve their military capability. Sometimes the United States has worried that such steps could weaken NATO at the expense of the European Union. But the eu is so far behind nato, and most of its members so strongly supportive of NATO, that such fears are vastly overblown. Whether for peacekeeping in the Balkans, conflict in the Middle East, or humanitarian intervention in Africa, the United States stands to gain greatly if its allies can do more.
A fourth subject, missile defense, requires brief mention because it is a NATO issue as well. The reason is simple: It makes little sense for the United States to have a national missile defense (nmd) if countries whose security it is obliged to protect do not. A future Saddam Hussein could simply threaten Paris or Berlin rather than Washington, if trying to use missiles to prevent Western military assistance to a country such as Kuwait in a future war in the Middle East. The United States could be as paralyzed by that threat as by one in which its own territory were threatened.
This is not an argument against missile defense so much as a plea that the United States coordinate more fully with its allies on the subject–and that it be patient. There is little point in maintaining a rushed nmd program to protect U.S. territory by 2006 or so if advanced theater missile defense capabilities that European allies would need to protect their territories will not be available before 2007 or 2008 at the earliest.
The new administration should therefore put off any and all major decisions on nmd deployment until at least 2002. That postponement would also buy it time to research boost-phase missile defense technologies, which probably make more sense than the Clinton administration's proposed midcourse system on both technical and strategic grounds.