Will NATO survive? - North Atlantic Treaty Organization - Defense & Technology

National Review, July 31, 1995 by Peter W. Rodman

THERE are really two questions here: First, should NATO survive? And second, will it? It is easier to answer a firm yes to the first question than to the second.

Lord Ismay, NATO's first secretary general, made the famous (or infamous) wisecrack that the purpose of the North Atlantic Alliance was to keep the Americans in Europe, the Russians out, and the Germans down. The reference to our democratic German ally is invidious and a distortion, but Lord Ismay was not wrong to touch on the three elements of the Alliance's geopolitical purpose: to ensure an American military presence in Europe, as a counterweight to Russian power, and as an ultimate reassurance of Germany's benign place in the Western security system. Obviously the Russian threat has receded, but the structural problem of European security turns out to be a major intellectual and political challenge in the new era nonetheless. Not in fifty years, in fact, has there been such fluidity and uncertainty about European arrangements. The stabilizing functions of the Alliance turn out to be still valuable -- indeed, there is no adequate substitute -- especially with respect to both post-Communist Russia and newly unified Germany.

Bismarck reputedly once said: Russia is never as strong, or as weak, as it appears. This was wise. Today's East - West balance of power on the Continent is a benign one, with the Red Army out of Central and Eastern Europe and with U.S. forces in Europe reduced by two-thirds. Nevertheless, the principle of equilibrium must still be observed. Russia is a huge concentration of power on the Eurasian landmass; it has been a clumsy and erratic factor in European politics for all modern history, even before the Bolsheviks and thermonuclear weapons. Today, Russia's military might is much reduced but still out of proportion to that of its neighbors. Its domestic evolution is uncertain, to put it mildly, and it has been throwing its weight around in its immediate neighborhood. There is no adequate counterweight without an American security presence in Western Europe, and even the most positive future relationship between Russia and the West depends on this.

Whether to enlarge NATO is a separate question. The geopolitical logic of doing so is not to respond to any immediate Russian threat but to erase any ambiguity about the outcome of 1989: Central Europe now consists of free and independent states that have chosen to be part of the West; Russian acceptance of this is the sine qua non of any relationship with the West. Extension of NATO's security umbrella eastward is not a change in the present status quo but a necessary consolidation of it.

Germany, as noted above, has been a faithful democratic ally for forty years. It has also become the dominant economic power in Europe. Historically, economic strength has always translated sooner or later into military strength. What has, uniquely in history, divorced German (and Japanese) economic power from any security implications has been Germany's (and Japan's) tight military link with the United States. Everybody has gained from this bargain: Germany and Japan have been free to develop economically without raising fears of more problematic forms of hegemony; Europe and Asia have gained a vital reassurance. That is one reason for the Germans' eagerness now to enlarge NATO: they are wise enough to see that their own activism in Central Europe has different implications if it is part of a collective presence from the ones it would have if Germany were acting unilaterally.

Despite some illusions in Brussels, the European Union cannot perform this function of anchoring Germany to the Western security framework. Germany, now unified, is even stronger -- and more assertive -- than before. The French strategy of taming Germany though monetary union and a European army is an empty one; all it has done is strangle the French economy and dilute Germany's commitment to NATO. It is not only the small states of Eastern and Central Europe that would be left vulnerable without the Americans; Western Europe too would become unhinged without the American security presence.

To state all this is not to make an ethnic slur against Russians' or Germans' moral qualities, but to define a structural problem -- one of disproportionate power that needs to be counterbalanced. This is the geopolitical function that the Alliance has performed successfully since it was founded. The need has not disappeared.

THE debate over NATO's enlargement is taking place in a decidedly uncongenial environment, as its cohesion is weakened by U.S. troop cuts, proliferating disputes (Bosnia, Iran, Iraq, trade), and feeble leadership in key capitals. The telling point has been made that for the Alliance to expand in these circumstances is like a couple whose marriage is in trouble deciding to have a baby in the hope that it will save the relationship.

The glue of an obvious and immediate military threat is gone. On both sides of the ocean, popular pressures work against the Alliance. Some question why any U.S. troops are needed; others are preoccupied with the disputes that tear away at any lingering sense of common interest. Even Europeans who value the American connection begin to doubt our staying power and look for hedges: thus the periodic, though so far ineffectual, moves toward a European army.