Whither NATO? (Part IV)

In this my last post on NATO, I’m going to discuss what the US can do with that organization in light of its current seeming lack of a mission and the fact that it cannot be wound up without drawing attention to the fact that the pivot to Asia is really focused on balancing against China’s rise in the Asia-Pacific region. You can see first three posts here, here, and here.

So, to what end can the US still put NATO to good use? The answer to that is the creation of a truly integrated European military, or at least a pseudo-integrated European military. That is to say that the US should encourage its European allies through the auspices of NATO to pool their military resources, including personnel, equipment, facilities, and, most important of all, procurement euros.

There are two primary caveats, one short-term and one long-term, that go along with the US attempting to bring this about. The short-term caveat is that there is currently a bit of a backlash in many European states at the moment against supranational institutions and anything that smacks of a “federal” Europe. Of the big European NATO militaries—France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, and the UK (though it is in NATO, I’m leaving Turkey out of this)—only Germany and Poland have any kind of stomach presently for further European integration. The long-term caveat is in part derived from the short-term one in that this is by its very nature a long-term project. Even if Europe was not presently going through an integrationist crisis, this is a policy goal that would have a multi-decade time horizon for success.

So what would an integrated European military structure look like? First of all it goes without saying that there is no one blueprint that a European military must have. It could be something as basic as national militaries specializing in certain aspects of military power all the way up to a truly integrated military structure in which national militaries become subsumed under the banner of a European “flag.” Obviously the former is more likely than the latter unless there is a breakthrough in European relations over the coming years that sees the creation of a truly federal Europe.

But at a minimum what an integrated European military should have is a shared budget. That is to say that there should be a centralized budget for Europe’s militaries for all aspects of military funding, but especially for administration and procurement. By creating a single military bureaucracy, Europe’s NATO members could increase non-administrative military spending without actually having to add euros to the budget. And by combining their procurement efforts, better deals with defense companies could be had because of the larger number of units that can be guaranteed to the company relative to individual national procurement budgets.

The biggest roadblock to a truly integrated European military structure is that such a structure would necessarily mean the loss of national control over that military. There would have to be a supranational entity to determine when and how to use the military, so it likely would have to come about in conjunction with the creation a federal European government. The less integrated forms of military integration can be accomplished, though, without greater European federalization, including a movement toward national specialization in certain military functions (though having one or a few states specialize in land forces would likely not be a good idea since those countries would be most likely to take the brunt of any casualties if the force were sent into action, which would be an unfair and politically untenable thing to expect of them).

Assuming that it would be possible to create some kind of unified and integrated European military structure, the obvious question arises of why it would be in the interests of the United States to foster and encourage such a situation. It would be in the interest of the US to do so because an integrated European military would be more likely to have the kind of out-of-area fighting capability that Europe’s individual states currently lack. With the exception of the UK and France, no European NATO ally can currently conduct out-of-area military operations without the assistance of the US, and even the British and French cannot sustain such operation very far from Europe or for more than a few weeks.

If the Europeans were to develop a true out-of-area operations capability, then a sort of division-of-labor could be worked out between the US and Europe in which the US takes responsibility for the Asia-Pacific and Western Hemispheric regions while Europe takes responsibility for Europe and Africa with shared responsibility over the Middle East and South Asia. The US would not only save on operational by not getting directly involved in European or African issues, but there would also be the savings of not having to support European operations there either.

Of course, such a division of labor would necessarily require a closer coordination between the US and Europe than currently exists. But one of the primary reasons why the US doesn’t currently coordinate closely with European countries is the feeling among many US policy makers that it would be fruitless to do so. Many US policy makers see Europe as more of a nuisance than a partner in the international relations arena. This is so not only because of the relative weakness of Europe’s national militaries but also because of the multiplicity of European states that must be coordinated with. An integrated European military could resolve both issues and make Europe a much more potent partner in the US’s efforts to enforce the international order that was created in the aftermath of World War II and that has redounded to the US’s (and its allies) benefit for many decades.

Whither NATO? (Part III)

In this third post on the future of NATO I'll discuss the current status of NATO in America's foreign policy in light of the announced pivot to Asia. You can read my first two posts on this topic here and here.

Given the announcement by the Obama administration of an American “pivot” to Asia, a not unreasonable question to ask is: What should the US do, if anything, with NATO?

To answer that question, you must first ask a different one: What purpose does NATO serve in the contemporary international system? As I pointed out in my two previous posts, NATO began as a North-American/Western-European effort to defend Western Europe from a possible Soviet invasion. The US had two primary reasons for entering this alliance: to keep the Soviets out of Western Europe and to keep Western Europeans from entering into a working relationship with the Soviets. Those purposes disappeared, however, with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, and NATO’s role shifted to performing the security function of bringing former communist Eastern European countries into the democratic, free-market fold and to acting as a legitimizer for US military efforts outside the European region.

The first of those roles is no longer an important one for NATO to play as the post-Communist expansion of Europe has almost been completed (though, admittedly, the economic and political roles of that effort played by the EU are currently on shaky ground). And the second of those roles is no longer a viable one since world opinion no longer sees America’s European allies as being independent actors because of their dependence on the US for their ability to engage in out-of-area military actions. It’s also highly unlikely that those allies will, after Afghanistan, ever again allow themselves to be put into the fire solely out of a feeling that they must uphold their commitments under NATO.

Given that the two post-Soviet roles for NATO have gone by the wayside, it would seem that a prudent thing for the members of NATO to do would be to wind the organization up and call it a day. Unfortunately for the US, that would likely, however, be a mistake. With the pivot to Asia currently underway, the US has its hands full with trying to convince China that the pivot is not about containing or confronting China’s rise. If the US were to dismantle its European alliance because it no longer has a real world rationale for existing, but did not also dismantle its Asian alliances, the obvious question to ask would be: What threat remaining in the Asia-Pacific region necessitates the continuation of these alliances. Given Russia’s weakness in the Asia-Pacific region, the only logical threat, either present or near-term, that exists is China. North Korea and Islamic fundamentalist terrorist groups might be threats to the US, but North Korea is only a threat to the US because of its alliances with South Korea and Japan, and the Asia-Pacific region is simply not where the action is when it comes to anti-American terrorism. So, any move to dismantle NATO without also dismantling the US’s alliances in Asia would only manage to drive China into an even higher state of anger regarding the pivot to Asia, which would be bad for America and especially bad for its allies.

This does not mean, however, that NATO must spend its future days as a weight around America’s ankle. There is something that the US can do through NATO in conjunction with its pivot to Asia that could make the organization as vital to US security in the 21st century as it was in the second half of the 20th. I’ll discuss what that is in my fourth, and final, post on NATO.