Europe and NATO
Apr 11, 2016
I will be leaving
shortly for a week in Europe, visiting Slovakia, Romania, and the Czech
Republic. After 1989, these former Soviet satellites sought integration with
Europe—and, in a sense, salvation—by becoming members of the two major
transnational organizations: the European Union and NATO. The former was
strictly European, while the latter bound Europe and the United States
together.
Recent chaos
in the EU and the return of Russian assertiveness has placed these three
countries in difficult positions. The Czech Republic is deeply bound economically with
Germany. Prague is comfortable with that relationship and shares Berlin’s fate
in many ways. When I visit the Czech Republic, I am going to be talking about
what I see as Germany’s weakness.
Romania has
opted to draw closer to the United States. It’s a difficult relationship, but
even under communism, the Romanians distrusted the Russians. I have long argued
that a close collaboration with the United States is essential to Romania. I
will get a chance to hear from Romanians about the progress of our
collaboration. The next critical step in the relationship is arranging
significant investment from the United States for much-needed development of
the Romanian energy sector—in spite of the fact that investing in energy right
now is a tough proposition.
My first visit
will be to Slovakia, a country that has struggled to keep its relations with
Russia intact. Each year there is a conference in Bratislava called Globsec,
where people who are focused on Central Europe and Russia gather. National
leaders frequently speak, but they rarely say anything new, since they can’t.
It is the people a tier or two down, some of whom I’ve known for years, who
reveal the most by what they say or don’t say about what really makes them angry
or worried. These people are the ones who give you get a sense of what is
coming— or at least what they think is coming.
This year, a
major topic at Globsec will be NATO. The choice of topic has to do partly with
Donald Trump’s statements that Europe isn’t paying its “fair share” and,
further, that it would be fine if NATO broke up. Such remarks by US
presidential candidates are regarded with great care and concern in Eastern
Europe. On a broader scale, Russia and the Middle East both present national security
issues for all of Europe. Europe has no integrated military capability except
for NATO, and NATO is now, to my mind, a shambles. It is a military alliance,
but Europe has allowed its military capability, limited to begin with in the
wake of WWII, to weaken dramatically.
As Europeans
come to realize that Russia has not gone away and the United States has not
actually overreacted to Islamist terrorism, Trump’s words on NATO are raising
alarm. The Europeans worry that the US has lost confidence in NATO. I will be speaking on
this subject, and what I have to say will not be reassuring. Many Europeans see
NATO as the guarantor of their national security. In other words, they depend
on the United States… the only NATO member with a global military capability.
From the
start, the Europeans wanted NATO to serve as the mechanism for approving and
overseeing military operations. They wanted a decisive voice in how NATO
members, including the United States, applied their military power. However,
their forces were so small that in most cases their participation was little
more than symbolic. NATO became less and less a factor in US decision-making,
and the Europeans compensated by congratulating themselves for their
sophistication compared to the American “cowboys.”
The Europeans
celebrated a concept called soft power, which involves the use of sanctions,
the mobilization of public opinion, and other strategies that avoid military
action. They wanted an option that cost less than becoming a global power
costs. Frankly, from my point of view, their embracing soft power was simply a
way to evade reality. As the Russians loomed larger and the Middle East spilled
over into Europe, the Europeans discovered that soft power was… soft. And that
they needed hard power, which the United States had (and to a far lesser extent
Britain and France), but no one else did. Suddenly the world seemed out of
control to the Europeans, since they lacked the hard power to shape events.
In terms of
soft power, NATO began to take on a function it was never designed for. As
communism fell, post-communist European states sought membership in NATO, not
so much to be defended but to become integrated and Europeanized. Membership in
the EU and NATO, it was believed, would turn these former Soviet satellites
into Western countries. But NATO is a military alliance. It’s about tanks and
planes and war plans. To become a mechanism for socializing new countries into
Western Europe was not its purpose. Defending these countries and the rest of
Europe was NATO’s function, but that function atrophied as war seemed
increasingly irrelevant.
Since the US
is a member, the Europeans felt that the United States’ power should be
available to them through NATO. From Trump (and from far lesser figures like
me), they are now hearing the message that the United States is not prepared to
spend a vast amount of money on its military and then allow the Europeans a
voice in its use. This is not a new reality, but it is one about which the
United States is becoming much less apologetic.
The issue is
not NATO itself but the defense relationship between Europe and the United
States. NATO is simply the old framework for that relationship, which was
established after World War II. At the time, the United States towered over
Europe economically and militarily. Europe had little that it could contribute
to defense, while the United States had an overriding interest in preventing
the Soviets from seizing Western Europe. The US, comfortable with the
asymmetrical arrangement, contributed the bulk of the military power to potentially
fight a war on European territory, while Europe took the primary risk. That was
the foundation of NATO.
That
foundation crumbled long ago, most emphatically with the fall of the Soviet
Union and the signing of the Maastricht Treaty that created the European Union.
The total population of the European Union is just over 508 million people. The
population of the United States is about 320 million people. The GDP of the
European Union is $18.45 trillion. The GDP of the United States is about $18.3
trillion. In other words, Europe and the United States are equal in wealth,
while Europe has almost 200 million people more than the US does.
There is
therefore no reason why the Europeans should not have a military capability
equal to or even greater than that commanded by the United States. Though
Europe was understandably the junior partner in the 1950s, neither demographics
nor economics show the continent to be a junior partner now.
Today, a
structural problem driven by policy decisions ensures the ongoing asymmetry
between the US’s commitment to NATO and Europe’s. The structural problem is
that the European Union lacks a defense dimension. European unification is a
complex quilt of relationships, and defense rests in the hands of individual
sovereign states. The largest state, Germany, which should be devoting the most
to a European defense force, devotes little even to its own force. Britain is
cutting back its defense expenditures, and while France is raising the issue of
increasing defense budgets, it still has a military force with limited
capability.
There is an
assumption in NATO that each country will devote 2% of its GDP to defense. A
few do this, but most do not, and Europe as a whole does not come close. The
American contribution to NATO is 2.7% of US GDP. The extraordinary fact is not
that Trump pointed out this disparity and made clear that it couldn’t continue,
but that it took Trump to make this a major issue.
During the
Cold War, NATO’s mission was clear. It was to defend Western Europe from a Soviet
attack. Military alliances function best with simple objectives. In this case,
the military mission evaporated, but the alliance continued in place. Lacking a
clear and present military mission, Europeans became even more reluctant to
invest in defense. The need for defense seemed distant from the reality Europe
was living in.
Now, the
Russians are reasserting their place in history, and the Islamic State is targeting European capitals. It is not
clear how the threats they pose are to be countered, but the challenge will
demand military force in some capacity. In Europe, the United States has been
seen as vastly overreacting to 9/11. A counterargument is that the Europeans
simply didn’t believe they would become targets, but they have. Today, the
fears fanned by terrorist acts in Europe have less to do with the number killed
than with the disconcerting reality that a strike may come at any place and at
any time. A state that does not act quickly and decisively to counter terrorism
within its borders loses legitimacy and the trust of its public and its allies.
The Europeans
must act. For its part, the United States has determined that it will no longer
act alone. In the case of Syria, the US is prepared to use air power but will
not deploy the multidivisional force needed to bring peace to the country.
Instead, the US wants fellow NATO partners to shoulder a much larger part of
the burden. And while the US is prepared to play a part, it does not intend to
take the leading role.
Europe,
however, is incapable of taking that role because it does not have the troops,
hardware, or motivation to do so. Thus the Europeans will continue to hope for
soft power solutions, so as to avoid the pain of hard power actions. They will
not be able to act decisively, even if they wish to do so, for many years. As
for Russia and the situation in Ukraine, the US is taking steps in conjunction
with Poland and Romania, but geography dictates that it cannot be the primary
player there.
The
foundations of NATO have dissolved. Europe’s financial commitment to NATO is
not credible. The willingness of the US to operate within the constraints of
NATO is long gone. A unified strategic outlook is missing. NATO can be
repaired, but it is hard to see that there is any unified vision or will to do
so. Multinational institutions do not die. They continue to have annual
meetings, such as NATO’s upcoming summit in Poland in July. But what is a
military alliance without a military or a mission? It is just an anachronism.
I will be
saying these things in Europe. My remarks will not be taken well. The Europeans
understand the problem but want it to go away because dealing with it is much
too hard. The problem will not go away, but the United States will, as the
partnership with Europe is largely an illusion. The threats posed by Russian
ambitions and terrorist plots will not go away but will simply become
increasingly difficult to manage. Good will and conferences cannot solve the
problem. I think that the 20th century exhausted Europe’s will to do difficult
things, and for more than half a century, the things Europe had to do were
relatively simple. That is no longer the case. In Bratislava, we will all agree
that something needs to be done. We will also know that nothing will be.
George Friedman
Editor, This Week in Geopolitics
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