4. The Path Ahead: At Warsaw and Beyond

What should we do to move beyond the Groundhog Day continuous loop on these issues and make meaningful progress? Here are some ideas for consideration, at the Warsaw Summit and beyond, on the ends-means disconnect.

• Reinforce the Two Percent Budget Pledge. Building on the recent defense-budget increases, NATO countries should reaffirm the 2 percent pledge and confirm that there is considerable work to be done. Short-term measures also should be considered to facilitate, to the extent possible, realistic and immediate progress toward the 2 percent pledge. Specifically, at Warsaw, NATO should:

a. Devise an annual “stair step” plan to demonstrate how nations will achieve their pledge within the allotted decade; otherwise, the ten-year plan to get to 2 percent is a recipe for deferring action and doing very little.

b. Encourage frontline nations to adopt more ambitious spending goals consistent with Article 3 of the Washington Treaty, which stresses national self-help and individual capacity; and

c. Reinforce the current goal of having no single NATO nation provide more than 50 percent of the capabilities needed for any one mission.

• Encourage European Force Integration, Specialization, and Cooperation. The EU is considering a shift toward closer defense cooperation and integration (making it a “norm”), with small, gradual steps today that would potentially facilitate the eventual, long-term goal of a joint European military force, as outlined in the Lisbon treaty. As the UK has largely been a skeptic of such closer cooperation, the Brexit paradoxically could accelerate this effort in the short term—and over time, the UK may elect to participate in the security dimension of the EU.

For its part, the United States should encourage this type of resource pooling and integration as an organizing principle for action (preferably with UK engagement), and encourage a series of short- and medium-term steps that would, over time, help to shape and incentivize such evolution.

Certainly, NATO European countries can achieve substantial efficiencies through efforts to pool their defense resources, including the gradual integration of military units, capabilities and procurements; selective specialization; and more joint and enhanced interoperability and cooperation. Recent collaboration between German and Dutch forces is a nascent step in this direction; the Dutch, having given up their tanks, have formed a Mechanized Brigade that will serve as part of the German First Tank Division. In particular, as smaller countries find it increasingly challenging from an economic and military standpoint to maintain their own standing forces, this type of force integration may increasingly occur. The Framework Nation concepts already underway and other, new and stronger such arrangements can serve as focal points for this type of activity.

• A Strong Focus on Roles and Missions: NATO Europe to Take Broader Responsibility for Ground Forces on the Eastern Front. To redress the burden-sharing gap and encourage the development of a European force, the United States should identify and encourage clear roles for European NATO members and offer more information sharing and other forms of partnerships as part of the equation with our allies willing to coalesce and enhance their capabilities in select mission areas.

One approach to consider is for the United States to ask its European partners to gradually take over more responsibility with respect to the deployment of ground forces role on NATO’s eastern flank over a transitional period. The recent U.S.-led multinational Anakonda exercise and others like it also could help to encourage the leadership of central European countries in building this capability. This type of approach could build on the Framework Nation concept already in use at NATO, with groupings of countries under one or more larger ones with both the political will and relevant capabilities to take the lead in this effort and other smaller countries offering capabilities to fill gaps. Subregional groupings such as the Nordic Cooperation Group and the nascent group in the east (Poland, Romania and Ukraine) also could be useful vehicles for this type of effort. A similar approach led by the UK could be utilized for establishing a European NATO expeditionary capability.

• Selective Capability Enhancement: Coalition Forces Planning Roadmaps and Selective Capability Enhancement by Allies. We should better integrate coalition warfare into U.S. national force planning, and also work with our NATO allies to identify, across a range of scenarios, where modest investments by coalition partners can yield significant returns and potential force multipliers. The United States should work with nations in areas of specialization that are consistent with their cultures, attitudes toward the use of force and resources. While some nations may focus on high-intensity capabilities, others may be more willing to further develop low-intensity capabilities suitable for Petersberg tasks. For example, if Country A has a decent UAV capability that could be incrementally augmented and that would be beneficial in a number of threat scenarios, the US should strongly encourage Country A to develop that capability further. This is the type of effort that is realistic, given budget limitations, and can bear fruit, but requires far more bandwidth by the United States. We need to focus and directly engage on this on a sustained, rather than ad hoc, bilateral basis, and seek cooperative approaches that benefit our partner countries in these efforts (e.g., enhanced bilateral training, force interoperability and the like).

• U.S. Steps to Facilitate European NATO Capability Development and Interoperability. Finally, there are a number of steps—in the nature of internal reforms—that the United States needs to take at home to advance this agenda and incentivize change.

a. Leadership Focus: Appoint a Pentagon-Wide Allied Capability Coordinator. The new administration should make it a policy priority to facilitate the development of coalition warfare capabilities by NATO countries and other allies, and enhance our force interoperability with such allies. We should appoint a senior Defense Department official to take “ownership” of this allied capability development and interoperability agenda and bring all relevant components of the Pentagon together. We also need to better develop and nurture the coalitions we create on a sustained basis.

b. Provide Data Outputs from Existing U.S. Enablers to NATO Forces with Appropriate Safeguards. In the short-to-medium term, NATO operations will have to rely on existing U.S. sensors and other ISR capabilities, given the degree of U.S. qualitative superiority in these areas. Thus, the United States should seriously consider making advanced U.S. assets and their outputs available to our NATO allies with appropriate safeguards in order to train for future operations (rather than on an ad hoc basis only during operations).

c. Develop Plug-and-Play Architectures with Allies. In the medium-to-long term, we should seek to foster the development of common network-centric architectures (using open rather than proprietary standards) into which NATO nations can “plug and play,” incorporate their own sensor outputs, and thereby achieve secure communications, similar levels of situational awareness, and other potentially higher-order forms of interoperability as needed.

d. Civil/Military Interoperability: Uncharted Territory. The United States should work with its allies, including the EU, to develop and implement new standards (for example, for software defined radios) that allow civilian aid providers and police to interact effectively with military and constabulary forces. We also should define clear lines of communication and chains of command for these operations, with standard operating procedures, for scenarios such as terrorist attacks and natural disasters (e.g., a biological attack or pandemic). To fully implement these steps, the United States should establish more advanced experiments with NATO and the EU and train together more extensively with allies in the use of advanced architectures and data outputs.

e. Pooling, Sharing, and Cooperative Programs Focused on Enhancing Coalition Capabilities and Interoperability. Consistent with NATO’s focus on smart and cost-effective defense, the United States should consider the pooling and sharing of existing capabilities and engaging in joint cooperative programs. We should also allow NATO countries to participate, where practical, in key U.S. development programs on network-centric warfare (including technology demonstrators and prototyping) in order to facilitate the development of both coalition capabilities and enhanced interoperability. This can include a focus on low-intensity capabilities for those allies for which this is an area of specialization.

Contrary to our current hands-off approach, the United States needs to lead in these areas to incentivize other countries to participate directly in pooling and sharing.

We therefore should considerably strengthen, and expand the limited DoD funding for, our coalition warfare development program in order to seed fund these initiatives. A modest amount of money spent here (in the order of magnitude of $50–100 million per annum) can help us to better share responsibility with our allies and limit our participation in later operations.

f. National Disclosure Policy/Export Control Reforms. Finally, we need to reorient our technology transfer regimes to promote coalition war fighting. The DoD should establish a single, wholesale national disclosure policy for NATO coalition operations that makes holistic decisions up front (i.e., before forces must be committed to conflict) and makes as few distinctions as possible between release policies for different coalition partners. We also need to broaden the release, subject to safeguards, of technologies relevant to coalition warfare in order to enhance our cooperation with NATO allies in this area.