NATO's Expansion: Why the Critics Are Wrong
Mini Teaser: An expansion of NATO can only occur under strong U.S. leadership.
Until the twentieth century, modern international systems were constructed in Europe and largely confined to Europe. In this century, they have been started in Europe but made global, involving North America and East Asia centrally and other regions peripherally. Likewise, the destruction of these systems has begun in Europe. The open question today, therefore, is whether Europe is in the construction or destruction phase. Given the trends there, the smart money is on destruction.
Why so? The short answer is leadership, especially U.S. leadership. Stable systems have always been created by the leaders of the major powers. The configuration of power today is such that only the United States can launch the construction of a new system, although it would need the cooperation of several other key states. Having adequate power, however, is not enough. Leadership with a strong sense of direction and the plodding consistency to remain on course is no less critical. Yet power and leadership will not be enough if the window of opportunity closes under the forces of disorder.
The window appears to be closing more rapidly as a result of the failure in both U.S. and European elites to agree on a strategy and build a political consensus to support it. This hiatus in concerted thought and policy action began in the last two years of the Bush administration after perhaps the greatest achievement of diplomacy in European history: the reunification of Germany within NATO, a peaceful realignment in Europe with no modern parallel. Yet that feat may prove a hollow victory because President Bush failed to rally NATO in 1991 to act in Yugoslavia and to plan for security arrangements in the eastern half of Europe. The window has been closing ever since.
The absence of effective policy action has not been matched by an absence of thinking about a strategy or the tendering of unsolicited advice. Advice abounds but consensus has been scarce. American former statesmen, scholars, and pundits are vocal but deeply divided on the major issues of the Bosnia crisis and the expansion of NATO. Europeans, including Russians, are no less divided. All the differing policy prescriptions are too numerous to examine separately; thus I shall suggest a few general approaches which subsume most of the variants. In reviewing them critically, I make no pretense at concealing my own policy preferences.
Russia First
The first set of prescriptions gives Russia first priority in U.S. foreign policy. President Richard Nixon advanced the "Russia first" approach most vigorously during the Bush administration. Within the Clinton administration, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott is reportedly its strongest proponent, although he is hardly alone among incumbent U.S. officials. Although President Clinton shares Talbott's view, he apparently began to move away from it in the fall of 1994 as he gave NATO expansion more serious consideration. Former Undersecretary of Defense Fred Iklé also belongs to the "Russia first" camp, calling for a Russian-American defense community. And former NSC staffer Stephen Sestanovich, also a close student of the Soviet Union, warns against any U.S. policy that might enable Russian nationalists and extremists to destroy Russia's inchoate democracy--more precisely, he warns that expanding NATO and accusing Moscow of imperialism within the Commonwealth of Independent States are not conducive to the promotion of democracy in Russia. The unlikely political mix of Nixon, Iklé, Sestanovich, Talbott, and Clinton suggests that this camp straddles the left-right political divide in U.S. politics, but a closer look exposes its internal left-right differences.
Talbott's rationale, it seems, is betting on Russia's successful transition to liberal democracy. Sestanovich shares this outlook, dismissing the reassertion of Russian hegemony over much of the former Soviet Union as a significant threat to Russian democracy. The virtue of the goal cannot be disputed. With cooperation between the United States and a democratic Russia, a security systemfor the whole of Europe can be worked out, and the Western Europeans would be highly supportive of such cooperation. Iklé's rationale, on the other hand, depends less on Russian democracy and more on military cooperation, thus having the logic of a security condominium.
The problem with the democracy rationale is twofold. First, Russia has to succeed as a democracy and that outcome is far from certain. Second, it has to succeed fairly soon; otherwise, disorder in the Balkans and setbacks in the transition programs in the states of the former Warsaw Pact cannot be dealt with in an effective fashion, because the necessary cooperation from Moscow will not be available. Indeed, fears of upsetting Russia will prevent Western unilateral
action to deal with such problems.
To a significant degree, these adverse consequences have already beset the Clinton administration, and they may explain its decision to propose the expansion of NATO in December 1994. In short, this variant of the "Russia first" strategy has had its chance, and has come up wanting. Giving up on it, however, does not mean writing off Russia or ceasing to help its successful transition. Rather it means recognizing that European security has to be addressed now, without conceding a Russian veto on the solution, with Russian cooperation if possible, but without it if necessary. In other words, the virtue of the "Russia first" strategy need not be cast off despite what its proponents fallaciously insist, as they surrender their moral dignity by watching silently as the Chechens are smashed into submission.
The problems with the cooperative security rationale are no less serious. First, the Russian military is too diminished from failed perestroika reforms and from general decay to be capable of the kind of relationship Iklé and others seek. Second, the Russian military is so entangled in domestic politics that it finds as many reasons to treat the United States as an adversary as it does to treat it as a partner. Any reliable partnership would require repeated U.S. approval, implicit if not explicit, of anti-democratic Russian behavior, of which the case of Chechnya is only one example. Russian policy in Central Asia and the Transcaucasus would create the same moral and political burdens for a United States that entered into a security arrangement.
Let Europe Take Care of Itself
Another set of views boils down to leaving Europe to its own security devices. Its variants are several, but at root they all come to a common prescription: the United States should no longer guarantee European security. Some of its proponents still support NATO but oppose its expansion. Others really do not care if NATO survives. Many of its proponents do not advance it as a coherent strategy but merely invoke it to justify shifts in budget priorities toward U.S. domestic programs.
Its most vociferous proponents are libertarians. The Cato Institute's incessant spokesman on foreign affairs, Ted Galen Carpenter, calls NATO an expensive anachronism, but one that is downright dangerous because it has the capacity to drag the United States into European wars. It is time, he insists, for Europe to organize its own defense and pay the price of peace in Europe. Owen Harries offers a less prescriptive view that comes close to the same conclusion, asserting that the "West" as we knew it in the Cold War no longer exists. Instead of calling for the end of the Atlantic Alliance, he argues that the objective conditions for its maintenance are gone and that efforts to expand it, perhaps even merely to salvage it, will fail. In the absence of a Soviet threat or its equivalent, foreign policy interests within Europe and across the Atlantic are too incompatible to be reconciled by U.S. leadership.
Three realities make this approach more likely to create dangers greater than the ones it seeks to remove. First, were the United States to leave the security of Europe entirely to Europeans, no common Western European defense community would replace it. The only state powerful enough to lead such a community is Germany, a leader France and Britain will not accept. Yet neither France nor Britain can take the lead itself. Franco-German cooperation in the European Union aims to overcome this mutual distrust, but the prospects of its reaching a common European defense and foreign policy look dimmer today than it did two or three years ago.
The Bosnian affair has demonstrated the core problems of achieving a so-called "European pillar" based on a political union that could prosecute effective military operations under a single command. In the face of U.S. passivity, France, Britain, and Germany quickly revealed that they are far from a common foreign policy, even in Europe. Germany's early recognition of Croatia prompted France and Britain to condemn Bonn and tilt initially to the Serbian side. This old pattern of competitive diplomacy is unlikely to remain confined to the former Yugoslavia; it can easily spread to Central and Eastern Europe.
The second reality is Russian foreign policy. Russia has lost an empire but not yet its imperial aspiration. Without an American presence in Europe, Russia may succeed at the diplomatic game it is already playing--encouraging dissension among the Europeans and disengagement on the part of the United States. A senior German CDU (Christian Democratic Union) leader, Kurt Bidenkopf, was told by the former Politburo member Alexander Yakovlev, in 1989, that after the Cold War the Europeans will soon be "dancing around the golden calf of Moscow's favor." Likewise, Karsten Voigt, a senior SPD (Party of Democratic Socialism) member of the Bundestag, said to a Washington audience in December, 1993 that leaving Germany as the easternmost liberal democracy in Central Europe would inevitably force it to make deals with Russia over the rest of Central Europe. The danger to Europe is not a new Russian military threat but rather Russian internal disorder, coupled with a foreign policy aimed at dividing Europe as the United States looks on passively.
The third reality is a military-technical one. It would be difficult for Europe to build a modern defense capability even if were willing to spend the money. The nature of military weaponry, the military-industrial base, manpower requirements, and the role of space have so dramatically altered over the past four decades that Europe is not capable of achieving anything like the military power it enjoys within NATO. The changes relate not just to technology but also to the geographical space required to test, deploy, and train soldiers to use modern weapons. Europe does not have the space. Russia does. Nor does Europe enjoy a common language required for the manpower pool of a modern military in the same class as the U.S. military. Russia does. The U.S. military compensates for these European inadequacies.
Although they have suffered severe quantitative reductions, NATO's military components still enjoy a rather large qualitative advantage over any potential adversary today. This qualitative edge has been driven mainly by the United States military. Without the American stimulus, the military establishments in Europe would have difficulty staying abreast of the continuing technological dynamic in military affairs; and, conversely, without the NATO obligation a similar stagnation would be more likely in the U.S. military. Those who urge the U.S. to let Europe take care of itself probably do not understand what sustains this military advantage--otherwise they would address the implications of letting it seriously erode.
It is precisely the American involvement in Europe, through NATO, that has provided Western Europe with what it has never had in modern times and is unlikely to attain any time soon on its own: a substitute for a supra-national political and military authority. To remove it is to ensure the slowdown and eventual reversal of European economic integration and political cooperation, not to mention a breakdown in military cooperation. Thus the libertarian prescription would produce an economically stagnant and militarily insecure Europe. How libertarians see this kind of Europe fitting with their prescriptions for the U.S. economy is difficult to fathom.
It must be admitted, however, that the United States cannot continue to play this role in Europe if the Europeans do not desire it. No U.S. policy should discourage or try to block European aspirations for "taking care of themselves." On the contrary, they should be encouraged to proceed on that path. But pushing them onto it before they are ready and determined to end the Atlantic Alliance is hardly the way to ensure their success.
Return to a Balance of Power
Still another set of views recommends a return to a traditional balance of power in Europe. Henry Kissinger, and to some degree Zbigniew Brzezinski, although they both favor the expansion of NATO, subscribe to the balance of power approach. Its more avid proponents, however, do not insist on, or even favor, NATO's continued existence. By forming a new concert of European and North American powers engaged in a collective security system, they would make it essentially irrelevant. Russia, Germany, Britain, France, and the United States would organize security in Europe, managing it as the great powers did in the nineteenth century.
Some proponents do not make the argument so formally but advocate policies consistent with it. Owen Harries and Michael Lind do so in their opposition to the expansion of NATO. They do not believe the United States can sustain its leadership role in Europe, much less in an expanded NATO. Although there is a Spenglerian quality to his argument, Harries explicitly denies holding the "declinist" view of U.S. power. Rather, Europe has become economically stronger, and while chances for a political union have receded for the moment, they will return as soon as Europe's economy turns again. Lind chides the Russophobia of British emigres (e.g., Colin Gray) and Central European emigres ("mostly Polish") who fear Russian expansion, and he warns against criticizing Russia over its actions in Chechnya. The ethnic slight might come from a native born American, but the rest sounds like a voice for inaction from Oxford or Cambridge in the
1930s.
At a global level, some version of a new concert of powers makes sense. It is the only practical approach to a global order. But at the European level it makes only partial sense. Europe's security problems are primarily ones of internal instability and civil war, problems a balance of power approach will not solve. To give up NATO as the core institution for European military security would be to invite the very kinds of diplomatic competition that the "Let Europe Take Care of Itself" approach has meant in the past.
Finally, a balance of power approach alone is out of tune with American political values. The American concept for NATO at its creation was prevention of a return to the old Realpolitik game in Western Europe, and although the alliance balanced Soviet power, it was created as much to solve Western Europe's problem with Germany as it was to prevent Soviet expansion. In France and most other continental states in Western Europe in the late 1940s, the Soviet threat was little discussed in the debate on NATO. Only the United States and to a lesser degree Britain saw the Soviet Union as the major problem. In France, Germany was the problem. Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman saw NATO as an umbrella under which economic cooperation, eventually leading to political cooperation, would be possible because the military alliance would remove the old balance of power conditions. Konrad Adenauer shared that view and also saw NATO as a device for recovering Germany's independence sooner. Precisely this internal NATO mission in Western Europe is overlooked by those who see the collapse of the Soviet military threat as making NATO obsolete.
The NATO epoch has brought to Europe a significant degree of American idealism about international relations. On one level, it has produced a balance of power. On another level it has inspired ideals and cooperation unknown in modern Europe. Why should we risk the decay of this remarkable achievement in Western Europe? At the same time, collective security and balance of power make sense in dealing with the larger Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals.
The Democratic Peace
Another set of views on European security rests heavily on the idealist component of U.S. foreign policy. Bruce Russett makes a case on the empirical record that democracies do not fight each other, and explains this in terms of democratic ideals and public participation in policymaking. The solution to Europe's security problems, it seems to follow, is more democracy. Variations of this view are to be found, and the "Russia first" approach is consistent with it. If there were democracies in Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals--and virtually all countries in that expanse are trying to create them--then the security problem would go away.
It is easy to dismiss this prescription as excessively idealistic. Yet there is something to the argument, although it is sometimes articulated in a way that confuses effect with cause. In ambiguous cases where countries have gone to war--for example, America with Britain in 1812 and Germany with Britain and France in 1914--the state that initiated hostilities is written off as not really democratic. This is close to arguing that a country is not democratic if it initiates hostilities, a standard that would make the United States a non-democracy on a few past occasions. Or it is argued that one democracy in these cases did not "perceive" the other country as a democracy. Valid though this analysis may be, it would leave future security to the vicissitudes of perceptions. These quibbles aside, one has to admit that the propensity of democracies to settle disputes short of war is a correlation too strong to be dismissed. It has been near perfect among the democracies within the U.S. postwar alliance systems. Economic interdependencies have mushroomed within the market economies of those systems, and international organizations have emerged to handle political, economic, and military cooperation among democratic states.
Some observers have called this postwar system an American empire. Paul Kennedy's warning that it will fall victim, like previous empires, to "imperial overstretch," is well known. American libertarians and other U.S. domestic groups repeat it, especially those who want to shift more money from the defense budget to social programs. Whether or not the American system is properly classified as an empire is debatable, but if it is, it is one of a very new type. Instead of impoverishing the United States through heavy military burdens, it has proven a money-making proposition. The net result of U.S. military expenditures has hardly been a deficit. Without them and the alliances they have sustained, the economic prosperity of the trilateral regions of North America, Western Europe, and Northeast Asia could not have occurred. In a speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in December 1994, the secretary of commerce stated that affiliates of U.S. corporations in Europe have sales of $850 billion annually and generate $30 billion in earnings. They also sell $650 billion in goods and services in the United States. U.S. exports to Europe amount to $110 billion, and about three million Americans are employed by European firms in the United States. Ted Galen Carpenter is appalled that U.S. defense expenditures for forces in Europe are about $90 billion. The true figure, when adjusted for costs that would be paid even if U.S. troops were not in Europe, actually is considerably lower. In any case, as an overhead expenditure for the largest part of the trilateral regions' security system, it is hardly in excess of the gains. Moreover, if the figures for the Asian part of this system of trading democracies were included as well as the impact of European-East Asian trade, the gains would be much larger.
Without the umbrella of the U.S. military alliances, this unprecedented postwar economic prosperity is unlikely to continue. As the Nobel Prize winning economist Douglass C. North has explained, when governments provide law, order, and ideological consensus, they lower the transaction costs for economic enterprise, allowing greater growth. The U.S. alliance system has extended this phenomenon to an international level, effectively lowering the transaction costs for international trade in the trilateral regions. Those who would dismantle the old security system would be more likely to raise the transaction costs of economic interdependency than to sustain our present prosperity. And the proponents of a new balance of power system might find the military burdens of that system equal to or greater than the old burdens. Moreover, the economic transaction costs would almost be certain to rise for many trade patterns within a collective security system after U.S. military withdrawal from Europe and East Asia.
The points stands: this American empire is a profitable venture for all its members. That is precisely why outside states want in. Mexico has overcome its longstanding anti-U.S. feelings and fought its way into the North American Free Trade Agreement. Little wonder that several Central European states want to join NATO and the EU. When members of the American empire begin to leave it, we will know that the transaction costs of membership have risen greatly and that "imperial overstretch" would be a real problem if we tried to stop them.
There is more to the American involvement in Europe than idealism. It pays. It pays, in part, because idealism helps lower transaction costs, but at the same time it has a realist component. Much of Europe is not yet democratic, and parts of it are likely to fail in creating democracy. The power politics approach leaves out the idealism component. Russett's call for "grasping the democratic peace" raises the neglected issue. How much of Central Europe can NATO reasonably expect to bring under its umbrella and nurse through the painful processes of transitions to democracy and market economies? A corollary question is what will happen to the present NATO region and European unification efforts if no expansion is attempted, or if NATO is allowed to wither as the West drifts willy-nilly into a purely balance of power game in the whole of Europe?
Expand NATO Now
Against all of the foregoing views, of course, is the judgment that NATO must not only be preserved, but expanded. Senators Richard Lugar and Mitch McConnell, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Samuel Huntington, and Henry Kissinger have been the most notable although not the only proponents of NATO's expansion. Like the other groups, the expansionists are not of one mind on the details of implementation. Their divergences are best understood in their answers to why, who, and when to expand NATO, as well as by what means.
Why? The key difference among the proponents of expansion lies in the emphasis that some put on external military security threats and others put on the internal development problems of prospective new members. The potential of a new Russian military threat to Central Europe concerns some more than others. Even if Russia poses no military threat, a new Russian diplomacy of meddling in Central Europe is feared. The new military threat is an extremely weak argument, unlikely to persuade anyone who is familiar with the state of the Russian military and its industrial base. Although a new Russian imperialism is already evident in Central Asia and the Transcaucasus, the burden of that empire will impede a serious Russian military modernization that could actually pose a threat to Central Europe.
A much better argument for NATO's expansion is found in its inception: the concern of its proponents with internal political and economic affairs in Western Europe. While their national motives were at odds--Germany seeking early independence, France seeking to prevent a new German military threat--leaders in both countries realized that a U.S. military presence within an Atlantic alliance structure would create the security and political context for economic recovery and the building of new interstate relations. To play its role, the United States had not only to be a military hegemon; it also had to bring its political ideology to Europe. A purely realist American approach to NATO would have failed.
An expansion of NATO today can only occur under strong U.S. leadership, and it must have as its primary purpose the internal transformation of new member states. As they create successful market economies and liberal democracies within NATO, their foreign policies will also have to change. New Central European members cannot let themselves become the pawns of competitive diplomacy between Germany and Russia, between France and Germany or between Britain and Germany. Nor can they return to their interwar irridentism and patterns of ethnic politics. The expansion of NATO would be a failure if it did not break those old patterns, as it has already done in Western Europe.
To be sure, in principle external military security is also a purpose for an expanded NATO. But that challenge is nonexistent today, and to emphasize it as primary is to distort what is at stake and to frame the American debate in a way that stirs up unjustified fears of U.S. soldiers dying on the Polish eastern frontier. The military challenge could however reappear in the long run if NATO is not expanded.
Who? Answers range from three or four Central European states to all of them as well as the Baltic republics, Belarus, Ukraine, and even Russia. If the primary purpose of NATO is to extend a roof over new members under which they can more quickly make the transformation to the pattern of domestic and interstate relations of Western Europe, then it is easier to see which states are proper candidates for membership. Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary seem to be solid prospects for such a transformation. Slovakia, often mentioned with this group, is more dubious, but because it would provide a contiguous border between the present NATO boundary and Hungary, it should at least be considered. Romania and Bulgaria are too problematic in their internal developments for NATO to bet on today. The same is true for Ukraine and Belarus. Although good arguments can be made for admitting the Baltic states, they should be excluded as assuming too great a reach.
Beyond these three or four Central European countries, the risks to NATO of biting off more than it can chew are considerable. The more troublesome requests for NATO membership are likely to come eventually from Sweden and Austria, countries difficult to reject because they are solid democracies and also belong to the European Union. They would probably have to be accepted although there is no urgency for their early admission as there is for other cases, for example the Baltic states.
What about Russia? Kissinger and Brzezinski have made sound arguments against its membership, saying essentially that it would destroy the European character of the alliance and weaken its internal structure. Moreover, Russia shows no serious interest in joining. The task of accomodating Russia in a post-Cold War security structure is global, not just a European security issue. Here the proponents of collective security and a new concert of powers have the best argument, but the new system must include East Asia and the Middle East, not just a larger Europe to the Urals.
On the global level, Russia could be brought into the G-7, which is now the single global forum of liberal democratic market states. Although the G-7 was conceived to manage economic affairs, it has increasingly addressed political affairs. Unlike the UN Security Council, where the permanent members include China, a country that does not share Western principles of international relations to the degree they are shared in the G-7, and where the new strong powers of Germany and Japan are excluded, a G-8 would represent all the major powers committed to liberal democracy and market economics. The condition for Russian membership of that group should be continued progress to a market economy and democracy.
On the European level, a security committee could be created within the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), composed of Russia, Germany, France, Britain, and the United States. A consensus among these states to act to preserve the peace would be a strong foundation for European collective security. Without that consensus, OSCE could not act, and it should not. In such circumstances, NATO would be the fall-back for military action. In other words, a great power group within OSCE would provide Russia with the institutional opening to participate as cooperatively as it desired in the security of Europe and to block any OSCE action it opposed. For the next decade or so, that is about all that can be done in accomodating Russia. Its strong desire to join the G-7 suggests that if the limited expansion of NATO were coupled with both G-7 membership and a security committee in OSCE, Russian leaders might find NATO expansion less irritating. And it should not be overlooked that some Russian democrats have actually favored NATO's expansion to prevent a destabilizing vacuum in Central Europe. The proponents of the "Russia first" approach fail to realize that their goal of a democratic Russia is more likely to be achieved by the "expand NATO" approach than by their own.
It should be added that all three arrangements--limited NATO expansion, an OSCE security committee, and a G-8--should also improve the security climate for Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic states. It would certainly be better than the situation today because it would give Russia stronger incentives to play by the collective security rules of the G-8 and OSCE.
When? Delay is not the answer, although some proponents argue for it. Including three, if not all four, of the Visegrad states should have been done at the NATO summit in 1993. Eduard Shevardnadze has said that it will be easier to expand NATO earlier than later. The Russian hardliners know this well, and that explains their tactic of threats, cries of alarm, and efforts to influence Western leaders and pundits. If they can delay the expansion long enough, not only do they hope to have recovered sufficiently to make it impossible for the Visegrad states to join NATO, but also to induce the old patterns of competitive diplomacy in Western Europe. Western hesitation based on fears of inciting political opposition to Yeltsin are actually strengthening that opposition. They, rather than Yeltsin, can already take credit for the delay, and they do.
What criteria? This question is tied to the "when?" question. Western military specialists tend to prefer more demanding criteria, but so do some political figures, including those in the Clinton administration who have helped move U.S. policy toward favoring expansion. By advocating criteria that include significant reform and upgrading of potential members' militaries so that they are near the level of NATO's, the day of expansion is delayed. Moreover, since potential new members in Central Europe are in poor economic shape, it detracts from their economic reforms to shoulder a larger military burden. There is no great urgency for the radical upgrading of Polish, Czech, and Hungarian military forces, certainly no more than for Spain when it joined NATO. If such military criteria had been invoked in 1949, NATO would still not be formed. The military criteria are a red herring.
Political and economic criteria are another matter. They must be a matter of judgment about the prospects for potential members to stay on the reform track. Again, if there were no risks in accepting a new member, the reason for admission would be weaker. Improving significantly the chances that a former dictatorship would grow deep democratic roots, rather than waiting until democracy was already deeply rooted, was the purpose in Western Europe in 1949 and should be the purpose in Central Europe today.
Putting emphasis on NATO's role in sponsoring internal reform does not mean that external security considerations should be forgotten. NATO could become too big to retain its internal military coherence. If it takes on too many difficult internal problems of the kind it has endured with the Greek-Turkish disputes, it could fracture. It should, therefore, expand first, and perhaps only, in Central Europe where the alliance has traditionally been the most vulnerable. No one can be sure that events in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus will not eventually produce a new wall in Europe. Thus NATO should position itself to insure that a divided Europe does not exclude the central continental region that has the strongest historical connections to Western Europe.
Can NATO Survive as It Is?
Among all of these differing approaches to European security, one point of agreement seems to be shared. Senator Lugar put it most succinctly: "NATO must go out of area or out of business." The libertarians and the collective security proponents are explicitly prepared to accept that outcome. The "Russia first" proponents are not, and most of them may believe NATO can remain vital in its present boundaries. Fred Ikle is an exception in believing that it will go out of business if it does expand. Going "out of area," of course, is not merely a matter of expanding the membership. It also means being prepared to conduct military operations outside the traditional boundaries and for purposes other than defending against a Soviet attack.
Former Yugoslavia is the most conspicuous "out of area" challenge. The Bosnian crisis has not yet spilled outside of the former Yugoslav territorial boundaries, and Owen Harries may be right that it will not spread even if it festers for a long time. At the same time, it has spread in two other international dimensions. First, morally it has created an unhealthy climate in Western Europe and the United States as publics watch the slaughter on television and become accustomed to ignoring all responsibility for it, making a mockery of the idealist component in American and NATO foreign policy. Second, it has exacerbated diplomatic relations among Western European states, the United States, and Russia. For proponents of a new balance of power strategy, Bosnia can be dealt with by walling it off, and for the libertarians and those who would let Europe take care of itself, Bosnia can be ignored. For all other approaches, it presents an urgent problem.
Can NATO be expanded without dealing effectively with Bosnia? Some proponents of expansion appear to believe so, and the Clinton administration's new policy of advocating a gradual expansion has been launched as if the two issues can be separated. They probably cannot. Leaving the Bosnian affair to the Europeans has allowed U.S. leadership in NATO to decline and to suffer unprecedented criticism and scorn from European leaders. With such a mood inhabiting the alliance, Washington's capacity to convince all the European NATO capitals to support NATO expansion in Central Europe is sorely limited. In a real sense, therefore, the United States has to show effectiveness in dealing with Bosnia in order to restore European confidence that Washington knows what it is doing in pushing for NATO expansion.
Any solution to the Yugoslav disintegration must include at least the following elements: First, military balance on the ground must be changed, not just in Bosnia but in other parts of former Yugoslavia as well. That means introducing fairly large peacekeeping forces--150,000 to 200,000 troops, no more than one-third of which should be U.S. forces. Second, the new military balance will have to be maintained for a long time, a generation or more. Third, intervention forces will at times have to play a "peacemaking" as well as a "peacekeeping" role. Fourth, control of military operations there cannot remain in UN hands but must be placed entirely in NATO's hands. Fifth, Western leaders must build domestic political support for such a policy. Following public opinion polls is not leadership. Changing them is.
The issue of NATO "out of area" military operations, of course, is larger than Bosnia. They may be required elsewhere in the coming decade. In virtually all conceivable U.S. military involvement in Europe, the Mediterranean region, and the Middle East, operations will have to be multilateral, as in the Persian Gulf War. Modern coalition military operations are extremely complicated. They cannot be thrown together overnight. NATO provides the single institution where the tedious, difficult, and highly technical details have been worked out. Thus the NATO military structure in this role is critical to maintaining the kind of extraordinary military power advantage that U.S. and other Western leaders have come to take for granted. If NATO ceases to work hard at this technical military task, which is never complete and always changing in light of new military technologies, Western military power will decline significantly. The public and the media will not even notice the decline until a crisis arises and these military realities are forced into public view through feckless military responses.
Trying to maintain NATO more or less as it is seems doomed to failure. Its former strategic context has changed in fundamental ways that demand basic alterations in the Atlantic alliance. At the same time, political, strategic, and military-technical continuities demand that it not be altered too much. Some critics, calling for "new thinking," argue that the disappearance of the Soviet military renders NATO obsolete. But is that "new" or "old" thinking? Such a fixation on the Soviet threat was Cold War thinking. Truly new thinking requires looking for continuing and new purposes for NATO before dismissing it.
Is a Consensus Possible?
The range of views on a proper U.S. approach to Europe is so wide that no consensus seems possible. Their incompatibilities are numerous and in some cases fundamental. In particular, the "let Europe take care of itself" school of thought stands apart as a sure road to U.S. isolationism, whether its proponents admit it or not. A critical look at all of the other approaches will identify overlapping conceptions and capabilities, all of which envision a U.S. policy of engagement in Europe. The "Russia first" strategy identifies an important goal that must be supported. Some variant of a balance of power strategy is the only option at the all-Europe level. The "democratic peace" strategy is equally compelling for the NATO states and the other stable European democracies. The "expand NATO now" strategy may prove a better way to encourage democracy in Russia than the "Russia first" strategy, and it combines the idealism of the "democratic peace" with the realism of balance of power. In principle, therefore, a basis for consensus exists.
Getting recognition of this ground for building a consensus, however, will require compromises, some very difficult to achieve. Perhaps the most intractable issue is between those who insist that NATO need not expand and conduct out of area operations, particularly in former Yugoslavia, and those who insist that it must. Some will insist that NATO can be expanded in Central Europe while the Bosnia crisis is essentially ignored--but that belief is likely to founder on European disenchantment with U.S. policy toward Bosnia--making them reluctant to support the recent U.S. initiative to expand NATO. Still, consensus should be built where it can be, and the sooner that is done, the sooner the debate on NATO expansion and out of area operations can be put in a common strategic context and better understood.
The present challenge is remarkable for the degree to which leadership lies almost wholly with the United States. No single European leader can force the political integration of Europe; nor can a single European leader insure that progress toward that goal is not reversed. No single European leader can insure democratic and market transitions in all of Central Europe. It appears less likely that President Yeltsin can insure the transition in Russia. U.S. leadership, in contrast, can prevent the reversal of some of these processes, and lacking U.S. leadership, most of them will be reversed--not suddenly, but over time.
The debate over the role of what E.H. Carr called "vast impersonal forces" versus the role of leaders in history is an old one, and often a false one. Both play their part, and although leaders are frequently overwhelmed by vast impersonal forces, strong leaders occasionally have an opportunity to master events. At the end of World War II, both Stalin and Truman had such an opportunity in Europe. Today, only the president of the United States has it.
Essay Types: Essay