{"id":6200,"date":"2003-06-26T21:17:09","date_gmt":"2003-06-26T21:17:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lexingtoninstitute.org\/?p=6200"},"modified":"2013-11-14T21:18:14","modified_gmt":"2013-11-14T21:18:14","slug":"natos-decay-and-the-search-for-a-few-key-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lexingtoninstitute.org\/natos-decay-and-the-search-for-a-few-key-friends\/","title":{"rendered":"NATO’S Decay and the Search for a Few Key Friends"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Remarks to the Heritage Foundation Conference on Global Alliances<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
\n

Thank you for inviting me to participate in this timely discussion of the role that alliances will play in America’s future security posture.<\/p>\n

The notes the foundation sent me for the meeting posed three questions in the aftermath of Operation Iraqi Freedom:<\/p>\n

Where does America move from here with regard to its allies?<\/p>\n

— What lies ahead for NATO and the transatlantic alliance?<\/p>\n

— What are the implications of recent developments for alliances with countries in Asia and the Middle East?<\/p>\n

I’m going to try to answer all three questions in a dozen minutes, devoting most of my time to explaining why NATO is likely to play a diminished role in future U.S. defense plans.<\/p>\n

As you know, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has recently endured a near-death experience over what to do about Iraq.<\/p>\n

It survived, but the prognosis is not good.<\/p>\n

The patient seems to be suffering from severe cognitive dissonance, if not multiple-personality disorder.That shouldn’t come as any surprise, because all the other multilateral alliances of Cold-War days — from ANZUS to CENTO to SEATO to the Warsaw Pact — have long since slipped into senility and death.<\/p>\n

Why would we expect NATO to be any different?<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, the official position in most western capitals is that NATO has a future.<\/p>\n

Its ranks are being increased — some would say invigorated — by the addition of new members from Eastern Europe.<\/p>\n

And earlier this month, member-states agreed to a number of steps designed to make the alliance more relevant, such as streamlining its command structure and establishing a rapid-response force.<\/p>\n

But these measures aren’t likely to mean much over the long run, because powerful centrifugal forces are at work, inexorably pulling the alliance apart.<\/p>\n

Let me briefly describe the five most important factors driving decline.<\/p>\n

First of all, the fear of Soviet aggression that originally forged and sustained NATO is long gone.<\/p>\n

It is hard today to even recall, much less recapture, the sense of crisis that surrounded NATO’s creation.<\/p>\n

In 1949, the year the alliance was founded, Russia exploded its first atomic bomb and communists secured control of the Chinese mainland.<\/p>\n

Soviet agents had recently subverted the government of Czechoslovakia, and were maneuvering to do the same in France and Italy.<\/p>\n

Vast Russian armies occupied much of Europe.<\/p>\n

And only months after NATO came into being, North Korea invaded the South.<\/p>\n

In such circumstances, it wasn’t hard to foster a feeling of solidarity and discipline among western democracies.<\/p>\n

There is no similar danger today.<\/p>\n

Terrorist threats are far more diffuse, and the military dangers posed by rogue states are relatively mild compared to the communist menace of Cold-War years.<\/p>\n

So the sense of urgency and shared purpose once so widespread in the West has largely disappeared.<\/p>\n

This is not unlike the experience of many countries in post-colonial Africa, which found it difficult to sustain a shared identity once the common oppressor had departed.<\/p>\n

Second, as the threat has changed so has America’s strategy for dealing with it.<\/p>\n

Throughout the Cold War, western strategy rested on twin pillars of deterrence and containment.<\/p>\n

Those doctrines were well-suited to a diverse, consensus-based alliance because they were essentially passive — they called for America and its allies to react to Soviet moves rather than seize the initiative.<\/p>\n

Occasionally a Fred Ikle or Ronald Reagan would point out the contradictions of deterrence, but Europeans viewed vulnerability as unavoidable and therefore resisted “destabilizing” changes.<\/p>\n

After 9-11, though, the Bush Administration reduced the role of deterrence and containment in U.S. strategy, preferring to preempt emerging threats.<\/p>\n

As President Bush put it at West Point’s 200th commencement …<\/p>\n

“If we wait for threats to materialize, we will have waited too long … In the world we have entered, the only path to safety is the path of action — and this nation will act.”<\/p>\n

That’s a sensible strategy for dealing with unpredictable enemies, but one that NATO is ill-prepared to implement.<\/p>\n

Preemption requires agility and daring, qualities traditionally in short supply within the Atlantic alliance.<\/p>\n

The alliance’s cautious, consensus-based culture forces the Bush Administration to choose between unilateral but timely action and ecumenical delay.<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, the administration is inclined to favor unilateral action — which reduces the role of NATO in national strategy.<\/p>\n

Third, even if the European members of NATO were unified in their resolve to address emerging threats, they would lack the means to do so.<\/p>\n

In the dozen years since Operation Desert Storm, the U.S. military has been transformed by new technology.<\/p>\n

Despite the Clinton Administration’s best efforts to reap a “peace dividend,” the U.S. still managed to outspend the rest of the world combined in acquiring cutting-edge military technology over the last decade.<\/p>\n

The European members of NATO, on the other hand, largely stopped investing in new capabilities.<\/p>\n

Not only did they devote a much smaller share of national wealth to defense, but more of their military spending went to consumption items like pay and benefits rather than procurement.<\/p>\n

To make matters worse, their balkanized procurement practices squandered much of the money they did spend on new systems.<\/p>\n

As a result, the military forces of European allies are now a generation or more behind America’s in the capabilities they can field.<\/p>\n

They lack precision and stealth and mobility and connectivity that U.S. forces have come to take for granted — so much so that it is dangerous for them to operate in close proximity to U.S. combat forces.<\/p>\n

A senior Air Force officer described to me how ill-equipped his European counterparts seemed in the Balkan air war.<\/p>\n

“We let them play for a while,” he said, “and then we decided we better get those kids off the highway.”<\/p>\n

This is the reason that coalition warfare is largely missing from Bush Administration military plans after bulking large in Clinton plans — because the Europeans can’t keep up.<\/p>\n

We welcome whatever role they are willing to assume in peacekeeping, but when it comes to warfighting, they seem increasingly irrelevant.<\/p>\n

Fourth, due to demographic trends, European countries will have increasing trouble meeting their security commitments in the future.<\/p>\n

According to the World Health Organization, the average number of children born to a European woman today is 1.4, a third below what is required to maintain population levels without immigration.<\/p>\n

That means European populations are aging, shrinking the pool of people available for military service and greatly increasing the burden of social-welfare programs.<\/p>\n

This trend is most pronounced in Russia, where national population may shrink by 30-40% at mid-century.<\/p>\n

But the trend is also apparent in countries that do not suffer Russia’s rampant social decay.<\/p>\n

For example, WHO projects that Spain’s population will decline from 40 million today to 31 million in 2050 if current fertility rates persist.<\/p>\n

Italy will suffer a similar fate, with 42% of the population 60 years or older in 2050.<\/p>\n

Obviously, this is not the demographic profile we would hope to see among the members of our most important alliance.<\/p>\n

U.S. fertility rates are only slightly below replacement value — about two<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The notes the foundation sent me for the meeting posed three questions in the aftermath of Operation Iraqi Freedom: . . .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nNATO'S Decay and the Search for a Few Key Friends - Lexington Institute<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lexingtoninstitute.org\/natos-decay-and-the-search-for-a-few-key-friends\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"NATO'S Decay and the Search for a Few Key Friends - Lexington Institute\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The notes the foundation sent me for the meeting posed three questions in the aftermath of Operation Iraqi Freedom: . . .\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.lexingtoninstitute.org\/natos-decay-and-the-search-for-a-few-key-friends\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Lexington Institute\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2003-06-26T21:17:09+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2013-11-14T21:18:14+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.lexingtoninstitute.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/lex_share.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Loren B. 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