Gates Doubles Down On NATO

NATO--the US has a hard time living with it but believes it cannot live without it.  For better than sixty years now we have been in a relationship with a tedious bunch which was not sought by us.  The treaty which ties the US to a couple of dozen other states was and remains a form of shotgun marriage--compelled by force of circumstance and, presumably, preferable to the alternative.

Nearly every secretary of defense has been frustrated by the pervasive unwillingness or inability of the member states to carry their fair share of the alliance's water.  Yesterday, Robert Gates, feeling free with his impending departure from the Pentagon, let it all hang out as he reamed the group for its collective failures of political will and military capacity.

His words were not particularly harsh.  Neither were they the petulant complaints.  His assessments were not even new.  Each and every one of the criticisms mentioned in his speech have been said before.  Often.  What made the Gates Warning substantially different was that it came in public.  The words were not murmured behind closed doors, minister to minister.  No.  These came in public for all to hear.  And, that sort of thing is just not done, don't you know.

Stripped to the essentials, the Gates Warning was simple and blunt.  As the cold war faded as even a memory, the American people and their representatives were decreasingly willing to spend ever more scarce resources underwriting the defense needs of countries unwilling to shoulder their own responsibilities.  Pointedly, Gates noted, the US carried roughly half the aggregate NATO military budget just before the Berlin Wall crumbled soon to followed by the Soviet Union.  He added the kicker: Currently the US staggers under three quarters of the total NATO military budget.

This one metric suggests strongly that something is amiss in NATO.  In case anyone missed the point, Gates commented that only four countries (the UK, France, Greece and Albania[!]) joined the US in spending more than the target two percent of GDP on defense.  The target figure of two percent was not established by some sort of fiat out of Washington but rather by consensus of all NATO members.  Nor is it some fossil of the cold war having been established long after the collapse of the Vanguard of the Proletariat.

More than a few of the assembled Dignitaries and Deep Thinkers must have squirmed when Gates not only acknowledged an awareness and appreciation of the budget crises enveloping most of the NATO members but went on to demonstrate how some (very) small countries were "punching well above their weight" by having used their defense money in an intelligent, forward looking, and combat focused way.  He singled out the Libyan efforts of Norway and Denmark in this regard.  By so doing Gates obviated the cringing and whining response offered by such European apologists as Daniel Korski, a senior fellow at the European Council of Foreign Relations.  Or, for that matter, the spokesman for the German Foreign Ministry who protested that Germany was pulling an awesome amount of freight in Afghanistan.

The reality of NATO is as it has been for many, many years.  That reality is simply the belief on the part of chancelleries throughout Europe that the US would always be there to pick up whatever burdens were necessary to guarantee European security.  The view has been the US has no alternative but to do so as Europe was the frontline of American defense.  As a consequence for three generations now the several old members of the alliance have shirked in defense so as to underwrite the extensive programs of social benefits and security which have long been the distinguishing characteristic of post-World War II Europe.

The majority of the old members of NATO have ridden in great comfort on the alliance's gravy train while the made-in-America locomotive pulled the freight.  The new, post-cold war members, the former Warsaw Pact states which have joined the alliance, have been quite willing to do the same--while complaining that the US is not doing enough to deter and inhibit the Russians in their efforts to reestablish some form of suzerainty over the Eastern European glacis.

NATO was challenged with the end of the cold war.  The collapse of the Soviet Union removed the reason for the alliance's existence.  More than ever it became obvious that the organization was an ill-assorted array of bed fellows who had little, if anything, in common beyond apprehension regarding Soviet ambitions in the West.  Not even geography tied the group together given that it spread from Turkey to Canada, Norway to Italy and Spain.  The very term, "North Atlantic Treaty Organization" had no rigorous meaning.  Arguably only one word, "treaty," was factual.  All the rest was well-intended diplomatic fiction.

The big question of 1991-2 which was never really asked let alone answered was, "What is NATO's justification now?"  The pseudo-answer focused on some critter called "out-of-theater operations."  That term is one of those phrases which is every bit as portentous rolling off a diplomat's lips as it is empty of actual substance.

The first "out-of-theater" NATO mission was not particularly "out-of-theater" if one defines NATO's area of responsibility to be Europe.  Specifically, it was the confused peace imposition operation in Kosovo.  That meant it was an R2P campaign without the term.  The US as always carried the majority of the burden despite the very compelling fact that no salient American interest was in play in the ruins of Yugoslavia.  Insofar as any state or states had interests in play, those states were all European.  NATO was invoked simply because the directly effected states (can we say, "Germany?") were unwilling to act.

The next "out-of-theater" operation was the ongoing mess in Afghanistan.  NATO with a rush and a flourish invoked its famous an-attack-on-one-is-an-attack-on-all article for the very first time while the smoke still hung heavy in the air over lower Manhattan.  What came out of this demonstration of one for all, all for one solidarity was the unfortunate applicability of the alternative meaning for the abbreviation ISAF.  To many Americans who have fought in the place the abbreviation does not mean International Security Assistance Force but I Saw Americans Fighting.

While some NATO contingents such as those from the UK, Canada and, shockingly, France have actually taken the war to the bad guys, others, (can we say, "Germany?") have done everything possible to avoid, evade, and ignore even the most remote chance of actually encountering the enemy.  Leaving aside the responsibility which must be assigned to the Bush/Cheney administration in the conduct of the war in Afghanistan and the alienation of allies attendant upon the invasion of Iraq, the residual actuality on the ground in Afghanistan is simply that NATO as an organization has done all too little relative to its capacities.

Now NATO is engaged in yet one more "out-of-theater" operation.  This time, unlike the previous efforts, the US has been a major non-participant.  Indeed, we would be even less involved if NATO had sufficient assets in critical areas such as overhead surveillance, reconnaissance, targeting, mid-air refueling, and electronic warfare.  Secretary Gates as much as said this as he detailed the glaring deficiencies in the NATO effort.  He also underscored that the engaged NATO contingents had already run short of critical munitions thus requiring urgent American restocking.  This, he stated, was the foreseeable consequence of not properly spending even limited defense money.

In its post-cold war missions, NATO has shown itself to be a coalition of the unwilling and unready.  This reality is not mitigated by the excellent performance of some national contingents in each and every of the three "out-of-theater" endeavors.  Nor can it be lessened by pointing to budgetary matters.  Neither can the situation be expected to improve any.  In his optimism, limited as it was, Dr Gates is being entirely too kind, too considerate of ruffled diplomatic and political feathers within the alliance's membership.

(In connection with this it is of more than passing interest that the Obama White House attempted mightily to put blue sky between Secretary Gates' position and its own.  An unidentified White House "official" took the stance that the Secretary was either speaking solely for the Pentagon or was expressing his personal frustration with some NATO states.  The most the white-feathered crew at the White House was willing to grant was that Gates had raised "legitimate issues."  A fine bunch of courageous statesmen and women in and near the Oval, don't you think?)

Dr Gates warned NATO that the day would soon come when post-cold war Americans would cease funding Europe's defense needs.  That day may be far closer than the secretary indicated.  The dismal record compiled by NATO in its post-cold war actions shows rather conclusively that it has no reason to keep on keeping on.

The concept of "out-of-theater" operations is intellectually bankrupt, ethically suspect, and diplomatically useless.  Beyond that, it is a military nullity marked with asymmetry of effort, confusion of command, vagueness and contradiction politically.  NATO is a broken tool without any real purpose other than inhibiting Russian ambitions should such exist with respect to Central and Eastern Europe.

The US would be far better served by assembling an ad hoc coalition of states with coinciding national interests when interventions of whatsoever nature might be required.  The diplomacy of George H. W. Bush in the run-up to the First Gulf War is paradigmatic in this regard.  Ad hoc coalitions might be a bit difficult to put together, but no more so than achieving consensus within the councils of NATO.  Should it be necessary for the US to carry the overwhelming majority of the water in a coalition, there is at least the advantage that such groups are short duration (provided the war is fought with an appropriate doctrine and force package.)

The time has come to say to NATO, "Thanks for the memories."

An Answer to Daniel Pipes

Daniel Pipes is a noted scholar of and writer about Islamist affairs. To say he is against Islamist jihadism is to engage in exceptional understatement. His position is well-reasoned, principled and well-rooted in both historical and contemporary reality. This must be kept in mind when considering a question he posed today (http://www.danielpipes.org/6269/does-turkey-still-belong-in-nato).

Pipes' specific question arises from the recent Turkish opposition to the appointment of Danish Prime Minister Rasmussen to the NATO Secretary General's slot. While the issue was finessed by providing for a Turkish Deputy SecGen which provided a face-saving way for Erdogan to back down on the eve of President Obama's visit to Turkey, the question of Turkey's place in NATO remains, at least in Pipes' eyes.

Pipes contrasts the views of a former NATO SecGen, Willy Claes, and former Spanish PM, Jose Maria Aznar, with the seemingly mea culpa based remarks of Rasmussen after taking office. Both Claes and Aznar, the former as far back as 1995, saw Islamist jihadism as an enemy to NATO equal to that formerly presented by the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact states. Clearly both the outgoing and incoming NATO Secretaries General dissent from this position.

The real issue is not, as Pipes avers, whether or not Turkey should remain in NATO given its Muslim majority population and Islamist rooted government. That issue is bogus. Turkey will not be ejected and is quite unlikely to unilaterally withdraw from the alliance.

Turkey, as President Obama acknowledged openly in his speech before the Turkish National Assembly, is a critical piece of real estate for the West. It is also an important diplomatic fulcrum. NATO is well off with Turkey's membership. But, this should not be interpreted either in Ankara or elsewhere as granting the country a degree of say in the affairs of the alliance surpassing that of other members.

Nor should too much be made from the size of the Turkish army. It may be second in size only to that of the US within NATO but it has severe limitations. Some of these are strutural to the army. Others result from the political context in which the army operates.

(For example, the army is the final guarantor of domestic tranquility and sees itself in finest continental power style as the ultimate custodian of nationhood. This brings the army into a constant and sometimes wide open tension with the government with all the usual, predictable effects on combat efficiency and readiness.)

The underlying issue implied by but never stated in Pipes' article is this. What is NATO's mission, its reason for existence now and in the near future?

NATO has engaged in limited missions in former Yugoslavia and Afghanistan. Had the previous administration not dropped the military and diplomatic balls so completely, NATO's first genuinely out-of-theater operation (OOTO) in Afghanistan would have been supported more fully and actively by the alliance. It had, after all, invoked Article Five of the NATO charter for the first and only time to date in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

Considering the responsibility accruing to the administration of George W. Bush for the resultant loss of enthusiasm for the OOTO, it is impossible to conclude whether this would extend to future deployments of a similar nature. While it is never out of fashion in some American circles to bash the Europeans (indeed the Geek does so on occasion,) it is not fair to assess the political mood of Europeans such as to bar participation in OOTOs of the future, particularly if such engage the frustration and anger of the elites of European countries.

It is possible to foresee a scenario such as genocide surpassing that alleged to have occurred in Darfur exciting such European sentiments as to result in a demand for NATO action. This potential is enhanced by any apparent unwillingness or inability of the UN to take effective, prompt action in this sort of crisis. Should such a hypothetical take place in a majority Muslim country with an Islamist regime, the stance of Turkey might be important in the decision making process.

As may be inferred from this briefly outlined hypothetical, the real difficulty is that NATO has no coherent policy regarding OOTOs. Such were never forseen when the alliance was formed sixty years ago. Arguably, the formation of a realistic, consensual policy regarding OOTOs might exercise some sort of deterrent effect upon those who wish the West ill. The formulation of any such policy would necessitate both the participation and agreement of Turkey.

Or, NATO could collectively reject the OOTO concept as part of its mission portfolio. This implies that the alliance continues to exist for the one and only reason which undergirded its creation: Standing on guard against any Russian armed aggression into Western and Central Europe.

This unitary reason for existence would, of course, exacerbate the problems confronting the relations between Russia and the NATO nations, particularly those which were once part of WarPact. A formal or even de facto declining of the OOTO mission could and would be used by Russian nationalists (which group includes both Putin and Medvedev) to justify higher military expenditures as well as the games the Kremlin plays regarding access to natural gas and oil either originating in or transiting areas under its domination.

Which ever way NATO goes in the next months and years, OOTO or Watch-the-Bear, Turkey is equally important for the alliance. No OOTO can be credibly put in place without the full participation of Turkey considering the most probable venues are in Muslim countries. Without Turkey, the Southern Flank as well as the Turkic speaking Central Asian Republics are militarily and diplomatically open and vulnerable.

NATO either must be clearly defined as to its mission or sent to early retirement. This decision set must be made sooner rather than later. And, it is a decision complex which cannot be adequately undertaken without the full and effective participation of Turkey, even a Turkey which seems to be drifting ever further from the vision of Ataturk.