COMMENTARY
NATO’s a great survivor for geo-political and military reasons
Autumn 2008
Nick Witney’s perceptive article predicts the demise of NATO. Yet it also contains a glimmer of optimism about the future, given that both Europe and the US still have a strong interest in the alliance. In my opinion, this latter view is correct. The future of NATO is based on both political and military needs: some states are useful as members for political reasons, others are valuable on military grounds too. Both types of member are important – hence I believe that NATO will survive.
NATO today is an arena for coalitions of the militarily able and the politically willing. Only a few member states are able to make meaningful military contributions to international operations. Take Afghanistan as a pre-eminent example. Just six countries – the US, Britain, France, the Netherlands, Canada and Denmark – are willing to deploy to the south of the country where they are most needed; these are the states that do not shy away from risk. There is a second group of states, including Norway, which has forces fighting in the north but has political caveats about operating in the south. A third group is typified by Germany, Spain and Italy, whose troops are present in Afghanistan but remain largely inactive and constrained by political factors. The 3,000 German soldiers based in Kunduz, for instance, have rules of engagement that prevent them from taking part in any significant military action. Numerous other NATO members contribute in some way, which is of course better than nothing. But the essential point here is that the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) will only prevail in Afghanistan if NATO has both the relevant war-fighting capacity and the political will to accept the risks involved.
In my forthcoming book (“European Security Dynamics. In the New National Interest", Palgrave Macmillan, October 2008), I analyse how domestic political factors have become more and more important to decision-making about security policy within NATO. Germany is extreme in this regard: war must be talked about as peace, there must be few if any fallen, German soldiers must not fight, and so on. This post-Cold War trend implies that very few European states are “able” to fight wars both in a military and a political sense. The military constraints are reflected in defence budgets, which amount to less than 2% of Gross Domestic Product in most of Europe; and the political willingness to accept the loss of lives of service personnel is a litmus test of governments.
This reluctance to fight means that NATO’s importance as a military alliance - and US interests in NATO – resides in it being a platform for coalitions of the willing and able. This is today’s reality and everyone recognizes it. The US can (and does) only operate jointly with those key European states that still retain the vestiges of a military culture. As Tony Blair put it, Europe is divided into states that can and will fight and the many that won’t.
NATO is more than a fighting machine; it has a geo-political role too. It is in this political arena that the many non-combatant NATO members play an important part. The extension of NATO’s field of operations eastward, for example, is very significant and confers a new political importance on the alliance, especially when Russia indulges in sabre-rattling and claims it is being “surrounded by NATO.” This dual role – both as a global military presence and a geo-political player – means that even when member states cannot contribute to NATO military operations, they are still important geo-political partners for both the US and the rest of us. This explains why NATO as a Euro-Atlantic alliance will prevail.