Is NATO Obsolete?
John Mauldin
Inauguration is in the air here in Washington. While we all wonder what Donald Trump will say in his first speech as President, I find myself thinking of other inaugural addresses in light of today’s issues.
One that comes to mind is Thomas Jefferson’s 1801 speech. In stating that peaceful relations with other countries were one of our “essential principles,” Jefferson spoke that now-famous line, that the US seeks “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.”
Today the US is entangled in enough alliances to have Jefferson rolling over in his grave. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization tops the list, and Trump sent US American foreign policy hawks and European elites into conniption fits when he suggested NATO was obsolete and we should rethink US participation in it.
The reaction was ridiculous, in my opinion. We say something is obsolete when it no longer serves its original purpose. That is unquestionably true of NATO, as George Friedman explains in today’s Outside the Box. NATO’s single reason for being is to protect Western Europe from Soviet invasion and/or domination. The Soviet Union no longer exists. But NATO still does.
On one level, I think this illustrates the inertia common to all government projects. Once launched, they quickly achieve self-awareness, followed by delusions of permanence, and refuse to go away. NATO is like that, but with the added dimension of having been a key international institution.
With the Soviet Union long gone, a discussion of NATO’s role is long overdue. It is now the elephant in the room of US–European relations. From George’s article:
For 25 years, the fundamental question regarding NATO was not raised in polite company – that is, in the company of NATO countries’ leadership. That question, from the American point of view, divides into three parts. First, with the Soviet Union gone, what is NATO’s purpose? Second, how does NATO serve the American national interest? Third, given the fact that the EU has almost as large a GDP and almost 200 million more people than the U.S., why isn’t Europe’s collective contribution to NATO’s military capability larger than the U.S.’? By contribution, I don’t simply mean money, but a suitably large, trained and equipped force able to support the wars that are being fought now.
We were going to face these questions anyway, even without Trump. He has simply hastened the inevitable. Far better to have that discussion now than to wait and have it in the middle of a crisis.
The NATO discussion is one thread within a larger debate on Europe’s future. The stakes are high for the Continent. The European Union is losing the UK, and others may follow. The euro currency zone is pushing the limits of monetary sanity. Add a NATO breakup to that list and the result could be a very different Europe in just a few years. Whether it will be a better Europe remains to be seen.
I have been reading George Friedman for many, many years. We met well over a decade ago and have become close personal friends. I enjoy every moment that I get to spend with George and Meredith (you hardly ever see George without Meredith in close proximity, which is a good thing), and my time with them has included some of the most intense and interesting conversations that I have ever experienced. George is simply an intense person.
When he decided that he was going to leave Stratfor, we talked about that process and why. Yes, there were some business reasons, but they weren’t the driver. He wanted to be able to reframe his writing and thinking. He talked passionately about that, but at the time I really didn’t understand what he meant by it.
I may not have read everything George has written in the last 10 years, but I’ve most of it. And lately, I have come to realize that there is simply a different tenor, a more strident purposefulness to his writing. His work and that of the team that he has put together at Geopolitical Futures has become what I call “George unleashed.”
The old punchline that people use after somebody says something passionate is, “Why don’t you tell us how you really feel?” I realized a few weeks ago that the George I am now reading is the George that I have conversations with. This is the George that I actually recognize. It is George up close and personal, telling you how he really feels about the topics he’s writing about. He brings his 40 years of experience to bear forcefully on those topics, whether he’s giving us a framework for understanding a geopolitical situation or making a specific point.
When he told me he was leaving Stratfor I immediately said “Let’s partner up.” As in, that second. And for all intents and purposes, we agreed to do it almost on the spot. The details took a little bit longer. I can’t tell you how pleased I am to be able to bring his work to my friends and readers. If you are not subscribing to George, click here and just take a trial subscription. If you don’t find what you’re looking for, then unsubscribe. Get your money back. But my bet is that you will find George and the rest of his team to be somewhat addictive. They really do give you a far better way to look at the world outside of the (multiple expletives deleted) fog and smoke and mirrors of the mainstream media, where we see so much that is written by people who don& rsquo;t really understand what they’re talking about, or whose worldview dictates a certain interpretation.
George just wants to know what reality is, and then he tries to describe it for you the best he can. It’s that simple. Here’s the link again.
It’s Thursday afternoon and I’m in Washington DC, going from one meeting to the next. At most of those meetings I am being told that people are glad to talk with me, but it has to be off the record. I had my video production crew here and was thinking about doing a documentary; but getting around DC this week is difficult at best, and the people I am talking to – the people who are actually putting the new administration’s plans together – don’t want to be on the record with them just yet. Just videotaping somebody who can’t give us anything really useful is not the best use of my time or yours.
What I am going to do, though, is sit down Saturday morning and just knock out an off-the-cuff letter to you on “What I Learned in Washington DC.” There are a lot of excited people here, but there are also a lot of very sober, thoughtful people who recognize what a monumental task is in front of them. I don’t want to write that letter today, as I need to do some more reflecting; but let me just say that it is not going to be all sweetness and light. It is going to be very real and very intense.
The last time I was in DC for an inaugural was in 2000 for George W‘s foray into the presidency. There was optimism then, too. Sadly, the next eight years were ones of great disappointment as far as conservative policy was concerned. The Republicans broke Coach Barry Switzer’s first rule: “Don’t fumble the *%$#@$ football!” The Republicans proceeded to fumble the ball over and over again, for almost 8 years. Trump is taking over with a much worse situation than George W faced. I’ve been talking to Uber drivers and people on the street here about how they feel about the incoming administration. You get a lot of interesting answers. Then when they ask me what I think, I simply say that I am skeptically optimistic. And they laugh. Which is probably the way to approach this.
You have a great week, and I’ll try to make sure you get my thoughts from DC as early on Sunday as possible.
Your beginning to understand how difficult this whole thing is analyst,
John Mauldin, Editor
Outside the Box
NATO and the United States
By George Friedman
The president-elect has pointed out a reality many
choose to ignore.
President-elect Donald Trump deeply upset the
Europeans by raising the possibility that NATO is obsolete and that the
European Union is failing. This is not the first time these issues have been raised.
Many in the United States have raised questions about Europe’s commitment to
NATO and to its relationship with the U.S. Many Europeans also have made the
observation that the EU is failing. What Trump has done is simply bring into
the open the question of Europe’s relationship with the U.S.
This question has been on the table for 25 years,
since the Soviet Union collapsed. NATO was an alliance with a single purpose:
to protect Western Europe from a Soviet invasion. That was a clear and
understandable goal in the interest of all concerned. The military structure
that was created was directed toward that end. And it reflected the relative
economic and military strength of each party at the time of NATO’s founding.
The Europeans bore the geographical risk. Any war would be fought on their
territory, and their forces would face the first wave of an attack. In the long
term, American reinforcements, air power and, in an extreme case, nuclear
weapons would protect Europe. The foundation of the relationship was that
Europe, with the best will, could not afford to build a sufficient defensive
force. The U.S. was the indispensable force that could deter and defeat a
Soviet attack.
In this photo illustration, a copy of the Jan. 16 issue of German tabloid Bild Zeitung that features an
exclusive interview with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump lies on a table in a train in Berlin, Germany.
In the interview, Trump branded German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s liberal refugee policy a mistake,
the NATO military alliance obsolete and threatened German carmakers with 35 percent import tariffs.
Sean Gallup/Getty Images
The basic structure of NATO did not change in
1991. What happened was an expansion to include the former Soviet satellite
states and the Baltic states. Little military consideration was given to that
expansion. Europe no longer faced a military threat. The motive behind the
expansion was to bring these countries into the framework of the Western
defense system to give them confidence in their independence and help support
the development of democracies on the Continent.
The motivation was roughly the same as for
expanding the EU. The bloc was primarily an economic entity. It expanded its
membership without serious thought to its economic mission. Simply being an EU
member was believed to enhance prosperity, so that even the economically
weakest countries would become robust after attaining membership. The real
motive was to expand the EU as far as possible, to integrate as much of Europe
as possible into the political and social culture that the union guaranteed. As
with NATO, EU expansion had less to do with the EU’s primary mission than with
political and ideological factors.
The EU question is ultimately a European problem.
The U.S. can’t save it, and it won’t collapse because of American opinion.
Here, the Europeans must take responsibility for what happens. But NATO is the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It includes Canada and the United States.
It is an alliance, and the U.S. has important and legitimate interests.
For 25 years, the fundamental question regarding
NATO was not raised in polite company – that is, in the company of NATO
countries’ leadership. That question, from the American point of view, divides
into three parts. First, with the Soviet Union gone, what is NATO’s purpose?
Second, how does NATO serve the American national interest? Third, given the
fact that the EU has almost as large a GDP and almost 200 million more people
than the U.S., why isn’t Europe’s collective contribution to NATO’s military
capability larger than the U.S.’? By contribution, I don’t simply mean money,
but a suitably large, trained and equipped force able to support the wars that
are being fought now.
The automatic answer to the first question is that
NATO’s purpose is to guarantee its members’ security. On the second question,
it can’t be argued that NATO has served American interests since 1991. For the last 15 years, the U.S. has been engaged in wars in
Afghanistan, Iraq and other Muslim countries. Whether wise or not, these wars
have been waged to different degrees under both Republican and Democratic
administrations. NATO is a military alliance and one of its members, the United
States, has been involved in wars for 15 years. NATO as an institution has not
devoted anywhere near the military force it could afford to any of these wars.
It is true that NATO’s area of responsibility is
focused on Europe, and the U.S.’ current wars are outside of this area. But
from the American point of view, maintaining an alliance with a region where
large-scale warfare is unlikely makes little sense. The place where the U.S.
needs a large commitment from allies is outside of Europe. NATO must evolve
with the needs of its members, and if it can’t, it can be seen (as Trump put
it) as obsolete, an alliance created to fight a war that will not happen, and
unable to fight a war that has happened.
It is certainly true that NATO committed itself to
fighting in Afghanistan. Many countries sent contingents. Some, like the
Germans, were not permitted to engage in offensive operations, others were too
small to be anything more than symbolic. Everything taken together was
insufficient to affect the strategic balance on the battlefield. They were
there in spirit, but wars are fought with large numbers of troops and
equipment. This brings us to the third question – the size of the European
force. A military alliance requires a military, and many European countries, in
times of prosperity as well as constraint, have chosen not to create a force
large enough to support American interests. Their unwillingness to do so has
created a reality, which is that even when NATO commits to fighting alongside
the Americans, European capabilities limit their contribution to the margins.
NATO chose not to support the American invasion of
Iraq in 2003. This may well have been wise on its part. But the reality was the
following. The U.S. was attacked on 9/11. The initial response was in
Afghanistan. The U.S. chose to carry out a follow-on action, in the same
conflict, in Iraq. The NATO alliance refused to commit itself to this. Some
members fought alongside the U.S., particularly Britain, along with some
smaller countries. But France and Germany refused.
This was their right as sovereign states. But in
exercising that right, they radically reshaped their relationship with the U.S.
They would participate in a U.S.-led war if it was in their self-interests. The U.S. could not
assume it would receive their automatic support. In that case, the question is
what does an alliance with France, Germany and others mean? The issue is not
what NATO’s charter says. That charter is obsolete and must evolve to account
for new conditions. The issue also is not whether the U.S. was starting a new
war in Iraq or continuing the one that began in Afghanistan. The diplomats can
argue that as they wish. The issue is that the U.S. was engaged in wars for 15
years, and there was no automatic support from NATO or major European countries
in those wars. The countries that wanted to participate fought, with as much or
as little as they chose to send . Those that wanted to fight in one war and not
the other did. And those that didn’t want to get involved in any wars or
arranged to be unable to engage, fought in neither.
Nations have the right and obligation to carry out
their foreign and military policies as they wish. But an alliance constrains
nations to behave in a certain way given certain events. An alliance is a
pooling of sovereignty. It is absolutely true that NATO wasn’t conceived to
fight wars outside of Europe. Nor was it conceived as an organization where the
primary military burden falls on the Europeans. But Europeans must face two
facts. First, this is 2017, and the wars that matter to the U.S. are being
fought in the Islamic world. Second, this is not 1955, and Europe is not
struggling to recover from World War II. It is a wealthy region, and its
military capabilities should be equal to those of the U.S.
There is a long argument to be had about the
wisdom of U.S. policy in the Middle East. It may well be that those countries
that limited their involvement in those wars made a wise choice. But that also
means that there is no alliance in any practical sense. The U.S. was at war in
two countries with multidivisional forces. Each NATO country sent what it chose
to Afghanistan. Many chose not to go to Iraq.
This was not an alliance action, but individual
European countries making the decisions that best suited them. That cannot be
criticized, but this does not constitute an alliance. NATO is obsolete if it
defines its responsibility primarily to repel a Russian invasion, especially
since it refused to create a military force capable of doing that. It is
obsolete in that its original mission is gone. It is obsolete in that it
regards the U.S. as the guarantor of Europe’s security, when Europe is quite
capable of incurring the cost of self-defense. If European nations are free to
follow their own interests, then so is the United States.
When we step back from the argument between the
U.S. and Europe on NATO, we see a broader reality. First, the European Union is
fragmenting and that fragmentation necessarily affects NATO. Europe is in
no position to undertake unanimously supported NATO operations. Nor is it in a
position to incur the political costs of a massive military buildup. For the
Europeans, NATO is important because it guarantees that, in the extraordinary
circumstance of a European war, the U.S. is, under treaty, required to be
there.
The United States has other interests. It is
interested in preventing Russian hegemony over the European Peninsula, but the
U.S. can effectively address that by placing limited forces in the Baltics,
Poland and Romania. Just as the Europeans have devolved NATO into bilateral
relations between the U.S. and each NATO member, the United States can do the
same. Similarly, the U.S. can accept the status quo in Ukraine, written or
unwritten. Kiev has a pro-Western government, the east is a de facto autonomous
region, and the rights of ethnic Russians in Sevastopol are guaranteed by the
Russians. The U.S. is not going to war in Ukraine, and Russia is not going to
war there, either.
Trump’s approach to NATO has been forced on the
U.S. by the Europeans and would be on the table with a different president.
NATO doesn’t function as an alliance. It is a group of sovereign nations that
will respond to American requests as they see fit. The U.S. understands this,
and inevitably, the veil of good manners was going to be torn away. Someone was
going to point out that NATO is obsolete. Trump happened to enjoy saying it.
But whether it is a tragedy or comedy, the matter
can be summed up the following way. The Europeans are wondering if the U.S.
will leave NATO. The U.S. is wondering if the Europeans will join NATO.
Forgetting NATO, the question is this. What is the commitment of European
countries to the United States, and what is the American commitment to Europe?
It is not clear that there is a geopolitical basis for this commitment any
longer. Interests have diverged, NATO is not suited to the realities of today, and the U.S.’
relations with European states differ from nation to nation, as do European
nations’ relations to the United States.
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