Winds of Change.NET: Is NATO A Real Alliance?

June 29, 2004

Is NATO A Real Alliance?

by Joe Katzman at June 29, 2004 7:43 AM

Instapundit links to Oxblog's analysis of the Istanbul Summit, and publishes part of an email by reader Eric Bainter, who worked in NATO during the 80s and 90s. Bottom line: given NATO's gaps in both capabilities and will, how real is the alliance? It's an important question, and NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer's recent comments (quoted later in this post) are sobering.

Patrick Belton's fine summary of the key issues facing NATO is solid, and he also throws some worthwhile advice for both Bush and Kerry. In some ways, however, he begs the larger question about NATO and its future - and there was one item in particular that could be misleading. We'll address both issues.

Patrick notes:

"What comes out of this is a capabilities gap. Of 1.4 million soldiers under Nato arms in October 2003, allies other than the US contributed all of 55,000."

The Toronto Star (of all places) had a pretty good article this Sunday June 27, by Sandro Contenta of its European Bureau. In it, he noted the following key figures. They aren't exactly orthogonal to NATO, but since the debate focuses on America-Europe they are meaningful and provide some critical context:

"The European Union, or EU, has about 2 million people in the armed forces of its member states, compared to the 1.2 million in the U.S. But the U.S. has the equipment to deploy 400,000 ground troops around the world from a total of about 650,000. The EU can deploy only 85,000 out of 1.2 million ground forces."

The question isn't absolute troop numbers, therefore - and it isn't just equipment, either, because that isn't enough to make troops "deployable." It's also a matter of composition (draftees or professional), organization, and doctrine. Remember this deployability chasm when terms like "military transofrmation" and "expeditionary force" arise in the USA, because they're among the changes driving these widening differences. As we've already seen in Afghanistan (on which more later), they're also driving growing inter-operability issues as the Europeans fall farther and farther behind.

These discrepancies may help to explain NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer's recent comments, as reported in Contenta's Toronto Star article. His remarks, and those of Lord Tim Garden, are truly sobering for anyone who pins their hopes on NATO as a key player in the War on Terror:

"At a speech in London last week, NATO's secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, criticized the tendency of member states to agree to missions only to balk at making troops available to carry them out.

"This is pretty much what happened in NATO regarding Afghanistan," he said. "And you also know what followed: my predecessor and I have had to go around and around to ask nations for contributions.

"This must change. I don't mind taking out the begging bowl once in a while. But as a standard operating procedure, this is simply inolerable."

NATO unanimously supported the Afghan war, the country's reconstruction is backed by Security Council resolutions, and all agree that its post-war success is vital for international security.

"And yet, we still can't get the nations to ante up with even quite small amounts of force," says [Lord Tim] Garden, the former British commander. "Afghanistan is showing the world how much NATO is needed, and how limited an alliance it is."

In light of evidence like this, I don't know what is required to rekindle European interest in this area - Afghanistan certainly shows us that the things Europeans say would suffice, can't be depended on.

Is there a better way than Europe pretending to contribute, and the Americans pretending to listen, as the alliance erodes rapidly from both ends? Time will tell.

I do know, however, that pretending contributions from Europe are enough to make it a serious player, and treating it as such, only perpetuates the "shifting the burden" dynamic that has led us to our present sorry state. Something has to give.

UPDATE: As Scott of Demosophia points out, Belmont club is playing Taps for the NATO alliance:

"It's hard to say which expectation is more unrealistic: the American hope that Europe will reverse decades of military atrophy or the European idea that America will share command with a Continent that can project only two battalion's worth of troops."

After going into some of the transformation-related issues that will widen this gap, and the geopolitical trends that are making Europe a secondary consideration, Belmont Club concludes by noting that the shift to non-European allies "...is not a temporary condition but a harbinger of a new state of the world. It's not that NATO has gotten smaller, just that the world has gotten bigger."

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"Is NATO A Real Alliance?"

Tracked: July 1, 2004 4:38 AM

Too Weak to Lead; Too Proud to Follow from Kalblog

Excerpt: That more or less summarizes Europe's position in the world these days. As this post on Winds of Change shows, they really lack the resources to be considered equal partners with the US in any decision concerning war and peace....

Comments

#1 from Scott at 3:42 pm on Jun 29, 2004

Joe:

You might also check out Wretchard's excellent briefing on this and the related topic of realignment: Taps.

#2 from Cynic at 4:25 pm on Jun 29, 2004

Of what importance is NATO if France can block its actions even though France is not a member ( I believe that France withdrew from NATO many years ago when it built its own nuclear sytem).

Let's face it the UN and NATO under the control of France and Germany is just an American tax dollar drain.
Let the Europeans pay for their own defense and the dollars the Americans save can be used to better things in the USA.
Even get Bush's Mars project off the ground?

#3 from Sam Barnes at 9:34 pm on Jun 29, 2004

Cynic,

Charles de Gaulle removed the French military from the NATO force structure a few decades ago, but France remained part of NATO politically. This means that France has a seat on the North Atlantic Council (26 members), but is not represented on the Defense Planning Committee (25 members). For this reason, purely military decisions may be routed to the DPC, thereby avoiding French attempts at obstruction.

#4 from Gary Gunnels at 5:56 am on Jun 30, 2004

One has to ask, why isn't the U.S. sending more troops to Afghanistan if other NATO nations are not willing to do so?

"The EU can deploy only 85,000 out of 1.2 million ground forces."

Sorry, but that figure is not even remotely correct. France by itself - as a result of reforms undertaken from 1996 onward - can deploy approximately 75,000 soldiers overseas. Indeed, that's why they were able to stick 20,000 troops in the Balkans, and why they have been able to contribute so many troops to the new NATO rapid reaction force.

#5 from Gary Gunnels at 6:00 am on Jun 30, 2004

Cynic,

"Let's face it the UN and NATO under the control of France and Germany is just an American tax dollar drain."

Both are as much a drain on those countries porportionately as they are on the US; furthermore, the UN is not under Germany's control.

"Let the Europeans pay for their own defense..."

Well, at this point Britain and France; indeed, that's a major reason for the independent nuclear capabilities - which costs both gobs of money every year.

"Even get Bush's Mars project off the ground?"

Please no more corporate-welfare - let the markets decide.

#6 from Tom Grey at 5:39 pm on Jul 01, 2004

Joe, the short answer is "no (- it's just for show -- 'cause the French won't go -- 'less the US is so slow -- that the French give the orders)".

The US needs to be in a military alliance, like an adjusted NATO, with super-majority (not total consensus) voting on whether a particular situation JUSTIFIES action. And, if so, who will contribute what forces. So that France could use the NATO grouping for Haiti, or the Ivory Coast, or Sudan, for instance.

It could, usefully, be tied to an expanding Democracy Caucus in the UN. One point is to get "international agreement", by democracies, that some non-democratic failing state deserves the regime change treatment. The second is to set up forces that can work with the US for those cases when it is useful, while accepting that no other force will really come that close to US capabilities, and therefore the US will do the heavy lifting in any major action the US is involved in.

In Sudan, for instance, the US should be pushing for all other NATO states to step in -- and asking France, in particular, what they are doing about it. Reminding France of its prior support for the Hutu killers of Rwanda might be too strong -- but bloggers can.

#7 from Tom Grey at 5:39 pm on Jul 01, 2004

Joe, the short answer is "no (- it's just for show -- 'cause the French won't go -- 'less the US is so slow -- that the French give the orders)".

#8 from Tom Grey at 5:40 pm on Jul 01, 2004

Joe, the short answer is "no (- it's just for show -- 'cause the French won't go -- 'less the US is so slow -- that the French give the orders)".

#9 from Grumpy at 3:31 am on Jul 02, 2004

The NATO 'Alliance' has seen it's glory days come and go. The European Union should defend itself, on its own, with its own resources.

I feel that if the members of NATO won't 'put up' when it comes to enforcement of policy, they ought to 'shut up', and fade away. Because the rest of the world isn't taking them seriously anymore.

I believe that now would be a good time to wind up all of our NATO aid deployments, and bring the troops home and base them along our own unguarded borders. Put the troops back to guarding our own country, where they were before, where our own government wanted them, before we bailed out Europe, and paid for rebuilding it afterwards.

We have troops deployed around the world, defending others, when our own borders are wide open, except for tourist crossings. We believe that we can change the world, but we can't guard our own backdoors.

Do we really expect countries like Afghanistan, and Iraq to keep out terrorists, when we can't keep out illegal immigrants at home?

Nationalities have been fighting each other for hundreds of years in the Balkans. Do we really expect that it will be any differant after we pull out?

More people have been killed throughout history in the name of religion, than any other reason, and that will not change. Our country will not change the world, NATO will not change the world.

But, we had better start to do a better job of looking out for ourselves, or we won't have a country of our own. It will be a giant refugee camp that we're taking care of, and NATO, the European Union, or nobody else is going to help us with it.