Nato

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World Report: The Student Journal for International Affairs / September-December 2011 / Nick McIntosh
NATO: Free-Riding and Legitimacy-Laundering By Nick McIntosh
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, herein referred to as NATO, is a relic of a different age. The organization, formed when communism more resembled a political juggernaut than specter, is a reflection of the necessity for cooperation in a bipolar world. Despite the Soviet Unions collapse, however, NATO lives on. This seemingly defies traditional realist theory, as the external balancing required during the Cold War is absent, yet the organization is stronger than ever. How can scholars best understand the utility of such a military alliance when its constituents find themselves in league with the hegemon, the United States? Upon deciding the appropriate framework, it is next important to determine the future of NATO and how to best maintain adaptability in such an organization for challenges in the coming years. Can NATO continue to exist as it is organized today, or will its current structure doom it to irrelevancy? To understand the future of NATO, it is essential to understand its past. Immediately following the defeat of Axis powers in World War II, the threat of communist Russias ideology and military power loomed large over Western Europe. To construct a bulwark against this Red threat, Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom signed the Treaty of Brussels on March 17th, 1948. This treaty promised stronger economic ties between member states while constructing a joint defense system to aid in the collective security of its member states against the U.S.S.R. (NATO Archives). In recognition of the need for collective security, Congress passed the Vandenberg Resolution on June 11th 1948, recommending the
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United States enter into a collective security organization. After more than eight months of talks, the North Atlantic Treaty was signed on April 4th, 1949 by the Brussels powers, the United States, Canada, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark and Iceland. The treaty affirmed member states determination to safeguardthe principles of democracypromote stability and wellbeing in the North Atlantic area [and] unite efforts for collective defense for the preservation of peace and security (Featured Document: North Atlantic Treaty). This North Atlantic Treaty Organization functioned primarily as a political organization until the outbreak of the Korean War. Due to this perceived escalation of communist aggression, NATO transformed into a full-on defense community. Beyond mere mutual commitment to defending democratic interests, NATO was given manpower from its constituents to defend against the threat of Russian attack. To counter-balance this treaty following its rejection for membership into NATO, Russia in turn orchestrated the creation of the Warsaw Pact. Throughout the Cold War, these two antithetical blocs never engaged in direct warfare, though posturing and threats always hinted at escalation to nuclear warfare. Upon the collapse of the Soviet regime and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1991, NATO was relieved of its Cold War duties to protect its constituents from the once fearsome threat of Soviet aggression. It would appear upon the dissolution of the Soviet Union that NATOs relevance in a unipolar world would decline. Yet rather than dissolve in turn, NATO leaders reevaluated the alliances purpose and future goals. Immediately, NATO still feared the military power wielded by former Warsaw Pact countries even if the communist intent behind the arsenals buildup no longer existed. Further, the collective security of Europe as a whole was uncertain in a unipolar globe and a multipolar Europe (McInnes 1994, 22-23).
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To accommodate and encourage this newfound raison d'tre, NATO began an expansion into Eastern Europe, granting membership to twelve new countries in four expansion instances after the German Reunification, including several former Warsaw Pact states. Further demonstrating commitment to European peace, NATOs intervention in the Bosnian War marked its first military operation, expanding to full engagement in the Kosovo War with an entire bombing campaign. Even today, NATOs efficacy and commitment to peace can be seen in the Libyan operations, giving the rebels air support during the revolt. NATO appears to be a model security community, making Europe and the world a safer place. Yet this pattern does not account for the role the United States plays in NATO. It does not take a Machiavellian cynicism to question U.S. motives in the organization. Professor John Mearsheimer (1994), a noted neorealist scholar, attempted in the early 90s to explain why his previous prediction of NATOs collapse due to the dissolution of the Warsaw pact did not come to pass. Mearsheimer claimed the unpalatable nature of realism drives politicians to engage in liberal institutionalism, avoiding the nastiness of how the world operates in reality (47-49). Yet Robert Keohane and Lisa Martin (1995) blast this response of collective delusion as irreconcilable with the very nature of realism and the driving forces it claims direct state behavior (40-41). It seems that Mearsheimers ad hoc logic is more intent on preserving the viability of neorealism to interpret all state actions rather than acknowledging its failure to predict NATOs continued existence. Perhaps the most favorable explanation in regards to U.S. involvement is a constructivist framework portraying NATO as a community of democracies and democratic norms. Keohane and Martin cite John Duffields theory that NATOs rules and democratic norms led to stability within the security regime (49). Yet as Helene Sjursen (2004) points out, NATO lacks a
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democratic mandate and has been inconsistent in promoting such values even if such a mandate were to exist (687-688). Further, there is little evidence of true multilateralism in the organization , as Sjursen describes Americas focus on coalitions of the willing when the United States lacked full support run contrary to the principles of indivisibility in NATO (701702). It is necessary to look at NATOs stated objectives and then interpret the interest the United States has in achieving such objectives. At the Lisbon Summit in 2010, NATO adopted three core tasks to reflect its goals in a post-9/11 world. First, a commitment to collective defense was reiterated as NATO pledged that each of its member countries will provide assistance to each other to fight aggression against member states. Luciana Balte (2011) notes this commitment is focused on both reactive defense and proactive deterrence (16). The second stated task is to effectively address crisis management in member countries in order to avoid instability and insecurity among member states. Thirdly, cooperative security through commitment to nonproliferation and disarmament remains a central NATO objective. Balte describes external cooperation in this matter to be essential to NATO success (16). Such a rosy picture of U.S. commitment to European peace seems possible. As the hegemon, the United States does not necessarily need European support to ward off potential attacks on its homeland. It would make sense that having a peaceful European security community would be a huge asset to American foreign policy. Further, the expansion of NATO to include former members of the Soviet bloc allows for greater cooperation and open dialogue with Europe as a whole. American partnership in NATO would appear to serve the interest of all parties involved by promoting peace.
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Yet in the 21st century, European stability and peace is largely a nonissue. Despite economic crises in several countries, Europe remains a relatively peaceful region. Eastern European instability has taken a backseat in the past decade. Most concern for instability and security lies in the Middle East or Africa and in regional anti-Americanism. In an unprecedented action in NATO history, the United States invoked Article 5 of the NATO charter (guaranteeing alliance-wide military support for a member nation under attack) in reaction to the September 11th attacks. This invocation was the first time constituent countries were called upon to respond to an external attack against one of its own. Taking over the International Security Assistance Force, NATO has been actively involved in Afghanistan operations and the subsequent rebuilding of the nations military and police. Institutionalists assert that their framework supports the reaction of NATO to this external threat. John Ikenberry (1998) invokes Paul Piersons conception of path dependence to describe the tendency of institutional arrangements to self-perpetuate. By depicting the supposed tendency for states to participate in established institutions as sticky, Ikenberry looks to describe Americas involvement in NATO as predictable due to the past effectiveness of the organization (53-56). A tried and true method for dealing with external threats, NATOs stickiness encourages the U.S. to bring its external military concerns to the community. This framework appears to account for the adaptability of NATO and the reaction by member states (including the hegemon) to bring concerns to the security community. Yet as Menon and Welsh point out, NATOs operations in Afghanistan differ quite a bit from the nature of operations during and directly after the Cold War. Disagreements stemmed due to the discretionary nature of the operation, the remoteness from member states, and the low stakes for NATO members (Menon and Welsh 2011, 89). Menon and Welsh assert that the mission in
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Afghanistan has transformed NATO into an organization whose legitimacy and viability as an international community rests on its peacekeeping operations outside member states (90). This shift in policy regarding when military action is appropriate casts serious doubt over NATO as a security community. Operations in Afghanistan, now coupled with intervention in Libya, mark a major shift from an organization dedicated to preserving and defending member states to a peacekeeping outfit dedicated to overthrowing undesirable regimes. Describing NATO as a security community appears to be a misnomer in the post-9/11 international sphere. It has altogether avoided its long-predicted demise, demonstrating its relevance more convincingly with each passing year. If the very existence of NATO hinges on successful peacekeeping, how can Europe and the United States find such common interests to continue NATO operations? In a geopolitical landscape with a single Goliath, NATO was no longer a necessary bulwark against communism. Yet U.S. leadership never seriously considered the dissolution of the organization. Bill Clinton encouraged the expansion of NATO, despite his administrations skepticism of such policy, thereby expanding the reach of the organizations influence. NATO has expanded three times since, growing the trans-Atlantic community into a multi-continental alliance. The hegemons military power and sway was no longer limited to Western Europe, but to states and regions once firmly entrenched behind the Iron Curtain. With its overwhelming military capabilities and influence, the United States had and has little need for military support to achieve its ends. Therefore, an alternate explanation must be explored. America has several other benefits from its membership and dominance of NATO decision-making. First, Ian Hurd in his work After Anarchy describes the United States valuing of the United Nations approval for military intervention in Iraq. As an agent lending legitimacy
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through its international perception of an impartial, multilateral body, United Nations approval of American intervention in Iraq would have been invaluable to moral justification and international approval of military action. Though such action was rejected and unsanctioned by the UN, the importance of the United States willingness to take such a matter to the United Nations cannot be overstated. The desire to appear as a cooperative and moral state actor through the United Nations approval demonstrates the importance of legitimizing military operations for the United States, even if such attempts ultimately fail. This same concept was illustrated in operations in Afghanistan, where the invocation of Article 5 of NATOs charter provides a legitimate justification for member state intervention. Though NATO lacks the scope of the United Nations, filtering American policy through NATO provides a veneer of impartiality and multilateral support. Similarly to the United Nations, there was dissent from member nations during the operations, albeit not to the level of the United Nations. This claim of American policy enforcement is further strengthen by the seeming distaste for European military intervention, as the U.S. initially ignored the war in Croatia during the Rome Summit of 1991, describing the situation as an internal conflict. Yet as Petar Kurecic (2008) points out, this attitude was completely contrary to NATO's objective to become one of the pillars of European security, which should be indivisible (29). Further, the charge of legitimacy filtration is evident in the military contributions of each country to the organization. The United States contributed 90 percent of NATO troops in both Iraq wars (30), suggesting a heavy predominance. Furthermore, US military expenditures dwarf those of Europe, as the U.S. and Canada account for 79 percent of NATO member state defense spending. European military spending has fallen by nearly 20 percent since the Cold War, despite an increase in GDP by 55 percent (Rasmussen 2011). Though Europe gave competent
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support during Libyan operations, a defense gap is quickly emerging between the United States and Europe. This reliance on the hegemon for military capabilities explains the willingness for European states to acquiesce to American policy decisions. The United States has a vested interest in the maintenance of European peace, necessitating military intervention should the need arise, regardless of NATO membership status. Furthermore, American and European interests in manipulation of the geopolitical landscape via military action intersect more often than not. The term free rider has been tossed around frequently to describe the military policies of European states in their deference to the American armed forces. This use of American military might in lieu of significant military contribution can be recognized as early as 1991, when the US provided 90 percent of coalition forces to the Gulf War effort (Gompert and Kugler 1995, 7). This has continued through to the present day, as former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates berated NATO allies at a June 2011 NATO summit, saying, The blunt reality is that there will be dwindling appetite and patience to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources or make the necessary changes to be serious and capable partners in their own defense. Elaborating on the operations in Libya, Gates pronounced, The mightiest military alliance in history is only 11 weeks into an operation against a poorly armed regime in a sparsely populated country yet many allies are beginning to run short of munitions, requiring the US, once more, to make up the difference. (Kirkup 2011).
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Rather than an alliance and security community dedicated to the protection of its member states, as NATO presents itself, a more accurate representation is one depicting subservient states supporting American foreign policy and hegemony through public backing. These European countries allow legitimization of American military action via the maintenance of an illusion of true multilateral decision making. In exchange, these states receive protection of national interests courtesy of the hegemons military might. As no NATO country has the military power or money to challenge the U.S., and most European nations share common interests abroad in affectation of international order, acquiescence to the hegemons desires in return for defense and interest protection via the American military is the unacknowledged quid pro quo of NATO power dynamics. Such a framework for understanding NATO leads to new conclusions, both descriptive and normative, regarding its tenability and desirability. First, such a system cannot be maintained indefinitely. The combination of a depressed economy coupled with the difficulty of maintaining global preeminence does not bode well for the maintenance of Americas role as European protectorate and unilateral NATO actor. Even if such maintenance were economically feasible, it would not be desirable. Kurecic spoke of American unilateral control of NATO as follows: NATO must not allow itself to become a simple tool for the realization of geopolitical and geostrategic objectives of any state, not even the USA. By becoming a simple tool, NATO would ruin its legitimacy, which could never be restored. (Kurecic 2008, 38). The use of NATO as a laundering mechanism is not feasible over the long run. Filtering American policy through NATOs namesake requires the feasibility of benevolent interpretations, as well as the unanimous (or at least persuasive plurality) concurrence of NATO member states. It is unlikely,
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even if the status quo of power dynamics were sustained, that all future American military conflicts will meet both of these requirements. If the U.S. desires to keep NATO alive as a legitimate resource for international military cooperation, there must be a cession of power and unilateralism on the part of the hegemon with a simultaneous encouragement for Europe to fill in the gaps. Whether the United States has the will to cede power to maintain power, however, is unclear. Kurecic writes, The main dilemma is whether the USA, as the stronger partner in the transatlantic partnership, will show enough willingness to find an acceptable balance between the unilateral pursuit of the American interests and constructive cooperation with allies and institutions in the international arena. (39). To support this image of multilateralism, Europe must grow its military capabilities beyond a bit part actor into a full-fledged, competent force when working in unison. America can encourage this transformation in several ways. Kurecic suggests that the unilateralism and establishment of coalitions of the willing only encourages European division and reliance on the United States. By treating Europe as a cohesive unit rather than individual states, the U.S. can encourage collective defense that would not be possible if defense were state-focused rather than region-focused (39). If European NATO nations were not to react accordingly, America could simply cut military spending to force Europes hand. Such a possibility seems unlikely, however, given the hegemons military-industrial complex. If these efforts to provide balance to NATO were to fail, it would spell certain doom for the organization. NATO lacks utility to the United States when it ceases to provide a legitimizing output, and America has little motivation to perpetuate an organization that does not provide tangible benefit. Without the military of the United States to support it, NATO would surely
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crumble. On the other side of the coin, without NATO, America has little need to justify military action to its former allies. Unilateral action no longer requires laundering and therefore no longer requires the framing of military intervention as a benefit to the trans-Atlantic community. Though interests would still continue to intersect between Europe and the U.S., Europe would lose a very important check on U.S. power by surrendering its power to delegitimize U.S. action. In addition, without the guarantee of protection granted by Article 5, the protection of Eastern Europe becomes less of a priority to American interests. In conclusion and in summary, I posit that NATO has sufficient utility on both sides of the Atlantic to continue operations. NATO serves a valuable purpose to both Europe and the U.S. as a legitimizing medium to serve U.S. interests as well as a guarantee of European safety and interest protection. To guarantee the future of NATO, however, the United States must cede military predominance as Europe collectively picks up the slack. The plausibility and probability of such a power transition, however, remains unanswered. I believe the next five to ten years will reveal this conclusions truth, as the status quo is unsustainable. Upon reflection, whether NATO collapses or is able to reorganize effectively, I believe we will look back at this power dynamic as a reflection of an international community struggling to reorganize to serve not the interests of any one state, but the interests of the Euro-American trans-Atlantic community.
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Works Cited Adler, Emanuel. "The Spread of Security Communities: Communities of Practice, Self-Restraint, and NATO's Post-Cold War Transformation." European Journal of International Relations 14, no. 2 (2008): 195-230. web.ebscohost.com.proxy.library.ohiou.edu (accessed October 19, 2011). Baltes, Luciana. "NATO, a New Strategic Concept." Buletin Stiintific 15, no. 1 (2011): 14-17. web.ebscohost.com.proxy.library.ohiou.edu (accessed October 18, 2011). US National Archives & Records Administration. "Featured Document: North Atlantic Treaty." National Archives and Records Administration. http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/north_atlantic_treaty/ (accessed November 15, 2011). Gompert, David , and Richard Kugler. "Free-Rider Redux." Foreign Affairs 74, no. 1 (1995): 712. Hurd, Ian. After Anarchy. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007. Ikenberry, John . "Institutions, strategic restraint, and the persistence of American postwar order." International Security 23, no. 3 (98): 43-79. http://web.ebscohost.com.proxy.library.ohiou.edu (accessed November 16, 2011). Kampmark, Binoy. "The Limits of Expansion:The European Union and NATO." Contemporary
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Review 290, no. 1691 (2008): 441-450. web.ebscohost.com.proxy.library.ohiou.edu (accessed October 18, 2011). Keohane, Robert, and Lisa Martin. "The promise of institutional theory." International Security 20, no. 1 (1995): 39-52. Kirkup, James. "America will no longer 'prop up' Nato, says US defence secretary Robert Gates." The Telegraph (United Kingdom), June 10, 2011. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/8569647/America-will-nolonger-prop-up-Nato-says-US-defence-secretary-Robert-Gates.html (accessed November 17, 2011). Kurecic, Petar. "NATO Enlargement: A "Geopolitical Victory" of the United States in the PostCold War Era? Results and Perspectives." Croatian Geographical Bulletin 70, no. 1 (2008): 25-42. web.ebscohost.com.proxy.library.ohiou.edu (accessed October 18, 2011). McInnes, Colin. "Europe's Jurassic Park? NATO and the End of the Cold War." Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management 2, no. 1 (1994): 21-30. web.ebscohost.com.proxy.library.ohiou.edu (accessed November 15, 2011). Mearsheimer, John. "The False Promise of International Institutions." International Security 19, no. 3 (1994): 47-49. Menon, Anand, and Jennifer Welsh. "Understanding NATO's Sustainability: The Limits of Institutionalist Theory." Global Governance 17, no. 1 (2011): 81-94. North Atlantic Treaty Organization. "NATO Archives." NATO - Homepage. http://www.nato.int/archives/1st5years/chapters/1.htm#f (accessed November 15, 2011). Pierson, Paul. "Increasing Returns, Path Dependence, and the Study of Politics." American Political Science Review 94, no. 2 (2000): 251-268.
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Rasmussen, Anders Fogh. "NATO After Libya." Foreign Affairs 70, no. 1 (2011): 25-42. web.ebscohost.com.proxy.library.ohiou.edu/ (accessed October 18, 2011). Sjursen, Helene. "On the identity of NATO." International Affairs 80, no. 4 (2004): 687-703. web.ebscohost.com.library.ohiou.edu (accessed November 19, 2011).
Thompson, Mark . "How to Save a Trillion Dollars." Time, April 25, 2011. http://web.ebscohost.com.proxy.library.ohiou.edu (accessed November 17, 2011).

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NATO: Free-Riding and Legitimacy-Laundering By Nick McIntosh

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