McNair Paper Number 46 Chapter 5, January 1996
BEYOND COLLECTIVE DEFENSE
Toward a New Transatlantic Bargain
Under much different international circumstances in the mid-1980s, it was suggested that the NATO allies ensure NATO's future by striking "a new transatlantic bargain."(Note 1) The main goal of the new bargain was to increase European responsibilities for alliance missions. Today, a new bargain may be required to clarify NATO's future role as well as to enhance the European role in the alliance. Most of all, however, a new bargain would require the United States and the European allies to commit themselves anew to a collective approach to advancing their common security interests.
Before the allies issue the first invitations to potential new alliance members, they might wish to strike a new bargain among themselves at a summit meeting, for example in the first half of 1997, that would make clear how they see their commitments to the alliance and to NATO's new roles and responsibilities.
Sharing Burdens and Responsibilities
If the alliance is to preserve a degree of unity of purpose in the post-Cold War world, the allies will have to reform NATO's approach to military cooperation in ways that share military burdens and responsibilities rather than dividing military burdens and responsibilities. The tendency of recent years has been to divide. Until recently, the United States has largely told the Europeans that Bosnia is their problem; meanwhile, many Europeans have been looking for ways to accomplish military missions without U.S. assistance. This approach was enshrined in the January 1994 NATO summit that made much of separate European and American responsibilities and raised questions about the U.S. commitment to defense cooperation with its European allies.
The alliance probably cannot survive if these approaches persist. Rather, the allies would have to make a commitment to return to a sharing approach in which all allied governments made a commitment to cooperate in NATO for the purpose of promoting international peace and stability. If future NATO programmatic and organizational decisions are not premised on a sharing rather than a dividing approach, allied cooperation will continue to deteriorate. Moreover, a sharing approach suggests that there should be no artificial geographic boundaries placed on non-Article 5 military cooperation. This means that non-Article 5 cooperation would be constrained only by the willingness and ability of the allies to contribute in any given instance. The mutual defense commitment contained in the NATO treaty's Article 5 will likely remain limited by the geographic description of its coverage in Article 6, but there is nothing in the treaty that geographically constrains non-Article 5 military cooperation.
Restating NATO's Mission
NATO has been and always will be a political as well as a military alliance. In the early post-Cold War era, it was popular to say that NATO would have to adapt to new circumstances by becoming "more political." It is increasingly clear, however, that NATO's unique functional role remains its utility as a means to promote and implement political/military cooperation among member and partner states. As all member countries shrink the size and capabilities of their armed forces, the ability to form coalitions to deal with a wide variety of peace-threatening situations is becoming increasingly important. As British expert David Greenwood has put it, NATO is moving from an "alliance-in-being" to a "coalition-in-waiting," or perhaps, carrying the thought one step further, variable coalitions-in-waiting.
Collective defense remains at the core of the U.S. and allied commitments to the alliance. This analysis concludes, however, that collective defense will not be the principal focus of NATO's activities during the next period of history. Moreover, it would be politically divisive to try to enlarge the alliance and still maintain a constructive relationship with Russia if collective defense were to remain the main focus of alliance activity in this period. This change in NATO's mission is already reflected in NATO's routine work schedule.(Note 2) NATO's day-to-day activities are shifting from collective defense to collective responsibility sharing across a broad range of security-support activities. Such an evolution is the only one that can accommodate all the factors currently influencing U.S. and allied security interests. In this case, NATO's future mission will increasingly focus on the following mutually reinforcing goals:
Preserving habits of military cooperation, by preparing allied commanders and forces to participate in multilateral military operations to ensure a high degree of readiness and interoperability among alliance and partner forces for whatever missions NATO nations may agree to take on, whether or not such missions are directed through the integrated command structure; Promoting peace, by developing cooperative military relations with partner countries, including Russia, through the Partnership for Peace program and the North Atlantic Cooperation Council, and through the cooperative use of allied military forces to provide humanitarian relief and disaster assistance, when necessary; using NATO cooperation to deter aggression by rogue states and discourage and deter proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; andRestoring peace, by conducting multilateral military operations intended to restore or enforce a peace that has been broken by aggression or other sources of military conflict. As long as no NATO country faces the kind of threat that used to be posed by the Soviet Union, NATO's strategy and force deployments will look substantially different than during the Cold War. They will be intended largely to support the functions specified above. This means that, unless circumstances change, the Article 5 mutual defense commitment will remain in NATO's "back pocket," readily available if necessary in the future, but not the day-to-day preoccupation of the alliance. Such a posture will help the allies make a more effective allocation of limited defense resources while reassuring Russia and other nonmember countries that their interests will not be threatened and, in fact, will be reinforced by defense cooperation that develops around the nucleus of NATO member states.
This new mission focus, if it is to serve as NATO's main rationale for the next period of history, will have to be made clear to allied electorates, potential applicants, and countries that have partnership arrangements with NATO but that might not qualify for NATO membership in the near future, including, and especially Russia. A restatement of NATO's missions could take the form of a revised New Strategic Concept, accepted by allied governments at a summit meeting within the next 2 years. Furthermore, NATO will have to continue to evolve its internal organization, command structure, consultative and decisionmaking procedures, and its training and exercise routines to implement its new mission objectives.
Reaffirming U.S. Leadership and Commitment
Perhaps the most important reform that the United States could initiate on behalf of NATO would be to start the process of rebuilding confidence among the allies in U.S. leadership and support among the American people for a U.S. international role based on collaboration with like-minded democracies. Such a commitment does not necessarily require deploying more troops in Europe or spending more money on defense. It would require greater clarity in U.S. executive and congressional policies about the U.S. role in the world.
One way to initiate the process of constructing a new form of U.S. leadership in the post-Cold War world could be for the Congress to pass, and the President sign, a Joint Declaration of Congress recommitting the nation to the goals of the North Atlantic Treaty. Those goals, as laid down in the preamble and articles 1 and 2, include:
Safeguarding the freedom, common heritage and civilization of their peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law;Promoting stability and well-being in the North Atlantic area;Uniting their efforts for collective defense and for the preservation of peace and security;Contributing toward the further development of peaceful and friendly international relations by strengthening their free institutions, by bringing about a better understanding of the principles upon which these institutions are founded, and by promoting conditions of stability and well-being; andEliminating conflict in their international economic policies and encouraging economic collaboration between any or all of them. At the same time, the Joint Declaration could accept the principle that the new forms of cooperation in NATO outlined in the mission discussion above are essential to the U.S. interest of promoting international peace and stability while not becoming the world's policeman. Such a Joint Declaration could provide a bi-partisan foundation for self-interested U.S. policies that seek to share the burdens of maintaining a stable international system in cooperation with NATO allies and partner states.
Organizational Reform
Enhancing positions of Deputy SACEUR and Deputy SACLANT. As noted earlier, the European members of NATO are not likely to relinquish fully their sovereignty within a supranational approach to defense in the foreseeable future, and certainly not as a result of the Intergovernmental Conference scheduled for 1996. But they are likely to develop cooperative approaches among themselves that prove fiscally, politically, or militarily necessary or attractive. NATO will have to be sufficiently flexible to accommodate this process.
By the same token, NATO's ability to perform its new missions will continue to be handicapped by a French position outside the framework of NATO military cooperation. The first reform suggested, intended to respond to this requirement, would restructure NATO to facilitate European command of operations taken on by largely European forces without damaging NATO's integrated command structure or breaking unity of command. Under this proposal, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) and Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic (SACLANT) would remain U.S. officers, and their deputies Europeans. The Deputy SACEUR and Deputy SACLANT would be nominated by the members of the Western European Union or of the European Union, if the Europeans wish, as a way of bringing NATO's European pillar into a close relationship to the NATO military command. The nominations would be approved by the North Atlantic Council (NAC) to ensure the involvement of those NATO allies who are not WEU or EU members. The two European officers could also logically be the most senior military officers in the WEU or EU structure, as determined by the European allies.
In this new approach, the allies would have a variety of ways to conduct a non-Article 5 mission using the Combined Joint Task Force concept. When the allies decide in the North Atlantic Council to pursue a non-Article 5 mission in which the United States would participate fully, and to form a Combined Joint Task Force for the purpose, the SACEUR (or SACLANT) would be in charge, as would be the case under current NATO procedures. NAC guidance would flow through the NATO Military Committee to the SACEUR, down through a Major Subordinate Command to the CJTF commander.
In another scenario, if the NAC decided that the operation should be conducted largely by European allies with a supporting U.S. role, the Deputy SACEUR (or Deputy SACLANT) would assume control of the operation, with full access to the assets of the integrated command structure. In a third scenario, if the NAC decided that the European allies should take full responsibility for the operation without any U.S. role, the Deputy SACEUR (or SACLANT) would shift to his European (WEU or EU) command function and run the operation independent of U.S. or NATO support. In return for this strengthening of European responsibilities in the Alliance, the package deal would require that France negotiate reliable and predictable conditions with the other allies under which France would cooperate with NATO's reformed command structure. The goal of the allies would be to make practical arrangements for French involvement without sacrificing the integrity of the command structure.
It would be desirable if, in the first experience with such a system, the Deputy SACEUR were a French officer, and the Deputy SACLANT a British officer. (Currently, British officers hold both the Deputy SACEUR and the Deputy SACLANT positions.) In the future, the Europeans might choose a German officer for the Deputy SACEUR position, but today Germany is still limited by domestic constraints on the use of its military forces. Thus Britain and France are likely to remain willing contributors in responses to non-Article 5 military contingencies. Such a structure would create a way for the European allies to take responsibility for leadership and burdens within the NATO structure at a time when they have not elaborated a WEU or EU structure sufficient to support militarily demanding operations. If the system worked, it might help avoid unnecessary duplication of structure and resources that could result from elaborating separate WEU/EU capabilities. This approach would also have the advantage of not disrupting normal command relationships from the SACEUR/Deputy SACEUR (or SACLANT/Deputy SACLANT) level down through a major subordinate command to a Combined Joint Task Force operation.
One concern about European leadership of non-Article 5 operations has been that an Article 5 contingency could grow out of a non-Article 5 operation (for example, if the operation led to an attack on a NATO member's territory). The fact that the operation had been kept within NATO's command structure would allow the SACEUR easily to assume control to manage an Article 5 response, if the NAC agreed that such a response was necessary.
In order for such a system to work, when the NAC commits to a mission, the decision would have to specify what resources allies are willing to devote to that mission. It would be particularly important for the United States to make clear what assets it would make available in the case of a largely European operation. The United States would also be expected to follow through with its commitments once they are made. As Patricia Chilton argues, "Even greater damage [to allied cooperation] would result from a situation in which the US initially agreed to a WEU operation using NATO assets and CJTF headquarters, but later withdrew from this position."(Note 3)
Merging NATO and WEU structures in the Mediterranean region. If the allies are not able in the near term to agree to the reform of the command structure described above, or in combination with the reform, they might wish to try a more limited experiment with a merger of NATO and WEU command structures in the Mediterranean. An Italian defense analyst has suggested making the Mediterranean the region in which to concentrate efforts to develop the WEU as a means to strengthen the European pillar of NATO. Maurizio Cremasco has proposed that subordinate headquarters under NATO's command in the Mediterranean, Allied Forces South (AFSOUTH), be restructured to be able to operate as NATO and WEU headquarters, with their commanders wearing NATO, WEU, and national hats. In a second phase, according to Cremasco, "The command and control of the Allied Forces in the Southern Flank is rotationally assumed by a European Admiral (who will wear a NATO and a WEU hat), flanked by an American Admiral (who will maintain his NATO and national hat)."(Note 4)
Cremasco argues that this approach would encourage deeper security and defense integration of NATO and WEU, facilitate NATO and WEU crisis management activities in the Mediterranean, prevent unnecessary duplication of a European military structure parallel to that of NATO, ease implementation of the CJTF concept in the region, and help keep development of a European security and defense identity within the transatlantic context.
A Combined Joint Task Force for Bosnia? With the prospect of a peace settlement in Bosnia, NATO could seize on the opportunity to structure the planned Implementation Force (IFOR) as a NATO Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF). Such an approach could help turn NATO's bad experience with Bosnia into a positive outcome.(Note 5) A collective NATO force in Bosnia could be a credible presence for all former combatants and help ensure the success of the peace settlement. Allies and partner nations, including Russia, could contribute forces to the presence, and the burden could be shared by many nations rather than by a few. If some allies are reluctant to call the IFOR a CJTF, the alliance could nonetheless use the operation as a test case for command and decisionmaking procedures to be agreed for future CJTF operations.
Reorganizing NATO commands along functional lines. NATO commands are currently organized on a geographic basis, reflecting NATO's plan for defense against a Warsaw Pact attack as well as a political balance among NATO nations in the distribution of command organizations and responsibilities. With NATO increasingly focused on performing a wide variety of tasks largely beyond the borders of NATO members, the old geographically focused organization may no longer be the most effective way to do business.
A new organization might be constructed along functional lines, designed to facilitate training, exercising, and deployment of forces to meet the new diverse challenges to security. At the same time, a number of current commands could be combined and the entire structure streamlined. The exact nature of a functional reorganization is beyond the scope of this study, but it is clear that such a reform would inevitably meet substantial bureaucratic resistance from within national military establishments. It would have to be carefully planned in order to produce not only an effective military organization but also one that reflects a balance of political interests in the alliance.
Because there are so many self-interested perspectives on this issue, NATO might usefully appoint an independent commission composed of retired military officers from a wide range of NATO nations, respected military scholars and independent experts to develop recommendations for a new functionally organized command structure.
Facilitating coalitions of the willing and able. NATO is a consensus-based organization. According to the NATO Handbook, "When decisions have to be made, action is agreed upon the basis of unanimity and common accord. There is no voting or decision by majority."(Note 6)
As long as NATO remains a voluntary association among sovereign states the organization will operate on the basis of consensus. In the less orderly, less predictable post-Cold War world, and particularly with an expanded NATO membership, the requirement to achieve consensus for all actions that allied countries might propose or consider could, in theory, immobilize the alliance.
This issue was addressed in a nonattribution paper that circulated at NATO headquarters in 1994 and was provided to CRS anonymously in 1995. According to the view of its author, who at the time was involved at a high level in allied decisionmaking, NATO's current consensus system forces member nations either to approve an operation politically or to draw criticism from others for "blocking" action. In the observer's view, "A better solution would provide an 'emergency exit' for those unable or unwilling to participate which does not prohibit action by others. This can be done by removing the requirement for consensus for Article 4 operations."
According to the author of this informal paper, the advocacy of a non-consensual approach to decisionmaking for non-Article 5 operations was rejected. The solution proposed would have created a separate NATO decisionmaking body for non-Article 5 operations, ranging from humanitarian relief and disaster assistance through peacekeeping to peace enforcement. According to the proposal, decisions in that body could be taken by at least two-thirds of Alliance members, with the majority including at least two of the four largest financial contributors to the alliance.
Any majority voting procedure for non-Article 5 operations probably will remain beyond political acceptance for the foreseeable future. And it should be noted that the consensus requirement can in fact facilitate decisionmaking by forcing countries to make difficult decisions in order to remain influential and respected members of the alliance. But the challenge of finding a way around the potential consensus barrier for non-Article 5 operations remains. In a time of reduced budgets and attempts to simplify governmental operations, it may not be prudent or necessary to create a separate decisionmaking body for non-Article 5 operations. And so perhaps the focus should be on decisionmaking procedures for non-Article 5 operations in the North Atlantic Council itself.
The allies could consider less formal alternatives to a weighted majority system like that proposed in the anonymous draft. Those could include allowing states that did not want to be politically linked to a given operation to "take a footnote" on a decision in the NAC as allies have done from time to time during the alliance's history on decisions that posed domestic political or other difficulties for them. This would allow countries to opt out without blocking the operation. Countries could also take the option of remaining silent on a decision, neither agreeing to it nor footnoting their opposition. In the case of strong opposition, a country could perhaps even ask that none of its assets or contributions to infrastructure expenses be used in support of the operation. In all cases, the SACEUR would be required to render a judgment concerning whether or not the operation remained feasible in light of whatever support was offered by member states and whatever support was going to be withheld. Strengthening cooperation with partners. As the alliance moves toward accepting new members over the next few years, it will be increasingly important to establish and nurture cooperation with partner countries that are not yet members. Such an effort is necessary to encourage partner countries to concentrate on the goals of developing effective civilian control of their military establishments and preparing to cooperate in NATO's new missions. Encouraging new democracies to move away from their understandable preoccupation with territorial defense and their residual fears about Russian domination would help create a more constructive, cooperative atmosphere in Central and Eastern Europe. Such an orientation would also help mitigate Russian concerns that NATO is working against legitimate Russian security interests.
The North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC), created during the Bush administration, and the Partnership for Peace (PfP) program, an initiative of the Clinton administration, could work together more effectively. The NACC is a forum where all countries that wish to participate in a dialogue with NATO countries can do so;(Note 7) the Partnership for Peace program allows any NACC nation to develop a program of cooperation tailored to their specific circumstances, abilities and needs. The Clinton administration has tended to give short shrift to the NACC while it concentrated on the Partnership for Peace and enlargement. In fact, however, the NACC and the PfP are natural partners in a program of NATO outreach.
U.S. defense analyst Jeffrey Simon has proposed a program designed to enhance the effectiveness to NATO's outreach to potential new members as well as to countries that may not seek such membership or may qualify only many years in the future.(Note 8) Simon proposes
Institutionalizing the NACC as the political/consultative umbrella under which the individual PfP programs would operateEstablishing a position of NATO Assistant Secretary General for Eastern Affairs to provide political oversight and coordination for PfP's military activities and political objectives.
A Transatlantic Cooperation Community
If the United States should recommit to an active and involved U.S. role in and beyond Europe, new cooperative approaches beyond those falling in NATO's mandate are likely required. Even though NATO's goals, listed above, include elimination of economic conflict in relations among the allies, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has traditionally focused primarily on military aspects of security. In today's world, security is increasingly dependent on a variety of interdependent factors, including transnational political, economic, military, and other aspects.
There is apparently a growing sentiment in Western Europe that the challenges faced by the NATO allies cannot be completely resolved within the narrow confines of the alliance, or even in a treaty between the United States and the members of the European Union. The diverse nature of post-Cold War issues affecting allied interests suggests the need for a new initiative designed to broaden the context of the transatlantic relationship. The point of doing so would be to give form and substance to the apparent belief of all allied governments that, even in the absence of a Soviet threat, they continue to share many values, goals, and interests.
At the annual Wehrkunde Conference in Munich, Germany, in early February 1995, foreign and defense ministers from Britain, France, and Germany separately proposed a new European-American pact. German Defense Minister Volker Ruhe called for a "new, wider trans-Atlantic contract" designed to emphasize the importance of military, political, and economic cooperation on behalf of Western economic interests and democratic values.(Note 9) The approach was supported by Minister of Defence Malcolm Rifkind, who had advocated the idea some months earlier. Rifkind said, "Defense issues alone do not offer a broad enough foundation for the edifice we need." Along the same lines, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé called for "a new trans-Atlantic charter to consolidate the common desire of North America and Europe to contribute to international stability in all its dimensions."(Note 10)
As suggested by these officials, creation of a Transatlantic Cooperation Community(Note 11)--an intergovernmental consultative framework within which diverse cooperative projects could be initiated--could provide the new political foundation for cooperation required for the post-Cold War world. Such a community would encompass, not replace, NATO, which would remain the framework for transatlantic security cooperation. It would symbolize and provide a vehicle for consultation and cooperation between the United States and the members of the European Union. It would also help mitigate problems caused by the fact that some European NATO members are not currently members of the European Union, and would not be included in a U.S.-EU bilateral treaty. To add parliamentary involvement to the mix, the North Atlantic Assembly (NAA), NATO's interparliamentary consultative body, could become the Transatlantic Cooperation Community's representative forum for considering issues and making recommendations to the member governments. Perhaps most importantly, creation of a Transatlantic Cooperation Community might help generate the political energy in the United States and the European countries needed to address the challenges of moving beyond the Cold War, strengthening the international economic system, and dealing with new security challenges.