Post-Summit Evolution:  Changing Roles for
the United States and Europe

First, what is NATO’s strategic purpose? Is it to defend the shared vital interests of America and Europe, or is it instead to be the security manager of a region that has become essentially secure? These two concepts point to widely divergent futures for NATO.

Second, how will responsibilities in NATO be distributed between the United States and Europe, now that neither American dominance nor European dependency can be justified.

During the Cold War, there was no doubt about the paramount shared interest that needed defending, namely, Europe itself. When the Cold War ended, NATO’s strategic purpose changed from defending Western Europe to stabilizing Eastern Europe. But that purpose, too, is beginning to pass.

Europe will enter the 21st century safe and stable. To prop up the specter of a Europe in danger for the sake of supplying NATO with a purpose would be a dreadful mistake—for it would drain the alliance of strategic significance, while also depriving Europe and America of the means to confront their main security problems, which are not in Europe.

The threat of aggression against Europe is gone for good. Regardless of whether there is a security partnership with Russia—indeed, regardless of what basic course Russia takes—it cannot menace a Europe that now dwarfs it economically, demographically, and technologically. The lack of value-added investment in Russia and the deterioration of its human capital rule out a revival of Russian power in our lifetimes. We must not manufacture a future Russian threat in order to justify admitting new members. There is ample rationale for NATO enlargement without resurrecting a ghost.

Less starkly but no less importantly, the danger of rampant ethnic violence in Europe has peaked and passed. The Yugoslav war has been contained, and with Milosevic, now on the defensive, even the Balkans can have hope. The reason should be obvious: democracy is largely working in Eastern Europe, and democracy enables peoples to resolve their problems nonviolently—just as we claimed it would. Now, the enlargement of NATO, and of the EU, will dispel fears that Europe’s new democracies will fail. In fact, it has already helped.

This is not to say that there is no work left for NATO in Europe. There is at least a need for a European-led NATO force, with a U.S. contingent, to remain in Bosnia for a while. But Europe’s future difficulties will be secondary to the strategic problems that loom for the Atlantic democracies in the world at large.

At the top of the list is the danger of losing access to the one essential resource that we do not control—energy. This vulnerability gives the United States and Europe a vital interest in the security of the region where much of the oil is, the Middle East. That same region is now threatened by the spread of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, which can stymie our conventional military superiority.

One could cite other serious dangers to common interests—radical takeovers in North Africa, unbounded genocide in Central Africa, nuclear confrontation in South Asia. But the presence of wicked regimes with weapons of mass destruction perched along the Persian Gulf is enough to make the point that interests as vital to Europe as to America are at risk beyond Europe.

If NATO were to be given the job of protecting the common vital interests of Europe and America, it would surely include those I’ve mentioned. Also, it would follow that NATO should have the means to fulfill that purpose. Yet, only the United States can project power at present, and only the United States is building the capability to thwart weapons of mass destruction. If Europe were poor, one could understand why the United States has virtually sole responsibility to defend those common interests that are most in danger. But Europe is now the world’s largest single economy.

Neither Europeans nor Americans should find the status quo acceptable. If the Persian Gulf needed defending again today, the European allies would be able to provide only token forces. Such a crisis would be devastating to NATO. True, Europeans have done more than the United States in Bosnia—but the total U.S. troop contribution to UN-mandated peace operations worldwide in the past five years has vastly exceeded that of its European allies. The U.S. policy elite may be content with this lopsided situation, but the American people are not.

For their part, Europeans complain a lot these days about U.S. unilateralism—and not without cause. Then why are they content to leave the security of their vital interests to the United States? Moreover, Europeans should realize that imploring the United States to maintain a presence in Europe will fall on deaf ears unless Americans observe their rich allies taking more responsibility in and beyond Europe.

I do not mean that NATO should no longer be the provider of security in Europe, with a substantial U.S. role. I am all for that. But shouldn’t the alliance of the world’s most capable nations be used to deal with their most serious problems? In short, NATO is too valuable to become the proverbial Maytag repairman of Europe.

The other defining question—the responsibilities of the United States and Europe—is linked to the question of strategic purpose.

There are three options. First, the United States could have principal responsibility for security both in and beyond Europe. To cling to this option, ignoring Europe’s progress, is to perpetuate the European culture of dependency while running the risk that Americans will lose patience. The suggestion that Europeans are too busy organizing Europe, or simply too disorganized, to accept greater responsibilities strikes me as a lame excuse. Anyone who has been in Los Angeles lately—or for that matter, Washington, D.C.—tires of hearing about Europe’s internal problems.

The second option is for Europeans to assume full responsibility for security within Europe and the United States to retain full responsibility for security outside. But this would leave the United States with the more demanding and dangerous assignment by far, even though Europe is just as wealthy and has similar global interests. It would also end America’s still-useful role as an honest broker in European politics.

The third and preferred option, then, is for Europeans to assume principal but not exclusive responsibility for security within Europe, while the United States takes principal but not exclusive responsibility for the security of common interests elsewhere.

This would provide a fair—by which I mean roughly equal overall—sharing of burdens and risks. Anything less would not be viable. More specifically, the United States cannot afford to maintain a significant commitment in Europe—measured in army divisions, air wings and carrier battle groups—unless its European allies make an offsetting contribution to the protection of world oil supplies.

Of course, responsibility is meaningless without authority and means. Therefore, NATO’s command structure should reflect this shift of responsibility. At the same time, responsibility must be backed up by capability.

Americans cannot expect Europeans to shoulder half the burden of common security while being kept in a subordinate position in NATO. At the same time, Europeans cannot aspire to commands whose forces are preponderantly American. Therefore, where Europeans are prepared to accept responsibility and provide most of the military means to back it up, they should command. And Americans should serve under them. If we cannot live with this, we do not really want partners but followers. That is no longer a viable model for the Atlantic alliance.

In sum, as soon as NATO’s membership has been updated and its cooperation with Russia launched, the alliance must begin to transform itself into an equal partnership between the United States and Europe, with some new players on the European side. This partnership must be able to defend common vital interests without geographic restrictions that no longer make strategic sense. In that more equal, more global NATO, Europeans should have primary responsibility for security in Europe while at the same time joining the United States in confronting the more serious threats elsewhere.

The European allies spend nearly as much as the United States on defense and have as many troops. Unfortunately, only a small part of this effort is useful, the bulk still being suitable only for territorial defense. The European allies could make a meaningful contribution to power projection without increasing defense spending. The United Kingdom has largely made the shift; France has produced a plan; and Germany has reoriented a fraction of the Bundeswehr. Other allies have yet to begin.

The pledge to help defend new members will require that more West European forces be retooled for projection. Such forces will be valuable for all sorts of purpose, in and beyond Europe.

As NATO’s strategic purpose is redefined, and as the European allies convert their forces, NATO’s command structure must change. Since that structure was right when Europe was weak and threatened, it must be wrong for the future.

In a book just out from RAND, Jim Thomson recommends that a third major NATO command be created to carry out power projection and to ensure that force programs are in train to permit the alliance to operate as an effective military coalition outside of Europe. He argues that this command should be given to a European, as an inducement to get the European allies to reorient their forces from the obsolete mission of territorial defense to one with contemporary strategic value.

In regard to the Treaty, keeping Article 5 is of course essential, both to symbolize the indivisibility of alliance territory and to ward off reckless attacks against individual members. But the importance of Article 5 will, fortunately, continue to wane.

At the same time, there is no chance of extending the same degree of automaticity to the joint defense of common interests other than territory. We’ll have to rely on Article 4 as written.

This has important implications for the roles of members and partners. Some members will not be both willing and able to join in operations beyond territorial defense. Moreover, as we know from Implementation Force (IFOR) and Stabilization Force (SFOR), partners who are not formal members can participate, perhaps more substantially than some members.

To conclude, I am under no illusions about how the NATO establishment will view such ideas: making "out-of-area" the strategic priority; overhauling European forces; creating a new command; giving Europeans the chief responsibility for security in Europe; rotating SACEUR; accepting the declining significance of Article 5; inviting partners to play an active role. Such reforms could be viewed as threatening by the NATO establishment.

I offer these ideas not because they are easy for NATO but because they match the conditions and challenges of a world that has changed a lot more than NATO has. Ironically, those who are committed to preserve NATO might recoil from ideas that would give it strategic content.

Our goal should not be to preserve NATO, for the very presumption that it must be preserved will impair our ability to think afresh about why we need it. And we should not confuse enlargement with reform—nor reform with purpose.

The United States and Europe have a real security challenge, namely, instability in much of the world around us, aggravated by the diffusion of dangerous technologies. The United States should call upon NATO to rise to that challenge.