NATO's Durability in a Post-Cold War World

Joe Burton

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781438468747
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Trattati

Why is it that despite the end of the Cold War and the almost constant controversies surrounding the alliance's role in the world, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is still a prominent and vital player in international security? Joe Burton provides an in-depth analysis of NATO's changing role in the post–Cold War era and its ability to survive, adapt, and meet the needs of its members in an increasingly turbulent, globalized security environment. He offers a historically and theoretically informed account of NATO that isolates the core dynamics that have held the alliance together in troubled times. In particular, he examines a series of processes and events—from the 1990 Gulf War to the rise of the Islamic State—that help explain NATO's continuing relevance.

1THE POST–COLD WAR ENVIRONMENT AND NATO ENLARGEMENT

AS NATO ENTERED INTO the post–Cold War period, the alliance faced new challenges and was forced to adapt to a changing strategic environment. The Soviet Union had collapsed, depriving the alliance of its main adversary, and debates raged in Europe and America about the ongoing viability of an institution centered on deterring a threat that was no longer there. NATO’s role was put to the test in dealing with the fallout from the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ethnic, intrastate conflict in the former Yugoslavia, and the alliance went through a period of intensive institutional realignment during this period, the absorption into the alliance of a newly unified Germany, the absorption of France back into the military command structure, and late in the decade, the enlargement of the alliance by three new members, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland, extending the border in which NATO operated 400 miles closer to Russia.

NATO clearly had a significant role in European and world politics in this period. What factors contributed to the alliance’s durability in this new era, though, and how did the alliance demonstrate such remarkable resilience in the face of a world that was rapidly changing? These are the central questions that this chapter addresses. The chapter proceeds in three parts. First, it explores NATO’s Cold War foundations and how they helped sustain the alliance in entering into the new strategic environment of the 1990s. This section also analyzes the interrelated effects of (a) the changing international “structure,” (b) the impact of globalization, (c) the first Gulf War, and (d) the rise of intrastate conflict. Second, the chapter examines the process of institutional change within the alliance, the adoption of a new strategic concept, which was directly linked to this changing strategic context, and explores the “genesis” of the enlargement strategy. Third, the chapter examines in detail the debate over NATO enlargement, the pros and cons, and the reasons those in favor of the strategy prevailed. The chapter reveals the divides that began to emerge in this period between democratic and realist narratives about NATO. It argues, however, that the decision to proceed with enlargement, and the strategic and political rationale behind it, demonstrates the convergence between liberal values and interests during this crucial early period in NATO’s post–Cold War history.

NATO’S COLD WAR FOUNDATIONS AND THE “NEW SECURITY ENVIRONMENT”

NATO’s durability in the post–Cold War era was clearly contingent on its Cold War history. That is to say, NATO’s historical accumulation of experience influenced its ongoing trajectory. By the time the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 NATO had been in operation for more than forty years. The alliance had faced many and varied challenges, both external and internal, but it had survived, and in doing so had accumulated a great deal of valuable experience.1 NATO was a larger alliance first of all, the members that joined during the Cold War—Turkey and Greece (1952), West Germany (1955), and Spain (1982)—had strengthened the organization and given it a wider geographical area of operation. The major Cold War conflicts and crises—the Korean War, Suez Crisis, Vietnam War, the decision by Charles de Gaul to leave the military command in 1965, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and President Reagan’s contentious deployment of Pershing missiles to Europe in the 1980s—all served to influence and shape the organization’s trajectory, inform its identity, and affect its operational capacity. The alliance had also become adept at resolving intra-alliance tensions during the Cold War. It had come through the storms of the Cold War and was perceived by many to have helped the West to emerge from this protracted conflict in a favorable position. Support for its ongoing role and a firm commitment to preserving the alliance in a very different strategic environment was contingent on such perceptions and on NATO’s prior successes and failures. As Veronica Kitchen has argued, “Since détente, the allies had consistently presented their political community as something worthy of preservation for its own sake, rather than simply as a means to defence against the Soviet Union.”2 This commitment to NATO did not dissipate as the alliance entered the 1990s, even as the alliance’s main adversary collapsed.

Additionally, the political and institutional influence of the alliance was evident as NATO entered into the post–Cold War era. That political strength was derived from the alliance’s collective military strength, but it was also aided by NATO’s strong institutional machinery and committee structures, including the North Atlantic Council (NAC), which by the end of the Cold War had become a prominent political player in North Atlantic security affairs, the post of Secretary General, a position occupied by many senior transatlantic statesmen, and the existence of an internationally representative and highly competent secretariat. Other Cold War processes, such as the 1967 Harmel Review, solidified greater consultation procedures within the alliance and guaranteed the smaller NATO powers a voice within the organization. The alliance also provided institutional means through which the diverging strategic interests and goals of alliance members could be reconciled and overcome: for the Europeans, NATO had become a tool to influence US policies, particularly over policy approaches that caused concern, such as the strategy of “brinkmanship” in the 1950s and the nuclear escalation in the 1980s. On the military side, the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) had been established, a powerful military presence in Europe, along with major command posts in Paris, Oslo, Fontainebleau, Naples, and Virginia, with many other smaller posts. NATO had put down institutional roots that were not easy to tear up as the alliance entered into the 1990s and the foundations laid in the Cold War began to be influential in helping the alliance adapt to new issues and challenges.

THE CHANGING INTERNATIONAL STRUCTURE

The first and perhaps most obvious of these challenges was the changing distribution of power in the international arena. In the aftermath of these events many believed that the international system was moving from a bipolar system to, in the absence of any other great power to rival the US, a unipolar system. In fact, many scholars and critics believed that the US had “won” the Cold War and was now in an unparalleled position of strength. At least in military terms, this is amply documented.3 The global influence of the US was no longer actively challenged either materially by the Soviet Union or in ideological terms. Communism had been largely discredited as a viable, functioning system by which to organize a state’s politics and diplomacy, and democracy was perceived by many to be “on the march.” This somewhat triumphalist way of interpreting the end of the Cold War was best articulated by Charles Krauthammer, who described this event as ushering in a “unipolar moment”:

The most striking feature of the post–Cold War world is its unipolarity. No doubt, multipolarity will come in time. In perhaps another generation or so there will be great powers coequal with the United States, and the world will, in structure, resemble the pre–World War I era. But we are not there yet, nor will we be for decades. Now is the unipolar moment.4

Krauthammer dismissed any new hope for multilateralism through the UN, suggesting that the US was in an unrivaled position to play a decisive role in conflicts globally. The main challenge or threat to the US in this new environment would be, Krauthammer argued, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Such weapons in the hands of “rogue states,” such as Iraq and North Korea, would be the central focus of the US in a new era, and this way of thinking greatly influenced policy makers in America.

Such a view had clear implications for the US and its NATO allies—the idea that the world system had fundamentally changed from bipolar to unipolar had the potential to have a serious impact on the alliance’s durability. The US might have decided that, given its newfound position of strength, it no longer needed its alliance partners and was no longer interested in being constrained by them. Likewise, the unity within the alliance might have suffered as a result of the US working increasingly outside of the alliance in conducting its foreign policy (a concern that was to resurface with the US response to 9/11, which is discussed in a subsequent chapter). The US might also have been expected to begin to refocus its international efforts on rising powers, and new states or new coalitions of states could have been expected to emerge to challenge the authority of the preeminent power and to seek to retain influence over their own regions, guarding against foreign interference and manipulation. In such a unipolar environment balancing behavior against the new “unipole” was a distinct possibility.

Conversely, it might have been expected that policy makers would recognize that the unipolar moment would be brief and that a unified American and European approach to security, institutionalized in NATO, would be the best way to insure against the emergence of new rival blocks of states, to best deter such adversaries during the inevitably brief transition away from unipolarity, and to balance against alternative power centers when they inevitably emerged. In this scenario, NATO’s continuing role would be assured by the expected transition from bipolarity through unipolarity to multipolarity, not nullified by the illusory transition from bipolarity to unipolarity. In other words, NATO’s essential utility would remain—in the immediate future the US may have needed the Europeans less in order to advance their foreign policy interests but inevitably a unified North Atlantic area was the best long-term approach.

Following this line of argument further, without NATO, and its consolidating and unifying influence, European states might have been more prone to be the ones balancing against the US themselves, in order to constrain a hegemonic power bent on influencing international relations in a unilateral fashion. Thus, by retaining NATO in the new era the US would guard against active balancing against its interests from within Europe and retain international legitimacy by working through the alliance, while the Europeans would maintain a channel of influence on US policy. It would also actively help to share the burden in responding to new threats and managing the transition toward a new era and it would keep Europe and America together in forging common solutions to international issues.

Clearly the change in polarity would influence the alliance but during the early 1990s it was not apparent exactly how this would occur. Moreover, the true nature of the post–Cold War era was contested. While it was the prevalent view in the US that America had “won” the Cold War, this narrative was not universally accepted. The influence of Gorbachev’s personality and policies in bringing the Cold War to an end may have been equally or even more important. There was also a broader view that the cumulative degeneration of the Marxist–Leninist political system forced the Soviet Union to “opt out” of Cold War competition with the US. Another claim was that the advent of globalization in the early 1980s was perhaps the most significant contributing factor—external pressure from the Reagan administration converged with long-term internal pressures within the Soviet Union and this was behind the end of the Cold War.

It is not the place of this book to examine these questions in detail. What is important to recognize is that the understanding of the end of the Cold War, and particularly the US reaction to it, would be important in formulating foreign policy in these crucial years, and would potentially have a big effect on NATO. It is important when moving on from this broader conceptualization to ascertain, whe...