The United States and NATO since 9/11

The Transatlantic Alliance Renewed

Ellen Hallams

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN: 9781135224646
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Política mundial

The US decision not to work through NATO after 9/11 left many European members of the alliance feeling deflated. This decision reflected not only the unilateralism of the Bush Administration, but also the belief that US operational freedom and flexibility had been hampered during NATO's two Balkans interventions.

This book examines US attitudes to, and perspectives on, the transatlantic alliance, with a particular focus on US-NATO relations since 9/11. It demonstrates that, following the decision to bypass NATO after 9/11, the Bush Administration's perceptions of the alliance shifted due to a belated recognition that NATO did indeed have much to offer the US. Hallams explores NATO's contributions to post-combat reconstruction and stabilisation operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and argues that the events of 9/11 galvanised NATO into undertaking an accelerated program of transformation that has done much to reinvigorate the alliance.

This book offers an optimistic assessment of the transatlantic alliance, counter-balanced by realistic reflections on the problems it faces. Drawing on interviews with US and NATO officials, it argues that NATO is far from irrelevant and that prospects for the alliance remain fundamentally positive; it will be of interest to students and scholars of US Foreign Policy, American politics, international relations, security studies and transatlantic studies.

1 The origins of the transatlantic community

The sense of ‘crisis’ that engulfed NATO following the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, was nothing new to alliance members. A critical examination of NATO’s history does much to dispel the ‘well-fostered and carefully honed myth that transatlantic security relations over the past fifty years have been seamless. They have not . . .’ (Lindley- French 2002: 41). NATO’s progression from its founding to the present day has been one of constant evolution and adaptation. From its very inception, as the key architects of the alliance sought to persuade the United States to abandon its historical pledge to remain free of ‘entangling alliances’, NATO’s journey from a unilateral US guarantee of European security to the most successful military alliance in history was not the ‘seamless progression, some up escalator of history’ that some judged it to be (Cook 1989: x). NATO was, in the words of its first Secretary General, Lord Ismay, formed to ‘keep the Russians out, the Germans down, and the Americans in’, intimating the crises, tensions and disputes that would plague NATO throughout the Cold War.

There was no guarantee that NATO would succeed or would even endure, and the ability of the alliance to respond to the changing tide of events has been a central feature of its continuing persistence. Although the US response to 9/11 and the subsequent war in Iraq in 2003 saw alliance unity stretched to breaking point, NATO’s history suggests that when the alliance experiences periods of tension and crisis, the shared values that bind member states together prove sufficiently strong to weather the storm. Indeed, it is a central premise of this book that there still exists within the alliance a strong spirit of ‘transatlantic community’; while this might have been tested in recent years, it remains central to understanding how NATO has managed not only to survive beyond the end of the Cold War, but to reinvent itself in a changing strategic landscape.

The origins of the alliance

That the United States should even enter a formal alliance was remarkable in itself, not least one that committed it to helping provide for the security of Europe. America’s foreign policy in the formative years of the American Republic was predicated upon a profound aversion for the power politics of the Old World and the belief that to avoid becoming entangled in its web of conflicts and wars, the United States must abstain from any involvement in Europe’s affairs. John Quincy Adams observed ‘I do not love to be entangled with the politics of Europe’, while George Washington, in his farewell address to the nation, warned his contemporaries:

Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none of a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics . . . It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world, so far, I mean as we are now at liberty to do it.

(see MacDougall 1997: 44–46)

The principles on which America’s foreign policy should rest were thus established, and affirmed further by Jefferson’s pledge to refrain from any ‘entangling alliances’. That the United States should come to do exactly this can only be understood as the result of a profound re-evaluation of its role in the world, beginning with the Spanish–American War of 1898, and culminating with America’s involvement in the Second World War. Even as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was debating the merits of signing the Washington Treaty of 1949 from which NATO was born, Washington’s warnings lingered in the minds of some. When Cornell professor Curtis P. Nettels spoke before the Committee, he argued that in signing the Treaty the United States would ‘abandon the historic policies of the Nation and substitute therefore a new policy utterly alien to our traditions’ (see Kaplan 1984: 14).

Different theories abound as to the reasons why the United States chose to entangle itself in the affairs of war-torn Europe. For some, it was a logical progression only to be understood within the wider contours of the unfolding postwar drama between the allies (Cook 1989: 7–8). As the allies lurched from crisis to crisis the need for an Atlantic military structure would emerge, slowly and uncertainly at first, and with alarming urgency at times, but always mindful of the ever-present threat posed by the Soviet Union to the construction of a peaceful, stable and prosperous Europe. Considerable disagreement existed over the extent of the US commitment to Europe and the wording of what would become NATO’s Article V. Such disagreement reflected not only contrasting visions of the alliance in the US and Europe, but also wider concerns within the US over the general direction of post-war US foreign policy (Cook 1989: 204–214; Kaplan 1984: 16–20). Although discussions had centred upon some form of transatlantic linkage between the US and Europe, the formality of the word ‘alliance’ had been deliberately avoided until British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin took the initiative. While Bevin remained reluctant to formalise ‘some form of union in Western Europe . . . backed by the Americans and the Dominions’, he did propose a treaty between Britain, France and the Benelux nations as a foundation for a Western Union (Cook 1989: 113–114).

The British proposals caused profound disagreement in Washington between key State Department advisers over the extent of the American guarantee that would be offered. When Bevin raised the prospect for the first time of a military alliance with the US, he was firmly instructed that until such time as there was ‘evidence of unity with a firm determination to effect an arrangement under which the various European countries are prepared to act in concert to defend themselves’, the US would not consider the part it might play in such an arrangement. As Cook (1989: 112) observes, such an ‘idea ran completely counter to a century and a half of United States history and deeply embedded tenets of its foreign policy’. Momentum lost was soon momentum gained, when in February 1948 a Communist coup in Czechoslovakia led to a common perception on both sides of the Atlantic that the ensuing six to eight weeks ‘will decide the future of Europe’ (Cook 1989: 118). In this context, the Brussels Treaty formally establishing the Western Union was concluded in March, the final stepping stone along the path to the ultimate security guarantee the British so desperately sought. The Prague coup, combined with Soviet demands on Finland and growing pressures being exerted on Norway to sign a ‘treaty of friendship’, helped produce an emerging consensus in Washington that an Atlantic security system was in the best interests not only of Europe, but also the United States.

Both the Brussels and Washington treaties also reflected a wider shift in the prevailing assumptions governing the formation of post-war US foreign policy. The policy of containment articulated by George Kennan in both his ‘Long Telegram’ from Moscow and a later article for Foreign Affairs in 1947 was comprised of three main parts. Firstly, Kennan argued the United States should seek to limit Soviet expansion, principally through the use of economic aid, to rebuild the self-confidence of those areas most vulnerable to Soviet designs, notably Western Europe and Japan. Kennan’s focus was on restoring the global balance of power, and he saw economic aid as the primary means of doing so. Secondly, Kennan advocated heightening tensions within the international communist movement, which he believed was inherently self-destructive, principally through the encouragement of nationalism. Finally, Kennan sought to modify Soviet behaviour by ‘counter-pressure’ – the use of deterrents and inducements to try and convince the Soviet leadership that it was futile to try and remake the world in their own image (Gaddis 1984: 25–53).

Kennan’s vision of containment would provide the intellectual rationale for the Truman Administration’s policies but Soviet actions helped to fuel a growing belief within parts of the Administration that America needed to operate from ‘situations of strength’, of which the military alliance with Europe was a core component. It reflected a growing trend towards an emphasis on military security over and above economic security and the firm belief that America’s strategic, political and economic interests were clearly at stake. Considerations of power relationships and perceptions of Soviet capabilities were foremost in the minds of US policymakers, many of whom were distinctly wary of making the same mistakes with the Soviet Union they had made with Nazi Germany. According to Henry Kissinger (1994: 456), ‘. . . from the Second World War America learned that the best protection against aggression is having overwhelming power and the willingness to use it, hence the Atlantic Alliance’.

The shift from an emphasis in economic to military aid in the form of a formal alliance was regarded by some as the result of a sustained effort by Europe to entrap the United States into providing for the long-term security of Europe. In this context, the Western Union is viewed as ‘an elaborate device to entangle the US in European affairs, and to do so by appealing to the dominant sentiments in post WWII America’ (Kaplan 2001: 8). Its leading members, Ernest Bevin and George Bidault, worked tirelessly to try and include the US within the Western Union, and although the US ruled out membership of the Union, they did not rule out membership of a wider Atlantic organisation. The long-term intentions of the United States with respect to NATO have also come under scrutiny, particularly from those who fail to comprehend any reason for NATO’s continuing existence, regarded as running contrary to the ‘original intent’ of the Americans, who foresaw only a ‘limited and restrained security commitment’ (Carpenter 1992: 20).

In the Senate Foreign Relation Committee hearings, a popular argument in favour of NATO’s formation was not so much the long-term threat posed by the Soviet Union, but rather the need to give the Europeans a ‘will to resist’ (Paterson 198: 47). The idea that NATO stemmed more from European insecurities than American interests is also reflected in the notion that the Europeans ‘invited’ the Americans to involve themselves in the affairs of Europe, an invitation that influenced both the timing and the scope of America’s commitment to NATO:

It seems likely that the setting up of NATO would at least have been substantially delayed if it had not been for the European invitations. The heart of NATO, Article 5, would probably not have had even its semi-automatic form if the Europeans had not pushed as hard as they did for an even more automatic American response to potential Soviet aggression.

(Lundestad 2003: 50)

Despite the importance of the European ‘invitation’ to the Americans, it is clear that by 1948 the Americans were convinced that there was also a clear strategic rationale for joining NATO. While this rationale would persist for the next 50 years, what became apparent as NATO evolved was the importance of the shared ideals and values that bound alliance members together, enabling it to overcome the tensions and disputes that arose during the Cold War years.

Growing pains

Histories and accounts of NATO’s evolution throughout the Cold War tend to confirm that NATO’s history has indeed been punctuated by disputes and crises, all of which the alliance survived relatively unscathed (Kaplan 2001; Kissinger 1965; Lundestad 2003; Osgood 1962; Tucker and Wrigley 1983). In its early years, the alliance was energised by the Korean War, as the communist threat in Asia and fears of a worldwide communist conspiracy ensured that NATO was transformed ‘into a military organization capable of defending Europe on the ground against attack from the east’ (Kaplan 1984: 145). Prior to the Korean War, NATO had been little more than a ‘political guaranty’, with Dean Acheson admitting that NATO’s defences were ‘totally inadequate’ (Jervis 1980: 569). Galvanised by the outbreak of war, however, not only did the US Congress approve a $4billion supplement to the allies, it also deemed necessary the integration of the Federal Republic of Germany into the alliance, a process that would take four years to complete.

For all the sense of relief at America’s commitment to NATO and the defence of Europe, new concerns arose to replace the old, not least, France’s reaction to the reintegration of Germany. French demands for a European Defence Community (EDC), which called for a European force under a European minister of defence, within which German troops would be incorporated, were evidence of growing tensions between France and the United States that would persist with increasing levels of discord and distrust. The EDC, signed in 1952, would collapse only two years later when France failed to ratify the treaty. Despite having been the driving force behind the concept, it appeared it was a step too far for a country that remained fearful of the Germans and had just suffered a decisive defeat in Indo-China. Still, the Americans were determined to see West Germany integrated into the Western alliance and negotiations continued between the Americans and their European allies to that end. In 1955 West Germany duly became NATO’s 15th member. The alliance was further emboldened by the creation of the Supreme Allied Commands in both Europe and the Atlantic, and General Eisenhower’s appointment as the first Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR). The subsequent dispatch of four US divisions to Europe signified not only a US military presence in Europe that had not been anticipated when NATO was formed, but an emerging military structure that breathed new life into the alliance.

For all Europe’s gratification at the increased US military commitment and the reorganisation of the alliance, the reliance of the Europeans on the Americans became clear. As Kaplan (2001: 62) argues, ‘in this first decade of NATO’s history the European allies were torn between gratitude for the shelter of American power and resentment over their dependence on that power’. Ultimately, the US commitment to NATO – and to providing a nuclear protectorate over Europe – reflected shifting strategic visions of the post-war world, enshrined most explicitly in NSC-68, America’s national security blueprint for the Cold War. NSC-68 set out a rationale for the militarisation of America’s policy of containment of the Soviet Union, and in doing so, laid the foundations for ‘a Pax Americana, a more hierarchical transatlantic system under American hegemony’ (Calleo 1987: 32). Under Eisenhower’s ‘New Look’ foreign policy, the American nuclear strategy of ‘massive retaliation’ provided a welcome nuclear security umbrella for European countries keen to reduce their conventional military forces and spending levels, but it also ensured that debates over burden-sharing ‘would remain an issue between the United States and Europe as well as between successive US administrations and Congress’ (Sloan 2003: 39).

If NATO’s most formative years only hinted at the tensions and disagreements that underlay the transatlantic alliance, the years between 1954 and 1969 would see the alliance face a number of testing crises and events that would fundamentally alter the nature of the transatlantic relationship. By the late 1950s some 400,000 US troops were stationed in Europe, but American frustration at European contributions – or lack of – to their own defence was steadily mounting. The European force levels agreed at the Lisbon NATO meeting of 1952, which proposed that NATO would have 96 divisions by 1954, were not met: by 1954 NATO had only 25 divisions, leaving President Eisenhower increasingly frustrated.¹ Frustrations mounted on both sides with the Suez crisis of 1956, in which the American condemnation of the Anglo-French intervention in Egypt prompted France to renew its efforts to forge a European Economic Community (EEC), culminating in its eventual withdrawal from NATO’s integrated military command structure in 1966. The humiliation of French experiences in Algeria, Indo-China and Suez, prompted a reconsideration of France’s relationship both with the United States and the NATO alliance, a relationship that would remain precarious throughout NATO’s history. In some quarters, France has been perceived as the ‘reluctant ally’, whose pretensions of global power did not sit well with America’s own hegemonic ambitions, setting up an uneasy tension that permeated the NATO alliance throughout the Cold War, and beyond (Harrison 1981: 48).

The emergence of the Atlantic community

As the alliance moved into its second decade, with the drama and tension of the Berlin and Cuban crises behind it, Europe seemed to have entered into a period of bipolar stability, a stability ‘that made it possible for latent differences within the so-called Atlantic Community to rise to the surface’ (Kissinger 1994: 595). Such differences centred principally on the debate over NATO’s nuclear strategy, a debate that took place in what many perceive to be the ‘crisis’ years of the alliance (Lundestad 2003: 120–132; Osgood 1962: 147–274). In an atmosphere of reduced East-West tensions, both Britain and France began to express growing doubts over the American strategy of ‘flexible response’, with its emphasis on the integration of NATO’s nuclear forces and a build-up of conventional forces in Europe.

Concerned that America’s enthusiasm for conventional forces might signal to the Soviet Union that NATO’s nuclear forces might not be utilised, Britain and France began to develop alternative military strategies:

Whereas America preached the dangers of nuclear proliferation in general and the specific dangers of a dispersion of decision-making authority in NATO, France and Britain argued the advantages of multiple deterrents, particularly when small national forces might be expected to trigger a superpower duel.

(Calleo 1987: 46)

The US responded by advocating an integrated Multilateral Nuclear Force that further divided an already fractious alliance. The British resolved their differences with the Americans, choosing to expend their energies cultivating the ‘special relationship’. The French, however, under Charles de Gaulle, sought to disentangle French interests from those of the United States through a Europe de Patries that would leave France to look after its own security interests without having to rely on the Americans.²

France resorted to drastic measures, withdrawing from NATO’s integrated military command structure and requesting that NATO remove its headquarters from French soil. Although the French withdrawal represented the alliance’s gravest crisis, NATO displayed a resolve and unity that would see it through this crisis and those yet to come. In the words of one NATO diplomat, it was nothing more than a ‘cheap anti-American gesture’, and for the most part, NATO ‘went on with the business of the alliance almost as if nothing had happened’ (Sloan 2003: 45). All the NATO allies reaffirmed their commitment to the alliance, ‘a measure of their determination to show that de Gaulle’s challenge in no way represented a threat to NATO as such’ (Lundestad 2003: 130). The consequences of the French withdrawal were significant, however, not least in terms of cementing America’s dominance of the alliance, whilst at the same time casting doubt over future European defence cooperation in a manner ‘that made it more difficult for th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 The origins of the transatlantic community
• 2 'Saving NATO': Operation Deliberate Force, Bosnia
• 3 'War by committee': Operation Allied Force, Kosovo
• 4 NATO, the Bush Administration and 9/11
• 5 The fall – and rise – of NATO: Operation Enduring Freedom, Afghanistan
• 6 The 'crisis' of the transatlantic alliance: Operation Iraqi Freedom, Iraq
• 7 NATO's transformation: The transatlantic alliance renewed
• Conclusion: Prospects for the transatlantic alliance
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index