Understanding NATO in the 21st Century

Alliance Strategies, Security and Global Governance

Graeme P. Herd, John Kriendler

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781138831889
• eBook ISBN: 9781135123239
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Understanding NATO in the 21st Century enhances existing strategic debates and clarifies thinking as to the direction and scope of NATO's potential evolution in the 21st century.

The book seeks to identify the possible contours and trade-offs embedded within a potential third "Transatlantic Bargain" in the context of a U.S. strategic pivot in a "Pacific Century". To that end, it explores the internal adaptation of the Alliance, evaluates the assimilation of NATO's erstwhile adversaries, and provides a focus on NATO's operational future and insights into the new threats NATO faces and its responses.

Each contribution follows a similar broad tripartite structure: an examination of the historical context in which the given issue or topic has evolved; an identification and characterization of key contemporary policy debates and drivers that shape current thinking; and, on that basis, a presentation of possible future strategic pathways or scenarios relating to the topic area.

This book will appeal to students of NATO, international security and international relations in general.

1 NATO in an age of uncertainty

Structural shifts and transatlantic bargains?

Graeme P. Herd and John Kriendler

Introduction

The future of NATO, for so long the cornerstone of the transatlantic partnership, has profound implications for the cooperative or competitive nature of transatlantic relations and thus for regional and global security. On the eve of NATO’s Chicago “Implementation Summit” (20–21 May 2012) a range of influential policymakers and commentators argued for the need for NATO to undertake internal reform and adapt to a changing strategic context. Jamie Shea, NATO’s deputy assistant secretary general for Emerging Security Challenges, contended that “By adding ‘smart planning and smart thinking’ to ‘smart defense,’ NATO can best survive the age of austerity intact and be ready for the world that awaits beyond it.”¹ Charles A. Kupchan, in testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, noted that Ivo H. Daalder, the U.S. permanent representative to NATO, has argued that the Alliance is more needed than ever, reminding us that NATO heads of state declared that NATO “remains an essential source of stability in an unpredictable world.”² NATO’s Operation Unified Protector in Libya has been declared a “victory”, and NATO moves towards “transition” in Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

Alliances are defined as “an association to further the common interests of the members; specifically: a confederation of nations by treaty” and “a league or compact for mutual support or common action.”³ Mutual support or common action can cover a lot of ground, most often focused on security. States that face common threats or challenges have a shared interest in responding through a common effort, supported by collective organizational structures and procedures. There are of course costs of membership in international organizations, including alliances, in terms of constraint on freedom of action and also political and financial costs. But rational states will join together in an alliance when the benefits appear to outweigh the costs. For NATO to survive and flourish it must advance the interests of its members. It will survive only as long as it accomplishes things allies wish at an acceptable cost.⁴

For allies to use NATO effectively to accomplish things they wish, they need first to have compatible (not identical) interests. At a fundamental level: “Alliances are made by states that have some but not all of their interests in common. The common interest is ordinarily a negative one: fear of other states.”⁵ Interests can change and evolve, as they have in the case of NATO, but if they are no longer compatible, the Alliance will lose its importance.⁶ It is thus necessary for the Alliance to have the ability to be able to forge compatible views on the nature and importance of threats as well as their management. It needs appropriate capabilities to effectively combat such threats, the political will to deploy capabilities for this purpose and the mechanisms for timely collective decision-making. This study will interrogate the likelihood that NATO, given its past, can measure up to the challenges of defining shared political objectives relevant for the evolving security environment; can marshal military capabilities to support those objectives; and can provide for the evolutionary development of ends and means responsive to the “new war” model dominated by insurgency and terrorism, notwithstanding NATO’s legacy obligations to deter any threat or use of force against all allies and respond effectively if any allies were attacked.

NATO policy debates: budget cuts and increased heterogeneity

When we examine current NATO policy debates, NATO official documents and pronouncements argue that NATO is adapting to a changing strategic context, though consensus in the academic community is harder to find.⁷ However, it is clear that some analysts and commentators share the view, for a range of reasons, that NATO allies are increasingly uninterested in NATO’s future. As NATO moves into the second decade of the 21st century, its role, purpose, utility and very existence as the core transatlantic security alliance is increasingly questioned. On the eve of his retirement, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned that NATO could face “a dim if not dismal” future if military spending shortages, national caveats, and the political will to contribute to NATO missions were not addressed, given, among other things, that his generation’s “emotional and historical attachment to NATO” is “aging out.”⁸ NATO Secretary General Rasmussen’s “Annual Report 2011” confirmed these fears: 18 allies had lower defense expenditures than 2008, with further reductions announced or anticipated; the U.S.’s share of the NATO defense budget had grown while European contributions had decreased; while three allies were at or above the agreed recommended defense spending levels of 2 percent of GDP, 15 allies spent less than 1.5 percent; and only eight allies met the agreed recommended 20 percent or more of defense budgets on major equipment, while six spent less than 10 percent. As Rasmussen noted, “The majority of Allies are facing difficulty in maintaining the proper balance between short-term operation and longer-term investment expenditures in light of decreasing defence budgets and increased expenditures rising from the cost of contributions to current operations.”⁹ Although burden sharing disputes have been a constant feature of NATO’s evolution, the impact of the financial debt crisis cuts deeper – the U.S., UK, France, and Germany, as well as other, smaller allies, are all slashing defense budgets – and is likely to be longer lasting than any similar downturn in Alliance history.

Another significant factor which challenges the implied terms and conditions of the post-Cold War “Transatlantic Bargain” is growing heterogeneity within NATO. This can be seen in divergent strategic orientations and different perceptions of NATO’s utility. General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, noted in January 2012: “All trends are shifting to the Pacific. Our strategic challenges will largely emanate out of the Pacific region.”¹⁰ Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had already announced in November 2011 that this was a “U.S. Pacific Century,” with President Obama in 2009 accepting the mantle of America’s first “Pacific President.”¹¹ This “pivot”¹² from Europe to the Asia Pacific and Middle East regions highlights the declining strategic importance of Europe in U.S. strategic thinking, a decline confirmed by recent U.S. Department of Defense Strategic Guidance and the planned reduction of ground troops stationed in Europe.¹³ Related to this is damage done to the perception of U.S. competence and credibility in the aftermath of the Iraq intervention and continuing serious difficulties in Afghanistan.

In addition, rather than emphasizing collective security and crisis management, NATO European allies – particularly the small states – emphasize a regionally anchored deterrence and defense posture, with Russia seen as the primary threat. As Julian Lindley-French (Chapter 8) notes: “The simple fact is that the Afghanistan campaign never crossed the threshold between peace and war in many NATO capitals to justify the investment of forces and resources in order to succeed.” Considering Operation Unified Protector in Libya, Germany could not reach a consensus with France and the UK, few allies took part (due to lack of finance, military capability restrictions, or political support), and it was clear that European allies are incapable of conducting major military operations without substantial U.S. enabling support. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates commented:

However, while every alliance member voted for Libya mission, less than half have participated at all, and fewer than a third have been willing to participate in the strike mission. Frankly, many of those allies sitting on the sidelines do so not because they do not want to participate, but simply because they can’t. The military capabilities simply aren’t there.¹⁴

Lastly, heterogeneity is not only apparent in NATO allies’ approaches to the new threats identified at the Lisbon summit – from cyber to energy to terrorism – which impact allies differently and render reaching a consensus on collective action difficult, but also to the evolving nature of the Alliance. Phillip Cornell (Chapter 12) examining energy security contends that: “the blurred lines between traditional security and economic interchange (especially energy flows) caused by globalization present new challenges.” Moreover, Jeffrey Hunker (Chapter 10) who focuses on cyber security begins with the admonition: “National and alliance security topics prefaced with cyber – war, security, defense, deterrence, attack, power, doctrine, operations – are all evolving, so to say inchoate, fields.”

How to explain heterogeneity: structural power shifts and realist theory

It is frequently argued that policymakers find contemporary international relations (IR) academic scholarship irrelevant and inaccessible, of limited value, even counterproductive as a guide to the conduct of “real-world” policy. General academic IR theories address the “why?” questions, and favor universal abstraction and long-term explanatory-predictive utility. Practitioners need immediate but approximate understandings of context-specific problems – they focus on “how to?” questions necessary to design and implement effective security policies. A theorist-practitioner dichotomy emerges: academics have a written culture replete with academic jargon, where individual creativity, accuracy, and elegance are primary concerns and plagiarism a hanging offence; practitioners inhabit an oral plain-language culture in which ideas are understood to be a public good and a premium is placed on group work, precision, concision, and the generation of real-time answers. While it is true that academics argue to conclusions and policymakers argue to decisions, it is also apparent that policymakers need sound conclusions to reach informed decisions. Can IR theory bridge this gap and so aid policy? Is theory an essential tool of statecraft?

Theories and concepts are an abstract set of ideas that are coherent and internally consistent, providing a simplified picture of how the world works and so rendering it comprehensible. They are intensely practical and useful. Without theory we exchange diagnostic tools for information overload – we have no means to organize, prioritize, and filter information, to discern patterns, establish salience, and explain causes. Theory is founded upon description, analysis and ultimately can be prescriptively rich, generating useful policy recommendations. By equipping practitioners with both a common vocabulary and a framework that locates a specific situation, issue, or event in a broader context, IR theories facilitate the design and implementation of effective strategic responses. As important policy debates rest on competing theoretical visions, effective policymakers identify and question whether embedded theoretical assumptions hold in any given context, conscious that a reliance on flawed theory can lead to foreign policy disasters.¹⁵

NATO has existed for over 60 years. The long-term viability of the organization is dependent on three interconnected factors. First, changes to the global distribution of power. Second, the U.S.’s ability to adapt its grand strategy to maintain primacy as changed power distribution creates new international orders. Third, the ability of allies to re-forge a workable “Transatlantic Bargain” that provides reciprocal benefits for all allies.

The structural or neo-realist approach to international relations focuses on the international system. It contends that how and where power is configured within a unipolar, bipolar, or multipolar world determines state behavior. Systemic pressures are understood to either underpin a status quo through balance of power responses, according to “defensive realists,” or a continual struggle for predominance, primacy, and hegemony, according to “offensive realists.” “Defensive realists” such as Kenneth Waltz and Robert Jervis argue that the logic of the international system tends towards maintaining the status quo and equilibrium via the balance of power, rather than primacy: the opportunity costs of predominance and primacy outweigh the benefit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgments
• List of abbreviations
• 1 NATO in an age of uncertainty: structural shifts and transatlantic bargains?
• 2 NATO’s Genesis and adaptation: from Washington to Chicago
• 3 U.S. perspectives on NATO
• 4 NATO enlargement: close to the end?
• 5 NATO partnerships: for peace, combat, and soft balancing?
• 6 NATO–Russia relations: reset is not a four-letter word
• 7 NATO and the Comprehensive Approach: weak conceptualization, political divergences, and implementation challenges
• 8 Pulling together? NATO operations in Afghanistan
• 9 NATO and nuclear weapons
• 10 NATO and cyber security
• 11 NATO: towards an adaptive missile defense
• 12 NATO and energy security: defining a role
• 13 “Good enough is better than good”: towards a third “Transatlantic Bargain”?
• Bibliography
• Index