It is not every day that a former Pentagon official encourages the Europeans to cut alliance ties with the United States. So, when one does, we should pay attention, especially when he does so as eloquently as Wayne Merry did in "Therapy's End." It is, certainly, a mark of a civilized man constantly to question one's first principles. Similarly, it is a sign of intellectual vitality to discuss the assumptions of Western security. One cannot help but agree with him that armies, alliances and international staffs are too expensive to be treated as job-creation schemes. Nor do we want to go down the route of the Soviet Union, which bankrupted itself spending too much money on an ossified defense establishment. In principle, when circumstances change, so should we.
And clearly, circumstances have changed. The reality of a belligerent Soviet Union threatening to spread communism into Western Europe--the threat which NATO was founded to deter--is thankfully no longer with us, and we should draw lessons from that success. Equally, the struggle for mastery in Europe, at least by traditional means, seems over and has been replaced by the economic, legal and, possibly soon, constitutional ties of the European Union. Merry is also painfully right about Europe's misallocation of its defense expenditures, which makes it feel like a midget despite jointly having the second largest defense expenditures in the world.
Merry proposes a radical solution: Defy that version of Parkinson's law that says that when institutions lose their purpose, they grow. Instead of enlarging, the Alliance should be dissolved and the EU should be encouraged to become a fully-fledged superpower, also in the military field. Let the Europeans take charge of their self-defense and let them define their own security interests beyond their borders as well. Let them grow up, in short, and not only will we save ourselves a great deal of transatlantic aggravation, but the United States will acquire a more responsible and competent ally at the end of the process.
If Merry's manifesto for the liberation of Europe from American tutelage had been written by a former colleague at the Quai d'Orsay, it would no doubt be cited as another proof of a Gallic plot to undermine the hyper puissance. But since it comes from this side of the Atlantic, we can examine the arguments without the usual histrionics. In the spirit of free enquiry, let us therefore imagine a world in which Wayne Merry's dream has come true: a world without NATO.
It is true that if the Europeans coordinated their defense policies better, they would gain a much bigger bang for their buck. Europe spends about a third of what the United States spends on its military but has nothing like a third of America's capabilities. If instead of 25 armies, navies and air forces, it had one of each, it would enjoy the economies of scale that benefit America. But one wonders if you need to dissolve NATO to do this.
The dissolution of the alliance would entail the withdrawal of American troops from Europe, since NATO is the main political and legal framework for their stationing. Europe taking charge of its own security surely means that, if it means anything. And that would have its downsides.
Firstly, the transition costs, both for Europe and for the United States--the disappearance, on the one hand, of all those American customers and, on the other, the need to relocate them to bases stateside--would be problematic. This would amount to tens, perhaps hundreds of billions of dollars. It's not a clinching argument--we don't want to be like a company that fails to downsize because of one-time charges--but it's something to keep in mind.
Secondly, the political and regional implications could become noticeably troublesome. Germany's democracy is sufficiently entrenched to survive the end of America's ultimate tutelage, but even a democratic Germany would be more tempted to play geostrategic power games in central Europe and the Balkans--games that led to disaster in the past. Much of "New Europe" itself, deprived of an American presence as the ultimate guarantor of security, would have no choice but to adopt the Franco-German terms of European integration, with all their anti-American undercurrents. Russia would react by speeding up the restoration of its empire. Ukraine, which gave up its post-Soviet nuclear arsenal in return for Western security guarantees, and which has tried to steer a middle course between Russia and the West, would probably succumb to a Russian sphere of influence. Britain would complete its internal realignment. With the security connection with the United States gone, Atlanticist political forces would decline and the UK would finally become a true European social democracy. Spain, Italy, Scandinavia, Turkey--they would all lose the wiggle room that a security connection with the United States gives them in their European policy. The one country that would feel vindicated at last would be France, or rather that part of the French elite which has dreamt of a non-Atlantic, European Europe for all these decades. In short, all of America's friends in Europe would be weakened, while all of America's potential rivals would be boosted. A Europe without American troops on its soil would be more likely to succumb to its lowest-common-denominator ideology of anti-Americanism. A Europe with its own independent military capability will more frequently say 'No' to the United States on a plethora of international issues and, unlike today, that may not mean resentful acquiescence but active opposition.
The third downside, even without falling into outright anti-Americanism, is that a fully fledged European power that had a bigger population and economy would naturally start to think of itself in terms of comparison and competition with the United States in all fields. A unified defense establishment that was a third of America's size in expenditure terms, but much smaller in terms of capabilities for many years to come, would demand what defense establishments do everywhere: a bigger share of resources. But the line between keeping up with the Joneses and an arms race is fluid, and one can lead to the other.
Fourthly, a purely European defense establishment would develop a community of interests with a purely European defense industry, large parts of which already see themselves as competitors with American defense giants. You don't have to be a Marxist to believe that commercial competition can feed into other types of competition as well and that these might reinforce one another, leading to volatile and unpredictable crises.
Fifth, such a non-NATO European defense establishment would also do what all weaker powers do in relation to stronger ones: seek allies. Russia, China, various Middle Eastern satrapies that have found the unipolar moment so constraining would finally find a partner in the balancing game. Multipolarity would come back with a vengeance and would not enhance the joint power of the Western democracies. A non-Atlantic Europe with its own army might be a more confident partner for the United States, but it would not necessarily add to America's--or Europe's--ability to achieve its objectives.
And then--either because of shared values and interests, or because common enemies bring us together--if these two powers tried to fight together, what would their military cooperation look like? Without standardized communications, friend-or-foe codes, intertwined lines of military and political authority, they would no longer be a workable coalition. Instead, they would resemble armies of Napoleon's time camped on opposite sides of the river with the European and American emperors sulking in their tents and never sure whether, at the crucial moment, the other would come to their assistance or stab them in the back. If they really wanted to collaborate, they would find that joint staffs, standardized procedures and compatible communications would be indispensable. Pretty soon, they would be working to re-invent NATO.
Let us take as an example, the biggest military coalition currently in the field: the 10,000 strong international division in the Central South sector of Iraq (it is under the command of Poland), which I visited recently. It has relieved U.S. Marines who previously secured the sector and has successfully provided security to over five million Iraqis. The biggest problem its commander has to deal with is the challenge of coordinating two dozen militaries with their different military sub-cultures, different equipment, different rules of engagement and different political directives from their capitals. After more than six months both the participants and the Americans have come to the conclusion that it would be useful to back it up with the institutional resources of an organization for which coordinating diverse militaries is a daily routine, namely NATO. The organization can be useful not only as an American toolbox, but also as an international staff experienced in working with the American military.
There is a middle course between leaving everything as it is and rashly dissolving a successful alliance, and it is in fact what is taking place. Europe will increasingly coordinate its foreign and defense policy, and it will progressively strengthen forces and capabilities that it might want to use either inside or outside of NATO structures. But NATO can remain the bedrock of our common security, and we can both use it as a toolbox for those actions that the other side does not object to, but feels no inclination to get involved in. We can be Europe and America, but we are also the Western civilization, with NATO as our invincible arm.
Radek Sikorski is a resident fellow at AEI and director of its New Atlantic Initiative.
