NATO's Future

The U.S. has been a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) since its inception in 1949. The alliance binds the U.S. to Canada and 17 European countries in a common defense pact. Recent divisions between the U.S. and some of its traditional NATO allies, however, have called the future of the alliance into question.

Throughout the period of hostility between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, known as the Cold War, NATO was seen as a protection against military aggression for U.S. allies in Europe. When the Cold War ended in the early 1990s, however, questions were raised about the continuing purpose of NATO. Since then, the alliance has undertaken military and peacekeeping actions and has expanded to include countries in Eastern Europe. In conjunction with recent U.S.-led efforts against international terrorism, NATO has begun a process of transforming itself into a reaction force capable of operating throughout the world. [See 2001 U.S. Response to Terrorism]

U.S.-led military action launched against Iraq in March 2003 has been a particularly contentious issue among traditional NATO allies. The U.S. led the invasion after asserting that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had failed to meet Iraq's disarmament obligations. While Britain joined the U.S. in its effort, and other NATO countries offered support, still other members of NATO, particularly France and Germany, opposed immediate military action. The aftermath of the war has led to speculation that, in the future, the U.S. might rely less on formal alliances such as NATO, and that some European governments might seek to enter into alliances that excluded the U.S. Plans to admit seven new member nations have also sparked debate over the purpose of the alliance.

Supporters of the NATO alliance and its ongoing efforts contend that the organization serves a cohesive function. By binding the U.S. to Europe, they say, it provides for the safety of allies that are not as militarily powerful as the U.S. In addition, they argue, it cements relations between the U.S. and its European allies.

Proponents also maintain that NATO provides ongoing military advantages to the U.S. and its other members. In the interest of fighting terrorism, they say, it is useful to have an existing alliance that can respond to international threats. NATO allows the U.S. and its allies to be better prepared for coordinated military action, supporters say.

Critics of NATO, on the other hand, argue that it is no longer as militarily valuable as it once was. They say that bilateral arrangements such as that between the U.S. and Britain during the Iraq war have become more useful. Alliances such as NATO carry commitments with them that are disadvantageous to the U.S., opponents argue.

For instance, critics say, through NATO, other countries can hinder U.S. military efforts in ways that could be detrimental to U.S. security, as evidenced by the attempts to block U.S. plans to supply Turkey with weapons to defend itself should neighboring Iraq attack. In addition, they charge that NATO compels the U.S. to defend interests that might diverge from its own. Because the military prowess of the U.S. makes it the main guarantor of security for NATO members, they argue, the U.S. is more likely to become involved in regional conflicts as NATO expands.

Origins of NATO

In the years after World War II (1939-45) the U.S. and the Soviet Union emerged as the two dominant world powers. Increasingly tense relations between the two superpowers and their respective allies led Western European countries to seek out means of collective security. In 1949, Britain, France, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Portugal, Italy, Luxembourg and Iceland joined Canada and the U.S. in forming a commitment to defend one another. Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, considered the heart of the agreement, stated that the armed forces of NATO members would come to one another's aid in the case of an attack: "The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all."

NATO offered Western Europeans a guarantee that the U.S. would not abandon them after World War II. In addition, it helped ensure that Germany, recently defeated in the war and divided into Western and Soviet spheres of influence, would remain non-threatening to its neighbors. As the first secretary general of NATO, Britain's Lord Ismay, described it, the alliance was created "to keep the Americans in, the Russians out and the Germans down."

In 1950, the Korean War began when Soviet-backed North Korea invaded South Korea, which was backed by the U.S., and the U.S. led a United Nations force to repel the invasion. Worrying that a similar offensive might be launched in Germany, the U.S. and its allies implemented a military command structure within NATO. The NATO system is overseen by the North Atlantic Council, headed by the secretary general, traditionally a European. Below the council is the military command, traditionally headed by a U.S. general.

In the early years of the Cold War, NATO expanded to include additional European members. Greece and Turkey joined in 1952, and in 1955 the Federal Republic of Germany, or West Germany, was accepted on the condition that it refrain from developing certain weapons. Other countries, however, became concerned that the U.S. was not serious in its commitment to defend them from the Soviet Union, or that NATO was too much an instrument of U.S. power. In 1966, France withdrew from the military command of NATO but remained part of the alliance.

NATO after the Cold War

When the Eastern European regimes allied with the Soviet Union began to collapse in the late 1980s, NATO sought to reach out to them by establishing the North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC). Established in 1991, the NACC was a group of countries that included the members of NATO and nations in Eastern Europe. The organization was meant to offer a forum for communication between NATO and its former adversaries.

Later in the decade the NACC was replaced by the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC) and the Partnership for Peace program. In 1997, NATO established the NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council to facilitate communication with Russia. Plans were also made to include former Soviet allies in NATO itself.

Just as the composition of the NATO alliance was changing, so was its purpose. By the late 1990s, NATO peacekeeping forces from member countries had taken over the role of the U.N. in the former Yugoslav republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Southeastern Europe, which had been embroiled in civil war. In 1999, after the U.N. refused to authorize military intervention, NATO forces launched an aerial attack on Yugoslav military forces to prevent ethnic cleansing of Albanians in the province of Kosovo. NATO peacekeepers were deployed to Kosovo in the aftermath of the conflict.

Although the Kosovo mission was a success for NATO, it led to controversy over the nature of the alliance. Some questioned the use of NATO to resolve regional conflicts. Others within NATO, particularly on the U.S. side, complained that the communal command structure made it difficult to effectively wage a military campaign. Russia was opposed to the attack on its allies in Yugoslavia and suspended its relations with NATO during the conflict. The entry into NATO that year of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, former Soviet allies geographically close to Russia, was also controversial.

In 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S. led NATO members to invoke Article 5 of the NATO charter for the first time in the history of the alliance, declaring that the attack on the U.S. was an attack on other NATO countries. NATO air defenses were deployed to the U.S. However, when the U.S. planned a military campaign against the Taliban regime of Afghanistan, which the U.S. accused of harboring the terrorists, it sought the help of a coalition of allies but did not involve NATO. Some observers said that the U.S. avoided NATO involvement so as not to be hindered by the structure of a formal alliance.

In 2002, plans advanced that would reshape NATO into a new rapid response force, capable of responding lightly and quickly to threats around the world such as those posed by terrorists and weapons of mass destruction. The new force would draw on the special capabilities if its members. Also in 2002, seven new countries--Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia--were invited to join NATO. The invitation to those former Soviet republics and allies in the vicinity of Russia aroused some controversy but was not opposed by the Russian government. Their membership is expected to be formalized in 2004.

Most recently, NATO allies have been divided over the U.S. military attack on Iraq. The administration of U.S. President Bush (R) sought to forcibly disarm Iraq, which the U.S. accused of possessing weapons of mass destruction. The governments of France, Germany and other NATO members, however, were opposed to the immediate use of military force, favoring instead continued U.N. inspections of Iraqi weapons.

In January 2003, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld emphasized divisions within Europe and NATO when he described Germany and France as old Europe. "If you look at the entire NATO Europe today, the center of gravity is shifting to the east," he said.

In February 2003, France, Germany and Belgium objected to a U.S. plan to supply Turkey, a NATO ally that borders Iraq, with weapons to defend itself in the event of a war. Their opposition was based on the fact that the U.N. Security Council had not agreed to the use of force in Iraq. The dispute was resolved when the decision was shifted to the NATO Defense Planning Council, of which France is not a member, rather than NATO itself, and Germany and Belgium dropped their objections.

Disputes over the war in Iraq have led many observers to describe current NATO relations as conflicted. In April 2003, after the U.S. campaign in Iraq, France, Germany, Luxembourg and Belgium announced that they were exploring a European defense initiative. Although they stressed that they were not attempting to undermine NATO, the announcement was seen by some as part of a desire by France and others to create a security arrangement independent of the U.S.

The U.S. publicly indicated its displeasure with NATO members who had opposed the war in Iraq. In a visit to Spain in May, U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice accused France and Germany of taking NATO hostage in the months before the war.
Alliance Still Useful, Supporters Say

Supporters of NATO and its new initiatives argue that the alliance continues to play a vital role in international security. In light of the ongoing threat posed by international terrorism and rogue regimes, they say, it is more necessary than ever for countries to be capable of united action. The dissolution of the Soviet Union does not make NATO obsolete, they maintain, and in fact makes it important that NATO undertake new responsibilities.

Bush elaborates on the existing threats:

The Soviet Union is gone, but freedom still has enemies. We're threatened by terrorism; bred within failed states, it's present within our own cities. We're threatened by the spread of chemical and biological and nuclear weapons, which are produced by outlaw regimes and could be delivered either by missile or terrorist cell.

From a military perspective, NATO is still valuable, supporters assert. A key function of the NATO military alliance is coordinating the capabilities of its members' armed forces, they say. For that reason, NATO ensures that U.S. allies will be compatible with U.S. forces in joint military actions, proponents argue. "There's not just the NATO go to war alliance," says Thomas Donnelly of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, speaking on the television program NewsHour. "There's the institutional training and equipping alliance. And the cooperation that we achieved with the British and others, in fact, during the Iraq War was a product not simply of bilateral military cooperation but of years and years of training and common practices within NATO."

In addition, supporters say, NATO allies can be helpful in military roles that do not necessarily involve fighting. Pointing to the example of NATO peacekeepers in Bosnia, they argue that NATO can be instrumental in keeping order in troubled areas. Keeping peace in failed nations is not only important for its own sake, they maintain, but also because it can keep terrorists and other rogue elements from establishing themselves.

Such capabilities make the maintenance of a strong NATO alliance a matter of paramount importance to the U.S., proponents say. With the U.S. extending itself militarily in many areas, it particularly needs the type of assistance that NATO provides, they argue. "Any additional capability to an overstressed American military force which, after all, has global responsibilities is value added," Donnelly says.

NATO is also important for non-military reasons, supporters argue. As an alliance with European countries, it offers the U.S. a chance both to make its voice heard in an international forum and to listen to the concerns of others, they say. Recent tensions between the U.S. and countries such as France and Germany highlight the need for greater communication, they argue, as a way to ensure continued relations between the U.S. and its allies. "Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, I've said the most important thing is the North Atlantic alliance itself, not its military capabilities," says former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger.

Supporters say that as NATO expands to include countries that are newly democratic, it can encourage liberalization, equality and respect for human rights. Even the prospect of being accepted for NATO membership can encourage progressive reforms, they contend. "For most of these nations, the hope of NATO admission has served as an incentive to strengthen democracy, subordinate military to civil authority and work out diplomatic solutions to longstanding nationalist quarrels," states a November 20, 2002 New York Times editorial. Proponents say that NATO is capable not only of ensuring military security but of encouraging democracy as well.
Critics Question NATO's Purpose

Critics of NATO argue that recent history has shown that it is no longer necessary for the U.S. to remain part of the alliance. They point out that in Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. was able to conduct successful military campaigns with various combinations of allies but without NATO. Even some who support NATO in general say that it is no longer useful to the U.S. for military purposes. "America's bilateral ties--especially with Turkey and Great Britain--are much more critical to U.S. security interests than the multilateral alliance," says Nikolas Gvosdev, a senior fellow for strategic studies at the Nixon Center, a conservative think tank.

Membership in NATO's military structure can actually hurt U.S. interests, critics say. They point to the attempt by NATO members to block U.S. assistance to Turkey before the Iraq war as an example of the constraints posed by formal alliances. As NATO grows to include new members, they warn, there will be more and more countries with their own agendas that will attempt to exercise control over what military actions the U.S. can take, potentially threatening U.S. security.

"The use made by the French government (and its temporary ally Germany) of the NATO structure to impede America's plans to act in Iraq again exposed the antiquity of an organization that had fulfilled its original purpose--to protect Western Europe from Soviet expansion--and showed conclusively that it is now obsolete," writes historian Paul Johnson.

Not only does NATO constrain U.S. military action, opponents argue, but it compels the U.S. to become involved in conflicts that do not necessarily pose a threat to its own security. In reality, they say, the U.S. is NATO's main military force, and hence is expected to take a prominent role in NATO missions, as it did in Kosovo. With NATO expanding into more troubled areas of Southern and Eastern Europe, U.S. military involvement in regional conflicts becomes more of a possibility, critics say.

Expanding NATO "would extend U.S. security guarantees to peripheral regions without augmenting Western military power," says Doug Bandow of the libertarian Cato Institute. "And there should be no doubt that it would be Washington that would be expected to resolve any new security problem. The membership might be in NATO, but the security guarantee is American."

Critics point out that the U.S. spends a significantly larger portion of its gross domestic product on defense than most European countries do. The knowledge that the U.S. is bound by treaty to defend those countries from external threats encourages them to minimize defense spending by removing any incentive for them to increase their military power, opponents contend. The U.S. is expected to shoulder more than its share of the NATO security budget, they say.

Critics argue that Europe would be better served by organizing its own security alliance to protect itself. Such an arrangement would serve Europe by making it self-sufficient and would serve U.S. interests by freeing it from its obligation to involve itself in European security, they maintain. "The Europeans would do far more for the U.S. by simply garrisoning their own continent," says Bandow.

Some critics say that the U.S. should stop trying to make its foreign policy needs fit into the structure of NATO and consider revising its security arrangements in a way that does not include the alliance. The U.S., they argue, should not automatically assume that it must belong to NATO. "A high-priority item on Washington's foreign-policy agenda should be to move beyond a reflexive reverence for NATO toward a new European policy that better serves America's interests in the post-Cold War era," writes Ted Galen Carpenter of the Cato Institute in Beyond NATO: Staying Out of Europe's Wars.
Future Role of Alliance Unclear

Recent developments have led some observers to speculate on the future of NATO as a military alliance. The war in Iraq, fought almost entirely by U.S. and British forces, is seen by some as an example of how smaller military coalitions could operate on their own, a development that could diminish the significance of NATO as a military alliance.

Another development that has fueled speculation is the emergence of a security force controlled by the European Union (EU), the economic and political coalition that includes many NATO members. In March 2003, EU peacekeepers replaced NATO forces in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and the EU has plans to replace the larger NATO force in Bosnia in 2004.

At the same time, NATO has been expanding beyond its traditional role in Europe and the North Atlantic. In May, it voted to provide logistical and operational support to Polish peacekeeping forces in Iraq, with the possibility of expanding its role there in the future. NATO has also agreed to take over peacekeeping forces in Afghanistan in August.

Some emphasize, however, that NATO is only as effective as its members are willing to make it. If the alliance is to function as intended, they say, it should be employed as an instrument of genuine cooperation, rather than as simply a means of advancing the interests of individual members.

"NATO is nothing more than the product of its member states," says Gen. Wesley Clark, former supreme allied commander of NATO and the leader of the Kosovo campaign. "For NATO to have continuing significance, Washington will have to seek NATO support--and that means consensus--and NATO participation in its most important security challenges. This will also require the Europeans, and especially France, to view the challenges as equally grave."

Sources:

Bandow, Doug. "NATO Expansion Hurts U.S. Security." Cato Institute (June 8, 2002)

Clark, Wesley. "Nato's Way Forward Uncertain As It Takes on New Members." The Times (April 16, 2003)

Gore, Karenna. "NATO Expansion." Slate.com (February 9, 1997)