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“Relaunching” NATO Isn’t Going to Happen

Anne Applebaum thinks Obama can “relaunch” NATO in his remaining two years: Obama might not have the power to make Congress do what he wants, but he does have the power to relaunch the Western alliance. He has all of the cards — the United States contributes three-quarters of NATO’s budget — as well as […]

Anne Applebaum thinks Obama can “relaunch” NATO in his remaining two years:

Obama might not have the power to make Congress do what he wants, but he does have the power to relaunch the Western alliance. He has all of the cards — the United States contributes three-quarters of NATO’s budget — as well as the ultimate argument: If the Western alliance, as currently constituted, no longer wants to defend itself, America can always leave [bold mine-DL]. That might sharpen minds quickly enough to give Obama a foreign policy legacy that would last.

Applebaum knows perfectly well that no president is going to make such an argument, because no one in Europe or in Washington would take it seriously. Whenever the U.S. complains about its allies’ failure to contribute enough to the alliance, the message always falls on deaf ears. All of our allies know that the U.S. will never force the issue, because ensuring that the U.S. is a “European power” matters more to enough people in Washington to guarantee that nothing in the alliance ever really changes. Whenever the U.S. even hints at reducing its military spending or hints at paying even a little less attention to Europe, there is the predictable whining here and overseas that the U.S. is “retreating” and “abandoning” its allies. Instead of forcing the allies to do more to provide for their own security by reducing how much the U.S. does for them, the U.S. always rushes to reassure them that they won’t have to do more. That is why the U.S. will continue to bear the bulk of the costs until something changes dramatically. Obama could threaten to take the U.S. out of NATO to try to force the allies to change their ways, but we all understand why he wouldn’t bother. The threat would be perceived as an empty one, and it wouldn’t prompt any European leaders to take risks to change the way NATO functions. Interventionists may theoretically want allies to share more of the burden, but they are willing to do any of the things to make that burden-sharing happen.

The rest of Applebaum’s argument is a bit confused. On the one hand, she suggests possibly conditioning NATO’s security guarantee on a country’s willingness to spend a certain amount on the military:

Some Europeans don’t want to pay for their defense? Maybe those who want to be covered by Article 5, the alliance’s security guarantee, should now be obligated to pay. Perhaps those who contribute less than 1 percent of their national budget should be told that the guarantee no longer applies to them.

However, she also warns against further expansion because of its potential to undermine the same guarantee:

At the same time, NATO members should understand that any further enlargement is not charity work: Every time the NATO membership is extended to another state, current members have to be prepared to defend that state—and if they aren’t, then the enlargement should be stopped. Either Article 5 is an absolute guarantee, or it is worthless.

She is right about this, and this is what opponents of every round of NATO expansion have argued for the last twenty years, but it is impossible to square it with her other proposal. If NATO members are supposed to enjoy an absolute guarantee, the alliance’s commitment to defend all its members can’t depend on how much a government chooses to spend on its military. Either alliance members are worth defending or they aren’t, and if some of them aren’t then NATO has already extended more guarantees than it is truly prepared to back up.

Applebaum frames her suggestions in terms of giving Obama something that he could achieve as part of his foreign policy “legacy,” so it’s worth saying a little about the value of these “legacy” arguments. They’re not all that different from any other argument advocating for a particular policy, but by adding in a reference to a president’s “legacy” it is supposed to make the policy ideas seem more significant or appealing to the president politically. “This isn’t just a request for the president to make my issue a priority–this is about his legacy.” Unfortunately, “legacy” proposals are usually distinguished by being extremely ambitious and difficult as well as politically treacherous. By emphasizing the supposed benefit of securing the president’s “legacy,” the advocate brushes aside all of the many practical obstacles that stand in the way of getting close to succeeding. Promoting foreign policy ideas with talk of how it will help a president’s “legacy” is a good way to encourage presidents to pursue unrealistic goals that expose them to a lot of unnecessary political risk. Presidents that fall for these arguments are unlikely to be remembered for their policy successes.

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