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NATO’s Mission

Could Trump and Mattis both have a point?
nato-no

My latest at The Week is about NATO.

In his confirmation hearing for the position of secretary of defense last week, General James Mattis staked out a position on NATO that appeared strikingly at odds with that of his prospective boss, President-elect Donald Trump. While Trump has called NATO “obsolete” and said he seeks “good deals” with Russia, Mattis called for inserting American troops into the Baltic states as a “tripwire” to deter Russian aggression.

Who is right? To answer requires asking a different question: What is NATO for, anyway?

Probably the most famous answer was given by Lord Ismay, the first secretary general of NATO. He quipped that the purpose of the alliance was “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.”

If that’s what NATO is for, then much of what the alliance has been doing for the past 20 years would have to be described as “off-mission.” So would Trump’s call for NATO to “focus on terrorism,” for that matter. But if the original mission no longer makes sense, perhaps the organization needs a new mission — or it needs to be scrapped. So: Is the original mission obsolete?

I go on to argue that no, it isn’t obsolete — it’s just not as serious a mission as it was in the heyday of the Cold War. Russian revanchism is a real problem that should be countered, but it isn’t a threat to civilization itself, and it matters much more to Europeans than it does to Americans:

Concerns that NATO allows Europeans to “free ride” on Americans are not new. Neither are concerns that America’s security guarantees are not actually credible. Indeed, Irving Kristol of all people, the very godfather of neoconservatism, mused as long ago as 1983 whether America shouldn’t withdraw its security guarantees precisely so as to prod Europe to build up its own defensive capacity, which (in his view) was the only credible way to deter Soviet aggression.

Such a conclusion applies in spades today. Estonia has no way of defending itself from Russian aggression. But Sweden and Finland would have genuine reasons to be concerned if Russia were to make a move against Estonia. That’s an argument for a collective security arrangement in the Baltics. And since the United States shares an interest in a peaceful Baltic, we would have a strong interest in bolstering such an arrangement.

But our interest, being more attenuated, should not rationally be expressed by seizing the front-line position. While conflict in the Baltic would be a bad thing, it would be madness for America to go to war with Russia over Estonian independence. For that very reason, if the only deterrent to Russian revanchism is an American tripwire, then there’s no credible deterrent at all. Collective security must be dominated by local forces that have the most to lose. Even in South Korea, where American troops act as just the kind of tripwire General Mattis suggests for the Baltics, they modestly bolster the Republic of Korea Armed Forces, one of the largest and most capable standing armies in the world.

Sweden and Finland undoubtedly cannot deter Russia alone, even if they make a robust commitment to doing so. But if they need support, they should first be getting it from their European neighbors — preeminently Germany. As the largest European economy, and with a Baltic coastline of their own, the Germans have the most to lose from conflict with Russia. That means they should be concerned about Russia’s ambitions to undermine European collective security — as they are. But it also means they should want to avoid provoking Russia unnecessarily. So it is no accident that Germany has been far less-enthusiastic about NATO expansion, or about demonstrative military deployments in the Baltics, than have many newer and more-vulnerable European states.

Inasmuch as NATO keeps Germany “down” (while the EU helps raise Germany “up” in the economic sphere), this allows the Germans to have their cake and eat it too, counting on Americans to shoulder the burden of collective security and leaving them free to posture as a more reasonable interlocutor with the Russians. It is difficult to see how this is in America’s interest — unless NATO’s primary purpose is not in deterring Russia through collective security, but preventing the rise of a European rival to American power, and providing America with a force-multiplier for its own adventures.

So I have some sympathy for Trump’s position in his current spat with the Germans. But I am much less sympathetic for the notion that, because Russia is no longer the threat that it was in Soviet days, we should find a new mission for NATO other than preserving stability in Europe:

If we still care about NATO’s mission, then, we need to focus on properly defining it and then how best to achieve it. If NATO’s mission remains collective security in Europe against the threat of a revanchist Russia, then that mission needs to be defined clearly, and undertaken primarily by Europeans themselves. America should remain “in,” but Germany, far from remaining “down,” should be expected to play a leading role. And the contours of the alliance should be fixed rather than subject to continuous expansion. Mattis’ own stated objective of deterrence would be better served by a policy of firmness and restraint than one of wild swings between overtures to cooperation and reckless provocation.

Meanwhile, it’s unclear what refocusing NATO to combat terrorism would really mean. An expansive military alliance with America is hardly necessary for cooperation on intelligence or even effectively patrolling the Mediterranean. And defeating ISIS requires brokering cooperation between Turkey, Iran, and the Gulf states more than it does any action by countries bordering the north Atlantic. Chasing shiny objects hasn’t served NATO well in the past few decades. There’s no reason to think Trump’s preferred shiny objects would be any different.

Read the whole thing there. And while you are there, read Michael Brendan Dougherty on the same subject.

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