On Monday Armchair Generalist had a link to an Andrew Bacevich op-ed that ran in last Thursday’s Los Angeles Times. Bacevich’s piece advocated for an American withdrawal from NATO, Jason Sigger (the Armchair Generalist) agreed. Acknowledging that both men know more about military affairs than I, and that this is rarely the case when I read something either of them has written, I must strenuously disagree. An American withdrawal from NATO would be an almost unmitigated catastrophe and a terrible waste.
Bacevich’s criticism of American participation in NATO breaks down into two main parts; first that NATO harms its credibility and integrity when it tries to justify its existence by acting outside of Europe, particularly when it comes to Afghanistan. Second, that Europe, particularly Western Europe, is more than capable of defending itself from any Russian threat but that it refuses to do so as long as America is committed to doing it anyway.
That NATO has no business trying to project power outside of Europe is possibly a valid criticism. NATO certainly hasn’t done itself any favors in Afghanistan and it’s equally true that NATO may be the wrong framework to continue whatever the hell it is we’re still trying to do there. But to deem that a failure of NATO ignores a lot of vital and important context. The alliance’s initial purpose in Afghanistan was a reaction to an attack on a member country that, had it been perpetrated by a nation state, would’ve met any definition of a casus belli. It was entirely appropriate and correct for NATO to be involved in that war.
The problem is that Afghanistan, a legitimate mission, was quickly subsumed into a much broader, and largely foolish, American “war on terror”. Afghanistan became a festering war because of a failure of leadership in Washington, not Brussels. The last seven and a half years of the Bush Administration did not happen in a vacuum and the lesson to be drawn from NATO’s participation in Afghanistan to this point isn’t that NATO is obsolete or riven with divisions; it’s that NATO cannot function if American leadership is both strategically incompetent and diplomatically tone deaf.
(Incidentally, this is the real reason Obama has had so much difficulty convincing the Europeans to send more troops to Afghanistan. Obama tries to paint Afghanistan as it was before the invasion of Iraq; the Europeans don’t see it that way.)
Bacevich’s second criticism, “that present-day Europe is more than capable of addressing today’s threat, without American assistance or supervision” is true in terms of men and materiel. And his assertion that Europe has been free riding on the benefits of enormous American defense expenditures is also basically accurate. But to end the analysis there is to seriously discount the enormous strategic and political benefits that come from the widespread belief that the trans-Atlantic alliance is a permanent fixture of global affairs.
I would suggest that NATO’s primary purpose in 2009 is not, as Bacevich writes, “the defense of Europe.” Rather, it is the binding of Europe and North America, two regions which are quite separate geographically but are very close in almost every other way. There are no major conflicting priorities between the allies, either in terms of territory, access to resources or ideology. “Europe” roughly defined and “North America” (meaning the U.S. and Canada) form an economic, political, military, and cultural bloc, run by governments which are (for the most part) stable, relatively uncorrupt and democratic.
Even better, NATO is part of a self-reinforcing and beneficial loop. Countries, like Spain and Germany, which were once nouveau members are now strong contributors. It takes decades, but it happens and there’s no reason to believe that the same won’t be true of more recent entrants. Aren’t Poland and the Baltic republics significantly friendlier and more receptive to the West than they would be if they were constantly trying to appease Russia, especially in light of last summer’s little war in Georgia?
It is beneficial to all of these countries to stand united in a world which is still very dangerous. I’m not one who believes that a serious war between America and China is in any way shape or form inevitable (it certainly isn’t anything either country’s leaders want), but it would be historically naive to think that such a war is impossible. It would be far better to have a place as wealthy, populous and sophisticated as Europe on our side than not. The same goes for an increasingly nationalist and authoritarian Russia. It isn’t hard to imagine a mishandled crisis quickly turning into a truly dangerous situation where American-European solidarity would be a tremendous asset. Or, to put it another way, the EU could probably win a war against Russia, but why subject the world to that terrible cost when an EU-US alliance makes that war both less likely to ever happen and more likely to have a favorable outcome?
Bacevich is right to say that NATO isn’t doing well in Afghanistan, and he may even be right that NATO shouldn’t be in Afghanistan at all, but it wasn’t NATO that botched that war, it was us. What NATO is good at, binding Europe and North America, it continues to be good at, and that is an absolutely vital function. Communism, as an economic and political ideology, is largely dead, but the marriage of capitalism to authoritarianism (dressed in nationalism) is alive and well as a competitor the idea of liberal democracy joined with capitalism. Throwing the Atlantic alliance away over a bungled mission in Afghanistan would be a tremendous waste and a dangerous mistake.
(And nevermind the fact that if American withdrawal from NATO even made it to the level of a semi-plausible rumor there would be something approaching a panic in a lot of Eastern European capitals, a panic which Russia (and Russian nationalists) would be more than happy to exploit and encourage. Such uncertainty would also very likely be accompanied by serious negative economic consequences as well.)
