Rarely has NATO not been under verbal siege over these past few months.
U.S. President Donald Trump continues to snipe at the alliance at any given opportunity. And on the other side of the Atlantic, French President Emmanuel Macron has gone so far as to call it brain-dead.
Leading officials, predictably, have rushed to defend the organization. Ahead of a meeting of alliance leaders near London on December 3–4, there will be even more praise and support showered on NATO.
Yet the fact that that this meeting will not be called a summit shows how NATO’s seventieth birthday is not being celebrated with great fanfare but instead with a degree of self-doubt, if not anxiety. In their different ways, Trump and Macron are good for NATO—provided alliance leaders can turn such criticism into an advantage.
Trump’s tirades against NATO are about money. He wants the allies to pay more into the pot and stop taking the United States’ security umbrella for granted. The member states are now paying more for their defense.
And even if several governments have yet to meet the target of spending 2 percent of GDP on defense, the contributions have jumped. Yet it is debatable if the 2 percent goal makes sense if not coupled with an overhaul of what countries spend the money on.
And it’s an open question if Trump even believes that sum is enough anyway. For him, NATO is just another transactional instrument. The idea that it was founded to underpin the West carries little weight. That’s such a dangerous development for the transatlantic relationship. It represents another assault by Trump on one of the post-1945 multilateral organizations that were established to ensure a measure of predictability and stability for the West.
Macron has weighed in from a very different angle. It’s the intellectual and political aspects that he wants addressed. It’s not about getting rid of NATO or ganging up on the United States—which some countries such as Poland infer from Macron’s comments. Nor is it about Macron wanting France to become the leader of a European defense force that would eclipse NATO. Even if he wanted the latter, he would garner little support.
What Macron wants is for NATO to think and act politically and for Europe to consider the future of its security in case Trump wakes up one day and pulls America out of NATO. Many alliance leaders prefer to keep their heads in the sand rather than contemplate such a possibility.
Trump’s comments aside, the immense dangers the West is facing from Russia, China, and terrorism, not to mention the increasing vulnerability of democracies worldwide, cannot be played down. Macron wants NATO to talk about these issues.
The fact that the alliance has shied away from such discussions—even of the collapse of the Iran nuclear deal—or avoided preparing for scenarios such as a conflict breaking out in the South China Sea reveals a mindset and culture in fear of opening a Pandora’s box.
But it has to be opened. And Germany should do it.
The German defense minister, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, says she wants the European allies to take on more responsibility. Not to be outdone, the minister of foreign affairs, Heiko Maas, who swings back and forth with regard to his views on NATO, wants an independent commission set up to undertake a forensic examination of the alliance. That committee should be chaired by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.
But it will go nowhere unless Germany gets off the fence and decides once and for all to play a strategic role in Europe and in NATO.
This is not about Trump forever berating German Chancellor Angela Merkel for failing to spend enough on defense. As if money alone was a panacea to NATO’s ills.
It is about Germany replying to Macron by setting the agenda for Europe’s security and defense. This means asking hard questions about America’s security guarantee, about the role of Europe’s two nuclear powers, Britain and France, and about further enlargement of NATO.
Germany’s procrastination over security and defense should worry all NATO allies and all EU members.
As Merkel sees out her last term as chancellor, she has the chance to take advantage of the criticism coming from the White House and the Élysée Palace. Unless she grabs that chance, the advantage will pass to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Comments(5)
Are you saying that Germany should militarily lead Europe against a perceived threat from Russia? Absent the US, NATO becomes a paper tiger. So what is exactly meant by Germany acting strategically? Germans care vastly more about global warming than they do about becoming military leaders. In Germany's case, the past dictates the future. Certainly, Poland doesn't want Berlin to be responsible for its defense. Is it even conceivable that Germany would consider a nuclear deterrent role against Russian expansion westward? And does the Kremlin even want to expand westward? As President Eisenhower once declared: "Beware of the military-industrial establishment." How prescient was the ex-general and president. NATO expansion and US global overreach has come at the expense of the American working people. Trump might win again or he might not, but the issue of global US hegemony has now become an axiom of domestic politics. From both the left and the right some form of isolationism has now taken hold. Hence, for Europe to begin to start to think strategically will require a dramatic rethink toward Russia. A new European security architecture is foremost on the agenda for the 2020's. Without an independent entente with Moscow as the only alternative, European security will continue to atrophy. The same has become true for Western policy in the Middle East. Now nearly all roads lead to Moscow, and there is very little Macron or anyone else can do about it. The US is withdrawing politically from both regions, as its domestic population has tired of so-called "endless wars". Isn't such a designation precisely the nature of both the Cold War and its post-era NATO expansion? Soon, the majority of Americans will view Europe and NATO as just such an endless exercise in wasted monies. This is especially true given that the US Democratic Party wants to spend trillions on repairing the income equality breach between the top twenty percent and the rest of the American society. NATO's days are indeed numbered. So for Europe to think strategically will require that the recent, expansive division of the continent be healed. In other words, Europe needs a strategic paradigm inclusive of Russia without the demand for US leadership. This is exactly what Putin desired just fifteen short years ago. But of course, he was refused. Now is the time for fresh thinking and new ideas. It is clear -- Germany cannot return to its military and strategic past.
Not clearxwhat Germany is,supposed to do about NATO when it's very basis of voluntary collective defenseis is being broken down on so many fronts.
Dear Judy : good points ! Time to act ! However, DEU is soft on Putin and therefore mum. Has to do with sensitivities linked to WW II. By the way: Trump's anti - NATO stance is nothing original, as you know. He just jumped on the US bandwagon existing long before him. Europe should indeed spend more, but that is not Trump wisdom. It was just convenient language for his ignorant followers. Trump does not understand the Atlantic bond is in USA's own interest. America will come around again to full Atlantic cooperation once he's gone. A couple of months of agony still, then it's over. Respectfully, Maarten de Sitter , formerly Polad, NIC A6
"The idea that it was founded to underpin the West carries little weight." Why should America protect a stable continent of wealthy democracies? Europe is ruthlessly free-riding on American security and laughing all the way to the bank. During the Cold War the Americans made the global oceans safe for all and kept the American market wide open to the alliance, in essence harming its working class in order to purchase a security alliance. But the Cold War is nearly three decades gone now, and until recently the Americans had yet to update their strategic policy. As such, the post-Cold War global economic boom was largely a result of the Americans continuing to pay for a global system without getting anything in return. Our allies are privileged to be allied with us, not the other way around. It's very much a one way relationship, where we do all of the heavy lifting (we pay for everthing - UN, NATO, we protect them, etc.) and they get most of the benefits. Still they take advantage of us. NATO means so much to the 25% of American children living in poverty even though their parents work full time for minimum wage.
The NATO meeting in London 12/3-4 must focus on explaining how NATO was defeated in Afghanistan, first time Article 5 was invoked. After defeating all European Empires individually, since Alexander the Great, the Afghans have now defeated an entire coalition. To make it worse, Brzezinski has brought religious war back for the foreseeable future, a never-ending clash of civilizations; it is now a continuation of 1054 and 680, Christian and Islamic schisms. The 18 years war should also be analyzed from the perspective of participation, money and people. The US has spent around 7 trillion and Bush, Obama and Trump need to explain the average US voter how they convince Stoltenberg to get the rest of the alliance to pay their fair share, money and people, the brutal arithmetic of war. The US youth can’t borrow forever (and Bernanke, Yellen, Powell can print $ forever, recycled by China) and be ready anytime to drive tanks they paid for across Europe, on roads they paid for, or fight a strategic thermonuclear war for Montenegro (as on Kahn’s magisterial opus) while the EU NATO members watch and applaud. Moreover, China is now pictured as a strategic competitor, and Kissinger recently said that conflict between US and China could result in a catastrophic outcome, Polichinelle’s secret incorrectly phrased as it forgets Russia. Shortly after that, in an interview with Ferguson, Kissinger reminded everyone his 1971 secret trip to Beijing, and shared his incorrect perception about equilibrium in geopolitics, kind of Congress of Vienna Europe. As a side note, Ferguson has many books praising Western institutions, but the two didn’t look at the secret trip as an institutional breakdown as Congress wasn’t involved, not to mention people. In this interview the two lack strategic geopolitical thinking and don’t seem to understand that Thucydides’ trap has always been not about the two opponents, but always about the third replacing the two, in this case India. In the current geopolitical state strategic thinking for the West is to correctly recognize that the time of confrontation has passed, and the window of opportunity to create a world based on the United Nations probably has closed. War in the Western tradition, total and industrial is inconceivable in the era of thermonuclear weapons delivered by hypersonic vectors; it is hard to ask a real estate developer to contemplate a world depicted in “The Day After” and not ask why, regardless of CNN. Si vis pacem para pacem!
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