The Guns of Brussels (2000)

Burden Sharing and Power Sharing with Europe THROUGHOUT HISTORY alliances have been made and unmade, joined and dissolved, based upon the strategic calculations of their individual member states. It is a commonplace that no alliance has survived victory; once the specific goals of an alliance have been satisfied, its members lose their common strategic vision, the glue that has held together their entanglement in the first place. So, on the face of it, it would seem to be folly to expect the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to confute both history and common sense. Yet some ten years on from the end of the Cold War that was its reason for being, NATO has not only survived but continues to be the most successful alliance in history. Which is not to deny the real and perilous problems that NATO must confront in coming years. One of the biggest of these is the enduring and debilitating problem of the relative weight of the European versus the American commitment of resources to the alliance and the relative weight of the say Europeans versus Americans have in the alliance's decision making. Proof of the enduring nature of the problem is evident in the recent resurrection of the idea of creating a European pillar within NATO. At a 1998 conference in Saint Malo, France, European members of the alliance agreed to a proposal for defense cooperation conducted through the European Union (EU) in Brussels, the seat of European aspirations for greater transnational unity and cooperation. Thus was the idea of a European Security and Defense. Policy (ESDP) born. Saint Malo was quickly followed by NATO's operation against Serbian aggression in Kosovo beginning in March 1999. The Kosovo campaign significantly hastened the process begun at Saint Malo by forcing the Europeans to recognize the growing gap between American and European military capabilities. This newfound momentum culminated in an EU conference in Helsinki in December 1999, at which EU member states agreed to create a 60,000 man rapid reaction force in order to conduct missions, perhaps like the one in Kosovo, without relying on American participation. Today, the leading allies in the EU are seeking to make ESDP function as the European pillar within NATO. How the rest of NATO, particularly the United States, responds to these initiatives may well determine the future of the alliance. Trojan horses? TWO IMAGINARY TROJAN HORSES currently stifle NATO reform. The Europeans fear that American efforts to cajole them into bearing a greater share of the military burden are based on a fundamentally isolationist strategy to bring the boys home. On the other hand, some Americans fear that the EU views ESDP as a tool to liberate Europe from American domination and become a global counterweight to U.S. preeminence. Fortunately for the alliance, neither of these fears is based on reality. While there is considerable frustration in the halls of Congress regarding the burden sharing chasm between America and its allies, no one this side of Pat Buchanan wants to withdraw from Europe. There is simply no political movement of any kind in this direction. The danger is more subtle and long-term than this European fear acknowledges. In the long run, failure to reform the alliance and more equitably distribute burden sharing costs is a real threat to NATO'S viability. Support for the continuance of the alliance will not prove politically tenable over time in either American political party if defense spending within the alliance continues to vary as widely as it did in 1998. In that year, U.S. defense spending accounted for 3.2 percent of GDP, while France spent 2.8 percent of its GDP, the UK 2.7 percent, Italy 2.0, Germany 1.5, and Spain 1.3 percent. These numbers speak volumes. The old European fear of America urging burden sharing reform in order to quit the continent is entirely unfounded. Rather, the opposite is true: More equitable burden sharing within the alliance will encourage American military involvement on the continent, as it makes the American outlay of resources more politically palatable. …