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| Kissinger Watch #13 - 7 | |
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| NATO at the crossroads; NATO'S uncertain future in a troubled alliance /by Henry Kissinger | |
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| The San Diego Union-Tribune December 1, 2002, Sunday Henry A. Kissinger; (C) 2002, Tribune Media Services International | Kissinger was national security adviser and later secretary of state under Presidents Nixon and Ford. He also advised the Kennedy, Johnson and Reagan administrations. The summit in Prague to celebrate NATO's embrace of the Baltic states and the remaining Warsaw Pact nations marked both a triumph of the alliance's original purposes and an occasion to reflect about the long-term changes wrought by success. NATO was created more than half a century ago to protect its members against the threat of aggression, specifically a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. That threat having disappeared for the foreseeable future, NATO is not so much expanding as transforming itself into a different institution. It has become more akin to a collective security organization like the United Nations than a traditional alliance. An alliance defines a casus belli, a dividing line and a specific set of obligations; it assumes an unambiguous threat. Collective security organizations define the threat from case to case and negotiate the method of resistance, if any, in light of circumstances. The various Berlin crises of the Cold War were dealt with in an alliance mode; the anti-terror campaign launched in September 2001 has been handled as a collective security matter, with our allies acting in their national capacities from case to case. NATO as an institution has not been involved. This tacit transformation creates two potential fissures within the alliance: between East and West Europe, and between Europe and the United States. NATO expansion would have proceeded much more grudgingly, if at all, had the European nations still believed in a Russian threat or the possibility of a nuclear war over NATO's new frontiers -- in other words, if our European allies had considered the alliance more needed. Moreover, most of Western Europe views Russian membership in NATO as only a matter of time. In the meantime, a sort of halfway house has been arranged, giving Russia access to the NATO consultative machinery and weakening the purpose of the alliance for many of its new members. For the attitude of the nations now entering NATO is that of Western Europe's in NATO's infancy. Having lived under Russian rule for decades, the new members see in NATO the instrument to prevent a recurrence of aggression or pressure from the East. Unlike some of their partners from Western Europe, they do not consider NATO a potential brake on American impetuosity; they seek to strengthen America's international commitments, not to restrain them. No incentive for Europe Similarly, the new international environment alters the relationship between Europe and the United States. So long as there was a uniform perception of threat, Europe had an incentive to keep up its defense expenditures though, even then, its domestic outlays always exceeded its security spending. But in the absence of such a shared perception, European nations increasingly subordinate defense expenditures to domestic priorities; since the fall of the Berlin Wall, there has been a steady decline in European defense spending. At the same time, the massive American defense effort does not bolster allied cohesion, for it is widely perceived in Europe to be designed to deal with contingencies not related to European interests. Indeed, it magnifies the fear of many in Europe that the world is becoming unipolar while Europe would prefer it be multipolar. Recognizing these trends, the Bush administration has abandoned pressures for increasing the overall European defense effort. Instead, it has concentrated on the creation of a relatively small intervention force of 20,000 under the NATO institutional umbrella to confront threats that used to be considered "out of area." But the future of NATO depends less on its military structure than on the ability of its members to develop common political purposes. And therein lies reason for profound concern. European media and some political figures continue to present the United States as the land of the death penalty, rapacious capitalism, unilateral diplomacy and a cowboy mentality. The psychological gulf was evident when, in Prague, so staunch an advocate of Atlantic ties as Czech President Vaclav Havel asked for understanding of "the occasional insensitivity, clumsiness or self-importance that may come with this (global) responsibility." Even the consensus on Iraq at the Prague summit will face a moment of truth when there is a need to define what constitutes a material breach of U.N. resolutions and what remedies are appropriate. At the same time, many in the United States see Europe as a region of incipient neutralism, free-riding on American defense capabilities and seeking to protect its security by substituting multilateralism for alliance responsibilities. There is, therefore, a growing insistence on having the United States act as the sole arbiter of the global interest. These attitudes are at the heart of the dispute that goes under the heading of multilateralism vs. unilateralism. The time has come to put that debate into perspective. The slogans obscure the underlying reality, which is over the relative importance to be given to domestic over foreign policy. Europeans are no more willing than Americans to subordinate their perception of vital national interests to multilateralism in the abstract -- witness their behavior with respect to the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union. But they define their vital interests in more parochial terms and consider global issues as matters that can be used to gain the support of passionate national constituencies. In this way, European multilateralism often merges with new forms of self-righteous moralistic nationalism. Different U.S. aims For its part, America defines its national interests in more strategic terms. Europe defers worries about the operation of such new institutions as the International Criminal Court partly because of the lower priority it gives to foreign policy altogether. The United States is concerned with the immediate impact of an institution with a vague charter, unsettled procedures and subject to no system of checks and balances, which can affect the many Americans engaged in global responsibilities. Hence it contests the ICC's provisions with the same intensity Europeans devote to Common Agricultural Policy. The difference in the European reaction to the Bush administration's rejection of the Kyoto Protocol and the International Criminal Court compared to its treatment of the policies of the Clinton administration shows that the controversy is more about style than substance. The Europeans were pacified by the multilateral process of negotiation even though they must have known that what was being negotiated would never be implemented. The Senate, by a vote of 95-0, had made clear its refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. And President Clinton, in signing the ICC convention three weeks before leaving office, emphasized that he had no intention of submitting the International Criminal Court to the Senate for ratification or of recommending that his successors do so. Similarly, the furor surrounding the notion of preemption concerns procedure probably far more than substance. Put forward as part of the national strategy of the United States in September, the doctrine involves two issues: its inherent validity, and the manner in which it was being introduced. The administration was surely right in pointing out that the defining characteristic of the traditional international system has been fundamentally altered by contemporary ideology and technology. That system assumed that the domestic jurisdiction of states was beyond international challenge; hence the principal threat to international stability was perceived to be the attempt to change frontiers by force of arms. Neither assumption is still valid. Terrorist threats challenge the social cohesion, and weapons of mass destruction can alter the balance of power and threaten devastation primarily through technological developments within the territory of a sovereign state. In those circumstances, the potential victims cannot wait until the threat has been implemented. Preemption is inherent in the technology and ideology of the 21st century international system. The administration erred in presenting what is an international reality as if it were an American dispensation. Our allies will not acquiesce in leaving the definition of preemption to an ally, however close and powerful. Nor can it be in America's interest to encourage every nation to define pre-emption in purely national terms. The solution to this dispute is to seek to narrow the gap between substance and procedure to develop together, at least with long-standing allies, some principles of preemption. But to make this work, it is necessary that our allies treat such an effort as having purposes beyond restraining the United States and that they take seriously the need to redefine the threat environment. In the end, pre-emption is not so much a new concept as the application of a norm long recognized in international law: the right of self-defense. What the argument is about is rules for lowering the threshold of when this principle can be applied. Why NATO is still important As the alliance shifts its emphasis from the military to the political arena, from defending a geopolitical dividing line to what in NATO parlance used to be called "out of area" conflicts, both sides of the Atlantic need to define for themselves why NATO is still important. The United States must resist the siren song of basing foreign policy on hegemonic power. Many of the problems affecting world order are not susceptible to solution by military means. History shows that, sooner or later, every powerful country calls into being countervailing forces. And at that point -- and I would insist even now -- the United States will not be able to sort out every international problem alone without exhausting itself physically and psychologically. We will need allies, and the countries that most share our values and history are the NATO countries. And however much conventional wisdom balks at the concept of a clash of civilizations, that is what Western societies face together from the radical crusading version of Islam. The ultimate challenge for American foreign policy is to turn dominant power into a sense of shared responsibility; it is to conduct policy, as the Australian scholar Coral Bell has written, as if the international order were composed of many centers of power, even while we are aware of our strategic preeminence. It implies the need for a style of consultation less focused on selling immediate policy prescriptions than on achieving a common definition of threats and long-range purposes. By the same token, Europe must resist the temptation of "distinctiveness" for its own sake. Criticism of American culture and policy has been a staple of European opponents of NATO for 50 years. What is unusual now is that the governments in key countries are making no efforts to stem the tide and occasionally even stir it up. The alliance needs a clearer declaration of what is intended by a "European" foreign policy and one less geared to pacifying domestic pressure groups. Europe must be allowed scope for disagreeing with its partner. But if distinctiveness is defined by disagreement for its own sake, Western civilization is on the road to destroying its substance as it did in the first half of the 20th century. Europe must take seriously that America's attempt to shape a world order reflects a sense of global responsibility and not the psychological orientation of particular leaders. In this context, the debate between multilateralism and unilateralism assumes a different dimension. Abstract multilateralism is as incompatible with a new Atlantic relationship as abstract unilateralism. The former absorbs purpose in a quest for a general global consensus, the latter in overemphasis on a special national character. But NATO, to be meaningful, needs to have a special character between these two extremes. It must be able to define common purposes more precise than the attainable international consensus and more embracing than the national interest of an individual partner, however powerful. Is this possible? Or are we condemned to drift apart? We cannot know the answer today, but the future of our civilization requires that we make the effort to find it. | |
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