The NATO Alliance: Dangerous Anachronism

The impact of the Russia-Georgia war continues to reverberate. Gen. James Craddock, NATO's Supreme Commander, has requested authority to develop contingency plans to defend the Eastern European countries. Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski recently told an American audience that "We need to make NATO's traditional security guarantees credible again" and that "NATO needs to recover its role, not just as an alliance but as a military organization." Kim Holmes of the Heritage Foundation advocates doing "more military contingency planning and military exercises with not only Poland, but the Baltic states." Senators Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman recently proclaimed the importance of "reinvigorating NATO as a military alliance," with "contingency planning for the defense of all member states against conventional and unconventional attack."

Until recently, NATO was treated like a social club, with invitations extended pro forma to anyone within geographic reach that exhibited proper manners. But the conflict in the Caucasus brought home to NATO's 26 members the unpleasant prospect of war with Russia. Moscow is truculent and the Europeans are nervous, yet US officials are pushing to bring both Georgia and Ukraine into NATO. This step would directly bring conflict and war into the alliance.

Why is the US still in NATO?

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created to prevent the Soviet Union from dominating Western Europe. Europe had been devastated by World War II. The USSR emerged from that conflict as the most powerful continental state. Having fought to prevent Nazi Germany from dominating Eurasia, the US understandably sought to prevent the Soviet Union from achieving the same result.

This was an important but limited objective. Washington made no effort to liberate Eastern or even Central Europe from Soviet control. The US government commemorated the subjugation of the Baltic States, but made no pretense that their captivity threatened American security. And no one shed any tears over the status of the more distant Soviet "republics" which had been part of imperial Russia. NATO was for self-protection, nothing more.

Even so, the alliance barely fulfilled that role. NATO always was America and the others. The US spent far more money on the military, devoted a much larger percentage of its GDP to defense, and treated Moscow as a far more serious threat. The Europeans, in contrast, often promised to hike military outlays but rarely delivered on their pledges. They accepted Washington's aid but ignored Washington's priorities – building a natural gas pipeline to the Soviet Union, supporting Nicaragua's Marxist government, and more.

During the early years of the Cold War, the US may have believed it had no choice but to protect the Europeans, however feckless they might be. But once the Western European states had recovered from World War II, America could and should have reduced its military role and troop levels. The Europeans conceivably could have chosen not to defend themselves, but the prospect of military catastrophe has a way of concentrating the mind.

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