The Intellectual Sand Undergirding NATO’s New Style

Less than three months after NATO’s triumph in Kosovo, a paradoxical but nagging question has become inescapable: Did Kosovo mark the end of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or at least as we have known it?

For the United States, the Atlantic alliance has epitomized the twin pillars of sound U.S. policy: the buttressing of both security and democratic values. For our European allies, NATO has given Britain the framework for its “special relationship” with America; to Germany, a safe haven from European suspicions and Eastern dangers; to France, a safety net against changes in the geopolitical balance it cannot handle by itself; and to Italy, an anchor for the emotional Atlantic commitments of its population.

Yet, unexpectedly, the first joint military operation of the alliance, carried out with extraordinary political cohesion and blessed both with apparent success and low allied casualties, has evoked vehement calls for greater European independence. The ink on the agreement ending warfare in Kosovo had hardly dried when, in Cologne on June 15, the 15 leaders of the European Union affirmed the urgency of creating a separate military force capable of acting without the United States and without the approval of NATO. Carried to its logical conclusion, this implies a revolution in the structure of the West: an all-European chain of command capable of bypassing NATO.

The timing of this quest for autonomy is puzzling. The European reaction would make sense if European allies felt they had been dragged into what, in retrospect, they consider an aberration or if they were squabbling about the consequences. Neither of these conditions applies. Far from feeling imposed upon, all allied leaders insist that, henceforth, the humanitarian intervention displayed in Kosovo is to be the rule, not the exception.

When all allied leaders agree on the significance of their actions, the sole remaining European motive for developing a capacity to act autonomously is to escape U.S. tutelage and to increase European bargaining power. If these goals reflected a desire to make a greater contribution to joint action or to give weight to occasional European warnings against U.S. impetuosity, they would contribute to the effectiveness of the alliance as long as they were backed by increased military spending. If, however, Europe fails to make a real defense effort, resentments against U.S. dominance will only increase. If the quest for independence is driven largely by anti-American motives, it will saddle the alliance with all the compulsive competitiveness that nearly destroyed Europe before NATO was founded in 1949.

The new European eagerness for autonomy, partly a function of the end of the Cold War and of the emergence of the U.S. as the sole superpower, also reflects and compounds the key alliance challenge: the growing confusion about what NATO is supposed to accomplish in the first place.

Allied leaders are correct in treating Kosovo as a watershed. The alliance abandoned its historic definition of itself as a strictly defensive coalition and insisted on the right to occupy a province of a state with which it was not at war. It reinforced this unprecedented ultimatum by coupling it with a demand for the right of free movement of NATO troops throughout Yugoslavia. This abrupt abandonment of the concept of national sovereignty, coupled with a truculent diplomacy, marked the advent of a new style of foreign policy driven by domestic politics and the invocation of universal moralistic slogans. But to implement such a policy on a permanent basis will not be nearly so simple as the self-congratulatory rhetoric implies.

NATO must act, according to the new style, because it is the only posse in town and because its motives are pure. This is not only incompatible with the notion of a defensive alliance but probably with the notion of alliance altogether. Traditionally, alliances have expressed the aggregate national interests of member states. Generally, the casus belli is the crossing of the national borders of alliance members, or those of a country considered vital to the alliance.

Once borders lose their sacrosanct quality, how is one to define the casus belli for the humanitarian wars of intervention of the new dispensation? Since they reflect a universal, not a special, obligation, they should, logically, be implemented by global consensus. But if NATO is subordinated to the United Nations, its high aspirations will almost certainly be stymied by the Russian/Chinese veto. On the other hand, if NATO insists on defining a universal legitimacy on its own, it will face the opposition of most of the rest of the world, as has been the fate of all previous claims to universal jurisdiction.

In the end, the dirty little secret of the allied leaders may be that their sweeping assertions reflect no operating policy. Shaped by ‘70s protest movements suspicious of alliances and assertions of national interest, as well as by the disappearance of the Soviet threat in the ‘90s, they treat foreign policy as an aspect of domestic politics and ideological goals rather than as a pursuit of long-range strategic objectives. They undertook the Kosovo operation, at least in part, in reaction to public repugnance of television footage of refugees; but a similar fear of the pictures of allied casualties caused them to adopt a military strategy that, perversely, magnified the suffering of the populations on whose behalf the war was ostensibly being fought.

No more important task confronts the Atlantic alliance than to bring the rhetoric of its leaders into line with realistic choices. Various declarations and “spins” since Kosovo have stated, or implied, that humanitarian military intervention is not contemplated against major powers (China, Russia, India), against allies, against allies of major powers or against countries far distant from Europe. Then what is left? It would be an odd revolution that proclaimed new universal maxims but could find no concrete application except against a single Balkan thug.

Concern for human rights, to be sure, has become a major component of the democracies’ foreign policies, and it is supported by powerful domestic constituencies. Nondemocratic governments court trouble when they ignore this reality. But alliance leaders need to keep in mind that they have obligations not only to the emotions of the moment but to the judgments of the future.

Joseph S. Nye Jr., in an article in Foreign Affairs, put forward four principles for humanitarian intervention: having a just cause in the eyes of others; proportionality of means to ends; high probability of success; and, wherever possible, reinforcement of the humanitarian cause by the existence of other strong national interests. When more narrowly defined, the rhetorical distinction between humanitarian and national interests erodes. But the task for NATO’s leaders is to be even more concrete and answer such questions as: Where and for what humanitarian causes will NATO project its military power? What risks is it prepared to run? What price is it prepared to pay?

Even more important is to reverse the hollowing out of the traditional purposes of the alliance, which stem, in part, from the collapse of the Soviet Union. But allied leaders bear a heavy responsibility as well. The April communique of the NATO summit is symptomatic. In enumerating a host of new-era challenges, it treats such items as drugs and terrorism without any sense of priorities or of strategy for dealing with them.

If the Atlantic alliance is to continue as more than a relic of a fading period, it must answer such questions as: How do we define strategic threats to world order? Above all, NATO’s political structure must be broadened and strengthened. But this cannot happen without a reaffirmation of the centrality of the alliance.

Half a century ago, the leaders of the time produced a vision relevant to their future and their needs. The current generation of leaders owes it to its people and to its standing in history to do no less.*