U.S. Must Remain NATO’s Core

Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush has been saying since his nomination in August that NATO peacekeeping missions in the Balkans should be the responsibility of Europeans, while U.S. forces should focus on deterring and, if necessary, fighting major conflicts. As election day nears, European alarm over this idea is rising. The allies’ concern is that it would undermine NATO’s basic principle of collective security--including shared risk--and diminish the credibility of U.S. leadership. Those are valid worries. But Bush’s notion about “a new division of labor” in NATO, most carefully articulated by his senior national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, does call attention to a disparity that needs rectifying.

Bush is out of line in implying that U.S. forces are over-engaged in the Balkans. Under 20% of the 66,000 troops in Bosnia and Kosovo are Americans, accounting for fewer than 10% of U.S. military personnel in Europe. Retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark, the former NATO commander, says the U.S. force in the Balkans is the minimum needed to influence NATO’s actions there.

Bush is no isolationist. His opposition helped kill an ill-considered Republican move in Congress to set a deadline for withdrawing U.S. forces from the Balkans, and he said in the presidential candidates’ second debate that while he dislikes having U.S. troops there he has no timetable for pulling them out. Al Gore quickly agreed that “we ought to get our troops home from places like the Balkans as soon as we can.”

The fact that Bush too easily overlooks is that without vigorous U.S. leadership NATO would be an alliance quickly headed toward impotence and dissolution. The Europeans have trouble agreeing among themselves on alliance policy, having squabbled for years over what to do about the bloodletting in the Balkans. Only when the United States finally took the lead was there concerted action. If NATO is to survive, it’s clear that active and consistent U.S. participation isn’t just an option but a necessity.

Bush’s “division of labor” in NATO suggests the United States could choose what tasks it would share in, an approach antithetical to the principles of the alliance. At the same time it’s up to the Europeans to begin doing more to preserve stability on their continent. With some exceptions, most NATO states underspend on defense and so lack the forces and equipment needed to make a fair contribution to collective security. This is a problem the next president should push to resolve, not so much in America’s interest as in Europe’s.