“When American military men approach some serious
situation they are wont to write at the head of their directive the words
"over-all strategic concept." There is wisdom in this, as it leads to
clarity of thought. What then is the over-all strategic concept which we should
inscribe today? It is nothing less than the safety and welfare, the freedom and
progress, of all the homes and families of all the men and women in all the
lands”.
Winston Spencer Churchill, Fulton, Missouri, March 6, 1946
The eternal
challenge of defending freedom
Alphen,
Netherlands. 4 April. The Free World still needs NATO because the unfree world
is again threatening it. However, the unfree world is becoming far more
sophisticated in the way it threatens the Free World. Therefore, NATO must thus
become much better at countering the threats of the twenty-first century.
Seventy years
ago today the North Atlantic Treaty was signed by (inter alia) the prime
ministers and foreign ministers of Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland,
Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, United Kingdom and the United
States. Since 1949 NATO has been joined (in order) by Greece, Turkey, Germany,
Spain, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia,
Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Croatia and Montenegro.
Article 5 was
enshrined at the heart of the North Atlantic Treaty and effectively committed
all member nations of the Alliance to consider an attack on one ally as an
attack on all. What was regarded as the Doomsday clause during the Cold War was
invoked only once, on 12 September 2001, in the immediate aftermath of the
terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
Adapting NATO
In 2017 I had
the honour to be the lead writer for the GLOBSEC NATO Adaptation Report. Under
the leadership of General John R. Allen the steering committee comprised one
former deputy secretary-general, a chairman of the Military Committee, a former
ambassador to the North Atlantic Council, and one of Germany’s top generals. The
report was crystal clear in its challenge to the Alliance, “NATO is at a
crucial decision point. The Alliance has adapted well in response to the
watershed events of 2014 – rebuilding deterrence against threats from the East,
increasing its engagement with the Middle East, and forging a closer
partnership with the European Union. But as it nears its seventieth birthday,
NATO risks falling behind the pace of political change and technological
developments that could alter the character of warfare, the structure of
international relations and the role of the Alliance itself”.
There has
been a lot of academic nonsense spoken about NATO as it approached today’s
landmark. Some of it from Moscow’s fellow travellers, some of it by people who
spend far too much time floating in clouds of theory. Frankly, I have lost
count of the number of times I have heard academics cite ‘alliance theory’ to suggest
NATO is doomed. It has become so bad of late that I have been reminded
repeatedly of an alleged exchange between British Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher and Irish Taoiseach Garret Fitzgerald. After a particularly fierce
‘hand-bagging’ by Thatcher about the need for action Fitzgerald is alleged to
have responded, “That’s all well and good, Prime Minister. What you propose may
indeed work in practice but does it work in theory”. However, if NATO is to do
more than merely hang after around after its seventieth the Alliance also needs
to answer with honesty a series of profound questions.
NATO: A beast
of burdens
Do North Americans
and Europeans agree about the purpose of NATO? The Alliance is under threat,
and not only from the likes of a Russia that wants to turn back the clock of
European history, and extremists who simply want their interpretation of
medievalism imposed upon the rest of us. The greatest danger faced by NATO
today is from Americans who do not realise they are growing relatively weaker
and thus need allies more not less, and from Europeans who refuse to recognise
that the security guarantee America affords Europe can and will only be
maintained if Europeans do far more for their own defence, the Alliance and the
wider transatlantic relationship.
Back in April
1949 the strategic equation was simple if stark. America was the only atomic
power and the ‘bomb’ offset a huge advantage in conventional forces enjoyed by
the Soviet Union on the then inner-German border. Today, many former Warsaw
Pact adversaries are friends and NATO allies. However, as the Free World has
become freer, the unfree world has become more assertive as they espy an
opportunity to fill a strategic vacuum. Much of this vacuum has been created by
strategically-inept Europeans who for too long have been suffering from a post-Cold
War peace hangover. Whilst this new tepid war of today lacks the ideological
sharpness of the early Cold War it is nevertheless extremely dangerous, and
every bit as cynical.
It also
explains constant American pressure on Europeans to improve their defence
performance. Indeed, such pressure was implicit in the North Atlantic Treaty
and has regularly re-surfaced since 1949. The Korean War, Germany rearmament and
the European Defence Community of the 1950s, the missile gap, Berlin crisis, Cuban
missile crisis, France’s 1966 withdrawal from NATO’s military command structure,
Vietnam and containment, Ostpolitik and the Harmel declaration of the 1960s, the
Euromissiles crisis of the 1970s and 1980s, the Wars of the Yugoslav Succession
of the 1990s, and 911, Afghanistan and Iraq have all, in some part, reflected
American frustration with a Europe that Washington believes makes an
insufficient commitment to its own defence and the obligations both explicit
and implicit in the North Atlantic Treaty.
These tensions
have been encapsulated since October 1949 in a series of so-called strategic
concepts – the what, the why, the when, the how and the with what and whom of
Alliance action. From New Look to Massive Retaliation and then from Flexible
Response to the post-Cold War concepts of cooperation, reconciliation and
enlargement the Alliance has been constantly adapting to strike a new balance between
environment, strategy, capability, military capacity, technology and
affordability.
Brittle NATO
How secure is
the Alliance? The unfree world is engaged in a continuous war at the seams and margins
of the Alliance employing disinformation, destabilisation, disruption,
deception and destruction for comparative strategic advantage. The very freedom
that NATO defended during the Cold War is being subverted precisely to
undermine the strategic and political cohesion of the Alliance. One might also
add a sixth ‘D’ debt to this 5D warfare. Russia, to some extent, and China, to
a very much greater extent, are ‘investing’ in NATO Europeans. The strategic
aim is clear – to influence countries such as Italy and Greece so that their
policies become more Moscow and Beijing-friendly. Even mighty Germany is not free from such
influence as Berlin ludicrously seeks to portray the Nordstream 2 direct gas
pipeline between the two countries as a commercial project that lacks and
strategic implications.
The unfree
world is also benefiting from the other-worldliness of many Western Europeans
and their refusal to see the world as it is, not as they would like it to be. As
the armed forces of China and Russia are being modernised to operate to effect
across the seven domains of future war - air, sea, land, cyber, space,
information and knowledge, too many European armed forces remain analogue
anachronisms.
Why worry,
many Europeans aver? After all, NATO has always really been American. First,
such complacency represents a profound misunderstanding of Alliance history.
For example, the largest land force under NATO command for much of the Cold War
was Germany’s Bundeswehr. Second, US
forces are stretched thin the world over. The Americans could be faced with
multiple crises simultaneously the world over. The only way that future NATO
can possibly continue to function as a credible deterrent and defence for over
1 billion free people is if Europeans help keep America strong where America
needs to be strong. First and foremost, that means Europeans being able to act
to far greater effect in emergencies in and around Europe.
A
twenty-first century Maginot Line?
Is NATO a
twenty first century Maginot Line? In May 1940 Britain’s Lord Gort and France’s
General Gamelin failed the true test of any alliance on the battlefield. When confronted with surprise and shock their
front collapsed. As the Germans broke
through the Ardennes the pictorially impressive but utterly useless Maginot
Line was bypassed and the allies forced back to Dunkirk. NATO is NOT a
twenty-first century Maginot Line but it could become one.
The litmus
test of a NATO that is truly future-proofed will be the ability of the Alliance
to move forces rapidly and securely from North America to Europe, and then move
them on across Europe to where they are needed. The hard truth today is that
the Americans lack the means to move large forces quickly across the Atlantic
that one once saw during the four massive REFORGER (Reinforcement of Germany) exercises
during the Cold War. Europeans lack the
forces and resources to regenerate a meaningful defence quickly and the basic
infrastructure – both actual and legal – that would ensure they could act as
effective first responders.
Another test for
the Alliance will be the extent, or otherwise, to which European allies embrace
the emerging hyperwar concepts and capabilities the Americans, Chinese and
others are developing. Any military alliance ultimately stands or falls on the
ability of armed forces to operate together under pressure in a crisis, the
very test Gort and Gamelin failed. Parade ground marches can look very smart,
table top exercises can appear impressive, and real exercises can create the
sensation of power. However, if such efforts do not actually address weaknesses
in relation the enemy they can also become a form of self-delusion. It is the
anachronism of European ideas about security and defence, allied to a refusal
to properly consider the nature of future war that represents a major threat to
contemporary NATO, just as the British and French in the 1930s wilfully refused
to accept the threat posed by Guderian’s concept of Blitzkrieg and do anything purposeful to counter it.
Today, a
revolution in military technology is underway that will be applied in future on
the twenty-first battlespace against Alliance forces by enemies armed with artificial
intelligence, big data, machine-learning and quantum-computing. If Europe does
not stop talking and start doing the possibility of another Maginot Line or
worse a twenty-first century Pearl Harbor cannot be ruled out – and this time
with no chance of recovery and fightback.
A 360 degree
Alliance?
There are
signs that NATO is slowly being allowed by its member-states to address the
fundamental division at its core, between NATO easterners who believe Russia is
the main threat, and NATO southerners who believe instability and
fundamentalism in the Middle East and North Africa is the main threat. Since the 2014 Wales Summit, European defence
expenditure has begun to slowly recover from the disastrous systemic cuts that
took place in the wake of the Cold War and the banking and financial crises
from 2008 on and markedly which accelerated the relative decline of America and
the West.
NATO command
structure reform has led to the creation of new commands to strength Alliance
control over the North Atlantic and to strengthen the ability of forces to
operate together across an ever-widening battlespace. Some improvements have
also been made to the readiness and responsiveness of Allied forces. NATO has
also made some efforts to consider its role in future war and to improve the
Alliance’s ability to counter cyber operations and information warfare. The
Enhanced Forward Presence to the eastern Alliance and the Tailored Forward
Presence to south-eastern Europe have also brought some degree of strategic
reassurance to allies. But, is it anything like enough? As Ukraine’s continuing
agony attests, there can be no room for complacency in dealing with a
nationalist Russia that is both militarily-resurgent and economically-backward
at one and the same time. However, there is also a danger that NATO becomes a
dumping ground for issues the allies find too hard to deal with. If that happens this relatively small
organisation with its relatively small budget and few personnel will be diluted
to the point of irrelevance.
If NATO and
its members are really committed to a 360 degree alliance that is credibly
capable of engaging threats from whatever angle and in whatever form they may
emerge, then it is going to have to be endowed with far more armed mass, and
that armed mass will need to be far more nimble and agile.
Too much of
this important debate has been reduced to whether or not the European allies
fulfil a commitment to spend 2% on defence by 2024 and President Trump. Germany’s recent decision to maintain defence
spending nearer 1% than 2% for the foreseeable future effectively kills off the
so-called Defence Investment Pledge. It also reveals one of the Alliance’s
major weakness - the US-Germany relationship. With the Brexit defeat and strategic
demise of Britain the importance of the Berlin-Washington relationship for the
Alliance cannot be overstated, but essential though it is it is anything but
special.
Whatever one
might think about the 2% debate and the arbitrary setting of defence spending goals,
2% of GDP spent on defence well is low compared with adversaries. And, if spent
well 2% would realise at least twice as much legitimate military capability and
all-important capacity than 1% spent badly…which is the case today. Importantly,
the DIP also called on all allies to spend 20% per annum on new equipment. As
for President Trump, he has become the latest European alibi to avoid doing
enough for their own defence when, in fact, the American commitment to Europe’s
defence as part of the so-called European Defense Initiative has increased
under the Trump administration.
Whither NATO
at seventy?
What of
future NATO? The West today is not a place but a global idea. Globalisation has
connected free peoples the world over for which the defence of whom NATO should
be central. The transatlantic relationship is a cornerstone of global security
thus NATO cannot be seen in isolation from the security of other free peoples
the world over. That does not mean NATO is going to enlarge to Asia, although
one of its members, Turkey, is already a major Asian power. Rather, for all of
its complexity the Alliance is, and will remain, the model for all legitimate
military alliances of democracies and the most tested mechanism for the
generation of democratic defence. In other words, NATO at seventy has a great
opportunity to strengthen its service of peace. Will it?
Regular
readers of these pages know I can be one of NATO’s fiercest critics, something
‘tell us what we want to hear’ officials at NATO HQ have not always thanked me
for. The reason I am so hard on NATO is that I am both a NATO citizen and one
of its biggest supporters. Equally, as a truly-informed NATO citizen I also
demand performance and too often I do not get it. Words yes, strategic performance
no. That is not the fault of the Alliance, but rather its members who hide
comfortably behind the fact of NATO without doing enough to makes its reality
credible.
Too often
NATO is reduced to little more than a summit organising committee designed to
generate communiques that make strategically-illiterate leaders feel warm and
fuzzy when they should be concerned and anxious. It is precisely because NATO
cannot deliver the feel good feeling too many European leaders seek that the
Alliance’s seventieth anniversary celebrations are today so muted. THAT, says
more about the leaders than anything worth hearing about the Alliance.
Twenty-first
century Flexible Response
NATO post
seventy must be empowered by all its nations to properly consider the threats
we all face, to create the forces a credible twenty-first century Article 5
demands, and endowed with the forces and resources necessary to maintain Allied
defence at a level of readiness relevant to the environment in which they might
be called upon at short notice to operate. The Alliance needs a new strategic concept
with a new idea of Flexible Response. Until that happens, and it is not
happening yet, NATO will continue to be undermined by a lack of political and
military ambition in a world where such ambition lies elsewhere in spades.
Flexible
Reponse 21 could do worse than hark back to Churchill sage words of 1946. The over-all strategic concept to which we all the free
peoples of the Alliance should inscribe today is nothing less than the safety
and welfare, the freedom and progress, of all the homes and families of all the
men and women in all the NATO lands. Nothing more, nothing less.
Happy
birthday NATO! Time to get real. The strategic vacation is over. Now, get on
with it!
Julian
Lindley-French
