NATO Shall Pay the Bill

The U.S. Secretary of Defense did not rule out a dismal future for the North Atlantic Alliance.

Robert Gates, the Pentagon chief, is leaving his post in late June. On a farewell visit to Europe, he harshly criticized NATO allies and, among other things, expressed the seditious thought that if trends in the decline of the European member states’ defense capabilities continue, the future of NATO looks “dim, if not dismal.”

“The mightiest military alliance in history is only 11 weeks into an operation against a poorly armed regime in a sparsely populated country, yet many allies are beginning to run short of munitions, requiring the U.S., once more, to make up the difference,” said the head of the U.S. Defense Department during his speech in Brussels, recalling a firmly stalled NATO operation in Libya.

NATO’s military campaign against Gaddafi, according to Gates, has highlighted not only the serious gaps in training and combat capabilities of the alliance, but also a number of institutional problems within NATO.

As Gates recalled with displeasure, “while every alliance member voted for the Libya mission, less than half have participated at all, and fewer than a third have been willing to participate in the strike mission.”

Indeed, the most powerful to date political and military organization that has only recently adopted a new strategic concept has failed to find the strength to act as a united front in the case of Libya. In addition, it is no secret that a number of European members of the alliance are grumbling louder than ever before about the more than a decade-long war in Afghanistan.

A feeling of growing discontent in Washington is understandable. Today Washington covers two-thirds of the North Atlantic Alliance costs and, in return, receives confusion and vacillation in the ranks of its own allies. This becomes even more important when the U.S., weakened by the economic recession, has to place its own defense spending under the knife. The idea of American taxpayers footing a rather large bill for providing European security finds even less support in the U.S. Congress.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, current Secretary General of NATO, acknowledged that in the Old World the military spending for NATO’s activities have dropped by $45 billion over the past two years. Contrary to the directions of the North Atlantic Alliance that provide for the allocation of spending on defense by member countries at not less than 2 percent of their GDP, only four of the 28 NATO member countries meet this requirement. The U.S. spends about 5 percent of their GDP on defense.

Robert Gates, a national security veteran who has worked under eight U.S. presidents in both intelligence services and defense agencies in one capacity or another, sent a clear message during his speech in Brussels to European members of NATO: This imbalance can’t persist any longer.

“Indeed, if current trends in the decline of European defense capabilities are not halted and reversed, future U.S. political leaders — those for whom the Cold War was not the formative experience that it was for me — may not consider the return on America’s investment in NATO worth the cost,” Gates said. As he spoke, he called himself the last high-ranking member of the U.S. administration who is a product of the Cold War.

Nevertheless, despite the attempt of the U.S. Secretary of Defense to shake up his NATO colleagues by predicting a “dismal future” for the alliance, Washington analysts are skeptical that this will have a proper effect.

Christopher Preble, director of foreign policy programs at the Cato Institute in Washington, told the Rossiyskaya Gazeta, “if you look at what Gates actually said, we are talking about how to save the alliance, rather than how to destroy it.

“He hopes that his words will inspire the European NATO members to spend more on defense, which is very unlikely as it makes no economic sense to them. Why would other countries pay for something that the U.S. is ready to cover at their own expense? A mistake of Secretary Gates is, in his opinion, that the U.S. must continue paying for other countries. The behavior of those NATO members who are not willing to spend their money on defense complies with the theory of alliances’ existence, according to which the principal members of such organizations will carry much more serious financial burdens on defense spending than other participants. That’s exactly what the U.S. has been doing for the past 60 years,” the expert said to our correspondent.

To the question asked by the Rossiyskaya Gazeta regarding whether the U.S.’s appetite for the subsidization of NATO at its own expense has decreased, Christopher Preble replied, “this appetite has never been very strong outside Washington.

“But it means absolutely nothing. The turning point is what is considered right in the U.S. Capital and in Washington. They believe that keeping NATO makes sense,”* said the expert from the Cato Institute.

*Editor’s Note: This quote, accurately translated, could not be verified.