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Yesterday in class we talked about NATO, and my military students were sincerely curious about why the US is still in NATO, since those countries should “pay for their own defense”.
I think this common belief misunderstands much of NATO’s purpose. A thread.
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I think this common belief misunderstands much of NATO’s purpose. A thread.
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Lord Ismay, NATO’s 1st SecGen, famously said NATO’s job was to “keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down”.
NATO was NEVER *just* a defensive alliance that should have dissolved as soon as the threat went away. It was also about solving the German Problem.
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NATO was NEVER *just* a defensive alliance that should have dissolved as soon as the threat went away. It was also about solving the German Problem.
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The German Problem is that a united GER is, by all material measures, a potential great power, sitting in the middle of EUR w/ no defensible borders, constituting a threat to its neighbors just by existing.
No EUR-wide peace/coop is possible w/o assurance that GER isn’t a threat
No EUR-wide peace/coop is possible w/o assurance that GER isn’t a threat
The US presence in EUR serves largely as the reassurance to everyone that GER won’t become a threat to them. This is what allows them to cooperate to everyone’s mutual benefit. GER can be the economic engine of EUR bc none of the others has an incentive to balance against them.
This is in the US interest for a couple of reasons, but primarily bc we don’t want RUS to dominate EUR, so we need a counterweight to them. If Europeans are mainly worried about GER, they won’t balance against RUS.
Second, even if Germans are permanently scarred by WWII and would NEVER seek military power status, the US gains enormous influence over EUR foreign policy through NATO. We could decide to leave, but EUR would not just pick up the slack and continue policies we like.
Some NATO states worry about a mil threat from RUS, but many of them don’t care about RUS at all. They contribute to NATO mil missions not bc they think the missions are important (see: Afghanistan) but bc that’s how they pay the US back for facilitating intra-EUR trust
In short, one could certainly question all these goals in terms of their relative value (DOES the US really care if RUS dominates the region? If EUR is stable?) but viewing NATO primarily in terms of how much military capability it contributes is missing much of the point.
Ok, so to spell out the point: I’m not saying no one can question the utility of NATO. I’m saying that NATO serves more purposes than just military ops capability, so evaluating its utility should include ALL its costs and benefits, not just some of them.
