NATO As Nero: Alliance Postures While Europe Burns

NATO leaders are meeting in Chicago with a full agenda. It’s the biggest NATO meeting ever, with some 60 governments in attendance. But no one is asking the most important question: why is America still defending Europe?

The North Atlantic Treaty Alliance once had an obvious purpose: to defend North Atlantic countries. More precisely, the U.S. was to protect everyone else. The war-ravaged western European states feared pressure, if not conquest, by the Soviet Union. NATO also helped tie a rearmed Germany to its neighbors.

The alliance finished its work on November 9, 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell. Soon the Warsaw Pact dissolved and the Soviet Union disappeared.

There then ensued a desperate attempt to find a new role for the alliance. Some officials suggested that NATO could fight the illicit drug trade, promote the environment, or even aid student exchanges. Alliance advocates settled on engaging in “out-of-area” activities. That is, NATO abandoned its traditional role of defending its members and switched to pursuing social engineering around the globe, as well as acting as a tool to socialize former communist states.

One thing did not change. The U.S. continued to subsidize the defense of everyone else. NATO essentially stood for North America and The Others. If anything was going to happen, it would have to be organized and paid for by Washington.
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The problem was evident in 1999 when the allies bombed essentially defenseless Yugoslavia. America did most of the work since Europe was estimated to have barely 10 to 15 percent of U.S. combat capabilities.

Last year’s intervention in the Libyan civil war was no better. It was supposed to be a European-led operation, but the Europeans took months to push the opposition to victory over the ragtag forces of Moammar Qaddafi.
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Yet NATO expansion is in the air. In March Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), just defeated for reelection in his party’s primary, and Rep. Michael Turner (R-Ohio) introduced the “NATO Enhancement Act” to extend the alliance. Unfortunately, NATO expansion adds security liabilities rather than military abilities.

Originally the alliance was created to protect Western Europe from the Soviet Union. Today no country is in a position to dominate Eurasia. The idea of an attack on western—or central—Europe is but a paranoid fantasy. Russia may be an unpleasant neighbor, but it has reverted to pre-1914 great power mode. Moscow wants secure borders and international respect. Florid threats to preempt a missile defense system to the contrary, even Vladimir Putin at his most aggressive isn’t likely dreaming of a revived Red Army marching down the Unter den Linden in Berlin or Champs-Elysees in Paris.
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NATO played an important role during the Cold War. The collapse of communism and the Soviet Union have eliminated its raison d’être. Even NATO admits that the alliance’s “value is less obvious to many than in the past.”

Instead of desperately concocting new missions for an old alliance, the U.S. should applaud NATO’s success and turn the organization over to the Europeans. America no longer need protect a continent that is both richer and more populous than our own nation.