The Future of NATO in the post Covid-19 era
By THO Contributor, Tarik Oguzlu
As the geopolitical competition between the United States and China has been intensifying each passing day, the future of NATO remains vital to this struggle. Shall the European allies adopt the American view of the so-called China challenge and acquiesce in NATO’s transformation from being mainly a European collective defense organization into becoming a collective security organization in the service of American interests in defeating rising challenges to its global hegemony? To what extent shall the deteriorating transatlantic relations during the Trump era cast a shadow on the future of the Alliance, thereby leading major European allies to turn away from NATO and increasing their investment in the geopolitical, military and strategic identity of the European Union? Will NATO survive the crisis of the liberal international order?
When NATO was established in 1949, it was
assigned three main functions to fulfill, to keep the United States in, Germany
down and the Soviet Union out of Europe. Faced with an existential communist
threat to the East, the United States, the architect of the postwar-era liberal
international order, decided to boost the security and economic resilience of
the West by midwifing multilateral organizations of a different kind in Western
Europe.
Rather than bilateralism, multilateralism
shaped the American way of dealing with Western European countries. The
American military presence in Europe would be considered more legitimate within
multilateral security platforms. NATO and the European Union have long been
considered the two most important institutional linchpins of the Western
international community.
Bringing the liberal-democratic capitalist
states of the transatlantic area together would not only help the West defeat
the Soviet menace but also facilitate an economic and political integration
process among European allies by domesticating Germany. Despite the periodical
crises within the alliance, in particular concerning the burden sharing debate,
NATO members had united around common strategic priorities, threat perceptions
and political values throughout the Cold War era.
Since the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991,
NATO allies have had difficulty redefining the rationale of their alliance. The
most important challenge facing the alliance then and now concerns the task of
finding a common strategic purpose in the absence of common enemies.
Neither the transnational terrorism threat
that al-Qaida and its affiliates posed nor the promotion of Western liberal
values to the erstwhile communist countries of central and eastern Europe, nor
the internal crises in war-torn countries lying in Europe's peripheries, nor
the growing salience of such issues as immigration, organized crime,
trafficking in drugs and piracy seem to have replaced the Soviet threat as the
glue tying all NATO members to each other through unbreakable bonds. Nevertheless,
for about 20 years, since the onset of the post-Cold War era, the majority of
Europeans concluded that the post-modern heaven in Europe had proved its
resilience and become a role model for other regional integration processes,
while a growing share of the American public subscribed to the view that the
United States had become the indispensable nation and the most powerful country
on earth, and that no one could dare challenge its primacy.
Besides, the gradual replacement of postwar
generations in both shores of the Atlantic by millennials, who are more
inclined to take the peace dividends of the globalization process for granted,
is likely to hollow out the alliance from within. The power of security elites
within the Alliance, in particular the United States, who had firsthand
experience with the horrors of the World War II and the psychology of the
mutually assured destruction of the Cold War era, has been on the decline.
New elites in the United States have been
looking to the Pacific as the new epicenter of global politics; whereas their
European counterparts are focusing their attention on salvaging their
post-modern peace project in the face of new-age challenges. That is to say,
NATO has not been front and center in transatlantic politics for some time.
Against such a background, the last decade
has witnessed five important geopolitical developments of which three might
help potentially rejuvenate the alliance; whereas two might further dilute its
cohesion and legitimacy. The breaking out of Covid-19 pandemic will likely
strengthen such trends. To start with the developments that might offer NATO
members new justifications to rejuvenate the alliance, one could mention the
resurgence of Russian revisionism in and around Europe, the growing Chinese
challenge to the primacy of liberal international order across the globe and
the negative consequences of the lack of good governance in the majority of the
Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region on European security.
Despite the fact that there is not a common
view within the alliance on the nature of the challenge that Vladimir Putin's
Russia poses to the transatlantic security environment as well as how to deal
with it, Russian assertiveness in Ukraine and the Middle East seems to have led
NATO allies to conclude that today's Russia is living in the age of 19th
century balance of powers politics and considers the use of military means to
secure geopolitical ends.
NATO summits convened over the last decade
attest to the fact that deterrence and reassurance have once again become vital
to the preservation of the alliance. Despite critical rhetoric of the current
American administration, American military presence in Eastern Europe has
increased and NATO allies now conduct more military exercises than ever since
the early 1990s. Russia's political meddling in western democracies and
increasing reliance on cyber-warfare tactics seem to have united the allies
around the common purpose of redesigning the alliance as a bulwark against
potential Russian threat.
The negative consequences of the post-Arab
Spring developments on European social peace and economic prosperity are also
well-documented. For European allies to deal with the challenges of terrorism
and immigration, which one can confidently relate to the developments in the
MENA region, cooperation within NATO has once again proved to be of vital
importance.
What is unique about the threats posed by
Russian revisionism and developments taking place in the MENA region is that
such threats endanger European interests more decisively than American ones. It
is Europe, rather than the United States, that should see NATO vital to its
security interests in the context of Russian policies and developments in the
MENA region. This is also to say that if the European allies want to see the
United States still feel committed to the alliance and help Europeans meet such
challenges successfully, they should increase their military contributions to
the alliance budget and undertake more security responsibilities than ever.
On the other hand, China's spectacular rise
is the particular geopolitical development that will impact the future of the
alliance most profoundly in the years to come. Despite the fact that Americans
tend to interpret China's ascendancy from geopolitical and geostrategic lenses,
while Europeans adopting a more economic perspective, the need to deal with
China becomes more and more important each passing day. Containing China's rise
has already become the number one preoccupation of successive American
administrations over the last decade. Both Republicans and Democrats in the
United State do now share the view that China’s spectacular rise in global
politics poses the greatest challenge to American primacy all over the world.
Even if Biden becomes the next president, the United States will likely
continue to view China from a negative perspective and increase its efforts to
help contain it. The National Security Strategy of 2017, the National Defense
Strategy of 2018 and the latest strategy document on China prepared by the
White House do all underline that it is in the interest of the United States to
adopt a whole of government and society approach towards China.
There is still a long way to go for
European allies to view China from a more "American" perspective. Europeans
are not happy with American efforts to decouple American economy from that of
China and scuttle the multilateral mechanisms of the liberal international
order. Multilateralism is in the DNA of the European Union and both Chinese and
Europeans believe that they benefit from the globalization process. China and
Germany are the textbook examples of how global trade serves national interests
and occupying critical nodes in global supply chains tremendously boosts
national power capabilities.
Yet, China's attempts at shaping a more
pro-Chinese attitude across Europe through the adoption of Russian style divide-and-rule
tactics, particularly in the post Covid-19 era, might help awaken European
allies to the Chinese challenge. China’s disinformation campaigns across the
globe, growing assertiveness in its neighborhood, pressuring tactics in its
dealing with many countries, strengthening its authoritarian character at home
might eventually bring Europeans much closer to Americans. This might even give
a boost to efforts to help redesign the alliance as a political/military
machine against China.
Nevertheless, unlike the Russian and MENA
challenges, the Chinese challenge seems to preoccupy the United States more
than European allies. That is to say that if the United States wants to see
European allies adopt the American perspective on China and help contain the
rising dragon, it needs to reassure them of America's commitment to European
security. All this suggests that NATO will be around because Americans and
Europeans will continue to benefit from it, though for different geopolitical
reasons.
The factors that could on the other hand
contribute to the erosion of the cohesion and legitimacy of the alliance are
the growing neo-isolationist trend in the United States and the rise of
populist and nationalist currents across Europe. Starting with former U.S.
President Barack Obama and continuing apace with current President Donald
Trump, the American public has gradually adopted a more skeptical attitude
toward the liberal internationalism of the postwar era, and the United States
acting as the sole global security provider. When this is combined with Trump's
nativist nationalism, one could even argue that the NATO membership of the
United States can no longer be taken for granted. Whether or not Trump is using
the "leaving the Alliance" threat to nudge European allies to invest
more in their armies, his misgivings about the liberal international order is
likely to have a corrosive impact on NATO's future. Trump’s latest salvo that
the United States is seriously thinking to scale down its military presence in
Germany has added further ammunition to anti-Americanism in Germany.
When the possibility of Brexit is combined
with the growing salience of illiberal populist political movements across the
European continent, NATO's future becomes much darker. Though the United
Kingdom's membership in NATO will not be affected by its exit from the European
Union in a technical manner, Britain's departure from the EU will likely
endanger the psychological bond between London and other European capitals.
Continental Europeans have already given strong signals that post-Brexit European
allies would look more to the EU than NATO in finding solutions to their
security problems.
The jury is still out on NATO, and time will tell if the transatlantic allies would be able summon the will and courage to adapt their time-tested alliance to the emerging geopolitical realities of the new century.