No reason to exist

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), the military underpinning of the Western alliance of the Cold War era, is on life-support. Although Trump did not pull the US out of NATO at its recent summit meeting, its existence is under threat. Here’s why.

Trump left the summit in early July saying that the meetings had been the “most collegial” in recent years and that he had managed to extract “billions” in new defence spending from “rich NATO countries.”

Trump had earlier launched a tirade: “What good is NATO if Germany is paying Russia billions of dollars for gas and energy? Why are there only five out of 29 countries that have met their commitment? The US is paying for Europe’s protection, then loses billions on trade. (European allies) Must pay 2% of GDP IMMEDIATELY, not by 2025.”

Central to Trump’s anger is the commonly held perception amongst Americans that they protect a bunch of ungrateful Europeans. As Trump tweeted, the “US pays tens of billions of dollars too much to subsidise Europe, and loses big on trade!” He also complained, “We are being played for fools.”

Could Trump be right? Contrary to the views of the champagne socialists who inhabit European capitals, NATO has been in trouble for some time, and its raison d’etreis riddled with contradictions.

Let’s start with the facts. Trump is not alone in attacking European free-riders. As Barack Obama sardonically noted in 2014, “If we’ve got collective defence, it means that everybody’s got to chip in.” Referring to Russian aggression in Ukraine, Obama said, “our freedom isn’t free, and we’ve got to be willing to pay for the assets, the personnel, the training that’s required to make sure that we have a credible NATO force and an effective deterrent force.”

In the four years since, only five countries met the 2% of GDP minimum spending target — and the US leads by a long way. So, why should American taxpayers pay to defend Europeans?

This is particularly confounding because Europeans have been playing a duplicitous game with the enemy they are supposedly being protected from — Russia.

As Trump retorted, “Germany just started paying Russia, the country they want protection from, billions of dollars for their energy needs coming out of a new pipeline from Russia…Pipeline dollars to Russia are not acceptable!”

Indeed, Germany’s dance with Russia exposes the Russian threat as a phantom one. It gets half its gas supplies (worth about $10 billion) from Russia at a lower price than does France. Germany has supported the building of the Gazprom Nord Stream 2 pipeline under the Baltic Sea despite opposition from the US and EU states, British warnings that it would compromise Europe’s position relative to Russia, and Sweden, Denmark and Finland’s warnings of harmful environmental consequences.

The pipeline is likely to provide even greater leverage for Russia over EU states whilst bypassing, and impoverishing, Ukraine as a transit route. This benefits Putin but condemns the EU’s long-term energy security to a parasitic dependence on Russia. Indeed, in the post-war era, it was Germany that played a key role in enabling modern Europe’s energy dependence on Russia by dealing with the USSR for gas shipments to West Germany in 1970.

There is other evidence that the Germans don’t see Russia as their enemy. Trade between Germany and Russia grew in 2017 — imports and exports both grew by a fifth over 2016. Germany has been seeking exemptions from US sanctions against Russia at the urging of corporations such as Siemens and Volkswagen. And leading German businessmen regularly influence a soft approach toward Russia against the EU’s interests.

It must not be surprising then to learn that Merkel regularly sends Radeberger beer to Putin whilst pretending to admonish him for a variety of international law violations. Notably, she also congratulated him on his election victory despite European concerns about rigging.

And Germany has been boosting Iran — against its NATO ally, the US, due to commercial interests. Aside from these contradictions, NATO may not fit today’s needs because its supposed deterrence is largely fictitious. Let’s look at the North Atlantic Treaty.

A weak promise

The preamble expresses “resolve” to “unite … efforts for collective defence.” This underpins the treaty’s most significant provision — Article 5. Unfortunately, the collective defence commitment is weaker than most people surmise. For starters, it doesn’t mean that an attack on one member automatically triggers armed reprisals by all. The article merely states that if “an armed attack occurs, each …[member], in exercise of the right of … self-defence … will assist the Party … so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force.”

Clearly, this is a weak promise. It reserves discretion to take “such action” as deemed “necessary.” And the actions taken do not have to be military. So, Germany might decide to impose sanctions if Russia were to attack Estonia, for instance, deeming that German lives are more important than Estonian ones.

And the definition of ‘armed attack’ in Article 6 is based on the old idea of ‘territory’ when modern threats include cyber-attacks.

In conclusion, Germany and other European countries no longer see Russia as their main enemy and are not building military capability to protect themselves. There’s no reason for Americans to invest in defending them against a phantom threat. Moreover, NATO is a vestige of the Cold War era that doesn’t reflect the emergence of threats such as ISIS, Syria, and Iran. A new alliance – beyond Europe and including countries like India – may be more appropriate to combat modern threats.

(The writer is Pro Vice-Chancellor for academic innovation at Deakin University, Melbourne)