VIEWPOINT: To Maintain NATO Unity, Stay Calm, Play Long Game
NATO photo
This is part of a multi-story series on the future of NATO as it marks its 75th anniversary.
That an alliance as diverse as NATO has remained vibrant, resilient and growing for 75 years is a remarkable achievement. If NATO is to survive through its centennial, its members will need to continue to adapt to evolving external threats and internal political conditions. That includes dealing with an increased willingness by some members to exploit NATO’s consensus-based decision-making to squeeze concessions from allies.
Here are a few observations:
NATO remains indispensable to the defense of Europe, and there is no substitute for U.S. leadership. Many NATO members — including the United States — misunderstood the significance of Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine, doing little to prepare for a wider war.
The United States and other allies did provide training to Ukrainian forces, which paid off in 2022, and former Soviet subjects in the Baltics and Eastern Europe were quick to raise the alarm. Russian President Vladimir Putin may have judged in 2022 that the United States was too beset by internal division to respond and that European allies would respond feebly if left on their own.
Instead, the Biden administration and Congress initially overcame domestic politics to provide military assistance and lead an international sanctions campaign. Washington’s response has sometimes been hesitant and inconsistent, but it has saved Ukraine and energized NATO — and strengthened unity among Asia-Pacific allies as well.
European fear that a second Trump administration would withdraw from NATO has revived calls for the European Union to develop new military structures. Yet few Europeans would actually prefer to confront a nuclear-armed Russia without their North American allies at their side.
Another observation: that NATO members are willing to pursue their individual strategic interests is the sign of a healthy alliance of partners — within limits.
Remember the Warsaw Pact? Unlike NATO’s consensus-based partnership, the Soviet-run Warsaw Pact was a collective of puppet governments whose populations would likely have failed to support Moscow in the event of war. Achieving consensus among NATO democracies responsive to domestic political pressures has not always gone smoothly, but it’s preferable to be part of NATO than the Warsaw Pact.
What appears new — or at least more blatant — is the willingness of some members to use their leverage within NATO to pursue their own policy goals at the expense of their allies. The accession of Sweden and Finland was a major boost to the fortunes of the alliance.
It came to pass only after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey and Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Hungary spent more than a year squeezing concessions, notably on defense procurement, out of some of their allies. There were howls of outrage in some quarters — including Capitol Hill — that Erdoğan and Orbán were weakening NATO in service to Russia. Meanwhile, U.S. and European diplomats got to work quietly cutting the deals that brought the Nordics into NATO.
I doubt anyone who has played hardball with disciplined, professional Turkish diplomats was surprised Ankara would try to use its leverage, then agree once it had squeezed out every possible concession.
Today’s Turkey sees itself on the cusp of becoming a global power and is no more interested in taking orders from Moscow than it is in subordinating its interests to Washington or Brussels. This is a view that is unlikely to change once Erdoğan inevitably passes from the scene. Decades ago, France and Greece withdrew from NATO structures, only to quietly return years later. We are better off with them in the alliance. The same is true of Turkey.
So, how to handle NATO’s internal challenges?
First, don’t give in to every demand. Put aside sentimental appeals to unity and angry calls to expel allies — for which there is no mechanism in the NATO charter — and engage in the sort of transactional diplomacy that Ankara and Budapest play.
I prefer carrots such as economic incentives to sticks like visa restrictions and economic sanctions. Even when sticks obtain a short-term goal, they engender popular resentment that can bedevil relations long into the future. But when all else fails...
We should also not hesitate, the next time the leader of a NATO ally threatens to shut down U.S. military facilities, to call their bluff and pack up. It’s their country, and there is considerable redundancy built into the system. Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, for example, was once vital to operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Incirlik offers little for NATO today that cannot be handled out of bases in the Gulf, Greece or Romania.
We might even find that bilateral relations improve in the absence of inflammatory basing issues. U.S. security ties with the Philippines improved after we shut down our air and naval bases in the 1990s. Winding down the all-American presence at Iceland’s Naval Air Station Keflavik in 2006 led to a rotational program in which several NATO allies, including the United States, now share responsibility for Iceland’s defense.
Final observation: there is more to rebuilding a capable NATO than passing robust defense budgets.
NATO spending targets measured in GDP are a useful bellwether of national commitment, but once a budget is authorized it can take years — and time in the mud — to raise, train, equip and season a military force. There’s no time to lose. ND
Retired U.S. Ambassador Philip Kosnett represented the United States in Europe, Asia and the Middle East as a career Foreign Service officer and served as ambassador to Kosovo and chargé d’affaires in Turkey and Iceland. He is now a senior fellow at the Joint Forces Staff College of National Defense University and the Center for European Policy Analysis. Kosnett is the editor of Boots and Suits: Historical Cases and Contemporary Lessons in Military Diplomacy, Marine Corps University Press, 2023.