The (probably short) future of NATO

Rummy got over his travel jitters long enough to make the trip to Germany for the international Conference on Security Policy this weekend.  With a little reassurance from German officialdom: German Prosecutor Won't Pursue Rumsfeld Case by Daryl Lindsey Der Spiegel (English) 02/10/05.

For more than two months, a legal petition to investigate United States Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on war crimes charges connected to the Abu Ghraib torture scandal threatened to further strain relations between Berlin and Washington, where diplomats have been working overtime to patch up relations lately. The case made headlines again in recent weeks in the run-up to an annual Security Conference in Munich because Rumsfeld had threatened to sit out the meeting if the petition against him wasn't dropped.

On Thursday, Germany's federal prosecutor, Kay Nehm, said his office would not pursue the case. In his statement, Nehm said that German authorities could only pursue the allegations if US authorities refused to do so -- and currently, there is no evidence that they won't. The men accused of torture at Abu Ghraib are all American citizens, none of the victims are German, and the cases should either be tried in the US or the victims' own countries, Nehm's office said.

The article gives a good background on the issues at stake in this particular case.  The German prosecutor decided to "punt" (to use an American football metaphor), postponing rather than completely rejecting the notion of a prosecution of American officials over torture in the gulag.  And reading between the lines a little bit, the German government didn't seem to mind reminding Rummy that he might have to worry about being arrested for war crimes if he sat foot on German soil:

Though German politicians were outspoken in their criticism of the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's government, which has been working to smooth over German-US relations that soured in the run-up to the war in Iraq, had little appetite for the the divisive and negative publicity-generating petition. Many, too, were frustrated that it took so long for [the] Federal Prosecutor's Office to drop the case.

By "reading between the lines," I mean this, which is the diplomatic equivalent of crocodile tears:

"This has been a very uncomfortable incident for the German government," Gernot Erler, the deputy head of the Social Democrats in parliament, said in a phone interview from his home, "that has also, of course, caused a lot of irritation for the Americans. We regret that a decision wasn't made punctually enough to possibly have an influence on the Munich conference. But this is a constitutional country and we couldn't do anything about it. It was a question for the prosecutor and it surprised us it took so long to answer, since it does nothing but irritate." He added that any German has the right to file this type of case, but that it was "still regrettable."

Gosh, we're sorry we caused you any discomfort, Rummy!

I posted earlier about the initiation of this case.

Germany, NATO and the Bush administration

There have been lots of noises lately about better trans-Atlantic relationships.  Rummy was on apparently good behavior at the conference, although given Rummy's level of diplomacy, "good behavior" for him would be bull-in-the-chian-shop for most anyone else.  Germany even went so far as to look the other way when the US kidnapped a German citizen, Khaled el-Masri, in Macedonia as a suspected Al Qaeda member: Kräftiges Beben von Holger Stark und Georg Mascolo Der Spiegel 02/14/05.

But it's obviously a sticky point.

Andererseits kann es kein Staat der Welt einfach so hinnehmen, wenn eine fremde Nation seine Staatsbürger verschleppt, als wären sie vogelfrei. Doch als Außenminister Joschka Fischer öffentlich gefragt wurde, ob er den Fall Khaled el-Masri bei seinem Gespräch mit Außenministerin Condoleezza Rice angesprochen habe, knurrte er nur ungehalten: "Nein."

[Translation: On the other hand, no state in the world can simply accept it, if a foreign nation snatches it citizens, as though they were without national affiliations.  Yet when Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer was publicly asked whether the case of Khaled el-Masri was discussed in his talks with Foreign Minister [Secretary of State] Condoleezza Rice, he just growled indignantly: "No."]

But when it comes to the question of the Bush administration's view of NATO as a "farm team" (to use another sports metaphor) from which the US can pluck participants on demand for its "coalitions of the willing" for wars legal and otherwise, the German government isn't concealing all its differences: Schröder verärgert die Nato von Thomas Kirchner und Frank Nienhysen Süddeutsche Zeitung 02/13/05.

Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and Foreign Minister Fischer are calling for reforms in NATO.  Or, more precisely, they are calling for an expert commission to do a study and make recommendations for a reform, the classic bureacratic move to refer something to a commission or committee.  It seems pretty clear that, in fact, they are putting the Bush administration on notice that European nations (with the possible exception of Britain under Tony Blair) do not consider themselves military vassals of the United States.

Schröder hatte unter anderem gesagt, die Nato sei "nicht mehr der primäre Ort, an dem die transatlantischen Partner ihre strategischen Vorstellungen konsultieren und koordinieren". Einige Tagungs-Teilnehmer interpretierten dies als Abkehr Schröders von der Allianz.

[Translation: Schröder said, among other things, NATO is "no longer the primary place in which the transatlantic partners consult and coordinate on their strategic concepts."  Some conference participants interpreted this as Schröder's renunciation of the alliance.]

It wasn't quite a renunciation.  But its hard to see how the EU countries have a strong interest in remaining part of NATO at this point.  Under the Bush administration strategy of pursuing (in its more extreme version, at least) a series of wars of liberation in the Middle East, the US has much more of an interest in having the EU countries as willing partners under the NATO umbrella than the EU countries have in being under such an umbrella.  They're not interested in pursuing wars of liberation.

Britain has somewhat of a different situation, because it has integrated its armed forces' operations with those of the US to a far greater degree than other NATO partners.  But whether the British voters are as willing as Tony Blair to have British soldiers serve as hoplites for the Bush administration's wars of choice is highly unlikely.

Here is an English report on this issue: Debating NATO's Future in Munich Deutsche Welle 02/12/05.

In addresses to the annual Munich security conference, both German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was still a crucial institution at the core of the transatlantic security relationship.

 

"However, it is no longer the primary venue where transatlantic partners discuss and coordinate strategies," Schröder, who did not attend the conference due to illness, said in a speech read by his Defense Minister Peter Struck to top-level defense and security experts from around the world.

 

The German leader said there had been "strains, mistrust and even tensions" between the United States and the European Union in recent years and while a US troop presence in Europe was still of "political significance," it was no longer the security priority that it was during the Cold War.

It also mentions that Rummy thinks the "farm team" concept is just fine:

"Were you to reverse it and say the coalition defines the mission, that would have meant nothing would have happened in Liberia, if you're talking about that NATO coalition, or Haiti or any number of other activities," Rumsfeld said.

Rumsfeld, who coined the term "the mission defines the coalition" ahead of the US-led war on Iraq, made clear Saturday that this principle was still very much at the center of new US security thinking.

Rummy, by the way, momentarily relieved of worries of being arrested for war crimes, said he didn't see any need for any NATO reforms: "Natürlich wollen wir die NATO nicht abschaffen" Deutsche Welle 02/13/05.

The problem with "coalitions of the willing" as a grand strategy

Philip Gordon and Jeremy Shapiro defined the core weakness of the Bush-Rumsfeld notion of relying on ad hoc "coalitions of the willing" in their 2004 book Allies at War: America, Europe, and the Crisis Over Iraq:

The "if you build it, they will come" theory of coalition management that has been applied with such vigor and purpose by the Bush administration has the virtue of allowing quick and decisive action. But it requires that the coalition move from success to success. When even one setback occurs—and setbacks inevitably occur, as they already have in Iraq—the theory fails, and fails badly, because there is no reservoir of legitimacy and consent to see the coalition through hard times. Not to do the minimum necessary to ensure that Europeans remain positively disposed to American aims—or worse, to actually provoke Europe into playing a sort of "balancing" role—would be to squander the potential advantages of a position of strength.

In the past, the United States maintained a sort of "European empire" so successfully because it was an "empire by invitation" as historian Geir Lundestad puts it: The United States was predominant in European affairs because Europeans wanted it to be. Today, that feeling remains strong among many European governments, but European publics are less certain. U.S.-European cooperation is sustained by the conscious decision of most European governments to defy domestic public opinion in the interests of maintaining an alliance with the United States.

It's hard to see how NATO can survive the current sharp divergence of perceived interests between the US and Europe.