Finding NATO
Alliances have risks and rewards, NATO included
Travelling Europe by air land and sea has many rewards, especially when not in tourist areas. You can board the airplane after visiting Charlemagne’s cathedral in Aachen, Germany and in no time, you’re walking the back streets of Warsaw or treating yourself to the newest cafes in Riga. Victory in WWII and the European Union’s evolution makes these adventures easy, but the bounty of western democracy has yet to reach every corner of the continent. A drive through Romania and Bulgaria reveals scars from the days of the Soviet Union where socialism showed its true colors. This type of “time travel” is not limited to cold war infrastructure, you can find people in these places who yearn for the American dream and would gladly come to our nation to hold the line on the soft march to communism. They know all too well that if America falls to autocrats, the prospects for these newer NATO countries to remain free and prosper will reduce.
The institutions and democracies of Europe are hardly an easy to understand. In addition to NATO, there are many organizations and structures that have evolved out of the Bretton Woods agreements over the years. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) is 56 member nations, the European Union (EU) is 27, NATO’s Partnership for Peace (PfP) is 20 (including Russia and Ukraine), and NATO itself is 30 (I haven’t even discussed the Shengen Area). If current trends continue, we’ll see Finland and Sweden join NATO and it will be 32 nations. Both of those nations are in the EU and PfP already. That they seek membership because of the war in Ukraine is clear, but what are the risks of expanding NATO, and are there rewards to the same? These are the questions I’ve been asked by people in America who see what is happening due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine but aren’t certain if NATO expanding as a result, is a positive thing. This “alphabet soup” may seem onerous to understand, but the healthy friction in these bodies have kept the continent mostly at peace over 75 years.
My small piece of the security equation in Europe was command of Army Aviation task forces spread across 6 countries as part of Atlantic Resolve, a NATO focused security mission where I trained with militaries from multiple nations, mostly from Eastern and Central Europe. As a commander, and as a trained military strategist, I was taught to account for numerous variables that could affect my organization’s mission and could drive a person’s, organization’s, or a nation’s decisions. The strategy development facet of this post and my career went far beyond a look at military force structures and capabilities. My team and I analyzed numerous factors from the political and military to economic, social, media and information, infrastructure, physical geography and time concerns. We viewed Europe as a giant and complex system with some necessary controls. We had deep knowledge of how energy restrictions from cutting off pipelines are as important as how effective the reactive armor is on Soviet era tanks, all overlayed to the unique nature of each nation’s political and military leadership. We were on tap to report a range of probabilities rather than certainties. In addressing the question of NATO expansion, the answer was a firm; “it depends”. It wasn’t a slam dunk, and it wasn’t to be avoided at all costs.
There are risks to expanding NATO that cannot be ignored. During the height of the Cold War Sweden and Finland didn’t join NATO, now they are close to doing so with Turkey removing their initial objection. The risk is that in expanding the alliance there are more countries that could cause the invocation of Article V[1], requiring a response from all countries and drawing America as part of NATO into a larger conflict that may have ill or undefined national strategic objectives. To be fair, this risk already existed during the Cold War, then expanded after 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell. Given how much America is the backbone of NATO, having Sweden and Finland join and not potentially fund their defense could mean they are simply hoping to piggyback on others for their own defense should it be needed. I’m not assuming this will happen, but only highlighting a possibility. We don’t know yet whether these two will be accepted into NATO, and if they are, how much of their GDP they will invest in defense. [2]
Other risks include the possibility of “entangl[ing] our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition….”[3] This is a quote from George Washington’s 1796 farewell address, where he warns us against permanent ties to alliances that could force our hand into conflicts with no clear purpose to America. He did not advocate swearing off all alliances for all time, or never getting involved with them, but that they should be temporary and only when needed.
The final risk I’ll list is that of the propensity of organizations to grow bureaucratic and corrupt over time, and in this case influenced or directly tied to power hungry groups like the World Economic Forum, and the Council on Foreign Relations. Every organization is susceptible to corruption, bureaucracy, and evil pursuits. To be honest though, if a person decided to not be part of something that has suffered or could suffer such a consequence, they would no longer attend church either. The World Council of Churches is equally as bad as those groups I’ve already listed. The world has changed since NATO formed in 1949, and there’s a reward side to each of these risks, and “European ambition” has also changed.
So, what are the rewards? The world continues to shrink with the advent of the internet, space-based systems, and faster air travel. What was once days or weeks away in Europe is seconds to hours away today. In a high velocity world, seconds matter when making critical decisions. Those decisions can come faster when relationships and trust already exist. The ability to know the ports, routes, and airspace all over Europe helps as well. I operated out of a number of European ports, drove many of the key routes, moved supplies across multiple borders, and flew across the continent. I can say that if a threat materializes in Europe that requires a speedy response that familiarity saves a lot of time. And time could well be THE deciding factor for any large conflict in Europe.
For a small investment, the United States maintains a level of influence in Europe that can prevent threats that materialize there from reaching here. Time is a critical factor, but so is leadership, organization, and training. Those same European nations can provide up to 2 million Soldiers, many of whom train with U.S. forces routinely. Deployments like Atlantic Resolve and the permanent basing of U.S. military and Department of Defense personnel ensure we maintain well-developed relationships, knowledge of allied nations, and a unified command structure that cannot be developed last second in today’s environment. I trained 33 Army Brigades, as well as some portions of other services’ forces while at the Army’s National Training Center in Fort Irwin, California. The greatest challenges came from putting together a fighting force that had never operated together before. Elevate that challenge to multiple nations, languages, and types of equipment and the need to work together for years in advance is essential to deterrence and if necessary, victory.
Many other questions arise from this new kind of conflict. At what point does a cyber-attack invoke Article V as much as a formation of tanks and infantry crossing an international boundary? How about space, currency, energy, refugees, and proxy support? It is possible that the speed of conflict today could result in a world drawn into major conflict where a little time and cooler heads could have prevented it, (see World War I). Unfortunately, the World Economic Forum, the Council of Foreign Relations and those within the global military industrial complex look at a world in conflict as profit or power enhancing and are therefore willing to push for war and use alliances like NATO to their advantage. Does that cancel out all the advantages?
This is not to say that the size of and the rules established for this time-tested alliance should be washed away as we push for some idealized yet unrealistic “Fortress America,” or leave behind a Europe that is unprotected and on its own. Our world is interdependent in a multitude of ways, and we cannot fight amongst ourselves to the point where dictators are free to roam unchecked. Getting the alliance and its processes right requires a scalpel rather than a wrecking ball.
The risks of such an alliance causing an expanded conflict must be weighed against the need to respond to existential threat. Idealism must be balanced with realism, for idealism would have prevented the alliance that helped defeat a Nazi Germany with global ambitions. Realism means there’s a greater threat to defeat first, then the world can deal with what’s leftover. The decision is up to the reader at this point, are the risks worth the rewards? But you can’t make an informed decision based on whether any alliance or organization could be abused, misused, or corrupted, for they all have this potential. George Washington concluded his thought by stating, "it is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world, so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it.”[4] Are we at a point now where we are not at such liberty? Our very wise first President might recalibrate his viewpoint if he could see the world his future strategists grapple with today.
Lt Col (ret) Darin Gaub is a Co-founder of Restore Liberty, an international military strategist and foreign policy analyst, an executive leadership coach, and serves on the boards of multiple volunteer national and state level organizations. The views presented are those of the author and do not represent the views of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, or its comp
[1] https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_17120.htm
[2] In 2021 Sweden spent approximately 1.28%, and Finland was 1.96%.
[3] https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/short-history/development
[4] https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/short-history/development