By Nigel Chamberlain, NATO Watch
Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen was awarded the Distinguished Leadership Award by the Atlantic Council in Washington, DC on 1 May. He was most effusive in his acceptance speech suggesting NATO has been a “collective life insurance” for over 60 years.
He said the Cold War provided the impetus for a first transatlantic deal and the collapse of communism provided the impetus for a second transatlantic deal – NATO enlargement, or expansion. He then spoke of one of his current major themes, global partnerships, which required a new, third transatlantic deal to support it. The Secretary General has a long-term vision for “a transatlantic common market” in trade, science and culture. This third transatlantic deal will require continued investment and greater burden sharing to:
Overcome the growing imbalance in the security contributions made by America and Europe. European nations need to do more, and to do better. Because to remain America’s partner of choice, Europe’s choice must be to become the strong partner that America needs.
Receiving her Distinguished Service Award from the Atlantic Council later, Hillary Clinton said that the watchword for missile defence, cyber attacks and nuclear proliferation must continue to be “shared responsibility”. She referred to the warning by Bob Gates that NATO is turning into a two-tiered alliance, with a shrinking percentage of members willing and able to pay the price and bear the burdens of common defence.
She explained that fewer than a third of NATO members participated in the strike missions in Libya while others simply did not have the military capacity nor the intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets. She concluded:
So NATO is being hamstrung, not just by budget deficits – which we all have to grapple with – but by political deficits. Because even in these difficult economic times, we cannot afford to let the greatest alliance in history slide into military irrelevance. This is a responsibility we all share, and I would urge the Atlantic Council to continue to make it a priority.
Clinton, and/or her supporters, also seemed to be using this high publicity event to launch her bid to become the Democrats presidential nomination and, effectively, the first female President of the United States. Henry Kissinger, in introducing her award, recalled that four Secretaries of State have gone on to become Presidents: "I want to tell Hillary that when she misses the office, when she looks at the histories of secretaries of state, there might be hope for a fulfilling life afterwards." And leading Democrat Nancy Pelosi said Hillary Clinton would be the most qualified potential nominee for President in recent history and that she prays for her to run in 2016.
UK Defence Secretary Philip Hammond in Washington for a series of meetings with US counterparts said there is a need to be prepared to protect the borders of NATO against incursions, probings, mischief-making and ethnic trouble. He recognised that many of the Eastern European countries joined NATO as an insurance policy against Russia, and “now they are slightly alarmed at seeing NATO turning away from Russia to focus on other threats, including asymmetric threats”. He added:
But the further away you get, and certainly by the time you get to the UK, the idea that somehow we need to configure ourselves to be dealing with the Russian threat doesn't feel very real to public opinion. Although, of course at a strategic level, the Russians do still pose the most credible potential threat. . . .
Hammond explained that the configuration of NATO defence in Europe is based on what the threat is and where it is coming from. He believes that most NATO countries see the immediate issue as asymmetric threats coming from terrorist-based groups in North Africa, the Horn of Africa and the Middle East region. He doesn't accept that the debate is whether to deploy more troops to replace US troops being taken out of Europe but whether European NATO is prepared to extend its focus of operations into the regions mentioned above and where traditionally the Americans have led.
He accepted that Britain and France must shoulder some political 'out of area' challenges , not necessarily with US assistance, but said that it had to be recognised that “some of the European partners are not yet at the point where they can embrace this agenda for political reasons -- most obviously Germany”. If NATO looks more like an expeditionary force, “this becomes much more difficult for some of the allies”.
Addressing the question of reducing defence budgets and over dependence on US assets, Hammond referred to the importance of the NATO planning process “and looking at the overall capability that European NATO needs to be able to field and making sure that … we get the capabilities we need”. He indicated that investment must “address those gaps, those inadequacies, and to do it efficiently by collaborating together, 'pooling and sharing' where that's possible. Although, 'pooling and sharing' is a term that's been coined and frequently used and is not so easily delivered into an operational context”. He added: “We're very excited about the prospect that, possibly, the US is willing to engage in a planning process for its capabilities that envisages incorporating the capabilities of allies into its core plan”.
“NATO has to address trying to do the same with less”, Hammond said, also pointing to retired US Defence Secretary Gates's comments about the inadequate budget contributions of European NATO countries. While not disputing this, Hammond cautioned against “putting too much hope on being able to resolve that in any time soon, or maybe in any time”, adding [it] “isn't clear to me what would persuade European public opinion to devote greater proportions of national resources to defence”.
Even though the Defence Secretary felt too little is spent on defence, he said “vast amounts of it are wasted” because of national duplication and money being spent on the wrong things. He called for “smaller more deployable, more agile forces properly equipped for the kinds of tasks we need to do [that are] interoperable with the US”.
In conclusion, Hammond said: “If you walk through that budget and scrubbed all the stuff on which we are spending money that delivers no real military effect at all, you would find that you have a large pot which was usable to deliver real effect”. Some commentators, perhaps including the interviewer, think he may be referring, in part, to the UK's proposal to invest large amounts of its annual budget for years to come on the Trident nuclear weapons system. But the UK Defence Secretary was having none of it:
Well, we consider it has a very high value. We have no intention of giving up our independent nuclear deterrent. And that is not the view -- the New York Times' opinion is not the view of the US administration, which places a high value on having a second nuclear deterrent within NATO.
In his prepared statement, published by Foreign Policy, Hammond wrote that he agreed “European NATO must up its game” and “in the longer-term, as growth resumes, we have to press those partners whose contributions have dropped below what is acceptable to recognise that collective security is not a free lunch”. He still believes that “NATO must remain the cornerstone of our defence. Not the NATO of our parents' generation, but an outward-looking NATO, ready to deal with a diverse range of threats emanating from beyond its borders”.
Meanwhile, The Telegraph reported that 'Whitehall sources' have suggested that new cuts in the UK defence budget could take British defence spending below 2 percent of Gross Domestic Product—regarded by the US as the minimum standard for a serious military power—and that the Defence Secretary had refused to rule out Britain dropping below that level of spending in the next Parliament following this year's spending review.
Currently, Britain is one of only two European NATO members that meets the 2 percent target but Hammond suggested that spending as a share of GDP “isn’t the best and most effective way to measure defence effort”. He said that he would be 'fighting his corner' to prevent more military redundancies, but said he could not promise to stay above the NATO threshold.
“It is a profound problem, which may evolve into a true existential crisis. It is prompted by a question that organisations must sometimes confront: “What purpose do we serve?” Perhaps not surprisingly, this is the opening gambit of an article in Le Monde by Jean-Pierre Stroobants which reports that the question of redefinition is starting to be asked at NATO HQ, due to economic uncertainties just as much as to the search for a new role.
European military budgets have become easy targets for cuts without fear of public opposition, which objects to cuts elsewhere in national budgets. Europe now dedicates 15% less to defence than in 2001 with the 2% target becoming increasingly unattainable in France and Britain. The strongest European economy, Germany, spends as much as France on conventional weapons, but the country remains reluctant to become a military power. According to Stroobants, net European contributions to NATO will soon drop from a little over 30% to around 25%, down from 50% in the early 1990s and some of the smaller nations add very little 'real value' to NATO operations, adding:
Since 2002, the alliance boasts a special force dedicated to quick reaction in emergency situations, but it has never been deployed. NATO finds itself busier than ever trying to calm internal tensions, and rediscover its raison d'être.
Stroobants suggests that the US may see an advantage NATO's Smart Defence project: “Developing more cooperation and common funding may mean a new way to sell more American military equipment and impose 'Made in US' as the norm for NATO members. He points out that the European Defence Initiative led to internal competition and hasn't been entirely successful to date and has encouraged those who support an EU military capability “rather than consider a new division of roles in the graying halls of NATO”.