The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was formed as a postwar alliance to counter the threat of further Soviet expansion into Europe. Throughout the Cold War, it played a pivotal role in uniting the armies of Western Europe in opposition to their Communist opponents in the Warsaw Pact.
Soviet power and the Warsaw Pact have gone and indeed former Warsaw Pact members are now anxious to join the alliance. So what is NATO now for? Its core defensive role was reversed dramatically for the first time when it was used to bomb Slobodan Milosevic’s Serbian dictatorship into ending its genocidal campaign in Kosovo. That aerial campaign involved warplanes from most NATO air forces, but the lion’s share of the attacks, including all the cruise missile assaults, was launched by the Americans.
This reflected the ambivalence of some NATO members, most notably France, to American domination of the alliance. The French, who for long years effectively withdrew from NATO because of Washington’s pre-eminent role, have been enthusiastic proponents of the European Rapid Reaction Force, about which the Americans and their loyal ally Britain have often been ambivalent. On the one hand, the emergence of the core of an European army would seem to satisfy Washington’s demands that Europe do more to defend itself and reduce its reliance on USn arms. On the other hand, a separate unified European military would be an addition to, rather than a part of the existing NATO structure. Thus Europe would be cutting itself from the military reliance upon Washington via NATO.
The Americans seem to have now become concerned at the loss of influence that this development would bring. Wise heads in the State Department and the Pentagon are uneasily aware of how the gunslinging Bush White House has been alienating its allies, one by one. Even the normally compliant British are seriously concerned about Bush plans to assault Iraq. A shift in the European military balance of power from NATO to a completely European force, so that NATO became a mere talking shop for superannuated generals and admirals, would probably be irreversible. The US taxpayer might be saving a whole pile of dollars, but gone would be the longstanding influence that those dollars could buy in European corridors of power. That influence extended far beyond lining up European allies behind US foreign policy but reached out to the dominance of American business and capital in the continent.
It must, therefore, be precisely because thoughtful officials in Washington recognize the fundamental seismic change that is in the offing, that a charm offensive has been launched to try and improve America’s standing and relationship with its allies. It is good that someone in Washington is sufficiently sensitive to the impact of US foreign policy on its friends. Unfortunately charm offensives are not going to help.
America’s position as the only superpower does not give it the right to ride roughshod over the opinions and concerns of its friends and allies. All the charm in the world is not going to change that. The Bush White House has learned a lot of lessons in the last two years, but listening carefully has not been one of them.
