{"id":40817,"date":"2018-07-21T06:00:05","date_gmt":"2018-07-20T20:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=40817"},"modified":"2018-07-20T11:02:05","modified_gmt":"2018-07-20T01:02:05","slug":"the-end-of-nato","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/the-end-of-nato\/","title":{"rendered":"The end of NATO?"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

What is left of NATO and the transatlantic order after US President Donald Trump\u2019s tumultuous week in Brussels, the United Kingdom and Helsinki, where he defended Russian President Vladimir Putin against accusations of cyber warfare by America\u2019s own intelligence agencies?<\/p>\n

Watching events unfold through rose-tinted glasses, one might think that the West\u2019s most important strategic alliance is more or less okay, or even growing stronger. In fact, NATO is in peril, and its fate now lies in Trump\u2019s contemptuous hands.<\/p>\n

Prior to and during the NATO summit, there was much hand-wringing over member states\u2019 military spending<\/a> as a share of GDP. Each member is expected to increase its spending to 2% of GDP by 2024, but Trump seems to think that this already should have been done. And at the summit last week, he suddenly called for a new target of 4% of GDP\u2014which is more than even the United States spends.<\/p>\n

To be sure, over the past few decades, NATO\u2019s primary focus was on peacekeeping operations in distant places, rather than on its core function of territorial defence. For most European member states, the peace dividend from the alliance\u2019s operations justified cuts in domestic military spending.<\/p>\n

But this attitude changed in 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea and launched secretive military incursions into Eastern Ukraine. Since then, NATO member states\u2019 defence budgets have increased by around 4% per year on average, making the 2024 target eminently achievable.<\/p>\n

More fundamentally, Trump\u2019s complaint that the US is shouldering an unfair share of the burden for NATO\u2019s collective defence is dubious. While the US military budget<\/a> equals roughly 72% of combined defence spending by all NATO member states, roughly three-quarters of US military spending is directed towards regions other than Europe. Around half of the US defence budget is spent on maintaining a presence in the Pacific, and another quarter is spent on operations in the Middle East, strategic nuclear command and control, and other areas.<\/p>\n

Moreover, although the US has increased its defence outlays in Europe substantially over the past few years, it is worth remembering that most US forces and facilities there are actually focused on the geostrategic arc from India to South Africa. With facilities such as Ramstein, Fairford, Rota, Vicenza and Sigonella, the US has long used Europe as a staging ground for deploying forces elsewhere. And the early-warning and surveillance facilities that the US maintains in the United Kingdom and Norway are there to defend the continental US, not Europe.<\/p>\n

The fact is that total European defence spending is around twice what the US spends on European security, and also roughly twice what Russia spends on defence, according to estimates<\/a> produced at the US National Defense University.<\/p>\n

The critical importance of US command, control and intelligence forces in Europe should not be minimised, but it should at least be put into perspective. Although the US Army recently rotated<\/a> heavy brigades through Europe for military exercises, its permanently stationed troops are equipped only for limited interventions.<\/p>\n

This is why NATO must continue to improve its defence capacity in Europe. At a minimum, Europe needs more military forces, and those forces need to be equipped for rapid deployment to critical areas. The new mobility command that is being established in Germany is a promising first step.<\/p>\n

And yet, Russia\u2019s advantages over NATO have less to do with resources than with command and control. As a single country, Russia\u2019s military forces are more integrated, and can be deployed more quickly in pursuit of strategic directives from the Kremlin. Such nimbleness was amply demonstrated in Crimea in 2014 and in Syria the following year.<\/p>\n

For its part, NATO does have a deeply integrated command structure for the forces that are assigned to it. But that hardly matters if political decisions to deploy forces or launch operations are not taken in time. In any military confrontation, unity of will and the speed of high-level decision-making determine the outcome.<\/p>\n

The problem is that while NATO\u2019s military capacity is actually improving, its political decision-making capacity is deteriorating. Imagine what would happen if a NATO member state sounded the alarm about Russia launching a secretive Crimea-style military operation within its borders. Then, imagine that US intelligence agencies confirmed that an act of aggression was indeed underway, despite Putin\u2019s denials.<\/p>\n

Finally, imagine how Trump might respond. Would he call Putin to ask what\u2019s going on? And would Putin make another \u2018incredible offer<\/a>\u2019 to help US investigators get to the bottom of things? Even more to the point: Would Trump quickly invoke the principle of collective defence under Article 5 of the NATO treaty? Or would he hesitate, question the intelligence, belittle US allies, and validate Putin\u2019s denials?<\/p>\n

These are truly disturbing questions to have to ask of an American president. They will now hang over Europe\u2019s head indefinitely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What is left of NATO and the transatlantic order after US President Donald Trump\u2019s tumultuous week in Brussels, the United Kingdom and Helsinki, where he defended Russian President Vladimir Putin against accusations of cyber warfare …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":527,"featured_media":40820,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26,1428,325,261],"class_list":["post-40817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-defence-spending","tag-donald-trump","tag-europe","tag-nato"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe end of NATO? | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/the-end-of-nato\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The end of NATO? 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