By
LOREN B. THOMPSON
LOREN
B. THOMPSON is chief operating officer of the Lexington Institute.
In 1968, French
journalist J.J. Servan-Schreiber published a hugely influential book
called The American Challenge, which argued that Europe was falling behind
the United States. It was not the Soviet Union that worried him so much as
the U.S. economic and technological "colossus" (as he called it)
whose multinational corporations were invading Western Europe. Unless
Europe transformed itself into a truly integrated regional economy capable
of keeping up with the United States in the computer and aerospace
industries, he warned, it would be permanently relegated to second-class
status.
Today, a third of
a century later, the Soviet Union is gone, and the European Union (EU)
really is beginning to resemble a unified market. Arianespace, a European
consortium, leads the world in commercial space launches, and Airbus has
surpassed Boeing in commercial aircraft sales. But, as the Western
alliance's spring air offensive over former Yugoslavia demonstrated,
whether Europe can keep up with the pace of technological innovation in
U.S. weapons systems is still an open question.
Servan-Schreiber's
book was the most seminal study of trans-Atlantic relations in his
generation because it crystallized the misgivings of many European
policymakers and intellectuals about America's expanding global role.
Today, those misgivings have grown even greater. The value of U.S.
security guarantees is less apparent to many Europeans, while the global
influence of the United States seems to be approaching something akin to
hegemony.
The Clinton
administration has been careful not to overplay its hand--especially in
Europe--but it is hard for Europeans to overlook how dominant the United
States has become on the world stage. It spends as much on defense as all
the countries of Europe combined (Russia included); from biotechnology to
the Internet, it dominates virtually every new technology of the digital
era; two-thirds of global trade is conducted in dollars; and American
culture is routinely assailed on every continent for overwhelming
traditional values with materialism and sensuality.
European nations
are no less susceptible to the appeals of chauvinism and envy than other
countries. Indeed, they may be more susceptible because it was not so long
ago that some of them dictated global economic, technological, and
cultural standards. With the waning of Russian military power and Japanese
economic influence, there is no external force more useful to serve as a
rallying point for a common European identity than the great democracy to
the west.
Just as the
threat of communist aggression provided the impetus for a common alliance
among the previously fractious countries of Western Europe 50 years ago,
so the fear of being subverted by U.S. power and values now gives urgency
to the European pursuit of a common persona. In ServanSchreiber's day
the impulse was tempered by awareness of the looming danger to the east;
with that danger now dissipated, fears of the U.S. challenge can have free
rein over the popular mind.
Against this
backdrop, some of the goals that the Bush and Clinton administrations have
pursued in Europe in the post-Cold War era look rather implausible. The
notion that European members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO) would provide suitable partners for coalition warfare was cast into
doubt by the experience of the Kosovo campaign. The theory that defense
research and production should be rationalized on a trans-Atlantic basis
has been disproved by the business strategies of industrialists on both
sides of the Atlantic Ocean. And the belief that open trade in military
goods could be achieved within the alliance has gradually run aground on
the twin shoals of U.S. security concerns and European economic
protectionism.
The last year of
the "American Century" provided considerable evidence for the
thesis that NATO without a Soviet threat is a questionable proposition
over the long run. Despite some remarkable diplomatic and military
successes during the year, the undertow of trans-Atlantic doubt and
resentment seems to be running ever stronger, while the currents favoring
common action are weakening. That is the main focus for a review of
European affairs in 1999, and the obvious place to begin is Operation
Allied Force--the Kosovo campaign--which unfolded over former Yugoslavia
during the spring of 1999.
Coalition
Warfare in the Balkans
It was supremely
ironic that NATO held a Washington summit in April of last year to
celebrate the 50th anniversary of the alliance's founding in the midst of
the first major European military campaign the allies had ever jointly
prosecuted. After a decade of trying diplomatically to contain the efforts
of Slobodan Milosevic to fashion a Greater Serbia out of the ruins of
former Yugoslavia, the allies finally resorted to the collective use of
force against his military and political apparatus. Operation Allied Force
began on the third day of spring with a gradually expanding bombing
campaign, and by the time it was successfully concluded 11 weeks later the
last spring of the second millennium was nearly gone, along with much of
Serbia's infrastructure.
The Kosovo
campaign was a remarkable operation--not just because of its military
prowess, but also because of the ability of the Clinton administration to
hold together an ambivalent alliance. That diplomatic achievement came
despite a scenario in which many of the campaign's underlying military
assumptions were proved wrong, and even when it became apparent that
Republicans in the Congress would not follow the tradition of muting
partisan criticism in wartime. There is no need to recapitulate the
partisan rhetoric surrounding U.S. involvement, but it is useful to review
how wrong much of the alliance's reasoning for the campaign turned out to
be.
First of all, few
alliance leaders anticipated the air campaign would last longer than a
week. Because the wily Serbian dictator had repeatedly backed down when
confronted with Western threats, it was widely assumed that a few
demonstration strikes would be sufficient to prove NATO resolve, and
Milosevic then would seek some sort of accommodation. Indeed, the
nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Enterprise was redeployed to the
Persian Gulf from its NATO mission in the Adriatic shortly before
hostilities commenced. But Kosovo turned out to have such heavy symbolic
importance for Milosevic--whose post-communist political career had been
based largely on appeals to renascent Serbian nationalism--that he did not
retreat.
Quite the
opposite: Serbian military and paramilitary forces in Kosovo seized the
initiative by greatly accelerating the "ethnic cleansing" of the
province. This was the Western alliance's second miscalculation. Its
carefully sequenced plan of gradually escalating bombing had no ready
answer to the forcible expulsion of nearly a million Albanian Kosovars--raising
the specter that Milosevic's moves would present the West with a political
fait accompli in the form of a thoroughly "cleansed" Kosovo.
After a week of
light bombing--impeded in equal measure by poor weather and political
micromanagement--the alliance resolved to expand the air campaign. The
number of aircraft committed was doubled to 900, while the range of
targets was broadened. By mid-April, 14 of NATO's 19 nations were
contributing planes to the campaign, and four dozen European bases were
actively supporting the air war. The USS Theodore Roosevelt and other Navy
and Marine Corps ships and aircraft arrived to add their muscle to the
operation.
But as the
bombing expanded to tactical military targets in Kosovo and infrastructure
targets around the Serbian capital of Belgrade, new problems with the
allied air campaign became apparent. The suppression of enemy air
defenses, regarded as the vital first step in any sustained bombing
effort, proved far harder to accomplish than had been anticipated. Serbian
forces operating in Kosovo also were hard to find, at least in part
because of a shortage of allied ground-surveillance aircraft. In both
cases, the Serbs showed considerable skill at exploiting mobility,
concealment, and deception to foil allied targeters.
Another serious
problem was the poor quality of many European planes committed to the
fight. European aircraft generally lacked the low observables, secure
communications, reliable identification friend-or-foe, and
electronic-warfare gear needed to maximize survivability in hostile
airspace. Fortunately, the Serbian air force was driven from the skies
during the early days of the conflict, and ground-based air defenses were
mostly last-generation technology with limited range and electronic
countermeasures. Nonetheless, if the United States had not provided
continuous electronic-warfare support from Navy and Marine Corps EA-6B
Prowlers, Western losses might very well have been extensive.
With notable
exceptions like the French Mirage 2000, the Europeans also lacked the sort
of precision-targeting capability and "through-the-weather"
munitions favored by their U.S. counterparts to maximize lethality and
minimize collateral damage. U.S. forces flew 70 percent of all allied
strike missions and used 80 percent of the precision-guided munitions
employed. In the end, U.S. Air Force and Navy strike assets were more than
sufficient to accomplish most military objectives, but the picture of
European air power that emerged from the campaign was not encouraging for
proponents of coalition warfare. As one senior U.S. officer disparagingly
commented, "We slipped some training wheels on the Europeans and put
them in the middle of the freeway; after a few days, we said, 'we better
get these kids out of the road.'"
Shortfalls in
European military capabilities were exacerbated by weak political resolve.
France--which at 100 aircraft provided the second largest contingent of
allied air power after the United States--opposed targeting Belgrade's key
economic assets such as the electrical power grid until early May. Italy
and Greece resisted sending any signals that suggested allied willingness
to use ground forces. Russia gave material and rhetorical support to the
Serbs. The difficulty of coordinating European leaders and their forces
was so daunting that U.S. commanders actively sought to exclude their
planes from many missions.
But for all these
problems, by early June the allied air offensive had begun to take a heavy
toll on Serbia's economic, military, and political infrastructure. Serbian
air defenses had succeeded in downing only two Western planes--both pilots
were rescued--while almost all of the allied munitions were hitting their
intended targets. In an air war that saw 38,000 aircraft sorties and
26,000 bombs and missiles employed, only 20 cases of significant
collateral damage were reported. At least one of those cases, the
unintended B-2 bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, involved poor
target intelligence rather than an errant munition.
The stealthy B-2
proved particularly impressive despite having to fly 30-hour nonstop
circuits from the central United States, delivering 650 satellite-guided
Joint Direct Attack Munitions against over a hundred different targets in
a mere 49 sorties. U.S. Navy planes flying 3,100 sorties (1,700 strike
sorties) from the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt
also performed very well, accounting for nearly half of all the damage
done to the
Serbian power grid and political apparatus. Navy and Marine Corps EA-6B
Prowlers provided support jamming for all allied aircraft (including the
stealthy ones), and the Navy also launched three quarters of the 219
cruise missiles used in the campaign. The sea-launched Tomahawk proved to
be an extremely reliable 24-hour-a-day all-weather weapon, accounting for
the destruction of nearly 50 percent of key fixed targets. It also was
effective against mobile targets, destroying 85 percent of the parked
aircraft, missile launchers, and early-warning radar sites it attacked.
It is not hard to
see why allied leaders assumed such a vast array of airborne firepower
would compel Milosevic to pull his forces out of Kosovo. But it did
not--at least not all by itself. Serbian forces were so dug in around
Kosovo that they seemed able to ride out the allied assault from the air
indefinitely. Serbia's infrastructure had taken a pounding, but by late
May allied planners were beginning to run out of targets and Milosevic
still had not capitulated.
As June began,
Britain and the United States were seriously considering a ground invasion
despite the strong opposition of other members of the alliance. It seems
likely that his awareness that planning for a ground operation was
underway is the principal reason that Milosevic finally accepted allied
terms on 3 June--just as constant allied reiteration earlier in the
campaign that there would be no ground operation probably stiffened his
resolve. Other factors in Milosevic's change of heart probably included
the prolonged loss of electrical power and water pressure in Belgrade due
to bombing; Russia's insistence that it could not continue to aid Serbia;
and a ground offensive by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) that drew
Serbian forces out of their hiding places in the province, enabling allied
aircraft to target them more effectively.
Allied bombing
ceased on 10 June. Data released by Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Wesley
K. Clark indicated that Serb forces in Kosovo had lost 93 tanks, 153
armored personnel carriers, 339 other military vehicles, and 389 artillery
pieces and mortars. But the Serbian Army and paramilitary units that came
out of Kosovo after the fighting ended still appeared defiant, and
Milosevic was able to win several last-minute concessions such as Russian
participation in the occupation of the province. At year's end, Milosevic
was still in power, and the military apparatus that provides much of the
basis for that power appeared to be largely intact. NATO's pronouncements
of a great Western victory seem at least somewhat exaggerated, therefore.
Lessons
for the Alliance
In the immediate
aftermath of the Kosovo campaign there was much relief in Western capitals
that allied war aims had been achieved without a ground invasion. The
alliance had managed to maintain a united political front throughout the
controversial bombing campaign, had suffered minimal combat losses, and
had reversed the eviction of Albanian Kosovars from their homeland. The
exile of Serbian Kosovars--and crimes of revenge at the hands of ethnic
Albanians--soon commenced. By year's end, international observers in
Kosovo accused former members of the KLA of orchestrating a campaign of
hate and violence to rid the province of Serbs.
The sense of
relief that NATO experienced in June also was tempered by recognition of
how surprisingly difficult the campaign had been. Considering that half
the world's great military powers had been arrayed against a backward
Balkan rump-state of 10 million that spent less on its military in a year
than the Western alliance spent in one day, the results seemed something
less than decisive--especially since Europe's last dictator was still in
power in Belgrade.
Adm. James O.
Ellis Jr., commander of U.S. naval forces in Europe and NATO's southern
region during Operation Allied Force, detected some worrisome signs in the
air campaign's fitful progress. A late summer briefing drafted by his
staff--and leaked to the news media--argued that micromanagement by NATO's
political leaders had permeated "every aspect of planning and
execution" in the operation, undercutting the alliance's military
effectiveness. Instead of decisive operations, his staff charged, the
alliance had waged "incremental war." Excessive concern about
collateral damage had created "sanctuaries and opportunities for the
adversary" that were eagerly exploited. Finally, a "lack of
credible threat of ground invasion," the briefing stated,
"probably prolonged the air campaign."
Ellis called for
a debate of the role that politics (and politicians) should play in future
military operations. Clark and Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael C. Short, who
led the allied Kosovo air campaign, expressed similar sentiments. However,
the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. Joseph W.
Ralston, gave a speech in November arguing that gradualism and heavy
political oversight are probably inescapable features of coalition
warfare, at least when it is conducted by a diverse, democratic alliance.
This view was shared by senior members of the Clinton administration, who
were more attuned to the political requirements of successful coalition
warfare than many military operators. Some senior U.S. officers privately
praised Clinton for persevering with the air war despite constant partisan
criticism in the Congress.
One area where
U.S. political and military leaders were in agreement, though, was that
the performance of European forces in the Kosovo operation left much to be
desired. The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) after-action review on
Kosovo, released to Congress in mid-October, noted that parallel U.S. and
NATO command-and-control structures and systems complicated operational
planning and the maintenance of unity of command. Secretary of Defense
William S. Cohen and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Henry H. Shelton
said that the United States needed to work with its allies to enhance
NATO's contingency planning process, to develop an overarching
command-and-control policy, and to enhance procedures and conduct
exercises strengthening NATO's political-military interfaces.
European members
of NATO had proved to be deficient in virtually every facet of military
technology--from airlift to precision targeting to aerial refueling to
electronic warfare to airborne surveillance. Even in relatively
inexpensive technologies such as secure communications links the allies
were wanting--proof, Ralston said, of how "foolish" some of
their investment priorities were.
The most obvious
reason for the shortfalls, said German Gen. Klaus Nauman, the retiring
chairman of NATO's Military Committee, was that European members of the
alliance "were very generous in giving themselves a peace
dividend" when the Cold War ended. Although the regional economy of
the European Union is similar in size to that of the United States,
European NATO nations collectively spent only 60 percent of what the
United States did on defense. And when their larger population was
factored into the comparison, the Europeans spent barely half as much as
the Americans in per capita terms.
But that was only
the beginning of the problem, according to Cohen. At a September
conference of NATO defense ministers in Toronto, he complained that the
European members of NATO further diluted the value of their defense
spending by failing to coordinate with one another, thereby, producing
fragmented and duplicative investment programs. European NATO countries
"spend roughly 60 percent of what the United States does and they get
about 10 percent of the capability," Cohen said. "That has to
change."
Deputy Secretary
of State Strobe Talbott delivered a similar message three weeks later at a
conference in London commemorating the founding of NATO. Talbott warned
that if the disparities in budgetary burdens and military capabilities
reflected in the Kosovo operation are not corrected, the American public
(meaning Congress) would gradually tire of contributing to European
security. The potential for congressional criticism became all too
apparent in November, when the U.S. Army gave two of its 10 active-duty
divisions the lowest possible readiness ratings because they had brigades
tied down on peacekeeping missions in Bosnia and Kosovo.
Of course, the
Europeans have contributed the vast majority of the 30,000 peacekeepers in
Bosnia-Herzegovina and 50,000 in Kosovo. The question members of Congress
and the Clinton administration were asking was whether the Europeans could
contribute significantly to the more demanding challenge of peacemaking.
The Europeans had sought to be responsive at the alliance's April summit
in Washington, embracing a "Defense Capabilities Initiative"
aimed at enhancing their interoperability, mobility, intelligence,
communications, and logistics. The 58 separate goals of the initiative, if
actually implemented, would go a long way toward addressing U.S.
complaints that the Europeans have not been sharing the security burden
equally.
But "paper
is patient," as an old German saying observes. Whether the
declarations at the Washington summit and subsequent meetings will
translate into sustained increases in military investment on the part of
the Europeans is unclear. The government of Germany sent a discouraging
sign after the summit when it signaled its defense budget for next year
would probably be cut, rather than increased, in order to address more
pressing domestic obligations. Because Germany's economy is so much larger
than that of the other European NATO members, any failure on Berlin's part
to fund more ambitious military spending plans would almost surely doom
European efforts to catch up.
A further
complication was introduced by France, which has not actually been part of
the alliance's military structure since President Charles de Gaulle pulled
it out in 1966--but nonetheless constantly offers suggestions for
improving NATO's role in European security. In mid-November the French
government released an assessment of the Kosovo operation that conceded
its military was deficient in key warfighting technologies. The findings
were similar to an earlier lessons-learned report compiled by Great
Britain. But, unlike the British study, the French assessment went on to
complain that "part of the military operations were conducted by the
United States outside the strict framework of NATO and its
proceedings."
That was a
somewhat surprising criticism coming from France, since Paris had been the
main impediment to unrestricted use of U.S. air power throughout the
campaign. However, complaints about U.S. unilateralism were a frequent
theme in French pronouncements on the meaning of Kosovo during the summer
and fall of 1999. A French Senate report in August warned of
"crushing American superiority" in cutting-edge military
capabilities, and it asserted that during the Balkan operation "the
United States had a virtual monopoly of information on the opponent but
did not always share it with its allies." The French generally
concluded from such findings that Europe needed to be less dependent on
the United States for the means of conducting warfare.
Other European
states felt the same way, but perhaps not as passionately as Paris. In
early October, NATO Secretary General Javier Solana relinquished his
position in the alliance to become the EU's first High Representative for
a Common Foreign and Security Policy. EU leaders gave the former socialist
a mandate to devise a common defense identity for the union by the end of
2000 that would enable it to act autonomously from the United States if
security objectives diverged. The Clinton administration responded warily
to this move, worrying that the EU might eventually eclipse NATO in
European security arrangements--excluding the United States from a central
role in the process. The Wall Street Journal commented that the Europeans
and the United States were "behaving like a husband and wife
preparing for a messy divorce."
Whether it will
actually come to that is unclear. EU security plans at present are so
nebulous that they may never amount to much--especially if members refuse
to spend more on their militaries. Even within Europe, the membership of
NATO and the EU are not coterminous. Ireland and Sweden are part of the
union but not of the alliance. Turkey is a key member of the alliance, but
its perennial applications for membership in the union have been blocked
by Greece. How these complexities would be sorted out in a pan-European
security framework is anyone's guess. It also is not clear if the EU could
muster the assertive political leadership needed to galvanize action when
dealing with a crisis comparable to that encountered in Bosnia-Herzegovina
or Kosovo--leadership traditionally provided by the United States in
NATO's political and military frameworks.
For all the
uncertainty, though, it was clear by the end of 1999 that most European
nations saw in Operation Allied Force a message that change is needed.
Even the United Kingdom, with stronger ties to the United States and
weaker ties to the continent than other EU members, seems persuaded that
Europe needs a more unified security posture to match its increasingly
integrated marketplace and legal structures. Indeed, some observers
thought they saw implicit market support for a unified defense
establishment during the year in the cross-border merger moves of major
European military suppliers.
Defense
Industry Integration
Last year began
with British Aerospace's acquisition of the Marconi Electronics defense
and missile business owned by the General Electric Company
(U.K.)--creating a $20 billion military and aerospace enterprise. That
move disappointed some U.S. policymakers who had hoped to see a
trans-Atlantic merger of military suppliers. But since the new combination
only involved British companies, it did not really further the integration
of Europe's or NATO's defense industries.
A more portentous
development was announced in October, when DaimlerChrysler Aerospace
agreed to merge with France's Aerospatiale Matra to create the world's
third largest defense and aerospace company (after Boeing and Lockheed
Martin). A week later, Aerospatiale, British Aerospace, and Finmeccanica
agreed to merge their missile business. Since Finmeccanica was already
partnered with British Aerospace's Marconi unit in a missile venture and
DaimlerChrysler's missile lines were about to be merged with those of
Aerospatiale, the end result would be a single pan-European missile
producer.
The exclusively
European character of these combinations provoked consternation in the
United States, where Deputy Secretary of Defense John Hamre and other
senior Pentagon policymakers had been urging European military suppliers
to merge with U.S. defense contractors so that the industry could be
rationalized on a trans-Atlantic basis. By late October, though, Hamre was
saying that the vast scale of the new European enterprises effectively
precluded major trans-Atlantic mergers.
The marketplace
thus has produced a series of business moves that reinforce the European
urge to pursue a security role separate from and independent of the United
States. U.S. defense companies are increasingly pessimistic that they will
be able to sell their products in Europe in the future. And since the
Airbus commercial airliner consortium will be jointly owned by British
Aerospace and the new DaimlerChrysler/Aerospatiale combination, economic
considerations are likely to encourage a further European sense of
isolation from U.S. interests. Unless Russia suddenly regains its former
stature as a looming threat to the collective security of the West--an
improbable development--U.S. and European interests are likely to continue
diverging.
The
Helpless Giant
It is a measure
of how greatly the European political landscape has shifted since the end
of the Cold War that an assessment of regional security developments in
the past year could have gotten this far without turning to the subject of
Russia. The Russian economy and political culture showed little sign of
recovery in 1999 from the depressed conditions of recent years. Per-capita
gross domestic product has plummeted by a third since the beginning of the
decade. In real terms--after accounting for inflation--Russia's economy
today is about half the size of the Soviet Union's economy in the late
1980s, when it was already lagging far behind the West. Corruption and
inefficiency are rampant, in part because the government of President
Boris Yeltsin has allowed political considerations to drive the
restructuring of state-owned enterprises. Many state enterprises have been
kept alive despite abysmal productivity, sapping the strength of a nascent
private sector. When privatization does occur, Yeltsin's cronies are often
the main beneficiaries.
Other parts of
the former Soviet Union are struggling too. The gross domestic product of
the Ukraine has contracted at an average annual rate of 11 percent since
1988, producing such widespread dissatisfaction that nearly half of the
electorate voted for communist and socialist candidates in the first round
of presidential balloting in mid-autumn. The Ukrainian economy today is
estimated to be about 40 percent of its size in the late 1980s. In
general, the further east former communist countries are located, the
bleaker their economic circumstances. Poland and Hungary have fared
reasonably well, with per-capita wealth levels approaching twice the
Russian figure. How much of this differential is due to
geography--proximity to the open markets of Western Europe--and how much
is due to culture or political inertia is unclear.
What is clear to
many Russians is that their nation no longer controls its fate. With
health trends similar to an underdeveloped country and chronic political
infighting creating widespread disillusionment with democracy, the public
seems increasingly willing to back any leader who can put an end to the
decay of the Yeltsin era. That concerns other European leaders, whose
domestic and defense agendas are predicated on the assumption that Russia
will not revisit its former expansionist policies.
Even if radical
nationalists or reform communists seized power in Moscow, though, it would
be a long time before the Russian military could regain its former
stature. An October assessment by DOD's National Defense University found
that "the Russian armed forces are in disarray, and will require two
to three decades to recover." The collapse of Russian military power
is so profound, NDU warned, that a political vacuum has been created in
Central Asia. The latest round of fighting in the Southern Caucasus is one
manifestation of this.
Another
manifestation is the grow-ing Russian dependence on nuclear weapons in its
defense posture. Gen. Ralston, who has been designated to succeed Gen.
Clark as Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, told the Senate Armed Services
Committee in late October that "as conventional capabilities erode,
they [the Russians] will rely more on their nuclear forces." Ralston
warned that "we have to do everything we can to make sure Russia does
not become a failed state." Unfortunately, Congressional support for
aid to the beleaguered states has waned as evidence emerged that the
Russians were diverting funds to other purposes. Congress even slashed
funds for the demilitarization of Russian nuclear forces--despite hearing
that 4,800 nuclear warheads, 365 intercontinental missiles, and 49 bombers
have been destroyed under the Nunn-Lugar program.
Russia's nuclear
establishment today is a pale shadow of its Cold War scale. Although its
17 nuclear-weapons production facilities still employ 100,000 scientists
and engineers, annual output of warheads has fallen from 4,000 at the
height of the Cold War to perhaps 200 today. The Russians are deploying a
new single-warhead, mobile intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) (the
SS-27) to replace multiple-warhead missiles banned by the second round of
the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks--even though the Duma has not actually
ratified the treaty--but the new systems are appearing at the rate of only
one per month. Plans for a new class of ballistic-missile submarines have
been delayed, forcing the Navy to defer decommissioning of Delta III
submarines. Even the Russian early-warning system is in disrepair,
providing such unreliable coverage that the United States has stepped in
to provide assistance.
Against this
backdrop, Russian threats about U.S. plans to build a thin national
missile defense system ring hollow. Russian leaders claim the
system--designed to counter small nuclear attacks by rogue states such as
North Korea--will compromise their nuclear deterrent. Any move to modify
the 1972 ABM (Antiballistic Missile) treaty, they say, may provoke a surge
in Russian offensive deployments. Some Western European governments take
this threat seriously, but the Clinton administration and Republican-led
Congress seem less than impressed. It now looks likely that, despite
European apprehensions the United States will decide to go ahead with the
start of construction of a defensive network in June 2000.
So where does all
this leave Europe at the end of the American Century? Much as Charles
Dickens described it in A Tale of Two Cities at the time in history when
the United States was being founded. It is the best of times and the worst
of times, a period of peace and prosperity in the West, depression and
dissolution in the East, and hope mixed with apprehension among the states
caught in between. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder captured Europe's
uncertainty about the future when he commemorated the 10th anniversary of
the opening of the Berlin Wall on 9 November, pointing out that it was on
the same day in 1938 that the Nazis launched the Kristallnacht pogrom
against Jews that foreshadowed the Holocaust. Imperialism, Fascism,
Communism--they all seem today to be part of Europe's past. But what the
future holds is no more settled than it was when the century began.
Next article:
Promise and Peril on the Pacific Rim
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