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NATO was born out of the post-WWII crisis created by naked Soviet aggression in the Balkans and Eastern Europe. Soviet moves against Turkey and Greece in August 1946, and throughout 1947, began the drumbeat--which greatly intensified with the Communist domination of Poland and the coup
d'etat in Czechoslovakia. The United States announced the Marshall Plan and, with Britain and France, supported a separate currency in West Germany. The Soviets soon reacted with the Berlin blockade. From such dramatic events NATO was created in April 1949, with 12 charter members. Turkey and Greece joined in February 1952, West Germany in May 1955, and Spain in May 1981.

NATO's military arm, under Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the first Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), began the long task of rearming the new allies and establishing the basic training necessary for each nation. The Alliance's political arm, the North Atlantic Council (NAC), provided the essential organization and gave proper visibility to the national efforts of the military, which were so necessary for their success.

Although the military confrontation locked the opposing armies in an almost Arctic-like immobility across Europe's Central Front, there continued to be cautious testing along the southern flank. When the Soviets built up their Mediterranean Fleet in the 1960s, NATO and the U.S. Sixth Fleet kept pace and tracked their operations.

NATO signaled to the world that it truly was a defensive alliance when it did not react militarily either to the 1953 riots in East Berlin or to the 1956 uprising in Hungary. No offensive strategy or war plans were ever developed, in fact, because such actions would be inconsistent with the North Atlantic Charter, and with the Alliance's defensive nature.

Resurgence and Reaction

A major decision early in the life of NATO involved returning West Germany to the role of an ally, and bringing its much-needed manpower into the NATO force structure opposing the Warsaw Pact forces. This integration and the economic resurgence of West Germany were so successful that in 1961 the East German government reacted by erecting the Berlin Wall to stop the loss of essential manpower to the West.

Even with the addition of sizable armies from West Germany, the Alliance badly needed the U.S. nuclear deterrent shield. Forward-based U.S. nuclear forces--i.e., aircraft carriers, B-47 strategic bombers, and land-based Thor and Jupiter missiles--were put in place and committed to the Alliance. As America's longer-range strategic forces became both more numerous and more capable, these theater nuclear systems were systematically withdrawn.

The political and diplomatic arm of NATO evolved policy and strategy from the concept of Massive Assured Destruction (MAD) in the early years of NATO to a "Flexible Response" strategy--with continued U.S. guarantees that nuclear weapons would be launched to halt a Soviet attack, even if it meant placing America's own cities at risk to nuclear attack. The ups and downs of nuclear policymaking in the political arena occurred against the backdrop of increasing economic prosperity across Western Europe and the steadily improving capabilities of NATO's conventional forces.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 and subsequent withdrawal eight years later showed the surprising limitations and lack of effectiveness of Soviet ground forces. Gorbachev's initiation of the perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness) policies announced the beginning of the end of the Soviet threat to Western Europe. After decades of little progress in arms reduction efforts with the Soviets, NATO saw in rapid succession: (a) Gorbachev's withdrawal of 10,000 main battle tanks from Hungary in May of 1989; (b) the opening of the Berlin Wall in November of 1989; (c) the unification of Germany in October of 1990; and (d) real progress in the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty. The great Soviet Empire itself dissolved in December of 1991--and the world was changed forever.

One of the most significant events in NATO's history occurred in this same time frame, with only moderate fanfare. The CFE Treaty, signed in Paris in November 1991, gave the Soviets and NATO verifiable limits on major types of war-making equipment--i.e., tanks, artillery pieces, helicopters, armored personnel carriers, and tactical aircraft. This agreement paved the way for massive reductions in force structure on both sides of the old Iron Curtain. Not incidentally, naval forces were not included in the treaty.

Concerns and Cooperation

How did NATO respond to all of these successes in the security sphere? The increasing pace of evolution in NATO began in earnest at the London Summit in July of 1990 when NATO heads of state formally extended the hand of friendship to the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. This was followed up shortly thereafter with a meeting of foreign ministers to set up the ground rules for the North Atlantic Cooperation Council, a political body that gives all former Warsaw Pact countries and former Soviet republics the opportunity to attend Alliance meetings in Brussels and discuss problems of mutual concern.

NATO also set about reorganizing itself internally, both on the political side and the military side. In the political sphere it immediately began to revise its strategic policy away from the Cold War defensive mindset and toward a more mobile flexible strategy using light mobile forces in lieu of the former static defenses. On the military side it reorganized itself into two major NATO commands vice three, and greatly reduced the number of major subordinate commanders, par-ticularly in the Central Region. Member countries began at the same time to reduce their armed forces to achieve an Alliance-wide 25 percent reduction overall and a reduction of 40 percent in the Central Region. A new military strategy also was introduced and approved.

The next heads-of-state summit, in Rome in November 1991, approved the new political strategic concept and the new military strategy, putting 18 months of staff work into reality. At a June 1992 foreign ministers meeting in Oslo, the Alliance agreed to carry out peacekeeping missions on a case-by-case basis and to commence peacekeeping training. This decision ended the long-simmering debate about whether NATO would get involved in the day-to-day security issues of Europe, or hold itself in reserve for only the Article V or "invasion of the homeland" scenarios.

The political agreement on peacekeeping missions was considered particularly timely, because NATO became involved (in August 1992) in the U.N.-sponsored sanctions operations in the former Republic of Yugoslavia. These maritime operations began with a monitoring phase, then shifted to an embargo phase and finally transitioned to a blockade, each phase coming in direct response to a new U.N. Security Council Resolution.

Air operations in the former Republic of Yugoslavia began, in mid-October 1992, in much the same way, also under U.N. auspices. The first phase, a monitoring operation, was followed six months later by enforcement of a no-fly zone. Alliance air operations were expanded in mid-1993 to also provide close air support for U.N. peacekeeping troops in Bosnia, and eventually were expanded by the United Nations to include maintaining peace in the "safe areas" declared around six Bosnian Muslim towns.

Transitional Initiatives

This background is helpful in understanding the nature of the NATO heads-of-state meeting in Brussels in January 1994. For the United States, the top priorities at this first NATO summit for President Clinton were to demonstrate the continuing U.S. commitment to an enduring Alliance and to emphasize the principle that the Alliance should be the primary forum for discussion of European security issues. Against this backdrop of priorities the United States introduced three new initiatives to further the transition of NATO away from its Cold War stance: Partnership for Peace, the Combined Joint Task Force concept, and a counterproliferation proposal.

The first initiative, Partnership for Peace, was spec-ifically designed to permit each member of the North Atlantic Cooperation Council to sign a bilateral agreement with NATO and to participate both in military exercises and in peacekeeping training, and thus gradually increase its familiarization with NATO standards. The Combined Joint Task Force concept is an organizational approach that allows major NATO headquarters commands to embed into each organization a team consisting of European officers only, in order to permit the European members of the Alliance to conduct peacekeeping operations without U.S. personnel being involved. The counterproliferation proposal was designed to focus the Alliance's attention on the threat emerging from the proliferation of tactical ballistic missiles and to begin discussions on how to thwart this problem.

While military support for the U.N. Protection Force in Bosnia was maturing, the European community also was voicing its concerns about future security issues. The two highest-priority concerns were the prospect of a rearmed Russia and the growing power of a renationalized Germany (a concern magnified by the fact that Soviet power had now all but dissipated on Germany's eastern boundary).

To a considerable extent, the expansion of NATO to include Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic was an Alliance answer to these two deeply seated fears.

Most recent discussions concerning the advisability of expanding NATO have centered around Russia's negative reaction to this paradigm shift. Here it must be said that, while the Russian view is understandable, it should not keep NATO from looking to its vital interests by adding the new members. They bring considerable eligible manpower and growing economic vitality; they also give the Alliance greater defense in depth with their potentially usable military infrastructure (if it is ever required). The thoroughly defensive nature of the Alliance also should reassure Russia itself as stability inevitably improves in Central Europe.

The recent decision to intervene in the Serbian province of Kosovo with a NATO "stabilization force" reflects the Alliance's deep concern for the regional stability in the Balkans. The current U.S. leadership position within the Alliance essentially demands that the United States also contribute ground forces for the Kosovo mission. America's allies have, in fact, insisted upon it, and U.S. credibility requires no less.

Unequal Distribution Of the Collective Burden

America's major policy objectives regarding NATO have always been those stated by President Clinton at the 1994 Brussels Summit. In accordance with those objectives the United States has no bilateral security ties to any of the other members of NATO. America also does not permit intra-European discussions to result in a "bloc" vote by the Europeans against the North Americans. This concept has been the underpinning of the U.S. positive response to the concept of a "European Security Identity," as long as those discussions take place within the NATO framework, not outside it. In short, the United States has always welcomed, and frequently urged, its European allies to do more for the defense of Europe and to increase their respective shares of the collective defense burden.

Despite the fact that the gross domestic products (GDPs) of the European Union and the United States are roughly equal, the European members of the Alliance collectively spend less than one half on defense the amount spent by the United States. Of that amount, moreover, two thirds is spent by the three most powerful European members of NATO--Germany, Britain, and France. This means that many of the other Alliance members are truly spending a very small amount per capita on defense as well as overall. This unsatisfactory arrangement appears to be worsening, moreover, as more European countries (and Canada) take steps to lower unemployment without changing the social contracts with their people, and reducing defense spending to help pay for domestic programs.

The probability that the United States will remain deeply involved in European security issues and the well-established mechanisms of NATO bode well for the future of the Alliance. The U.S. military and America's diplomatic corps are very pleased with the leading roles they play in the day-to-day business of NATO. If there is a cloud on this horizon, it may involve another branch of government--namely, the U.S. Congress. As U.S. spending for defense continues to go up--as it is projected to do under President Clinton's future-years defense plan--and if European/Canadian defense spending goes down, as also seems likely, there will come a time when the Congress will almost inevitably act forcefully to withdraw more and perhaps all U.S. forces from Europe.

Countless hours already have been spent trying to convince America's NATO allies to increase the readiness and mobility of their forces, and not just make pronouncements. Unfortunately, U.S. policies and intentions, including the assignment of a full ambassador for burden sharing, have not been very successful at making this case, even though the effort has been herculean. U.S. Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen has been making this point forcefully and repeatedly to the Alliance's defense ministers for some time. This is NATO's long-term weakest link and can be strengthened only by the other Alliance members doing more for their own security.

With the preceding as prologue, it seems reasonable to suggest a few short-term probabilities as the Alliance prepares to enter a new century--and a new millennium: (1) The issue of whether NATO should revise its strategy to address the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) beyond the Alliance's immediate borders will be resolved in favor of an aggressive approach to such threats. (2) Extending NATO's influence beyond its borders by addressing regional instabilities also will be worked out through the consensus process, and will result in a satisfactory strategic solution. (3) However, although new strategic concepts will rightfully point the way to a realistic future for Europe, the American public, and the U.S. Congress, may eventually set limits on how much the United States itself is willing to spend to achieve those Alliance objectives.

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