Farley on NATO
Robert Farley makes a lot of sense on the past and future of NATO expansion. As he says, we have no reason to apologize for past NATO expansion, but simply because past expansions have been beneficial doesn’t mean that “NATO expansion” as such is a good thing that needs to be pressed forward. A point I would add is that there’s a difference between extending security guarantees so as to protect countries from Russian coercion and extending security guarantees in order to encourage countries to engage in risky anti-Russian behaviors. There was no sign that Hungary or the Czech Republic ever had any desire to actually pick a fight with Russia the way Georgia did (and has) or that Ukraine with its messy situation including actual Russian military bases on Russian soil plausibly might in the future.
24 Responses to “Farley on NATO”
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August 16th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
What’s wrong with having Russian military bases on Russian soil?
August 16th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
I agree with MikeJ — I think here we have a case of redundancy here.
I would also mention that NATO is a 100% consensus organization, so that the more members you add, the harder it gets just to agree on simple matters. It has been mentioned previously too, that getting military coordination between the established older members is hard enough.
August 16th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
A key concept, too, is that we can’t add states to the alliance that we aren’t actually prepared to go to war to defend–”we” meaning the Germans, the French, the British…everyone in the alliance. I think the alliance has been grown as large as it can be for the time being–and perhaps it’s too large already. Latvia? Slovenia? As the saying goes, don’t let your mouth write a check that your ass isn’t able to cash.
August 16th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
i think we have a case of the infamous MY typo here. Sevastopol is in Crimea/Ukraine, not Russia. It is the former home of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet. So it is not a Russian base on Russian soil, rather a Russian base on Ukrainian soil, and it would be a bit weird to have such if the Ukraine joined NATO.
August 16th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
But past NATO expansions are part of the problem here. If we hadn’t started expanding NATO, the issue of Ukraine and Georgia joining it would not be on the table complicating those countries’ relationships with both Russia and the US/Europe. (And Georgia might not have been under the misimpression that we were prepared to back them up in South Ossetia.)
NATO should have been replaced with a new European security pact—one which Russia might actually join some day. Instead, we started down the slippery slope of treating the new Russia just like the old Russia. And partly as a result, NATO expansion is turning into the Versailles of the Cold War.
August 16th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
One thing that NATO does is to mandate a minimum level of military expenditures and to impose programs of weapon modernization etc.
USA spends half of world military expenditures, NATO, half of the rest, other US allies (Japan, South Korea etc), half of the rest.
Given that the expanded NATO just does not have enemies warranting such an enourmous financial effort, we should consider some pacts to reduce the level. The fact that most of that financial effort is a boondogle that does not translate into actual military capability is not an argument to perpetuate and expand this waste.
Then, in the context of simultaneous security guarantees, negotiations on restoring arms control and to get two-sided arms reductions, expansions would not be a sufficient cause for paranoia.
August 16th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
The obvious root of the problem is the same concept the US neocons push: that every country – or better yet, certain rich countries – need to be concerned about and meddle in the internal and external affairs of every little ass country in the region – especially if they have oil or other natural resources.
This is just colonialism dressed up for the late 20th and 21st Centuries.
Once the Soviet Union fell, there was ZERO need for a NATO at all. Having NATO troops way over in Afghanistan, a country nobody in Europe or the US gives a rat’s ass about, simply demonstrates that the whole point of NATO is to support militarism no matter what the actual situations are.
Nothing in Eastern Europe is going to rise to the level of WWIII unless countries outside of that region – such as the western European nations, the US and Russia – decide to make it so.
Disband NATO, bring the US troops home from everywhere, and the only fights that will rage will be between little militaries run by equally little men in little countries.
And the world will survive that. Escalating those conflicts into big country conflicts by meddling with them is nothing to the purpose – unless you just want to keep handing out fat contracts to rich people running corporations making bombs.
August 16th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
Robert Farley makes a lot of sense on the past and future of NATO expansion.
When IT comes to considering the practical case for NATO membership for the Ukraine and Georgia, Farley in fact makes very, very little sense. Indeed, he doesn’t consider practical matters at all, but indulges in a lot of fuzzy-headed and largely irrelevant liberal musings about whether and to what degree Georgia and the Ukraine are truly democratic. Like a lot of liberal foreign policy thinkers these days, he doesn’t seem to understand the difference between defensive alliances, on the one hand, and all sorts of other international organizations, on the other.
NATO is not a Club of Democracies; it’s not a trade organization; it’s not a common market; it’s not an cultural association of Europhiles; it’s not a philanthropic organization that exists to bestow gifts of protection on charming and needy eastern outposts; it’s not civic organization that awards plaques and initiates new members for good democratic behavior.
NATO is a defensive alliance. It exists to provide security to its members. It’s members undertake the demanding commitments it imposes because they believe that, all-in-all, they are more safe and secure having made those mutual commitments than they would be if they were fending for themselves. And its members will, and should, make decisions about changing the membership in NATO, and changing the scope of its mission, based on whether or not making those changes enhances the security of the existing members.
To me the case is rather straightforward. It’s not nearly so complex and debatable as Farley makes it out. Nobody has yet presented a single compelling reason for thinking that admitting Georgia and the Ukraine to NATO would make the existing members of NATO safer. Instead, it seems quite obvious that it would not make them safer, but would compromise their safety in many ways by entangling their security commitments with the goings on in strife-torn and contested little places like South Ossetia. It would raise the probability of great power war, and even nuclear war, rather than lower it.
It’s not even a close call. I can’t believe t’s even being considered. It is somewhat depressing to admit that the Bush administration, under Condi Rice’s “New American Realism” has been somewhat more on the ball here than either the crazed and reckless neocon, neo-Cold Warrior John McCain on the right, or the fuzz-brained liberal NATO expansionists and dotty military philanthropists on the “left”. Obama hasn’t been bad, but please save him from the remnants of that triumphalist “democratic enlargement” school. The latter are clearly not to be trusted with the security of America’s children.
August 16th, 2008 at 6:59 pm
Myself, I’d like to see brave little Bolivia admitted. Unbelievable as it may seem, there are those – mainly in the energy industry – who would like to split Bolivia, dividing it between an oil rich east, dominated by traditional oligarchs dissatisfied with the results of democratic voting, and the rest. Can you believe it? They’d even like those separatists to defy national laws concerning a national resource. Surely we cannot let them dictate terms to our hardy little Bolivian democracy!
Or wait a minute – that democracy is allying with last year’s model Hitler – Chavez! I take it all back. We must support the brave Eastern part of so called Bolivia as they bravely struggle for freedom and free markets. It is so hard to select that brave democrats from the Hitlerian autocrats anymore! If only AEI would put out a list so that we can know who to hate, and – for the soft liberal intervention crowd – what totally totally universal principles to evoke in each separate case.
August 16th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
This may be a hint from Putin to Obama about how to deal with Bush IF Obama wins the election.
Saakashvili may be put on trial in Russia, say prosecutors
http://www.russiatoday.com/news/news/29005
August 16th, 2008 at 10:19 pm
Dan Kervick,
In 1999, NATO adopted the Membership Action Plan process. Here is the relevant document:
http://www.nato.int/docu/pr/1999/p99-066e.htm
The first section is related to “Political and Economic Issues” prospective applicants for membership must address to the satisfaction of the current members. Among other things, it provides:
Future members must conform to basic principles embodied in the Washington Treaty such as democracy, individual liberty and other relevant provisions set out in its Preamble. . . .
Aspirants would also be expected . . . to demonstrate commitment to the rule of law and human rights . . . to establish appropriate democratic and civilian control of their armed forces . . . [and] to show a commitment to promoting stability and well-being by economic liberty, social justice and environmental responsibility.
So, Farley is correct when he writes: “Although NATO has included non-democratic members in the past, both NATO and the EU now place democracy high on their list of values and thereby pushed prospective members to adopt democratic reforms.” And thus he was correct to apply those requirements to the cases of Georgia and Ukraine.
August 16th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
DTM,
Those political and economic requirements might be regarded by NATO as necessary conditions for membership, but they are quite obviously not sufficient conditions. In the section in question, Farley was was purporting to discuss “the practical case for NATO admission for Ukraine and Georgia”. But he then did nothing of the sort. Determining whether Georgia and Ukraine have met the baseline ideological preconditions for membership is a long way from making a practical case for NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine.
To use the sort of basketball analogies Matt might like, you haven’t made a practical case for signing a player to the roster of your basketball team simply by determining that he has met the baseline preconditions of being drug-free and having no criminal record. My neighbor Steve is drug free and has no criminal record, but there is not the slightest practical case to be made for signing him to the Boston Celtics.
This isn’t just a pedantic point; it’s very important. Talk like Farley’s shows how the understanding of NATO has evolved and degenerated in the minds of many liberals into a view of the organization as some sort of “democracy club”. Does Farley even understand what a security alliance is? This kind of thing really burns me, because it plays into the old fears that Democrats can’t be trusted to defend the country. How can a man purport to discuss the practical case for adding a country to an alliance built for the collective self-defense of its members, and then not even discuss the most important question: would adding that country enhance or degrade the security of the alliance’s members?
August 17th, 2008 at 12:04 am
Dan Kervick,
Well, in the section in question Farley was actually arguing that the case for admitting Ukraine and Georgia was very weak, and he discussed their democratic shortcomings as one of the many reasons why that case was weak. So that actually fits well with your concept of these being necessary conditions.
And of course that wasn’t the only problem he discussed–he also discussed insufficient control by Georgia over its nominal territory, outstanding territorial disputes with Russia, the presence of a substantial Russian population and Russian military bases in Ukraine, lack of proximity to NATO’s core, and Russia’s oil boom. So there was no suggestion by Farley that merely addressing the democratic issues would be sufficient. Indeed, he specifically noted with respect to Ukraine “that a shift in geopolitical orientation (away from NATO and toward Russia) is easily conceivable through democratic means.”
So I really don’t understand your objection to him raising the particular points about democracy–he didn’t imply that being democratic was sufficient, and it is consistent with NATO’s current membership doctrine to consider democratic shortcomings as a ground for exclusion.
August 17th, 2008 at 12:12 am
By the way, just from reading this article I would have no idea if Farley was liberal or a Democrat. It would probably be a good bet he wasn’t a neocon, but that is about all I could ascertain.
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