Global NATO? I Say No
I’ve spent a huge amount of time trying and failing to compose a long, detailed counterargument to Will Marshall’s case for expanding NATO membership, but I can’t quite get the job done. Instead, here’s a brief issue that Marshall left remarkably unaddressed. First the proposal:
This alliance would be stronger still if expanded to include free nations in other, more volatile parts of the world. Likely candidates include Japan and South Korea, which have entrenched market democracy in East Asia; India, which is modernizing rapidly and dominates South Asia; Australia and New Zealand, liberal bastions in the South Pacific; and Chile and Brazil, which have stood against a rising tide of authoritarianism in South America. More controversially, some Italian leaders have even broached the idea of offering NATO membership to Israel.
Anyone putting this forward really ought to think about the consequences for the NATO mission in Afghanistan. If I were a Pakistani official, I would look on India joining NATO — or even any vague took thereof — as indicating that NATO success in Afghanistan constitutes an existential threat to Pakistan. And if I were a soldier serving in Afghanistan, I really wouldn’t want Pakistan to view me succeeding in Afghanistan as posing an existential threat to Pakistan. In general, the consequences of a move like this for stability on the sub-continent strike me as incredibly frightening.
56 Responses to “Global NATO? I Say No”
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December 22nd, 2008 at 5:35 pm
To me this smells like a desire for a Seal of Purity rather than something that serves some kind of concrete purpose or strategic objective. Same with the League of Democracies or whatever it’s called. Basically the idea is to form a club whose purpose is to exclude countries who aren’t as good as us.
December 22nd, 2008 at 5:38 pm
I really like the idea. I can see the issue with India in particular, but are you against NATO expansion in general. I think including Japan, South Korea, New Zealand and Australia is a no brainer. Chile and Brazil may be good additions as well. Are you making a general point against NATA expansion or a specific point against including India?
December 22nd, 2008 at 5:38 pm
You make a good point. On the other hand, I think it’s crucial that we not allow Russia a veto on whether its neighbors are in NATO. Eastern European nations govern themselves now, and Russia needs to get over it.
December 22nd, 2008 at 5:41 pm
Surely you could just say, as a matter of principle, that nations that have an outstanding unresolved conflict with another state cannot join the new alliance (unless it were logical for both parties in the conflict to do so). That would leave out both India and Israel, but also put useful pressure on both.
You really need to engage the larger question, Matthew. There’s no reason for a North Atlantic alliance anymore, but a global alliance of free and stable democracies sounds like the most progressive foreign policy imaginable.
December 22nd, 2008 at 5:44 pm
I can give you one really great reason.
The Charter of NATO doesn’t allow it.
December 22nd, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Oh, I see Marshall already addresses the Treaty problems with the usually stupid “some say” argument.
But he should learn geography. Turkey is part of Europe and Asia.
December 22nd, 2008 at 5:48 pm
Marshall must have access to some really high quality LSD. New Zealand? They won’t let our ships dock in their ports. Think that might be a sticking point? India? Wow, could you open a bigger can of worms? Japan and Korea? I guess if we really want to piss off China, that would be a good way to do it. But given how much money we owe them, maybe that’s not a good idea. Israel? Okay, I guess there is a bigger can of worms than India. Chile and Brazil are remotely sane choices, but what do they offer us? Australia is the only real choice to join NATO, but they are already our 51st state. We might as well offer NATO membership to California. I guess Marshall could make worse choices, like say Georgia or the Ukraine. But he probably wants those, too.
December 22nd, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Penn, despite the current fad about NATO memberships, NATO’s only real purpose is to be a common defense pact. including countries adding Japan, South Korea, New Zealand and Australia is not a “no brainer” because almost non of the current countries can be helped in their defense by those countries, nor can the vast majority of the current members help them.
It isn’t a “cool countries club” It’s a “everybody is going to war without asking, without any regards if any member is attacked club”
If Georgia was a member like so many people wanted 4 mayor nuclear powers of this world would now be at war with each other.
December 22nd, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Worldwide NATO=League of Democracies=UN without those pesky black and brown people who keep us from invading them
December 22nd, 2008 at 5:53 pm
How is this different than the “League of Democracies”? Also, there’s absolutely zero chance of New Zealand signing up for this, and the idea of it is so laughable as to make me wonder why the article’s worth responding to.
December 22nd, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Yeah, this is one of the stupider ideas I’ve read in a while.
First off, a global NATO, as Bosch’s Poodle pointed out, would be the same as the League of Democracy idea. An amorphous definition would decide who gets in or not.
The United States already has military agreements with Japan, Korea, and Australia. No need to put them in a club they’re already de facto in.
December 22nd, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Japan and Korea? I guess if we really want to piss off China, that would be a good way to do it.
Our mutual* defense treaties with Japan and ROK are possibly stronger than NATO, in terms of their ability to be invoked.
Regardless, our military presence in both countries has been a fact of life for almost the entire history of the PRC. Enlarging NATO with making their presence de jure (which in many cases of Pacific multilateral excercises is already de facto) I would not think would not be very different from the Chinese point of view. (NATO would obviously be a obsolete term, but otoh, the Big Ten muddles through). (Trying to have Taiwan join NATO or a similar org, that would be a phenomenonally stupid idea)
*not really two-way I grant you, for obvious practical, historical, and a few good policy reasons.
December 22nd, 2008 at 6:06 pm
“Turkey is part of Europe and Asia.”
Very true, but at the same time, Turkey is neither Europe nor Asia. It is simply Turkey. Kind of like how Texas isn’t The South. But they had to be part of NATO. They are our second oldest ally (after France), and the only ally against which we’ve never fought a war. Even during WWI, we were neutral with Turkey, and even traded with them during the war. Our British allies were quite upset about that. And if you think we’ve always been on Israel’s side, think again. We fought against Israel, England, and France in the Suez Canal Crisis.
December 22nd, 2008 at 6:17 pm
njbunk and Kolohe raise good points. We already have military agreements with many of these countries, anyway. From a practical standpoint, there’s no need. Unless you want to bring in the idea that NATO countries would be required to back us in a war. But that’s a moot point anyway, as Turkey’s non-participation in the Iraq War makes clear. So what the hell is NATO anyway? Our current allies will support us if we’re being sane. And only Australia and England will support us if we’re being stupid. Other allies will send troops in exchange for military aid. NATO membership hasn’t been an issue. And look at Thailand, nobody would consider them for NATO, but they sent troops to Iraq, anyway. All we had to do was pay for those troops. Just like we had to do with Poland and the Czech Republic. If anything, NATO should just be let to ride into the sunset so we don’t have to watch it die.
December 22nd, 2008 at 6:26 pm
Institutions don’t die gracefully do they?
December 22nd, 2008 at 6:38 pm
“Institutions don’t die gracefully do they?”
No, but they eventually get ignored.
December 22nd, 2008 at 6:42 pm
Huh…the NORTH ATLANTIC treaty organization should include nations not even close to the North Atlantic…huh
It’s understandable to include nations in Eastern Europe, but India? Japan? WTF?!?!?!
December 22nd, 2008 at 6:43 pm
Matt,
I too am generally unimpressed with Will Marshall’s article. I think that NATO expansion is very unwise. Nevertheless, your example is a very poor one in that you don’t indicate what Pakistan might do to us in Afghanistan that they aren’t already doing to us via their proxies the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. Similarly, the addition of India to NATO would make very little difference in the context of the India-Pakistan problem since, as with Afghanistan, Pakistan has already unleashed its proxies inside India. What more could the Pakistanis do to us? Specifically, are there nasty things that they could realistically do (without fear of all out war) that they are currently unable or unwilling to do? I don’t think so.
Basically, I think this proposal by Will Marshall is just another neo-con end run around the UN and it only makes sense in the context of their peculiar fantasy world. I don’t have a problem with putting a proposal to join in a working alliance with India and/or Iran and invite them to participate in NATO’s Afghan mission but that is because I have already concluded that it desirable to punish Pakistan’s military by opposing its effort to bring Afghanistan within its sphere of influence (and eliminating military aid) even as we take the necessary steps to beef up the power of the central government. Again, because I don’t think that the Pakistanis are restraining their proxies, I don’t see a downside for the US in a regional alliance that would allow India to deploy its significant economic and military resources in Afghanistan as a response to Pakistan’s terrorist activity inside India.
December 22nd, 2008 at 7:54 pm
“Just an aside, but in the long run, I’d like to see Russia join NATO.”
Well that would certainly make NATO worth something. But along the range of improbable concepts, I’d say it’s more likely that we’ll have an effective military base on Mars. The fulcrum of strength will be on oil, and the Russians hold the good hand there. Oil prices may be down now, but they’ll go up. Why would they want us to drag them down? The Russians may be drunk, but they’re not stupid. The current oil situation doesn’t work in their favor, but the future looks bight for them. We won’t stop consuming, and they’ll keep producing. That means a lot of transfers from us to them. But they’ve got it covered, they’ll send oil to China if we’re too poor to buy it.
December 22nd, 2008 at 8:15 pm
President Bush destroyed the NATO alliance’s reason for being when he rejected NATO’s Article 5 invocation (an attack on one member is an attack on all members) after 9/11. Nobody wants to be in Afghanistan in NATO (it’s a split mission with two tracks, one US, one NATO) other than maybe the Brits. The Afghanistan mission is a giant clusterf@ck but the other NATO countries have stayed 1) to gain favor with the US and 2) to avoid Iraq. Very few of the NATO members are in Afghanistan because they care about Afghanistan.
NATO can either become Europe’s army or become a weak teaf mess that is akin to John McCain’s League of Democracies. What it can’t be is a global army. That’s what the UN is supposed to be for and instead of Americans inventing new missions for NATO that Europeans don’t want Americans should try to beef up the UN’s peacekeeping forces.
December 22nd, 2008 at 8:26 pm
Will Marshall is just repackaging Bob Kagan’s League of Democracies idea now that McCain isn’t going to be prez, as joejoejoe indicated. It was a bad idea, it is a bad idea. The interests aren’t there. Western Europe’s interests in an alliance are quite different from India’s. If you are the US it’s your task to balance that in the view of your own interests.
NATO is going to be a useful alliance for organizing West European (sorry, but the East European states are never going to be consequential) and American geopolitical interests for a few more decades, if the next American President will be reasonable about it. If he is, he’ll start planning the end game for the alliance in a broader global cooperation, involving the main players regardless of their current political ideology. It will end regardless, but the world in which it will could be more chaotic or less.
American dreams of involving Russia into NATO are stupid, even from an American POV. What can you offer Russia with NATO that the EU can’t offer Russia? Seriously, think about that. There are probably more constructive ways to structure your bilateral relationship.
December 22nd, 2008 at 9:21 pm
This discussion touches on one of the things that will have long repercussions from the Bush era: what the fuck happened to NATO. It got used as a political hammer in Rummy’s ‘New Europe’ bullshit period, and its civilian leaders got screwed over. As joejoejoe says, Bush wrecked NATO, and no-one seemed (or seems) to have noticed.
This alliance would be stronger still if expanded to include free nations in other, more volatile parts of the world.
Uh, no. One basic principle of NATO as a defensive alliance is that member states need, at very least, to show that they won’t be rendered unstable by internal unrest. Now, there are obvious exceptions — e.g. Turkey, where the ‘deep government’ is tacitly the signatory — but the neoconnerie here from Marshall is just pathetic.
December 22nd, 2008 at 10:11 pm
“what the fuck happened to NATO.”
It wasn’t Bush’s fault NATO is dying because it’s become obsolete. Nobody could have saved NATO, and surely not Bush. Please, let NATO just die in peace. The appropriate security guarantees are already in place. And NATO just makes it harder to determine which guarantees are appropriate. What’s appropriate should be determined by who has the money. Yes, that will be ugly, but look at history. Banks have traditionally determined who will and will not be killed. If government get’s involved, has it been any better? It really comes down to which entity you will pay. If you’re smart, you pay those in power. And you don’t really worry about it. The Thai understand that. Someday, I will too.
December 22nd, 2008 at 10:12 pm
They [Turkey] are our second oldest ally (after France), and the only ally against which we’ve never fought a war.
Whuh? We’ve never fought a war with France (just a quasi-war, although there were some campaigns in WWII against the Vichy regime). No matter how you define a war, we’ve certainly never fought wars with Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, or Greece.
Similarly, the addition of India to NATO would make very little difference in the context of the India-Pakistan problem since, as with Afghanistan, Pakistan has already unleashed its proxies inside India. What more could the Pakistanis do to us?
My understanding is that the NATO treaty, being a mutual defense treaty, would have to involve us in defending India against any Pakistani aggression. I don’t see why we’d want to do that.
December 22nd, 2008 at 10:53 pm
India would probably say, “Gee, thanks, but no thanks.” NATO (read: America), in order to demonstrate its relevance, would constantly be interfering in South Asian politics. Therefore, India would be giving up self-determination in its own backyard.
Meanwhile, as Pakistan can attest, being “friends” with the US is like getting three wishes from a complete douchebag of a genie.
Lastly, I’m sure China would love to be surrounded by NATO airbases. If India didn’t have enough trouble from China already, this would make sure they got more than they could handle.
December 22nd, 2008 at 11:13 pm
Its pretty safe to offer India NATO membership, given that it’d be rejected with a 99.99999% certainty. Imagine the EU offering membership to the US and you’ll have a rough idea of how India would view the NATO offer.
December 22nd, 2008 at 11:19 pm
Please, let NATO just die in peace.
Is there a farm where it can frolic with the League of Nations and the Hanseatic Leauge?
December 23rd, 2008 at 1:19 am
Why would Chile want to defend Korea? Why would New Zealand want to defend Israel? Why would, for instance, Mexico want to defend India? A common defense security pact not only would bind us to each of these countries, they would bind them all together.
In the end, the only way such an idea can work is once China, Russia and at least one large Arab Muslim state (preferably Egypt) are pluralistic, liberal democracies that would actively help to enforce such a pact against much weaker nations that would then be forced to go along to survive in the combined face of the entire world. Until we get to that point, such a league would only raise paranoia in China, Russia and the Arab world. Paranoia leads to mis-reading others’ intentions, which leads to the other side becoming paranoid as well until the situation spirals out of control. For instance, losing our ability to use bases in Uzbekistan had some positive effects in that 1) it reduced the potential paranoia in Beijing from being completely surrounded by US allies, rising powers (Russia) and crazy powers (NK) and 2) made us less connected to whatever evil schemes Islam Karimov commits against his own people.
There would also be a lot of borderline cases for inclusion where the judgment call would look bigoted to some major group no matter what. A case could be made (depending on the year) for including Thailand, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories, Taiwan, Serbia, etc. There are legitimate criticisms on ideological grounds for not wanting to include any one of these countries (save Taiwan, for more obvious security reasons), but then you probably can’t keep every imperfect democracy out and have any leverage and legitimacy worldwide. Also, including countries with ongoing violent separatist wars, occupations, international territorial disputes or common outbursts of ethnic violence in highly divided nations – India, Israel, Indonesia, East Timor, Lebanon, Turkey, Thailand, Bangladesh, Kenya, Ukraine, Georgia, etc. – is only asking for trouble.
Last of all, who often wins elections? Nationalists that don’t like outsiders telling them what to do. That is why Bush benefited from anti-French and anti-UN sentiments post-9/11. That is why demagogues who run their nations’ economies into the ground maintain support. In a lot of countries, getting further tied to the US militarily is the easiest way for the foreign supporters of such a pact to lose their seats to anti-American nationalists. In Korea and Japan, our military presence is a lot less popular than most Americans realize, but those military alliances were forged under occupation and, in the Korean case, under the rule of military leaders, many of whom cut their teeth working for the Japanese fascists. In the Korean case at least, it is doubtful that if they were a functioning liberal democracy that could see nationalists run for office when our tripwire presence was first forged, that we could have established our long-standing presence there once the shooting stopped. Instead, popularly elected nationalists could have easily have told us to go home. If Korea had become a democracy within a year or two of the Kwangji Massacre, it is likely such a scenario would have been played out.
December 23rd, 2008 at 1:22 am
*Kwangju Massacre
December 23rd, 2008 at 5:12 am
Look, morons, the only reason anybody is suggesting this crap is to guarantee more wars and more money going to the pockets of the guys lining the pockets of the guys suggesting this crap.
NATO needs to GO AWAY – not be expanded.
Not to mention, what part of “North Atlantic” don’t these morons understand?
If the US shut up and NATO went away, Russia and China wouldn’t be nearly as interested in things like Central Asia and the Shanghai Cooperative as they are. All those “alliances” are just reactions to existing Western alliances.
All these people are trying to do is start a new “Cold War”, and then hope it turns hot.
December 23rd, 2008 at 5:30 am
Incoherent Empire: The Case for Getting Out of NATO
http://www.takimag.com/site/article/incoherent_empire_the_case_for_getting_out_of_nato/
December 23rd, 2008 at 7:58 am
Let’s just dispel this stupidity right now…
In terms of the first four Asian nominees, do we really think that any of them would aid the U.S. if Taiwan was attacked by China?…Moreover, the last time I checked, Japan’s constitution forbade it from conducting military action not in self defense. Moving right along…
India won’t help us vis a vis Iran for purely economic reasons. If they can’t see the forest through the trees on that issue, I think that qualifies them as a net liability for an alliance that functions on the principle of collective security.
And then there’s Chile and Brazil, neither of which has any military wherewithal to speak of, and are currently at loggerheads with the U.S. on a number of issues including trade and our waning influence in South America.
Honestly, how do these people have jobs? This lame idea is nothing more than an expanded redux of the League of Nations. Why do neocons and hawkish wilsonians believe that the rest of the world is going to drop all of their interests and do what we tell them to do?
December 23rd, 2008 at 9:09 am
Russia and China are going to be liberal “democracies” around the time that that hell freezes over. And the ‘democracies’ in CHile and Brazil are going to last until the next Great Depression hits, which looks like it might come increasingly soon. Liberal democracy is actually a singularly ill-suited form of government for Latin AMerican, Asian, and Orthodox-East European countries.
I mean, really. I know that this idea of democratizing the world and so forth is a big part of Stuff White People Like, but sometimes absurdity is simply absurdity. The United States military should be concerned with protecting the country from foreign attack, and that’s about it. Why is it our business if Russia decides to teach a well-deserved lesson to the insolence of Georgia?
December 23rd, 2008 at 9:31 am
Expanding NATO is a great idea if you want it to be a totally useless/toothless organization. We already have a useless international organization called the UN. NATO is the only international organization that is capable of killing people that need killing; see operations in Serbia/Kosovo and Afghanistan. For examples of bullies run riot, look at just about everywhere else.
December 23rd, 2008 at 10:10 am
Terrible idea. Just an attempt to lock in the dominence of already developed nations over the undeveloped. Imperialism by a new name. Just wait: Nato’s first mission will be “liberate” more resources from the poor nations.
December 23rd, 2008 at 12:10 pm
The rising tide of what in South America?
Is this really how Marshall sees the spread of popular, elected governments across the continent? As a threat to be countered, rolled back and destroyed?
If Will Marshall has no interest in what people in South America actually think and aspire to he should not discuss the future of their continent.
South America is not anyone else’s backyard. Its states are not a threat to anyone. Just back off already.
December 23rd, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Alex: Don’t you know that any popularly elected government that doesn’t carry water for the USA is, by definition, illegitimate? Don’t you know that Hugo Chavez is a “dictator”, who, rather inconveniently seems to losing referenda, and then abiding by the result? Dictators always lose referenda.
Isn’t it time for some more US-backed coups in South America to protect “democracy”?
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