Seen one way, Vice President Joseph Biden’s visit to central Europe in mid-October was no more than limited damage control by a lightweight. For those in the ex-communist countries inclined to worry, the facts are indeed bleak. Rarely has America been more distracted; never has NATO been more divided. At its Bucharest summit in April 2008 the alliance was riven by the issue of membership for Ukraine and Georgia. After the war in Georgia, both NATO and the EU were hopelessly divided on the issue of what sanctions to impose in response and for how long. In both cases it is now back to business as usual, generating scepticism in the east in the solidity of collective security guarantees. If America stays engaged in Europe, then NATO still means something, the easterners say wanly. But if it doesn’t, then the new democracies of Europe will be squeezed between a newly revisionist Russia and a newly self-confident Germany.
A second reason for gloom is Afghanistan, the yardstick of this administration’s interest in Europe. If the European members of NATO are willing to commit to the multinational effort there, then in American eyes the alliance still has value. If not, then America has other worries—Iran, North Korea, the Middle East, China—that leave little time for a costly and cumbersome “1990s relic.”
The third problem is tribalism. Among some Democrats, the leaders of countries such as Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and the Czech Republic are seen as the accomplices of the Bush administration. Whether it was hosting secret prisons or missile defense bases, they made life easier for the Republicans. Big mistake: “I expect Radek Sikorski now wishes that he had chosen Brookings over AEI,” said a senior Obama administration official on a visit to Brussels earlier this year. The Polish foreign minister, who was running for the post of NATO Secretary-General, found it hard even to get a meeting in the White House. Another kind of tribalism — between Germany and Russia — cropped up as well. Mr. Sikorski’s chances were further dented when the Germans let it be known that he was completely unacceptable as a candidate because the Russians wouldn’t like him.
On top of all that came America’s diplomatic bungling in September. First, the administration decided to send William Perry, a retired secretary of defense, to Polish commemorations of the outbreak of World War II in Gdansk on September 1st. Poles took that as a calculated snub: while in office, Mr. Perry was an ardent opponent of the idea of Polish membership of NATO. America hurriedly added the National Security Adviser Jim Jones to the trip. Then came the botched announcement of the change in missile defense plans, cancelling the planned bases in Poland and the Czech Republic. Militarily, that was an entirely defensible decision. Even missile defense geeks have reservations about the Bush administration’s approach. But to publish the news on one of the blackest days in Polish history was an extraordinary blunder. September 17th, the anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, is the equivalent of Pearl Harbor day and 9/11 combined.
Yet to stitch all this together into a tapestry of gloom and doom is a mistake. Europe is still by far America’s biggest trading partner. The EU and United States together are the biggest economic bloc in the world, with two-thirds of global GDP. The relationship is inescapable, in security and defense as well as in running the world economy. The idea that America is going to sulk off from Europe just because, say, Germany won’t drop the caveats that stop its soldiers being useful in Afghanistan, is wildly exaggerated.
The real problem is that the administration has yet to focus on Europe in detail. The State Department officials dealing with the region now lack the smarts of the Bush administration team. The combination of Dan Fried, Kurt Volker, David Kramer, Matt Bryza and others was a formidable mixture of intellectual firepower, experience and personality. Their successors have yet to make deep footprints. At the White House, things are little better. The National Security Council is tied up with internal politicking and worries about other regions. European questions struggle to be heard, let alone answered.
But at the Pentagon, the focus is still sharp. Few people realize that it was the Bush administration that blocked NATO officials from including Russia in the alliance’s threat assessment. It also vetoed development of real contingency plans on how NATO would react to, say, an attempt to create an Abkhaz-style enclave of ethnic Russians in eastern Latvia. Under the Obama administration, that has changed. Big air exercises over the Baltic have reminded Russian military planners that NATO air forces are hugely superior (at least when they show up). A major American military exercise in the Baltic States next summer will underscore that message, especially if — as now seems likely — other NATO countries join in. It will also be a good rejoinder to the alarming Russian-Belarussian combined exercises which took place in September. The scenarios for these exercises involved the defeat of NATO-like “aggressors” and “terrorists.” The presence of the USS Cole in Tallinn harbor, as well as the arrival of other NATO visitors, showed that in a real war, the outcome would be short, sharp and not to Russia’s liking. “Given a choice between the USS Cole and Joe Biden, we would certainly settle for the warship,” says Andres Kasekamp of the Estonian Foreign Policy Institute.
NATO is also working on a new strategic concept, which will (despite strenuous objections from Germany and others) highlight the territorial defense of its neighbors as the alliance’s core mission. In this regard, the recent visit to Europe of Sandy Vershbow, a senior Pentagon official, was probably even more important than that of the voluble vice-president.
Like marriages, security relationships require work from both sides, and an understanding of sore points and failings. The new member states of NATO may not get the extra bilateral guarantees of security that they sought from the Bush administration. Ukraine and Georgia may not come into the alliance as smoothly and speedily as would be desirable. America will continue to find many European NATO countries indecisive and war-shy. But divorce is not in the cards. The east Europeans are right to feel miffed, but wrong to feel gloomy. Mr. Biden may have his shortcomings, but the relationship he represents is for real. |