Saving Europe From Itself—Again - WSJ
Saving Europe From Itself—Again
A Russian aggressor could drive through NATO’s weak center or bite off its edges piece by piece.
ENLARGE
American soldiers en route to NATO exercises in the Baltics, May 27. Photo: Getty Images
By Mark Helprin
Updated Dec. 14, 2016 11:40 p.m. ET
127 COMMENTS
Though Europeans bridle when confronted with the possibility that Americans have something to offer, the Champs Élysées is not called Unter den Linden, and the Thousand-Year Reich and Warsaw Pact are no more, because—intelligently, successfully, and sacrificially—the U.S. came three times to Europe’s aid.
But for the past quarter-century the U.S. has had no effective, proactive strategy in regard to the defense of Europe. Should it not awaken to this with strategic clarity and resolve, the price may be beyond calculation.
Although the Continent is dangerously weakened by ideological fevers, economic malaise and the importation of bereft masses from war-crazed cultures, keep your eye upon the sparrow—a resurgent, revanchist Russia, which with continued success in recobbling its lost empire will look westward to the rich lands between it and the Atlantic. Rather than arriving late as in the two world wars, the U.S. should take military and diplomatic measures now to deter yet another catastrophe.
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The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was able to keep the Soviets at bay because its nuclear forces and resolution were at least equal to those of the U.S.S.R.; its powerful conventional elements were properly positioned opposite their adversaries; its command structure was unified; and American echelons were deployed in strength.
Despite the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, the migration of most of its members to NATO, and the U.S.S.R.’s collapse, the European military balance is shifting toward Russia. While the U.S. has reduced the number of its nuclear weapons, failed to modernize them, and pacified its nuclear doctrines, Russia has cut less, steadily modernized, and promiscuously issued nuclear threats.
Some examples in regard to conventional forces: In 1987 the U.S. had 354,000 military personnel in Europe and surrounding waters, and 735 combat aircraft. Now it deploys 40,450 and 130, respectively. Between 1987 and 2015, Great Britain’s main battle tanks have dwindled to 227 from 1,200, France’s to 200 from 1,340, and Germany’s to 306 from 4,887. Britain’s combat aircraft have fallen to 194 from 596, France’s to 360 from 520, and Germany’s to 235 from 604.
Given the strategic chaos in the Mediterranean, it is astounding that while in 1985 the U.S. Sixth Fleet often comprised two aircraft carriers, six nuclear submarines, and 28 other warships, during most of the Obama administration it had been reduced to one virtually unarmed command ship.
Though to save themselves the Europeans must be pressured to increase defense expenditures, threatening publicly and without warning to refrain from U.S. treaty obligations, and eight years of military retreat under President Obama, have emboldened Russia and pushed Europe further into creating a European defense separate from NATO. Herding 28 countries into a coherent military structure is difficult enough without adding another level of command. And even if the possibility of aligning with Russia to balance out China were not met with Russian betrayal, the price would be Western Europe, which is obviously unacceptable.
Were Europe merely to meet its minimum spending targets, military outlays would increase by 59%, or $87 billion annually. This close to $1 trillion over a decade would bolster its capacities and also allow for a richer variety of equipment, which—though more costly and unwieldy—would provide different tools for different problems, with multiple types, ranges, and heat and radar signatures vastly complicating an enemy’s planning.
But reconstituting NATO’s strategic and conventional forces is not in itself sufficient to counter Russia’s carefully executed incremental strategies. Russia treats firmness as provocation justifying further Russian aggression, and sees fecklessness as an invitation to the same. Adding to the general instability, de facto U.S. abandonment of tactical nuclear weapons while Russia retains them removes NATO’s option of limited escalation, forcing it to rely on either its weakened conventional defenses or all out nuclear brinkmanship. To counter this, NATO needs a new form of flexible military-diplomatic response. To wit, a massive, newly deployed force that can quickly and with precise calibration respond to provocation, and with similar agility ease off in response to accommodation.
No such structure now exists, due to NATO’s overall weakness and to the scattered deployment of its components, suitable to the defense of each individual nation more than to defeating an attack upon its center. Germany’s rapid westward conquests in both world wars might not have occurred had British armies not been sitting off to the side in England. This bitter lesson, leading to the success of strong central deployment in the Cold War, has now been forgotten. As NATO’s capabilities have contracted, the accession of new members has expanded its continental defense perimeter by 83%. The product of these two deficiencies is vulnerability similar to that of the interwar years of the 1920s and ’30s.
An aggressor can drive through NATO’s weakly defended center or bite off its weakly defended edges piece by piece (starting, perhaps, with the Baltic republics). Concentrating the main NATO force near Russia’s borders would make them simultaneously too provocative and too vulnerable. Massing them in Germany would rob them of the ability to move in response to Russian action except to the Russian periphery.
Better to base NATO’s main “column” in Germany and (a major diplomatic challenge) France. In response to Russian provocation, French-stationed forces could then be moved eastward—in a clear and substantive signal—and moved back just as easily. Tripwire forces could be sent to the Baltic and Poland as they are now (though now, with insufficient backing other than general nuclear warfare, Russia need not take them too seriously). Meanwhile, NATO’s center would be massively defended, which is the heart of the matter and the best insurance against Russian adventurism.
Mr. Helprin, a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute, is the author of “Winter’s Tale,” “A Soldier of the Great War” and the forthcoming novel “Paris in the Present Tense.”