By Fang Xiaozhi
According to foreign media reports, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) will hold a meeting of foreign ministers in Washington, D.C. on April 3-4, to celebrate its 70th anniversary and negotiate on its future development. As a product of the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union, after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, NATO not only didn’t disband, but continued to expand, resulting in increasing internal contradictions and declining cohesion, and the reality of a huge contrast between military resource allocation and strategic objectives. So, could NATO’s future development be plain sailing? And what variables might exist?
Firstly, the US government's attitude toward NATO is an important factor affecting its future development.
US President Donald Trump has implemented an “America First” strategic contraction policy and has repeatedly targeted NATO since he took office. Trump complained that the European member states of NATO took a “free ride” of America on defense issues and had not raised their military expenditure to 2% of their GDP as required. To this end, Trump has repeatedly asked the member states to increase military spending, and suggested that failure to do so may reduce US protection of NATO allies. In February 2017, Trump even tweeted that NATO was “outdated” and had no value. Before the NATO summit in July 2018, Trump continued to “bombard” NATO, demanding that European member states share defense pressure for US troops. As the leading country in NATO, the US will play a key role in the future development of NATO, and its stance will inevitably affect NATO’s development prospects.
Secondly, the process of defense integration of the European Union (EU) has been accelerating, posing a major impact on NATO.
As the contradictions between the US and Europe and the sense of independence of European countries continues to grow, the EU is no longer willing to be a military “dwarf.” Instead, the EU begins to be dissatisfied with the absolute dominance and influence of the US in NATO. In recent years, the EU has vigorously promoted “common defense,” in the hope of strengthening its autonomous military capabilities through the establishment of a joint force and becoming more proactive in dealing with its own security issues. The EU’s promotion of building a military outside the framework of NATO will inevitably lead to resource competition and manufacturing confrontation, and challenge NATO’s leading position as the main defense agency in Europe.
Thirdly, there are many internal contradictions among NATO member states, and there are many different voices on many issues.
For example, France and Germany do not fully agree with the US on NATO globalization in terms of NATO expansion. The two countries disagree with NATO’s infinite expansion and oppose NATO’s role as a world gendarme. France and Germany advocate that Europe should propose a clear strategy to avoid falling into NATO’s globalization trap, actively promote the EU’s defense integration process, and enhance its leading role in security affairs in Europe. Other small and medium-sized member states of NATO, especially the Baltic countries and Poland, Romania and other Eastern European countries, are more willing to put their own security in the hands of US-led NATO because they fear Russian deterrence. In addition, there are different voices among NATO member states toward Russia. The member states in northern Europe regard Russia as a threat and advocate tough measures against Russia, while countries such as France and Germany maintain close contact with Russia because of energy cooperation considerations. Such contradictions and differences are hard to settle and will bring more uncertainty to the future development of NATO.
At the same time, we must also see that current threats facing NATO are more concentrated, including escalating military confrontation with Russia, increasing terrorism, chaotic situations in the Middle East and North Africa, and growing cybersecurity challenges. All of these require NATO to further strengthen its collective defense and deterrence capabilities.
As the overall military strength of Europe is currently quite limited, NATO is still the cornerstone of European collective defense. It is not realistic for Europe to break away from the US and NATO to achieve its own defense. In addition, the US, through NATO, can not only control the military power of European countries, but also carry out some regional military operations, in order to achieve the strategic goal of global dominance. So it will not easily give up NATO. Therefore, the future development of NATO will depend, to a large extent, on the trade-offs and complex interactions of various international factors. The strategic game of various forces around NATO’s future development will remain for a long time.
The author is deputy director of the Center for Foreign Military Research at the College of International Relations of the National University of Defense Technology of the Chinese PLA.
