U.S. Foreign Policy and European Security PDF
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U.S. FOREIGN POLICY AND EUROPEAN SECURITY Also by Arthur Cyr LIBERAL PARTY POLffiCS IN BRITAIN BRffiSH FOREIGN POLICY AND THE ATLANTIC AREA U.S. FOREIGN POLICY AND EUROPEAN SECURITY ArthurCyr Vice President and Program Director The Chicago Council on Foreign Relations Palgrave Macmillan ISBN 978-1-349-06306-2 ISBN 978-1-349-06304-8 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-06304-8 ©Arthur Cyr 1987 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1987 All rights reserved. For information, write: Scholarly & Reference Division, St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010 First published in the United States of America in 1987 ISBN 978-0-312-00221-3 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cyr, Arthur U.S. Foreign policy and European security. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Europe-National security. 2. United States- Foreign relations -1981- 3. North Atlantic Treaty Organization. I. Title UA646.C97 1987 355' .00304 86-20379 ISBN 978-0-312-00221-3 To Jamie, Tom and David- the last is first Contents 1 Introduction 1 2 Nato: The Ancient Alliance 10 3 New Strategies, New Strategists 39 4 The Global Reach of Great Power 70 5 Discontinuity, Uncertainty and Change: Atlanticism in Retreat 103 6 Conclusion: Present and Future Nato Relationships 136 Notes 144 Index 151 vii 1 Introduction The purpose of this extended essay is to provide discussion and, ideally, insight concerning a variety of the principal problems currently facing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization-the Atlantic Alliance -along with some evaluation of suggested changes in both policies and goals. The subject is both old and new, which means that some effort is required to put the conventional wisdom in current focus, respond to the challenges of a shifting international environment, and address in particular the issue of how appropriate existing relationships are in the context of the contemporary international system. There is a consider able existing literature on Alliance issues. The security of Europe, the insecurity of the borders dividing East from West, the exposed poli tical nerve represented by Berlin - these elements have been the preoccupation and source of tensions in Soviet-American relations since the beginning of the Cold War. There is no shortage of studies of the bases of this most fundamental, stark and far-reaching ideological conflict in the modern international system. This particular study is designed to place contemporary debates and suggestions in the wider historical context of the development of the Alliance from the beginning. I hope that the chapters which follow will contribute in a useful manner to debate over United States foreign policy toward Europe. In many ways, the debate over the state of the Alliance has grown rather steadily more intense over approximately the past decade. The reasons for this are understandable but also complex, and not all of the concern voiced about the problems of the Alliance has been truly merited or representative of the realities of the situation. The subject is in part not new, of course, because the Alliance is not new. Nato is in fact one of the longest-lasting regional security pacts in history. The fact that the partners have been able to maintain formal institutional cohesion, and regional political co-operation as well, since the formation of the Alliance in 1949 is a major accomplishment and stands as such without reference to other developments. Success 1 2 Introduction has resulted in numerous and varied treatments of the subject, often urgent and crisis-oriented in earlier years, more recently taking the longer time perspective available and arguing that gradual decay is taking place in Nato. The most telling single fact about the Atlantic Alliance, developed over the course of this book, is that institutional and political survival does not imply the absence of, but rather the management of, a series of important internal strains. From the start of Nato, a wide variety of differences in national interests and outlooks have generated conflicts. Important issues have involved the basic, continued European dependence on the nuclear umbrella of the American superpower. More recent difficulties have reflected the economic revival of Europe and consequent waning of American dominance, continuation of differences of view on 'third areas' of the world in a time of greater European independence, Soviet mischief in trying to exploit these differences and enlarge policy fissures, and other factors. Continuity has of course been present as well, from the American perspective most notably in the fact that Nato has been the institutional centre piece of post-Second World War foreign policy, however such de velopments as detente with the Soviet Union or war in Indochina have distracted attention for certain periods of time. At the same time, a variety of considerations lead to the conclusion that the subject nevertheless still deserves more attention. First, the political environments of Western and Eastern Europe have been changing. Though the national borders in Europe remain fixed, diplomatic currents have become increasingly fluid. If conflict is con stant, the nature of conflicts - their genesis and directions - has changed. Even the political significance of borders has been altered, at times with dramatic result. Notable in this regard is both the Ostpolitik of the West German goverment in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the Helsinki accords of the mid-1970s. Their regularization of relations with the Soviet bloc has not ended the Cold War but has in important ways altered the board on which the game is played. Second, recent years have witnessed some major shifts in the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union. Two Republican administrations, under Presidents Nixon and Reagan, have initiated two very different sorts of broad stance toward the adversary superpower, representing in each case dramatic shifts from the status quo. Detente was the great achievement of Nixon and Kissinger, involving not only the comprehensive strategic nuclear arms agreements contained in the Salt I treaties, but also extensive Introduction 3 economic, scientific and other technical understandings. This has been followed under Reagan by a massive military build-up, designed directly to counter the enormous cumulative Soviet military expansion of the past two decades. The Soviet efforts have been perceived to be so threatening as to promise a fundamental shift in the balance of military power between East and West; indeed, some conservatives have argued for some time that such a shift has actually taken place. Moreover, there was by the early 1980s a consensus clearly reaching beyond the far right that the Soviet threat was so enhanced that greater military efforts by the West were required. It was, after all, the Carter Administration that began to reverse the course of steady or declining real spending on defence during the 1970s. That Democratic adminis tration also took the lead in securing Nato agreement that the partners to the Alliance would each endeavour to increase military spending by 3 per cent in real terms annually. The Reagan Administration has carried the process further, more clearly and with more enthusiasm than the previous regime. Third, over the past decade there has been a great shift in the mix of elements which comprise security for both the nation states and the larger Alliance structure. After more than twenty years of focus on straightforward military weapons and manpower issues during the period of the long post-war economic boom, the situation has now changed dramatically. The Opec (Organization of Petroleum Export ing Countries) price shocks of 1973-74 were an indication in the starkest possible terms that economic questions were becoming more consequential to international politics even as the answers became more uncertain. And these were only one set of indicators of change among a variety available. The years of steady, comparatively easy economic growth in the West, with low unemployment and low inflation, stable trade flows and fixed monetary values have come to an end. We now live in a period of much greater economic uncertainty. Trade and monetary frictions have come to pit military allies against one another in econ omic competition, and have threatened a return to the devastating protectionism, undercutting currency devaluations and escalating trade walls of the Great Depression of the 1930s. The economic base upon which military strength has been built is no longer quite as stable, reliable and predictable. Opec policies demonstrated the fragile character of the supply of the most fundamental commodity of the industrial system of the modern world-petroleum. In effect, a number of economic uncertainties must be added to the international security
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