Realists,noticing that as an alliance NATO has lost its major function, see it simply as a means of maintaining and lengthening America's grip on the foreign and military policies of European states. The survival and expansion of NATO tell us much about American power and influence and little about institutions as multilateral entities. The ability of the United States to extend the life of a moribund institution nicely illustrates how international institutions are created and maintained by stronger states to serve their perceived armies perceived interests.The Bush administration saw, and the Clinton administration continued to see, NATO as the instrument for maintaining America's domination of the foreign and military policies of European states. In 1991,Under-secretary of State Reginald Bartholomew's letter to the governments of European members of NATO warned against Europe's formulating independent positions on defence. France and Germany had thought that a European security and defence identity might be developed within the European Union and that the Western European Union (WEU), formed in 1954, could be revived as the instrument for its realization. The Bush administration quickly squelched these ideas.The day after the signing of the Maastricht Treaty in December 1991,President Bush could say with satisfaction that 'we are pleased that our Allies in the Western European Union ... decided to strengthen that institution as both NATO's European pillar and the defense component of the European Union'.
16. The European pillar was to be contained within NATO, and its policies were to be made in Washington. Weaker states have trouble fashioning institutions to serve their own ends in their own ways,especially in the security realm. Think of the defeat of the European Defence Community in 1954 and the inability of the WEU in the more than four decades of its existence to find a significant role independent of the United States. Realism reveals what liberal institutionalist 'theory' obscures: namely, that international institutions serve primarily national rather than international interests.
17. Keohane and Martin, replying to Mearsheimer's criticism of liberal institutionalism,ask how we are 'to account for the willingness of major states to invest resources in expanding international institutions if such institutions are lacking in significance'.
18. If the answer were not already obvious,the expansion of NATO would answer it: to serve what powerful states believe to be their interests.Domestic politics supply a third part of the explanation for America's championing NATO's expansion. With the administra-tion's Bosnian policy in trouble, Clinton needed to show himself to bean effective leader in foreign policy. With the national heroes, Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel, clamouring for their countries' inclusion,foreclosing NATO membership would have handed another issue to the Republican Party in the congressional elections of 1994. To tout NATO's eastward march, President Clinton gave major speeches in Milwaukee, Cleveland and Detroit, cities with significant numbers of eastern European voters." Yotes and dollars are the lifeblood of American politics. New members of NATO will be required to improve their military infrastructure and to buy modern weapons.The American arms industry, expecting to capture its usual large share of a new market, lobbied heavily in favour of NATO's expansion.
20. The reasons for expanding NATO are weak. The reasons for opposing expansion are strong.
21. It draws new lines of division in Europe, alienates those left out, and can find no logical stopping place west of Russia. It weakens those Russians most inclined towards liberal democracy and a market economy. It strengthens Russians of opposite inclination. It reduces hope for further large reductions of nuclear weaponry. It pushes Russia towards China instead of drawing Russia towards Europe and America. NATO, led by America, scarcely considered the plight of its defeated adversary. Throughout modern history, Russia has been rebuffed by the West, isolated and at times surrounded. Many Russians believe that, by expanding, NATO brazenly broke promises it made in 1990 and 1991 that former WTO members would not be allowed to join NATO. With good reason,Russians fear that NATO will not only admit additional old members of the WTO but also former republics of the USSR. In 1997, NATO held naval exercises with Ukraine in the Black Sea, with more joint exercises to come, and announced plans to use a military testing ground in western Ukraine. In June 1998, Zbigniew Brzezinski went to Kiev with the message that Ukraine should prepare itself to join NATO by the year 2010.
22. The further NATO intrudes into the Soviet Union's old arena, the more Russia is forced to look to the south and east rather than to the west. This seems all the more ironic when one recalls that during the 1980s Russian military analysts began to believe that long-range threats to Russia would come from the south and east,not the west.
23. Late in 1996, expecting a measure of indifference, I asked an official in the Indian Ministry of External Affairs whether India was concerned over the expansive NATO policy. He immediately replied that a policy seemingly designed to bring Russia and China together of course was of great concern to India. Despite much talk about the'globalization' of international politics, American political leaders to a dismaying extent think of East or West rather than of their interaction. With a history of conflict along a 2,600-mile border, with ethnic minorities sprawling across it, with a mineral-rich and sparsely populated Siberia facing China's teeming millions, Russia and China will find it difficult to co-operate effectively, but we are doing our best to help them do so. Indeed, the United States provides the key to Russian-Chinese relations over the past half-century. Feeling American antagonism and fearing American power, China drew close to Russia after the Second World War and remained so until the United States seemed less, and the Soviet Union more, of a threat to China. The relatively harmonious relations the United States and China enjoyed during the 1970s began to turn sour in the late 1980s when Russian power visibly declined and American hegemony became imminent. To alienate Russia by expanding NATO, and to alienate China by pressing it to change its policies and lecturing its leaders on how to rule their country, are policies that only an overwhelmingly powerful country could afford, and only a foolish one be tempted, to follow.Once some countries are brought in, how can others be kept out?Secretary Albright has said that no democratic country will beexcluded from NATO because of its position on the map. A hurt andhumiliated Russia can expect to suffer further pain. Secretary Albright thinks it ridiculous of Russia to fear NATO's inclusion of a distant Hungary, but the distance between additional members of the alliance and Russia would be shorter.
24. Anyway, it is not so much new members that Russia fears as it is America's might moving ever closer to its borders. Any country finds it difficult to understand how anothercountry feels. Americans should, however, be able to imagine what their fears would be if they had lost the Cold War and Russia expanded the WTO into the Americas, all the while claiming that it was acting for the sake of stability in central America with no threat to the UnitedStates implied. Adept statesmen keep their countries' potentialadversaries divided. The Clinton administration seemed to delight inbringing them together.Even while American leaders were assuring Russia that NATO's expansion was not motivated by animosity towards Russia, American and NATO estimates of the costs entailed depended in large measure on speculations about when Russia would once again pose a military threat to Europe.
25. As Boris Yeltsin said in Moscow, with President Jiang Zemin at his side, 'someone is longing for a single-polar world'.
26. Pressure from the West helps to unite them in opposition to this condition. Both parties now speak of a'constructive partnership aimed at strategic co-operation in the twenty-first century'.
27.The American rhetoric of globalization turns out to be globaloney: we fail to understand how our policy for one region affects another.Winners of wars, facing few impediments to the exercise of their wills, have often acted in ways that created future enemies. Thus Germany, by taking Alsace and most of Lorraine from France in 1871, earned its lasting enmity; and the Allies' harsh treatment of Germany after the First World War produced a similar effect. In contrast,Bismarck persuaded the Kaiser not to march his armies along the roadto Vienna after the great victory at Koniggratz in 1866. In the Treatyof Prague, Prussia took no Austrian territory. Thus Austria, having become Austria-Hungary, was available as an alliance partner for Germany in 1879. Rather than learning from history, the United States is repeating past errors by extending its influence over what used to be the province of the vanquished.
28. Can one find any reason to be optimistic about the pointless policy of expansion? Perhaps this to start with: in a co-ordinated organization, more is less. The larger the number of members, the greater the number of interests to be served and the more varied the views that have to be accommodated. In the absence of a final arbiter,aligning interests becomes more difficult as their numbers increase.Just as a wider European Union means a shallower one, so a more inclusive NATO means a less coherent and focused alliance.
Western Europeans think of NATO's expansion as being of low cost because with no foe to fear additional military expenditure would have little purpose. Thus French President Jacques Chirac said in effect not a centime for NATO's expansion, and British leaders said not a penny.Yet American leaders continued to claim that old and new European members would pay the major share of the costs. NATO argued enough about burden-sharing during the Cold War, and America by and large lost because it believed that fairly or not it had to do what Europe's and its own security required. A larger NATO will have more to argue about and, lacking the disciplining threat of a serious opponent, the arguments are likely to become more frequent and bitter than they used to be.One can turn this the other way and say that differences will be muted precisely because the absence of a threat means it matters little whether they are resolved.
The members of NATO, however, will still have the obligation to come to one another's defence. The American military will certainly take the obligation seriously, as it should. Moreover, because nuclear deterrence covers only a country's manifestly vital interests, it will not cover newly admitted members of the alliance. Deterrence is cheaper than defence. The increase in American commitments makes reliance on deterrence more desirable and less possible.The expansion of NATO extends its military interests, enlarges its responsibilities and increases its burdens. Not only, do new members require NATO's protection, they also heighten its concern over destabilizing events near their borders.
Thus Balkan eruptions become a NATO and not just a European concern. In the absence of European initiative, Americans believe they must lead the way because the credibility of NATO is at stake. Balkan operations in the air and even more so on the ground exacerbate differences of interest among NATO members and strain the alliance. European members marvel at the surveillance and communications capabilities of the United States and stand in awe of the modern military forces at its command.
Aware of their weaknesses, Europeans express determination to modernize their forces and to develop their ability to deploy them independently. Europe's reaction to America's Balkan operations duplicates its determination to remedy deficiencies revealed in 1991 during the Gulf War, a determination that produced few results.Will it be different this time? Perhaps, yet if European states do achieve their goals of creating a 60,000 strong rapid reaction force and enlarging the role of the WEU, the tension between controlled by the United States and a NATO allowing for independent European action will again be bothersome. In any event, the prospect of militarily bogging down in the Balkans tests the alliance and may indefinitely delay its further expansion.
Expansion buys trouble, and mounting troubles may bring expansion to a halt. European conditions and Russian opposition work against the eastward extension of NATO. Pressing in the opposite directionis the momentum of American expansion. The momentum ofexpansion has often been hard to break, a thought borne out by theempires of Republican Rome, of Tsarist Russian, and of LiberalBritain.One is often reminded that the United States is not just the dominant power in the world but that it is a liberal dominant power. True, the motivations of the artificers of expansion - President Clinton, national security adviser Anthony Lake, and others - were to nurture democracy in young, fragile, long-suffering countries. One may wonder, however, why this should be an American rather than a European task and why a military rather than a political-economic organization should be seen as the appropriate means for carrying it out. The task of building democracy is not a military one. The military security of new NATO members is not in jeopardy; their political development and economic well-being are. In 1997, AssistantSecretary of Defense Franklin D. Kramer told the Czech defence ministry that it was spending too little on defence.
29. Yet investing in defence slows economic growth. By common calculation, defencespending stimulates economic growth about half as much asdirect investment in the economy. In eastern Europe, economic notmilitary security is the problem and entering a military alliancecompounds it.Using the example of NATO to reflect on the relevance of realismafter the Cold War leads to some important conclusions. The winner ofthe Cold War and the sole remaining great power has behaved asunchecked powers have usually done. In the absence ofcounterweights, a country's internal impulses prevail whether fuelledby liberal or by other urges. The error of realist predictions that the end of the Cold War would mean the end of NATO arose not from a failure of realist theory to comprehend international politics, but from an underestimation of America's folly.
Do liberal institutionalists provide better leverage for explaining NATO's survival and expansion? According to Keohane and Martin,realists insist 'that institutions have only marginal effects'.
30. On the contrary, realists have noticed that whether institutions have strong or weak effects depends on what states intend. Strong statesuse institutions, as they interpret laws, in ways that suit them.Thus, Susan Strange, in pondering the state's retreat, observes that 'international organization is above all a tool of national government, an instrument for the pursuit of national interest by other means'.
31. Interestingly, Keohane and Martin, in their effort to refute Mearsheimer's trenchant criticism, in effect agree with him. Having claimed that his realism is 'not well specified', they note that'institutional theory conceptualizes institutions both as independent and dependent variables'.
32. Dependent on what? - on 'the realities of power and interest'. Institutions, it turns out, 'make a significant difference in conjunction with power realities'.
33. Yes! Liberal institutionalism, as Mearsheimer says, 'is no longer a clear alternative to realism, but has, infact, been swallowed up by it'.
34. Indeed, it never was an alternative to realism. Institutionalist theory, as Keohane has stressed, has as its core structural realism, which Keohane and Nye sought 'to broaden'.
35. The institutional approach starts with structural theory, applies it to the origins and operations of institutions, and unsurprisingly ends with realist conclusions. Alliances illustrate the limitations of institutionalism with special clarity. Keohane has remarked that 'alliances are institutions, and both their durability and strength may depend in part on their institutional characteristics'.
36. In part, I suppose, but one must wonder on how largea part. The Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente were quite durable.They lasted not because of alliance institutions, there hardly being any,but because the core members of each alliance looked outwards andsaw a pressing threat to their security. Previous alliances did not lack institutions because states had failed to figure out how to construct bureaucracies. Previous alliances lacked institutions because in theabsence of a hegemonic leader, balancing continued within as well asacross alliances. NATO lasted as a military alliance as long as the SovietUnion appeared to be a direct threat to its members. It survives and expands now not because of its institutions but mainly because the United States wants it to.
NATO's survival also exposes an interesting aspect of balance-of- power theory. Robert Art has argued forcefully that without NATO and without American troops in Europe, European states will lapse into a 'security competition' among themselves.
37. As he emphasizes,this is a realist expectation. In his view, preserving NATO, and maintaining America's leading role in it, are required in order to prevent a security competition that would promote conflict and impair the institutions of the European Union. The secondary task of analliance, intra-alliance management, should continue to be performedby the United States even though the primary task, defence against anexternal enemy, has disappeared. The point is worth pondering, but Ineed to say here only that it further illustrates the dependence ofinternational institutions on national decisions. Balancing amongstates is not inevitable. As in Europe, a hegemonic power may suppressit. As a high-level European diplomat put it, 'it is not acceptable thatthe lead nation be European. A European power broker is a hegemonicpower. We can agree on US leadership, but not on one of our own'.
38. Accepting the leadership of a hegemonic power prevents a balance ofpower from emerging in Europe, and better the hegemonic powershould be at a distance than next door.Keohane believes that avoiding military conflict in Europe after the Cold War depends greatly on whether the next decade is characterized by a continuous pattern of institutionalized co-operation.
39. If one accepts the conclusion, the question that remains is what sustains the 'pattern of institutionalized cooperation'? Realists know the answer.
