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January 20, 1998 MEMORANDUM
TO: OPINION
LEADERS FROM:
GARY SCHMITT
SUBJECT: NATO Enlargement The following memorandum
is the fourth in the Project’s series on the topic of NATO’s
expansion. Project Memos: 1. Why
NATO Enlargement is in America’s Strategic Interest (Oct.
8, 1997) 2. NATO Enlargement: What is the "Threat?" (Oct. 13, 1997) 3. Russia and NATO Enlargement (Nov. 11, 1997) 4. The Cost of NATO
Expansion (Jan. 20, 1998) The
Cost of NATO Expansion There has been considerable
debate about what the costs of NATO’s expansion will be. The worry,
of course, is that the American tax payer will get stuck with a bill totaling
tens of billions of dollars over the next decade and a half. Although
the concern is understandable, it is off the mark. NATO’s expansion
won’t bankrupt us. That’s the good news. However, the bad news
is that this focus on enlargement’s costs has tended to obscure (and,
in certain respects, has made it even more difficult to draw attention
to) an alliance problem which should be of increasing concern: the continuing
decline in defense spending by the major states of NATO. This, unfortunately,
may be the hidden cost in the debate over NATO’s expansion. Instead, fueled by
a wide variety of estimates, the debate on NATO’s expansion has centered
at times on what it will cost to add Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic
to NATO. Estimates have run as high as $125 billion over a fifteen year
period (Congressional Budget Office), as low as $1.5 billion (NATO), and
all points in between (Defense Department and the RAND Corporation). What
gives? Why the gross disparity in expansion’s estimated costs? There are two basic
reasons. The first is that the studies have different views of what is
militarily required of NATO’s armed forces. For example, the CBO’s
high-end estimate of the cost for enlarging NATO rests on what amounts
to a “worst case” scenario: designing an alliance defense against
an attack on the new members by a resurgent Russian military. In contrast,
the other studies presume a less hostile European security environment,
which generates military requirements that are less expensive for the
alliance to meet. Now it is certainly conceivable that Russia could pose
a serious threat to NATO in the future if Moscow altered the direction
of its current national security policies and it was able to find the
immense sums of money necessary to turn around the decline in its conventional
armed forces. But the question is whether this scenario is sufficiently
plausible that it should drive NATO’s defense plans over the next
decade and become the basis for estimating the cost of the alliance’s
expansion? Since the Pentagon does not see a resurgent and aggressive
Russia as a threat it must meet in the years immediately ahead when it
goes through its own planning and budget exercises, it seems incongruous
that NATO should.* The second major reason
for the different estimates is that the studies also differ about which
of NATO's present and future military requirements results from the specific
decision to expand the alliance. In 1991, anticipating a changed security
environment in Europe, NATO adopted a “New Strategic Concept”
which saw the alliance threatened less by “calculated aggression
against the territory of the Allies” than by escalating instabilities
around the continent's and the alliance’s borders. To address this
new concern, NATO determined that it should acquire the capability to
conduct large-scale, mobile military operations — a capability that
only the U.S. possessed at the time. It is precisely this ability to project
significant military power rapidly outside NATO’s present borders
which is expected to form the core of the alliance’s military commitment
to its new members. Yet it is also a capability that will be the alliance’s
as a whole and applicable, as first intended, to circumstances other than
defending Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic from an invasion. Traditionally, the
great bulk of the expenditures necessary for meeting any alliance-wide
military requirement falls within the national defense budgets of each
member nation. There are, of course, common NATO budgets to cover the
costs of running the alliance’s headquarters and common infrastructure.
However, the real money for NATO stays in each country’s own defense
budget, buying the military capabilities that are then made available
to the alliance. (In recent years, NATO’s common budgets have amounted
to less than 1% of NATO’s total expenditures on defense.) Given the
way in which NATO’s budgets are constructed, it is no surprise that
NATO’s own calculation of what expansion will cost is as low as it
is. Enlargement’s expenses are basically limited to making sure the
new members’ militaries can communicate with NATO’s and to upgrading
a sufficient number of former Warsaw Pact military bases so that they
can handle the introduction of a large number of NATO forces into those
countries. Upon review, then,
the disparities between the various estimates of the cost of NATO’s
enlargement are not as significant as they seem at first. They can be
traced to different assumptions about the security environment in Europe
and the inclusion of costs not directly attributable to the decision to
expand the alliance. Nevertheless, sorting through the various estimates
does serve the useful purpose of reminding us that what ultimately matters
is not the amount of money spent to facilitate NATO’s expansion.
What matters is the level of resources dedicated by each NATO member to
maintaining and modernizing their own armed forces since it is those resources
that make it possible for the alliance to make good on its commitments. But this is precisely
the problem. Despite our European allies formal commitment to NATO’s
“New Strategic Concept,” they have been slow to acquire the
capability to deploy and operate significant military forces beyond their
own borders. At the moment, they have no more than one-tenth the capability
of the U.S. military to engage in operations requiring significant and
rapid power projection. Combined with continuing cuts in force levels
and defense spending more generally, America’s NATO allies will find
it increasingly difficult to pull their expected weight in the alliance’s
military affairs. By most accounts, the costs associated with NATO’s expansion are manageable. What is getting tougher to manage, however, is the decision by the alliance’s leading members -- including the U.S. -- to continue to cut defense spending beyond what is called for in light of the Soviet Union’s collapse. Accordingly, the potential danger with the current debate’s focus on keeping the costs of expansion down is that it will implicitly sanction further cuts and, in turn, put at risk NATO’s ability to carry out its present strategic responsibilities. Deterring aggression against member states, staying sufficiently strong to reduce the temptation of a revived imperialist effort on Moscow’s part, providing forces to stabilize situations in Europe and, when necessary, using military force to secure NATO’s interests beyond its immediate borders remain key alliance missions. But they can’t be accomplished on the cheap. _______________ |
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