NATO is at a ‘critical inflection point’ as it heads into July summit in Brussels

• NATO's annual summit begins on July 11 in Brussels. Meetings are typically an opportunity for member states to take stock of the most pressing international security issues of the day.
• But U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened the status quo and is pushing for members to bear more of the funding burden.
• NATO members must also confronted the more important question of what their main mission in the world is now.

Mandel Ngan | AFP | Getty Images

US President Donald Trump (C) delivers a speech next to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg (L) during the unveiling ceremony of the Berlin Wall monument, during the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) summit at the NATO headquarters, in Brussels, on May 25, 2017.

At roughly the same time every year, the world’s oldest military alliance assembles in Brussels to reaffirm its unity, strength, and resolve. The annual North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) meetings are typically an opportunity for member states to take stock of the most pressing international security issues of the day.

The event is largely a highly choreographed and antiseptic affair; after two days of conversation and the crafting of a lengthy joint communique, the delegations get on their planes and fly back home.

Needless to say, President Trump has shaken that routine. In more conventional times, European heads-of-state and NATO officials would be eagerly awaiting the transatlantic reunion rather than biting their nails wondering what the U.S. president may say or do during the summit.

But, alas, Trump—a man who once called NATO an “obsolete” relic of the Cold War and who takes joy at scolding Washington’s European partners for lackluster military spending—is the human antonym for conventionality.

Trump, of course, has since amended his description of NATO as obsolete. It is, after all, still an operational military alliance that continues to send troops to Afghanistan. Yet it would be highly unwise for members of the alliance to discount what Trump has to say. While NATO is not at risk of extinction, it finds itself at a critical inflection point in its nearly 70-year history. Continuing with a business-as-usual is not an option.

The most immediate problem within the alliance is the spending disparity between the United States and everybody else. Granted, it would be foolish to expect Germany, Spain, Italy, and France to invest as much money in real terms as the U.S. to national defense (the U.S., after all, is an $18.5 trillion economy).

Yet it is hardly unreasonable to expect all of NATO’s members to fulfill their financial commitments toward NATO’s collective defense. While non-American financial contributions have slowly risen since 2015, burden sharing continues to be a significant impediment to a capable, adaptive, mobile, and fully prepared military alliance.

The latest figures from NATO headquarters underscore a trend that is not only grossly unfair to the American taxpayer, but unsustainable from the standpoint of alliance unity. At the end of this year, eight of NATO’s 29 members (including the U.S.) will spend at least 2 percent of their GDP on national defense.

The 2 percent guideline is arbitrary, but one the entire alliance nevertheless committed to during a previous summit in Wales. Of the $945.6 billion NATO countries expended on their militaries, Washington’s portion was an astronomical $703.7 billion. In other words, 74 percent of NATO’s entire defense expenditure in 2017 was underwritten by the U.S., a nation whose national debt just exceeded $21 trillion.

Lopsided numbers can't be ignored

For Trump to ignore such lopsided numbers and fail to forcefully press the point during this month’s summit in Brussels is simply a dereliction of duty and feckless presidential leadership.

As important as the burden-sharing issue is, there is an even more immediate imperative NATO members are confronting: what exactly is the alliance’s raison d'être in a world far more frenetic, multidimensional, and complicated than when the organization was established in 1949?

During the Cold War, NATO’s mission statement was clear and unequivocal: protect, and defend Western Europe from a Soviet invasion and ensure that any Soviet division bursting through the Fulda Gap would spur the entire alliance into action. While counteracting the Soviet Union would inevitably be a bloody affair, NATO’s members at least understood who their primary adversary was.

The Soviet Union’s dissolution, however, removed the foundation that upheld NATO’s structure practically overnight. Ever since, the alliance has been a beast in search of a mission.

Today, NATO is an overstretched alliance conducting operations as diverse as training Iraqi counterterrorism forces to rescuing stranded migrants in the Mediterranean Sea. The mission sets have gotten so unwieldy that NATO members find themselves increasingly divided about which national security issue—Russia, migration, terrorism, or cyber security—deserves the most attention. One will get a different answer depending on which government is asked.

Can NATO find a necessary, appropriate mission for today’s world? And can NATO survive if the alliance remains totally dependent on the money, military capacity, generosity, and good will of a single member—the United States?

The search for answers need not be difficult if the alliance embraces common-sense solutions.

Clear consensus on mission

First, NATO political leaders can begin exploring a formal accountability mechanism that holds all member states to the same standards. For instance, members not demonstrating year-over-year progress on NATO’s defense spending goals could be suspended until the problem is addressed. Or the government failing to fulfill its commitments could be blocked from taking rotational command of NATO units like the enhanced forward battle group deployed in the Baltics.

Second, NATO must come to a clear consensus on mission priorities. NATO is and has always been a Russia-centric organization; the alliance should return to the basics of checking Russian aggression along NATO’s eastern perimeter rather than continuing to venture off into out-of-area missions that have only an indirect connection to the translantic community.

NATO can also use the summit in Brussels as an opportunity to send a unified, collective message to Moscow that while it is prepared to defend itself against a Russian-orchestrated destabilization campaign, it is also willing to re-establish a more permanent dialogue in the spirit of mutual respect.

This means rejuvenating the NATO-Russia Council from the relatively meaningless, unproductive debating society it is today into a neutral forum where disagreements can be solved and misperceptions can be remedied.

The transatlantic community cannot afford to avoid the tough discussion any longer. The sooner this very tough family conversation begins, the better off it will be.

Commentary by Daniel DePetris, a fellow at Defense Priorities.

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