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The center I run at Northern State University, the Center for Public History and Civic Engagement, recently sponsored a talk by Brian Bengs on “Collective Self-Defense: Understanding U.S. Involvement in NATO.” Brian is a former colleague. More important to the subject he is a retired military JAG who served as an instructor at NATO School Oberammergau. His job was to teach NATO member personnel about NATO, what it is and what it does. Brian was also the Democrat U.S. Senate candidate in South Dakota against John Thune in 2022. Since you don’t know much about Senator Bengs, I guess you know how that turned out.
I have seen Brian give many presentations. He’s ridiculously well prepared and organized. You can tell the military training: he gives a great briefing. In this case, he began by spelling out what we mean by “collective security.” In short, collective security is the notion that we are all safer if we work together, especially if we band together in an alliance in which an attack on one member elicits a collective response. The idea is that by building alliances we create systems of cooperation that promote peaceful resolution of conflict. We can trace this notion historically from the Peace of Westphalia (1648) up through the creation of the United Nations (1945). NATO is a continuation of this mentality.
Founded in 1949 with twelve member states, the NATO alliance was famously formed as a check upon potential Soviet aggression in Europe. It also meant that Germany (or West Germany) had less incentive to rearm. As Lord Ismay, first Secretary General of NATO, notably put it, NATO was designed to “keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.”
One of the big takeaways from the talk is that while NATO is an alliance, members retain their sovereignty. Therefore, there is little to nothing that NATO can force a member nation to do. NATO has no military assets of its own. Any NATO military operation uses personnel and material of member states. Even famous Article Five, which states that an attack on one member is an attack on all, if invoked only requires each state respond with “such action as it deems necessary.” It is up to each member to decide what is “necessary.” It might mean military force. Or it might mean a strongly worded letter. No one is forced into military action. Ironically, given recent American questioning of NATO membership, the only time Article Five has been invoked is on behalf of the United States in response to the 9-11 attacks of 2001.
The grumpiness of some Americans (including Donald Trump) toward NATO largely centers around the notion that the United States is paying for the defense of Europe, with Europeans getting a free ride. There is some justification for this. NATO asks (but does not require) that member nations (now at thirty-two) spend at least 2% of their GDP on defense. Most member nations fail to do so. While that may put some additional pressure on the United States defense budget, truth be told such pressure is minimal. The United States spends about 3.5% of its GDP on defense (roughly $860 billion, or about 15% of the federal budget). Note, though, that in the 1980s, at the height of the Reagan defense buildup, the U.S. was spending about 6% of GDP on defense. It’s hard to believe that if every NATO member met its 2% requirement we’d see any noticeable change in the U.S. defense budget. We can safely say this: U.S. membership in NATO contributes essentially nothing to our massive debt problem.
Brian articulated various possible negative consequences to U.S. withdrawal from NATO and from collective security in general. I will only mention two. First, other American alliances would likely erode as the U.S. would come to be seen as an unreliable ally. Smaller nations, looking to collective security arrangements to augment their defense, might look to other major power such as Russia or China, strengthening America’s competitors. More importantly, U.S. departure from NATO and its likely subsequent collapse as a meaningful alliance would promote nuclear proliferation. Nations would perceive the world as a less stable place. Without a strong U.S. presence, these nations might look to acquire nuclear weapons to enhance their own power. We see the way that North Korea is more of a threat as a nuclear power as we must take the prospective use of nuclear weapons seriously. In the Ukraine war, Russia seeks to intimidate Ukraine supporters with loose talk regarding its own nuclear capability. We don’t want this problem to metastasize to dozens and dozens of nations. A strong U.S. presence on the world stage assures states that they needn’t pursue the nuclear option.
Typically, I learned a lot from Brian Bengs. Everything here is my characterization of his remarks, so don’t blame him if you’re thinking, “That’s a load of poo!” Brian is a committed liberal internationalist. I am not. I am more of a soft realist, believing Morgenthau’s realism is essentially right but with the necessity of a moral conscience in international affairs. Still, in a day when the level of political discourse in our nation could hardly get lower and our campuses seem more a venue for shouting than learning, it is worthwhile to know that there are smart, reasonable people who can speak reasonably and disagree with respect.