Geopolitical Journey: Nostalgia for NATO

May 7, 2013 | 0900 GMT

Stratfor

By George Friedman
Founder and Chairman

Geopolitical Weekly

Several years ago, I wrote a series of articles on a journey in Europe. It was intended
both to be personal and to go beyond recent events or the abstract considerations of
geopolitics. This week I begin another journey that will take me from Portugal to
Singapore, and I thought that I would try my hand again at reflecting on the
significance of my travels.

As I prepare for my journey, I am drawn to a central question regarding the U.S.-

European relationship, or what remains of it. Having been in Europe at a time when
that relationship meant everything to both sides, and to the world, this trip forces me
to think about NATO. I have been asked to make several speeches about U.S.-
European relations during my upcoming trip. It is hard to know where to start. The
past was built around NATO, so thinking about NATO's past might help me put things
in perspective.

On a personal level, my relationship with Europe always passes through the prism of
NATO. Born in Hungary, I recall my parents sitting in the kitchen in 1956, when the
Soviets came in to crush the revolution. On the same night as my sister's wedding in
New York, we listened on the radio to a report on Soviet tanks attacking a street just a
block from where we lived in Budapest. I was 7 at the time. The talk turned to the
Americans and NATO and what they would do. NATO was the redeemer who
disappoints not because he cannot act but because he will not. My family's underlying
faith in the power of American alliances was forged in World War II and couldn't be
shaken. NATO was the sword of Gideon, albeit lacking in focus and clarity at times.

I had a more personal relationship with NATO. In the 1970s, I played an

embarrassingly unimportant role in developing early computerized war games. The
games were meant to evaluate strategies on NATO's central front: Germany. At that
time, the line dividing Germany was the fault line of the planet. If the world were to
end in a nuclear holocaust, it would end there. The place that people thought it would
all start was called the Fulda Gap, a not-too-hilly area in the south, where a rapid
attack could take Frankfurt and also strike at the heart of U.S. forces. The Germans
speak of a watch on the Rhine. For my generation, or at least those millions who
served in the armies of NATO, it was Fulda.

In the course of designing war games, I spent some time at SHAPE Technical Center
in The Hague. SHAPE stands for Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe. The
name itself is a reminder of the origins of NATO, deep in World War II and the
alliance that defeated the Germans. It was commanded by SACEUR -- Supreme
Allied Commander Europe -- who was always an American. Over time, the name
became increasingly anachronistic, as SACEUR stopped resembling U.S. Gen.
Dwight Eisenhower and started resembling the chair of a fractious church board,
where people showed up for the snacks more than to make decisions.

To me, in the 1970s, SHAPE and SACEUR were acronyms that recalled D-Day and
were built around the word "supreme." I was young and in awe, with a sense of
history and pride in participating in it. Why I should be proud to participate in what
might lead to total catastrophe for humanity seems odd in retrospect, but there is little
in any of our lives that does not seem odd in retrospect. However, I was proud that I
got to go into a building designated as SHAPE's technical center. I felt at the center of
history. History, of course, is deceptive.

Games and Reality

It was never clear to me what those above us (whom we called "EBR," echelons
beyond reality) did with the games that were built and played, or with the results, but I
believe I learned a great deal about the war that was going to be fought. What cut
short my career as a war gamer was my growing realization of the triviality of what
we were doing and that the intelligence that we were building the games from was
inherently deficient. Moreover, the commanders weren't all that interested in what we
were doing. And there was the fact that I was genuinely enjoying and actually looking
forward to a war that would test our theories. When the pieces on a map represent
human beings and their loss means nothing to you, it is time to leave.

The war gaming was not the problem; properly done, as I hope it is by now, it can aid
in victory and save lives. But then, knowing the men (women came later) who would
stand and fight at Fulda if the time came, I felt I had been given a frivolous job. There
was one thing I got from that job, however: I came into contact with troops from all
the armies that might be called to fight. I had a profound sense that they were not just
my colleagues but also my comrades. Some didn't like Americans, and others didn't
like me, but this is no different than any organization. We were peering into the future,
with our fates bound together.

The U.S. and Soviet Views of NATO

The United States believed that the Soviet conquest of Western Europe would
integrate Soviet resources and European technology. This same fear led the Americans
and Europeans to fight Germany in two wars from two very different perspectives.
For my European colleagues, it meant the devastation of their countries, even if
NATO won the war. The Dutch, for example, had lived under occupation and even
preferred devastation over capitulation. For me, it was an abstract exercise, both in the
strange mathematics of the war games and in the more distant consequences of defeat
for my country. At the same time, there was a shared sense of urgency that formed the
foundation of our relationship: War might come at any moment, and we must consider
every possible move by the Soviets, and we must propose solutions.

The Americans were always haunted by Pearl Harbor. This is why 9/11 was such a
blow. The historical recollection of the attack out of nowhere was always close.
Doctrine said that we would have 30 days' warning of a Soviet attack. I had no idea
where this doctrine came from, and I suspected that it came from the fact that we
needed 30 days' warning to get ready. The Europeans did not fear the unexpected
attack; rather, they dreaded the expected attack for which preparations had not been
made. World War II haunted them differently. They were riveted on the fact that they
knew what was coming and failed to prepare. The Americans and Europeans were
united by paranoia, but their paranoia differed. For the Americans, staying out of
alliances and not acting soon enough was what caused the war. The United States was
committed to never repeating that mistake. NATO was one of many alliances. The
Americans love alliances.

It is interesting to recognize now what the Soviets were afraid of. When World War II
came to them, they had no allies. Their one ally, Germany, was the one that betrayed
them. The Soviets were both taken by surprise and fought alone until the Americans
and British chose to help them. The Soviets had played complex diplomacy with
traditional alliances, and when it failed the Soviet Union committed itself to never
again depending on others. It had the Warsaw Pact because the West had NATO, but it
did not depend on its allies. The Americans threw themselves into alliances as if an
alliance solved all problems. The Soviets, however, acted as if allies were the most
dangerous things of all.

In the end, when we look back on it, war was much less likely than we felt. The West
was not going to invade the East. On the defensive, the Soviets would have
annihilated our much smaller force. And, truth be told, no one had the slightest
interest in conquering Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union.

As for the Soviets, on paper they were an overwhelming force, but paper is a bad
place to think about war. The Soviets did not want a nuclear exchange, and in their
view the United States was itching to have one. They knew if they moved westward
there would be an exchange. Plus, it turned out, the Soviets would have a great deal of
trouble keeping their tanks fueled as they moved to the west. They had a plan for
laying plastic pipes from their fuel depots and rolling them out as the tanks advanced.
The problem was that the pipes never worked very well, and their fuel depots were
slated for annihilation by airstrikes, possibly the day before the war began officially.

All of this is past and I recollect it with a combination of pride -- not for what I did,
which was little, but for simply being there -- and chagrin about how little we
understood the enemy. Both sides were ready for war. Both sides were expecting
actions that the other side had no intentions of undertaking. But all of the plans that
we created were, in the end, irrelevant. The only way to win the game -- as the movie
War Games said -- was not to play it. Not surprisingly, the leaders -- Eisenhower and
Khrushchev, Nixon and Brezhnev, Reagan and Gorbachev -- knew it better than the
experts. It has always struck me as the world's great fortune that the two great
superpowers were the United States and the Soviet Union, who managed the Cold
War with meticulous care in retrospect. Imagine the European diplomats of 1914 or
1938 armed with nuclear weapons. It is easy to believe they would not have been as
cautious.

NATO's Legacy and Disarray

What NATO provided that was priceless, and the unexpected byproduct of all of this,
was a comradeship and unity of purpose on both sides of the North Atlantic. Even the
French, who withdrew from NATO's military command under Charles de Gaulle,
remained unofficially part of it. There was little question but that if "the balloon went
up" -- the enemy took action -- the French would be there, arguing over who would
command whom but fighting as hard as the Underground did before D-Day. But
through NATO, I got to know Germans at a time when knowing Germans was not
easy for me because of what my family went through during the war. I was forced to
distinguish Germany from Franz who could play the ukulele.

I had a son in 1976. When I went to Europe, I met an Italian and we became friends.
We would talk about what we would tell our families to do if the balloon went up. The
conversation -- strange and perhaps pathological as it was -- bound us together. It was
not war, it was not peace, but it was a place in the mind where the preparation for war
and the anxiety that it generated created strange forms, such as plans for the
movement of children in order to avoid a nuclear holocaust.

NATO, far more than a model United Nations or a Fulbright, allowed ordinary
Americans and Europeans to know each other and understand that with linked fates,
they were comrades in arms. After World War II, that was a profound lesson. Millions
of draftees experienced that and took the lesson home.

The end of the Cold War is no great loss, although my youth went with it. Losing the
unity of purpose that the Cold War gave Western Europe and the United States is of
enormous consequence. For a while, after 1991, the two sides went on as if the
alliance could exist even without an enemy. However, NATO started to fragment
when it lost its enemy. The passion for a mission gave NATO meaning, and the
passion was drained. The alliance continued to fragment when the United States
decided to invade Iraq for the second time. The vast majority of countries in NATO
supported the invasion -- a forgotten fact -- but France and Germany did not. This
damaged the United States' relations with Europe, particularly with the French, who
have a way of getting under the skins of Americans while appearing oblivious to it.
But the greater damage was within Europe -- the division between those who wanted
to maintain close relations with the United States, even if they thought the Iraq War
was a bad idea, and those who wanted Europe to have its own voice, distinct from the
Americans'.

The 2008 global financial contagion did not divide the Americans and Europeans
nearly as much as it divided Europe. The relationship between European countries --
less among leaders than among publics -- has become poisonous. Something terrible
has happened to Europe, and each country is holding someone else responsible. As
many countries are blaming Germany as Germany is blaming for the crisis.

There can be no trans-Atlantic alliance when one side is in profound disagreement

with itself over many things and the other side has no desire to be drawn into the
dispute. Nor can there be a military alliance where there is no understanding of the
mission, the enemy or obligations. NATO was successful during the Cold War
because the enemy was clear, there was consensus over what to do in each particular
circumstance and participation was a given. An alliance that does not know its
mission, has no meaningful plans for what problems it faces and stages come-as-you-
are parties in Libya or Mali, where invitations are sent out and no one RSVPs, cannot
be considered an alliance. The committees meet and staffs of defense ministers
prepare for conferences -- all of the niceties of an alliance remain. SACEUR is still an
American, the Science and Technology Committee produces papers, but in the end,
the commonality of purpose is gone.

My European colleagues and I were young, serious and dedicated. These are all
dangerous things because we lacked historical perspective (but then, so did many of
our elders). What we had together, however, was invaluable: a moment in history,
possibly the last, when the West stood shoulder to shoulder in defense of liberal
democracy and against tyranny. Still, I look back on the Soviets and then look at al
Qaeda and I miss the Soviets. I understood them in a way I can never understand al
Qaeda.

So I will be asked to speak about U.S-European relations. I will have to tell the
Europeans two things. The first is that there is no American relationship with Europe
because Europe is no longer an idea but a continent made up of states with diverse
interests. There are U.S.-French relations and U.S.-Russian relations and so on. The
second thing I will tell them is that there can be no confederation without a common
foreign and defense policy. You can have different tax rates, but if when one goes to
war they don't all go to war, they are just nations cooperating as they see fit.

I remember the camaraderie of young enlisted Americans and Europeans, and the
solidarity of planning teams. This was the glue that held Europe together. It was not
just the commanders and politicians, but the men who would have to cover each
other's movement that created the foundations of NATO's solidarity. My recollections
are undoubtedly colored with sentimentality, but I do not think I've done the idea an
injustice. NATO bound Europe together because it made the nations into comrades.
They were able to face Armageddon together. Europe without NATO's solidarity has
difficulty figuring out a tax policy. In the end, Europe lost more when NATO fell into
disuse than it imagined.

I don't know that NATO can exist without a Cold War. Probably not. What is gone is
gone. But I know my nostalgia for Europe is not just for my youth; it is for a time
when Western civilization was united. I doubt we will see that again.

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