Making the Alliance Work: The United States and Western Europe , and: Conventional Deterrence , and: NATO Under Attack: Why the Western Alliance Can Fight Outnumbered and Win in Central Europe without Nuclear Weapons (review)

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS 251 Making the Alliance Work: The United States and Western Europe. By Gregory Treverton. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985. pp. 242. Conventional Deterrence. By John J. Mearsheimer. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985. pp. 296. NATO Under Attack: Why the Western Alliance Can Fight Outnumbered and Win in CentralEurope without Nuclear Weapons. By F. W. von Mellenthin and R. H. S. Stolfi, with E. Sobik. Durham, N.C: Duke University Press, 1984. pp. 161. Reviewed by Lawrence Friedman, a Washington attorney and graduate of the Woodrow Wihon School at Princeton. The constellation of bilateral and multilateral relationships between the United States and Western Europe that comprises that amorphous entity, the Western Alliance, has proven remarkably durable. So immutable does the association seem that it is commonly referred to simply as "the Alliance." While other regional security arrangements patterned after nato have withered or dissolved (cento and seato come to mind), the original Alliance endures, despite predictions of imminent collapse under the weight of conflicting policies among its members. In recent years reports of nato's impending demise have been widespread. Disputes over deployment of modernized theater nuclear weapons, fears that the United States may not be willing to put its own homeland at risk in defense of its allies, and such discordant incidents as the invasion of Grenada or the Achille Lauro affair, are adverted to as portents of Alliance disintegration. As Gregory Treverton correctly points out, conflicts have marked nato since its inception. The perceived threat of further Soviet advancement into Europe, like the German threat that united the Grand Alliance in World War II, concentrates the minds of Europeans and Americans wonderfully. The Alliance, however, remains a compact forged in response to a specific strategic threat by nations with widely diverging perceptions about the nature and extent of that threat. These nations have conflicting political, military, and economic goals within and without Europe as well. Treverton's Making the Alliance Work is a useful survey of the strains that have bent but never broken nato. They range from conflicts over European economic cooperation with the Soviet bloc in the 1950s and disagreements over a proposed multilateral nuclear force in the 1960s to the disputes of the present day. The book usefully describes these past conflicts and points to the factors that have always contributed to Alliance discord. Each ally's national interests, capabilities, perceptions, and domestic political constraints differ from those of its neighbors. Two allies have had armed clashes with each other; two others maintain independent nuclear forces; another has enshrined in its constitution and bound up in its notions of political legitimacy, closer relations, and eventual reunification with a member of the opposing alliance. Treverton's theme is the inevitable clash of interests and what he regards as an avoidable clash of perceptions. Europe will always be geographically closer to the Soviet Union than the United States and so will have different economic goals (trade with the Warsaw Pact is a more viable and alluring proposition, and dependence on Arab oil is greater) and even different military interests (a defense in depth may reduce the need for nato to escalate to a nuclear conflict 252 SAIS REVIEW that places the American homeland at risk, but such a strategy will wreak additional destruction upon Europe). Other factors (the United States is a heterogeneous nation with global interests that often clash with those ofits allies, as in the case of Suez) exacerbate the asymmetries. The divergent interests will remain a constant feature of the Alliance. What can be changed, Treverton argues, is the counterproductive dynamics of Alliance conflicts that result from faulty perception and communication, the classic recent examples being the theater nuclear deployment and enhanced radiation weapon disputes of the late 1970s and early 1980s. This type of misperception and mismanagement is, in Treverton's view, avoidable but ultimately not fatal to an alliance that continues to regard deterring a Soviet invasion as a common and (more or less) urgent task. Treverton's study is a useful reminder of what makes the Alliance survive these unavoidable conflicts. If there is any fault in this comprehensive study (other than such minor errors as...