Nato's Non-Nuclear Needs

Abstract

H ELMUT VON MOLTKE argues that an alliance never really achieves what is militarily desirable; individual allies extend themselves only if and when they think they can gain a political advantage. NATO has been struggling since its formation in 1949 to become an exception to this proposition. It has always been true that neither the United States nor the rest of the Alliance could build a satisfactory defense posture without the other. Yet, during the period when the heart of NATO's defenses rested on the commitment of United States military power, Alliance strategy, forces and resource commitments had the simplicity of a relatively single focus. Today, this focus has become more diffuse. The remarkable growth in Western Europe's economic, political and military strength has shifted relationships among its members and, in recent years, the Atlantic Alliance has seemed to become considerably more vulnerable to the infirmities noted by von Moltke. The NATO Alliance owes its creation to a series of Communist aggressive actions after World War 11-in Eastern Europe, Azerbaijan, Greece, Turkey, Czechoslovakia and Berlin. These events forced Western Europe and the United States to recognise, first, that Communist tactics for gaining world-wide hegemony extend beyond political and economic measures to include use or threats of military force and, second, that Western interests could not be assured without military forces capable of deterring or otherwise frustrating Communist takeover attempts. This common realisation led to the NATO concept of a collective military defense for the territory and population of its members. Like any other alliance, NATO involves a complex of historical, economic, political, psychological and military factors, and its effectiveness suffers whenever these factors get out of equilibrium. Though the military element cannot be looked at in isolation, it is at the core of the Alliance. Today, the military forces available to NATO fall short of those needed for a sensible Alliance defense. In Ottawa this spring, the NATO Ministers acknowledged the absence of a balanced relationship between military strategy, forces and resources, and directed a study of these questions in light of the ' need to achieve a satisfactory balance between nuclear and conventional arms'. Nuclear concerns have centered chiefly on how best to reconcile military effectiveness with broader Alliance