News Journal: Will tragedy finally bring NATO cooperation?

As I write this, there has been no definitive answer to who was responsible for the horrific shooting down of the Malaysian Airline plane over eastern Ukraine on Thursday. But if it does turn out that Russian-backed separatists were in some way responsible, something positive might come out of a great tragedy. Our reluctant NATO allies may finally agree to the strong sanctions against Russia that President Obama has been urging.
That would be good news for an alliance that has become dangerously less relevant over the past couple of decades.
For most of my life, our NATO alliance with the countries of Western Europe has been the one constant of our foreign policy. Throughout the Cold War era, we depended on a strong NATO to face down the Warsaw Pact military threat. We shared not just a common potential enemy but also a common belief in democratic values. There were always some strains in the relationship, but, until the fall of the Berlin Wall, NATO was a remarkably unified and effective force.
The first cracks in the alliance became evident during NATO’s bombing campaign in the Balkans in the 1990s. NATO had grown to 16 members by then, and the campaign was greatly weakened when even tactical decisions had to be approved by all member foreign ministries.
The problems became even more pronounced when NATO invaded Afghanistan in 2002. European members all agreed with the invasion and its goals, and to a greater or lesser degree provided troops. But most did so only after attaching caveats to where and how their troops would be deployed. Germany’s parliament, for example, mandated its troops be used in peacekeeping and reconstruction efforts in the relatively peaceful Northern provinces.
Throughout the first years of this century, and especially since the economic downturn of 2008, virtually all European NATO countries have drastically cut their defense budgets.
The effect of this could be seen during the bombing campaign in Libya, where only eight of the now 28-member alliance actually fought – and some of them actually ran out of ammunition.
The United States has always provided way more than its share to the alliance, but the new reality is that the Europeans have become – and no other word is quite as descriptive – freeloaders. As Jochen Bittner, a political editor for the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit, wrote on Monday in the New York Times, “we’re happy to have the protection [of America’s nuclear umbrella] while being still happier not to have to carry the responsibility.”
That’s not the kind of alliance that was, until now, up to a strong response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and attack on Ukraine. Economic sanctions do work, but to do so they require consistent, unified sanctions by all the countries dealing with the target country. That’s how a unified world ended apartheid in South Africa. That’s clearly the best way to stop Russian aggression against its neighbors.
When President Obama first called for economic sanctions against Russia, all of the European leaders said the right things. They would not tolerate Russia’s aggression.
Sure. But Putin knew better. He bet that the Europeans would never pay much more than lip service to sanctions, and went right ahead with the occupation of Crimea and sending Special Forces to destabilize cities in eastern Ukraine.
I never believed the Europeans would actually impose the strong sanctions necessary, but I have been stunned at just how hypocritical they have been. Six days after the United States announced economic sanctions against Russia, Joe Kaesar, CEO of Germany’s giant engineering conglomerate’s Siemans, was in Moscow telling Putin, “Siemens will continue its work on the localization of production and industrialization of your country.” Reuters reported that “Kaeser said the German government knew about his trip in advance and had not pressured him.”
The Germans were just doing what other European countries have done in the past. Back in 2010, Defense Secretary Robert Gates urged his French counterpart not to proceed with a planned sale of two French-made amphibious assault ships to Russia because, he said, “it would send the wrong message to Russia and to our allies in Central and East Europe.” France went ahead with the sale and has recently begun training Russian sailors on the ships. Business is business, right?
Just last week, the Italian Foreign Minister Frederica Mogherini invited Putin to the October summit of European Union and Asian leadership in Milan. What makes this especially disheartening is that Ms. Mogherini is a front-runner to become the EU’s foreign policy minister.
Some keep calling for the United States to institute even tougher unilateral sanctions against Russia. But in a truly global economy, even the world’s greatest economic power cannot effectively act alone. Sanctions can only work if we have the cooperation of our European friends.
Let’s hope that we now begin to get that cooperation.
Find all of former U.S. Senator Ted Kaufman’s columns at tedkaufman.com.