The Shaky State of NATO

By Hedley Donovan

In the rolling Franconian countryside, near the point where West Germany, East Germany and Czechoslovakia meet, a U.S. Army helicopter is giving a brisk guided tour of the frontier. The helicopter cruises parallel to the ugly belt of East German barbed wire and minefields, staying about 100 yds. to the safe side. Occasionally the pilot banks sharply to avoid stray "peninsulas" of East German territory jutting out from the fencing. "You have to know this border by heart," says the pilot. "You could get yourself shot at." His passengers are appreciative. "We call those places 'Gotchas,' " he adds pleasantly. Back down on the ground the visitors are taken to a checkpoint to look up at the stark observation tower on the other side. We are asked not to make gestures, friendly or otherwise.

Only half a dozen miles to the rear, in the town of Hof, is the headquarters of the Second Armored Cavalry Regiment. The Second is at the very forward edge of the U.S. commitment to nato, some 3,800 men assigned to the surveillance of 400 miles of the Iron Curtain. They are screening, among other places, the "Hof Corridor" into upper Bavaria, a less likely battlefield than the north German plain or the Fulda Gap in central Germany but perhaps a tributary invasion route. A feisty Lieut. Colonel from Florence, Ala., Tony Brinkley, 39, thinks the Second could give "the Pact" (the Soviets plus Eastern Europe, as in Warsaw Pact) a lot of trouble. Some of the men in the tanks and armored personnel carriers are considerably more tentative, a not unusual nuance in an army.

Brinkley opens a briefing with the "Regimental Philosophy": "To Care the Most, Operate the Best, and Cover Ourselves with Glory." Sophisticates must be grateful that some middle-aged and even young men still find these words invigorating, right up on the line.

"To cover ourselves with glory." The very thought would sound like romantic nonsense to much of Western Europe, which today is being swept by a new wave of pacifism and neutralism. This sentiment, combined with economic strains within the alliance (all too evident at the Ottawa summit in late July), long-building political tensions, and the palpable growth of Soviet power, has brought the West once again to deep doubt about the future of NATO.

NATO-in-Crisis (the calmer variant: NATO-in-Disarray) has for long years been a staple of journalism and think-tank colloquia. The crisis story was always halfway true, because of the fundamental divergences and imbalances within the alliance, but now the story is also serious, because the desire to overcome the divergences has been significantly weakened.

NATO has now lasted 32 years, a remarkable feat for a very strange alliance, strung out from Hawaii to the Black Sea. The 15 members are the signatories of the North Atlantic Treaty, though one of them, France, seceded from the military organization (not technically an alliance) that implements the treaty --a massive inconvenience in NATO military planning. The heart of the treaty is Article 5: "The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all." The drafters of the treaty wisely refrained from trying to spell out what the parties would do in the event of such attack.

In the early years of NATO, its essential message was that the Soviets would have to face the overwhelming nuclear power of the U.S. if they attacked Western Europe. After the U.S. lost clear superiority in intercontinental (or "strategic") weapons, probably around 1970, and now that it may have lost even parity, the message is more clouded. Europeans increasingly doubt that any man in the Oval Office, in the face of some Soviet diplomatic-military blackmail move, would really risk all of the urban U.S. "to save Rotterdam." (For some reason Rotterdam has become the preferred metaphor, perhaps because Dutch attitudes toward NATO are so spongy.) Recent U.S. Presidents have declined, as they must, to relieve Soviet uncertainties on this point. Henry Kissinger, out of office, felt free to say in Brussels in 1979 that "it is absurd to base the strategy of the West on the credibility of the threat of mutual suicide." But a senior German general says the bedrock of NATO is still that "the risk to the aggressor must be incalculable," by which he means both immense and uncertain. That may be a better place to leave it.

But short of the Apocalypse, NATO has always been trafficking in impressions, perceptions, counterperceptions, ambiguities calculated and otherwise, or some would say smoke and mirrors. What do the Soviets think we think? What do they think we think they think? And what do they think? On our side there is the complication that we must play somewhat similar games with our allies, on the size of national defense budgets and contributions to NATO, weapons standardization, "host country" costs, etc., all in the full hearing of the adversary.

The immediate trigger for European anxieties about NATO is the TNF question--Theater Nuclear Forces. In December 1979, NATO members agreed to the deployment on the Continent of 572 U.S. Pershing II missiles and ground-launched cruise missiles, GLCMS or Glickums. These would be capable of reaching all of Eastern Europe and some of western Russia. These weapons were to counterbalance the SS-20s, which the Soviets had begun targeting on Western Europe. Without some such force, there would be a wide gap in the NATO arsenal between "tactical" or battlefield nuclear weapons, and the intercontinental weapons. The NATO TNF will not be ready for deployment until 1983. Meanwhile, the Soviets are steadily deploying the SS-20, and have about 750 warheads--each 15 times or so Hiroshima strength--in place today. In 15 minutes, these weapons could wipe out most of the major military targets and much of the urban fabric of Western Europe.

There are several other ways that Western Europe could be destroyed in a war, and this has been true almost since the end of the last war. But the TNF quite suddenly this spring became a focus of fear and suspicion. The fear is that far from deterring an SS-20 attack, the NATO intention to deploy weapons of similar range might actually provoke attack. The suspicion, nourished by the hard-line anti-Soviet rhetoric of the incoming Reagan Administration, is that the U.S. believes there could be such a thing as "victory" in a nuclear war and seeks the capacity to conduct the next war strictly in Europe. (An absurd mirror image of the absurd European hope that if there has to be an East-West war it will consist of salvos between the Soviet and American homelands.)

The Pershings and cruise missiles would be sited mainly in Germany. Thousands of short-range or "tactical" nuclear warheads have been harbored in Germany for years without stirring up great public concern. But the TNF has now ignited the opposition of the left-wing rank and file of the governing Social Democratic Party, important elements of church opinion, both Catholic and Evangelical, and various youth and environmental groups, fresh from campaigns against nuclear power.

Ironically, it was the Europeans and in particular the Germans who were pressing two years ago for a TNF buildup. They thought the Carter Administration was prone to policy zigzags, and they were disconcerted by some Washington stances and statements that seemed a shade too trusting of the Soviets and too complacent about the military balance--not that the Europeans wanted to do much more themselves about their own bit of the balance. It is very hard, of course, to please the Europeans, and especially the Germans. President Reagan and his people bother Europe whenever they sound at all belligerent. A German Foreign Ministry man was asked what on earth would be Schmidt's definition of the ideal U.S. President. After the briefest pause, he said: "Helmut Schmidt."

When the Carter Administration committed the U.S. to the TNF, it also pledged a "two-track" approach --good-faith negotiations with the Soviets on TNF limitations while we were preparing to deploy the weapons. Secretary Haig has now promised the beginning of such negotiations no later than Dec. 15. An important debate within the Reagan Administration, pitting very hardliners against the medium hardliners, has turned on whether the U.S. should try to get its allies to agree to the "threat assessment"--what NATO is up against, weapon by weapon, front by front--before working out the NATO negotiating position on the TNF. The firmer the NATO agreement on the threat, the firmer, presumably, the U.S. bargaining position on TNF. In a National Security Council meeting, President Reagan chose a more flexible approach--try for informal NATO consensus on the threat but go ahead in any case preparing to negotiate. Reagan has thus sided with those who fear that NATO cannot hold firm on the TNF commitment unless its public soon sees the West seriously negotiating for restraints on these weapons.

TNF gives the Soviets a great propaganda opening, which they are vigorously exploiting. Brezhnev in a recent speech accused the U.S. of evading negotiations while preparing pads for "hundreds more" missiles; he made no mention of his SS-20s. After negotiations do begin, the Soviets will doubtless accuse the U.S. of foot dragging, and will dangle before Western Europe hints and glimpses of plausible-sounding Soviet proposals. Even with the best will in the world, which is scarcely to be counted on, it will be very difficult to devise a TNF agreement acceptable to the West and the Soviets. An essential part of the Western negotiating position must be a high-level p.r. strategy--specific plans for informing the Western public of the overall military balance in Europe, and where the TNFs, theirs and ours, fit in.

The TNF tension will last at least two years, until NATO begins deploying the weapons with a governmental consensus, sacked by popular majorities--if this can be achieved--that the West has no other choice. During this period of severe political stress in NATO, there is a good prospect, paradoxically, that the military posture of NATO will be substantially improved. The U.S. Army units in Germany, now equivalent to five or six divisions, have come back quite away from their post-Viet Nam low. "The 'horror stories' have done their work," says one U.S Army general, referring to the widespread publicity on the bad state of morale and readiness in the middle and late 1970s. Horror stories can still be told, but not so many. Germany's Bundes-wehr--twelve divisions--is a very solid presence. The contingents of Britain, Canada, Belgium and Holland, though generally understrength and shockingly low in some supplies, are well trained and equipped for an initial battle.

What will be coming NATO's way, from the Reagan fiscal '82 and '83 military budgets, is just what the U.S. forces in Europe most need: more fuel and ammo, better housing, more training, better maintenance, more and better gear for defense against chemical warfare (routine in Soviet war games), more of all sorts of unglaraorous spare parts. Aircraft carriers and manned bombers always have their advocates on Capitol Hill, but at last there is a congressional constituency for maintenance and operations.

NATO today is strong enough to discourage any attempt at a surprise attack on the ground. The Pact would have to bring up bigger forces than those normally stationed in East Germany, and take visible mobilization measures, which would give NATO at least seven to ten days for its own mobilization steps and for anything that diplomacy could accomplish. If war did begin, NATO could sustain a conventional battle for at least a few weeks. The Pact, despite vast preponderance in manpower and conventional weapons, has its weaknesses and worries--e.g., the security of the lines of communication across Poland.

NATO reinforcement capabilities are crucial, and the new U.S. defense budgets are also addressing these needs. This means more air and sea-lift capacity from the U.S., and pre-positioning in Germany of combat equipment for the first wave of reinforcements. The purpose is to provide the maximum margin --again for diplomacy, if it could still function--before the terrible decisions on nuclear escalation would have to be faced.

The growth of Soviet power leads some Europeans to question whether any defense is worthwhile, whether it wouldn't be better to settle for "Finlandization." If the Americans want to spend a lot of money to try to deal with the problem--let them. The Reagan defense spending programs will really begin to bite into domestic programs twelve to 18 months from now. Congressmen hearing neutralist noises from Europe could well revive something like the Mansfield Amendment, the Montana Senator's annual proposal, back in the 1960s, for reduction of U.S. forces in Europe.

Cutbacks in European defense programs, as indicated in German budget decisions last week, will not enhance NATO popularity on Capitol Hill. It is indeed remarkable and in some,, ways outrageous that we keep a large American Army in Germany 36 years after the end of World War II, and make a greater defense effort (by most measurements) than the prosperous countries we are helping defend, while even in the most responsible European conversation one sometimes catches an implication that NATO is somehow more to our interest than theirs.

The fact is that NATO is almost as much in our interest as theirs, and that a vigorous NATO could be more important today than at any time since its earliest years. This is a dangerous "window" period in our relationship with the Soviet Union. Their military strength vis-`a-vis the West is at a maximum, even as their economic and political problems accumulate. By the mid-'80s, if we get there safely, the military balance should be looking healthier. By 1990 it might be safe to indulge in a little old-fashioned isolationism. --By Hedley Donovan

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