President Donald Trump continues to prove himself to be a diplomat who thinks out-of-the-box. The NATO summit in Brussels, despite all it’s testiness and recrimination by his detractors, brings up several realities that the alliance needs to deal with if it is to remain relevant as a contributing body to future world peace.
As a longtime analyst, NATO, in my observation, has been
morphing away from being a purely defensive alliance to becoming a de facto expansionist
one in the European theater. In concert with the economic agenda of the
European Union, NATO has been expanding its presence into eastern Europe coming
ever closer to the traditional influence sphere of Russia in the last 25 years.
As eastern European countries have discovered the attraction of Western
economic advantages, they have sought to join the military alliance as part of
their migration from what was the old Warsaw Pact. This has led to some interesting
political clashes in this expanded Europe that puts
active socialist experiments in Western Europe in league with recovering failed communist experiments in
Eastern Europe. Within this loose
union, this new European landscape has proven to have all of the hill and
valley complexities that have marked such matrices throughout history; and it
is a tenuous matrix as best, as the world has witnessed the players within the
EU/NATO system experimenting, sometimes dangerously, to define the future of
their sphere of influence.
All of this ebullience has not gone unnoticed on the eastern
border of the new NATO where the power shifts into the hands of mother Russia.
In the minuet of set piece
warfare that forms the
long wave undertone
of conflict for Europe ever since the end of the Hundred Years War, these
subtle border shifts expanding eastward have the net effect of an invasion not
unlike the threat of Operation Barbarosa was to the motherland’s Steppes in the
mid-20th Century.
Russia, for its part, has sought to adjust and consolidate
its latter day version of a Maginot line making shifts to territorial
alignments to fix haphazardly drawn borders from the aftermath of the Cold War.
This has caused, and will continue to cause, a growing tension between the
evolving nouveau Europe, a $14 trillion GDP federation, and the prideful but
poor order of magnitude poorer eastern empire of Vladimir Putin. This economic
disparity makes for a very real and volatile border tension reality.
But wait. Let’s take a step back for a second from our
perspective as the outside third party. What is the national interest of the
United States when looking at the evolution of these two very important spheres
of influence that characterize most of the northern half of the Eurasian
continent?
Clearly, we see value in both of these power spheres. We
have a long history of interaction with both western Europe and Russia. We have
cultural and strategic reasons for wanting to have productive relations with both. Simple pragmatism
dictates that EU/NATO and
Russia are both equally vital to our strategy to ensure global stability
and world peace. These two spheres, along with China, are the fundamental building blocks of a
likely future northern alliance that could at
some point replace the peacekeeping function of the United Nations; an organization now suffering
from the ill effects of too much autocratic world mediocrity and
prejudice disguised as international democracy. Therefore, it does fall to the United States
to be the bringer of tough love to the alliance.
And that is precisely what the president of the United
States did at the NATO summit. President Trump recognized the self-interest of EU/NATO
Europe to build a sphere of influence within which its evolving federation can
grow. He then pointed out that if this is the aim of this new EU, it would have
to fund it’s military border with the Russians much more indigenously. In his
policy position, it is apparent to me that Donald Trump did the calculus of
deterrence. It’s not that hard. He spelled out to the Western Europeans the
simple formula that a 4% of GDP commitment to military spending is what it
would take to sustain a fully credible deterrent of the type that would
stabilize the border between the Western and Russian spheres of influence. It’s
a simple global stability equation; one that both the Europeans and the
Russians can, and very well do, understand. Mr. Trump, who if you haven’t been
reading Twitter, understands that plain and direct messaging gets results when
it comes to asserting influence, set the 4% line because it is a plain language
message that even economists would understand. Yes, that was a dig. Here is the
simple math. 4% of the GDP
of Western Europe in aggregate spent on defense is roughly 50%
of Russia’s GDP. It creates the conditions for resilient stability; an overwhelming
deterrent advantage in the mission to stabilize a sphere of influence border.
Mr. Trump further recognizes the dangerous nuance that the
spending pain by NATO has to be equitably distributed among all of the members.
It creates this business concept called “buy in”. It is astute acumen by Mr.
Trump. Every student of military history that has studied Europe knows that a
failure to ensure parity in participation eventually leads to disastrous outbreaks
of European warfare. Don’t repeat the League of Nations mistake; it’s bad. It
was clear to me in Mr. Trump’s messaging that he had thought long and hard
about far more complex elements than people give him credit for. The summit
ended with grudging pledges of new commitment. President Trump called it a
success; probably more of a strategic success that an everyone feels good one. As
they say, sweat equity.
Back to all about “US”. What does that buy the national
interest agenda of the United States? In global stability, everything is an
enabler. Things are a turn within a tun within a turn. The next logical step is, for anyone
paying attention, already
coming into play.
On July
15 in Helsinki, Mr. Trump
will meet with Mr. Putin in what will be a
private bilateral relations discussion between two major military powers and
world affairs influences. The USA will ponder thoughts with the nation most critical to enabling
global stability in the lower 2/3 landmass of planet earth. It’s a
tumultuous co-dependency for sure; but then again, so was perpetuating a Cold
War for decades while waiting to find out if the Reich would rise again? What?
You didn’t think that was a big part of why we both did it?
Economically, it’s another order of magnitude disparity. The
US with it’s over $16 trillion GDP dwarf’s Russia; although, the two leaders do
share parallel concerns about certain portions of their federations being
economically problematic. Housekeeping is a universal pain it the butt. Still, President
Trump will be bringing the vast richness of the United States, who’s GDP as a
single nation equals and exceeds the entirety of Western Europe’s; and is
matched by only one other trading partner, China, to the chat room. Economically,
it will be a giant sitting down to talk to a dwarf, a very prideful dwarf.
Militarily it will be a unique peer like no other on this planet having a heart
to heart discussion about what to do to bring peace to troubled regions in the
world; with the combined imperial power to make those changes happen.
Mr. Trump has set a very interesting stage indeed.
Parting Shot
I understand that the news media is captive to reporting the
blow-by-blow minutia of events as they unfold. But this is not the way to view
these events. This is more like watching the story arc of a grand play
unfold. Ultimately, it is left to us, the citizens,
to discern the movie
from the soundbites.
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