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***AFF***AdvantagesDemocracyWithdrawal solves support for authoritarian regimesCarpenter 16 – senior fellow for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. He is the author of ten books and the contributing editor of ten books on international affairs, including four on NATO, Ted Galen, 8/25. “NATO is an Institutional Dinosaur.” ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****It is time for the United States finally to conduct Dulles’s agonizing reappraisal. The only way to change the long-standing, frustrating dynamic is for the United States to make clear by actions — not just words — that it will no longer tolerate free riding on America’s military posture. That means, at the very least, gradually withdrawing all U.S. ground forces from Europe and drastically downsizing the presence of air and naval forces. It also means ending Washington’s insistence on U.S. domination of collective defense efforts through its NATO leadership. Indeed, the United States needs to abandon its myopic opposition to the European Union developing an independent security capability.Policymakers need to take a hard look at NATO for two other reasons. First, allies are supposed to enhance America’s security, but recent additions to NATO have done the opposite. Most of the newer members fall into two categories — the irrelevant and the dangerous. In the former category are countries like Montenegro, with a tiny population and economy and a minuscule military. How Montenegro is supposed to help the United States in the event of a military crisis is truly a mystery.But at least Montenegro has few enemies and no great power enemies. The same cannot be said of the three Baltic republics, which are on bad terms with Russia. The only thing worse than committing the United States to defend a small, weak, largely useless ally is doing so when that ally is highly vulnerable to another major power. Yet that is what Washington has foolishly done with the Baltic republics. RAND analysts conclude that a concerted Russian attack would overrun the Baltic states in about 60 hours. That would leave the United States (as NATO’s leader) with an ugly choice between a humiliating capitulation or a perilous escalation.Worse, hawks in the United States advocate making defense commitments to Georgia and Ukraine, which are even more sensitive geographic locales to Russia. Alliances with such client states are perfect transmission belts to transform a local, limited conflict into a global showdown between nuclear-armed powers.Second, although the United States likes to portray NATO as an alliance of liberal democracies, the reality is now murkier. There are disturbingly authoritarian trends in several NATO countries. Those trends are most pronounced in Turkey, which in the aftermath of July’s abortive military coup has become a barely disguised dictatorship under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. But authoritarian developments have also taken place in Hungary and to a lesser, but still worrisome, extent in Poland, where elected leaders are now cracking down on political opponents and undermining democratic institutions. Does America really want to risk its security to protect such allies, especially when it purports to lead an alliance of enlightened democracies?The world has changed a great deal since the stark days of the early Cold War when Washington felt compelled to defend a weak, demoralized democratic Europe from a powerful, menacing totalitarian adversary. It is long past time for European countries to take responsibility for their own defense — and for the overall security of their region. U.S. leaders should move beyond the usual futile rhetorical quest for burden sharing and take substantive steps toward burden shifting. Those steps must include reducing America’s military presence in the region, especially ground forces, and preventing any further ill-considered expansion of the alliance.But those are only the necessary first steps. At a more basic level, the United States needs to consider whether the Article 5 provision that an attack on one NATO member constitutes an attack on all really serves America’s best interests any longer. Incurring risks, even grave risks, to protect a democratic and economic power center from a rapacious totalitarian adversary was one thing. To incur similar risks to protect marginal client states along the border of a second-tier regional power (which is today’s Russia) is quite another. The justification for the latter is far less compelling.Not only should policymakers revisit the wisdom of the Article 5 obligation, they need to consider whether American interests are best served by the United States remaining in the alliance at all. No foreign policy institution is sacred or permanent. NATO has had a very long run — nearly seven decades. It emerged victorious in the Cold War, and there is a compelling argument that it should have been given a dignified retirement on that occasion. It is time to rectify that error and promptly begin the multi-year process of transferring security responsibilities for the European region to a Europeans-only organization. That would prepare the way for a U.S. withdrawal from NATO if future American leaders decide such a step is appropriate.Euro Fill InL: NATO/EU tradeoffNATO centrality trades off with a strong European Union Elie Perot (2019), PhD Researcher European Foreign & Security Policy at the Institute for European Studies, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Master in Public Affairs from Sciences Po Paris (Summa cum laude, 2014) and a M.A. in European Political and Administrative Studies from the College of Europe, Bruges (Chopin Promotion, 2015-2016), “The art of commitments: NATO, the EU, and the interplay between law and politics within Europe’s collective defence architecture”, European Security, 28:1, 40-65, DOI: 10.1080/09662839.2019.1587746, tog, ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****This evolution of Europe’s collective defence architecture has not attracted, however, as much attention as it could – which is all the more unfortunate given the renewed salience of this issue in the present geopolitical context. In NATO, collective defence is clearly back to the fore since the Ukraine crisis (Deni 2017) although, meanwhile, the Trump administration has repeatedly sowed doubts about its willingness to honour NATO's mutual defence pledge (Shear et al. 2017, Sullivan 2018, Barnes and Cooper 2019). More surprisingly maybe, the topic of collective defence has also started to gain political traction within the EU itself. The 2016 EU Global Strategy (EUGS) proclaims that the first objective of the Union is to “promote peace and guarantee the security of its citizens and territory”. The Global Strategy adds that “[t]his means that Europeans, working with partners, must have the necessary capabilities to defend themselves and live up to their commitments to mutual assistance and solidarity enshrined in the Treaties”, i.e. Art.42.7 TEU and Art.222 TFEU. However, in this document, it is also recognised that, “[w]hen it comes to collective defence, NATO remains the primary framework for most Member States” (High Representative 2016, pp. 7, 14, 19–20).US withdrawal would lead to Europe to strengthen its mutual defense treatiesElie Perot (2019), PhD Researcher European Foreign & Security Policy at the Institute for European Studies, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Master in Public Affairs from Sciences Po Paris (Summa cum laude, 2014) and a M.A. in European Political and Administrative Studies from the College of Europe, Bruges (Chopin Promotion, 2015-2016), “The art of commitments: NATO, the EU, and the interplay between law and politics within Europe’s collective defence architecture”, European Security, 28:1, 40-65, DOI: 10.1080/09662839.2019.1587746, tog, ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****In Europe, turning to NATO and to its mutual defence clause inscribed in the Article 5 of the Washington Treaty has appeared for decades as the natural answer. But these days may be over. To everyone’s surprise, in the wake of the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, the decision of the French government was rather to invoke the “EU mutual assistance clause”1 (Daalder 2015, Guibert and Stroobants 2015, Biscop 2016).At the time, this first concrete involvement of the EU in the domain of collective defence has not functioned as a catalytic episode (Tardy 2018, pp. 12–13), but this issue is now returning to the frontstage. For instance, the French President announced in August 2018 that he wanted to “spearhead a project to strengthen European solidarity in security matters” by giving “more substance” to the EU mutual assistance clause, saying that “France [was] ready to enter into concrete discussions with European States on the nature of reciprocal solidarity and mutual defence relations under our Treaty commitments”. At this occasion, Emmanuel Macron also put into doubt the United States’ security guarantee to Europe, echoing previous remarks made in the same vein by German Chancellor Angela Merkel (Macron 2018, Merkel 2018).The legal basis already exists, in effect, for the Union to play a role not only in crisis management but also in the field of collective defence. Since the Lisbon Treaty, two legal commitments to collective defence bind EU member states together, namely the EU mutual assistance clause (article 42, paragraph 7, of the Treaty on European Union), and the EU solidarity clause (article 222 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union).2 In Europe, those two commitments come therefore on top of the key defence clause enshrined within the Washington Treaty.Formal Legal Commitments ImportantElie Perot (2019), PhD Researcher European Foreign & Security Policy at the Institute for European Studies, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Master in Public Affairs from Sciences Po Paris (Summa cum laude, 2014) and a M.A. in European Political and Administrative Studies from the College of Europe, Bruges (Chopin Promotion, 2015-2016), “The art of commitments: NATO, the EU, and the interplay between law and politics within Europe’s collective defence architecture”, European Security, 28:1, 40-65, DOI: 10.1080/09662839.2019.1587746, tog, ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****Is devoting attention to the respective collective defence mandates of the EU and of NATO worth the effort? When push comes to shove, will not political necessities prevail over legal niceties? Admittedly, formal commitments are no panacea. Nations have frequently joined wars and effectively fought side by side with others, even if they were not to bound by any commitment to do so before the outbreak of hostilities and, reciprocally, states have not always respected what they had pledged in their formal alliances (Leeds et al. 2000, Berkemeier and Fuhrmann 2018).Nonetheless, strictly opposing law and politics is often misleading because “all law is an instrument of policy broadly conceived” (Henkin 1979, p. 90). Put differently, a legal commitment is not an end in itself. “The art of commitment”, in Thomas Schelling’s words, consists indeed in “[persuading] enemies or allies that one would fight abroad, under circumstances of great cost and risk” (Schelling 2008, p. 36). But doing so “requires more than a military capability. It requires projecting intentions. It requires having those intentions, even deliberately acquiring them, and communicating them persuasively to make other countries behave” (Schelling 2008, p. 36). The solemn commitments in which countries enter when they subscribe to collective defence treaties is precisely such an instrument to “communicate persuasively” one’s intentions and to influence those of other parties effectively, or at least more effectively than if those commitments had not been formalised into legal documents. In turn, this added credibility provided by legal commitments simply comes from the fact that the respect of legality as such remains a concern in the conduct of international affairs. Although states’ deference for the “sanctity” of treaties should not be overblown, it is also true that states try to live up to their legal obligations, or to appear as such, and, what is also important, other states equally know this. A formal commitment, embodied in a mutual defence clause, serves in sum both to reassure allies and to discourage potential aggressors because reneging on them would likely imply a higher loss of reputation (e.g. Morrow 2000).Besides, at the domestic level, the existence of a legal commitment can be necessary for getting the constitutional approval for actions abroad. For instance, after the 2015 Paris attacks, German authorities have justified, in front of their own parliament, their demands for a greater involvement of their military forces in overseas missions notably on the ground of the legal basis created by France’s invocation of Art.42.7 TEU (Federal Government of Germany 2015, Langland 2016). Reciprocally, stressing the existence of an international obligation to come to the assistance of one’s allies can be of some importance for a government that would have to deal with a reluctant domestic public. In fact, an opponent could precisely mount an ambiguous challenge in order to sow discord among partners about whether and how collective defence should be exercised. Since the Ukraine crisis, NATO allies and EU member states have feared that Russia might use for instance “hybrid warfare”, enabling Moscow to accomplish its political objectives while staying below the radar of NATO and EU legal commitments in the domain of collective defence (Reisinger and Golts 2014, Sari 2018).In sum, law is the product of politics in the sense that it is made by political actors, for political ends. But in turn, legal imperatives, once established, often have political and strategic implications because they constrain governments’ freedom of action. In the domain of collective defence too, law shapes in part state behaviour.M: PeaceA strong and cohesive European Union is key to peace—its failure triggers European nationalism and global economic collapse.Belin, 2019 (CéLia Belin, visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, 4-2-2019, "NATO matters, but the EU matters more," Brookings, , DoA 6/23/2020, DVOG) ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****Americans who are truly committed to the idea of a Europe “whole and free” should realize that NATO is no longer the main spinal cord of the European project; the European Union is. When George H. W. Bush?coined?the phrase in 1989, the level of intra-European integration was arguably on par with the defense alliance as providing stability and prosperity to the continent, and Americans were still heavily involved in both. Remember, this was pre-Maastricht Treaty, before the EU itself. Three decades of political, economic, and monetary integration later—and 16 new members later—the European Union is deeply entrenched in the lives of Europeans.Today, 28 European democracies, which used to compete among themselves and sometimes fight to their ultimate demise, now choose to pool sovereignty and have their interests communally discussed and collectively defended. The EU is a power multiplier: Every one of the 28 has a stronger individual voice because they stand together in the European Union. Small European countries, whose geography and demography would force them to cave to stronger neighbors, can now count on the solidarity of the group—as illustrated by the?unwavering support?for Ireland by the other 26 member states and the Brussels institutions in the Brexit negotiations.The neighbors of the European Union are no fools. Those who seek prosperity and stability hope to join the EU club. Those who reject the model set by the West and liberal democracies feel threatened by the European Union—it is the?prospect?of Ukraine moving into the EU’s orbit through an Association Agreement that triggered Russia’s hostility and ultimate aggression, not NATO. The power of attraction of the European Union, at least as much as the security guarantees of NATO, has helped stabilize Eastern Europe.Despite these realities, Americans often indulge in a scornful disregard for the EU. Recently, benign contempt has taken an ugly turn. Since taking office, President Trump and his administration have attacked the European Union and individual member states repeatedly, with near impunity.At first sight, American complaints appear to be centered on the issue of Europe’s trading power, which rivals that of the United States. For Donald Trump, the EU was created to “take advantage of” the United States and it is “worse than China.” Early in his mandate, the American president pushed for tariffs on steel and aluminum and threatened to go after automobiles, until a meeting with EU Commission President Juncker?put a brake?on the downward spiral.However, a deeper look reveals a fundamental ideological contention: The brand of nationalism and populism that defines this administration stands in direct contradiction with the very existence of a liberal, supra-national body such as the European Union.As?laid?out by the State Department’s Director of Policy Planning Kiron Skinner in December 2018, the administration holds the view that “international institutions have steadily encroached on the rights of sovereign nations” and that “nothing can replace the nation-state as the guarantor of democratic freedoms and national interests”—an indictment of the EU’s very existence. The ideological clash is reminiscent of older times.?Addressing a crowd?in Warsaw in July 2017, President Trump likened the European Union to the Soviet Union, criticizing a similar “steady creep of government bureaucracy that drains the vitality and wealth of the people,” an equivalency popular in?conservative circles. Similarly, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo suggested in a December 2018?speech?in Brussels that EU bureaucrats were not really working for the interests of European citizens.By making no secret of his personal support for euroskeptic forces, Donald Trump has become an active political opponent of the European Union in its existing form. He?celebrated?the Brexit vote,?expressed?support for far-right candidate Marine Le Pen ahead of the French presidential elections,?disparaged?Angela Merkel repeatedly, and appeared to?rejoice?at the Yellow Vests protest movement. He?criticized?Theresa May for negotiating a “soft” Brexit, and even recommended to Emmanuel Macron that?France leave?the EU. The American president has nominated ambassadors famously?critical?of the EU, and his administration demoted the EU ambassador’s status without notification, before?reversing?under criticism.As Donald Trump torments both the Atlantic alliance and the European Union, all rush to NATO’s bedside, and few worry about the EU. Truthfully, Atlanticists love to love NATO. It stands for values, valor, unity, solidarity. NATO won the Cold War. Celebrating NATO is celebrating the military. It is much harder to love the EU, the bureaucracy, the politics, the regulations. The EU lacks democratic appeal, and its slow-moving decisionmaking process create many frustrations. Unlike in NATO, the United States sits on the sidelines, it does not control who enters, or who stays in. The EU is also an economic peer competitor, a tough trading partner, and a sovereign international actor, at times?non-compliant?with American demands.Yet, the prospect of an implosion of the European Union should be as unbearable and intolerable to an American audience as the dissolution of NATO—or more so, as no one wants to see the demons of nationalism back on the European continent, along with a global economic catastrophe. Benign neglect is counterproductive; but a policy openly hostile to the European Union is a grave mistake. In a world where?the strongmen are striking back, Americans should not forget that the European Union stands with the United States when it matters most. The NATO summit in Washington this week should be the occasion to recall not only the utmost importance of the Atlantic alliance to trans-Atlantic security, but also the crucial contribution of the European Union to peace, unity, and ultimately security for Europe and beyond.M: RussiaPerceptions of EU weakness drive Russia to isolationism instead of cooperationJoseph Dobbs, 2018, Research Fellow and Project Manager at the European Leadership Network, “Proud and Prejudiced: The risk of stereotypes in Russia-West relations” ELN, Policy Brief 29 January 2018, accessed 6/16/20 *tog ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****In the run up to, and in the aftermath of, the UK’s decision to leave the European Union Russia was not alone in thinking that the bloc had a bleak future. Perpetual crisis for several years, due to, amongst other factors, sovereign debt and significant migration flows, encouraged regular debates over the future of the EU. Russia however arguably bought into this narrative more than others.35 Developments in the EU in 2017, however, demonstrate that while the bloc is not without its challenges, talk of its impending demise was overblown. The oversimplification of the EU as being close to collapse encourages Russian attempts to divide the EU and discourages Moscow from seeking better relations with the bloc. This is understandable. Why work hard to develop closer relations with a body that will collapse, especially when it is complex and difficult to deal with?36 Far better to deal with individual, and sometimes friendlier, governments by leveraging bilateral relationships at the expense of the multilateral. Moreover, this stereotype encourages Russian attempts to not only hope for certain political outcomes in the West, such as the election of Russia friendly governments, but actively seek to promote them. This could include the spreading of disinformation and support for anti-Europe or pro-Russian organisations. The result of this approach, in part desired and in part unintended, has been to further alienate Brussels. A Russia which is less inclined towards closer relations with the EU (as is arguably in its interest)37 is more inclined to pivot away from Europe and towards increased isolationism or closer partnerships in Asia.38 Perceived EU weakness is not the only contributing factor to what has been a long-standing intellectual trend in Russia, but it does add legitimacy to it. Europe can defend itself plus Russia defensive not aggressiveDoug Bandow (2019), senior fellow at the Cato Institute, former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan, “The Outdated Alliance? On NATO’s 70th anniversary, it is time for burden shedding—not burden sharing.”, Foreign Policy, April 3, 2019 accessed 6/20/20 *tog ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****Yet Europe does not really need U.S. military support. Although scholars like the Heritage Foundation’s Luke Coffey and Daniel Kochis have argued that Russian resurgence makes NATO as important to European stability as ever, that is false. The continent matches the U.S. economy and possesses a larger population. Meanwhile, European states have roughly 10 times the economic strength and four times the population of Russia. They collectively spend four times as much as Moscow on armed forces. Obviously, collective action can be difficult, and European governments need to be smarter about their spending. However, a sense of urgency would overcome many of these problems.But that doesn’t exist. Few Europeans perceive a serious enough threat to spend more on the military. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo acknowledged as much when he recently told a conservative group that when he asks the Europeans what they are prepared to do about defense, they say, “It’s tough. Our voters just really don’t like to spend money on defense.” Although European countries did start to spend more after Russia intervened in Ukraine, the uptick has barely exceeded economic growth. As a percentage of GDP, Europe’s military outlays remain below those of seven years ago. In 2014, the number, which includes Canada, fell to 1.4 percent; last year, it was 1.47 percent.The future is not likely to be much better.To be fair, parts of Europe, especially on NATO’s edge, do appear to be more worried about the possibility of Russian aggression. But even if Russian President Vladimir Putin, despite his country’s economic woes, wanted to go after the Baltic states or Poland, he would risk further economic isolation and almost certain military retaliation. The Baltics’ ethnic Russian minorities do not look to Moscow as a protector and have shown little interest in securing its rule. Poland’s history promises an ever hostile population if conquered.Perhaps that is why, according to Michael Kofman, a researcher at CNA, Russian military forces are not deployed for combat in the Baltic region. “Despite provocative air and naval activity concentrated in the area,” he wrote in 2017, “Russian forces based there are principally defensive, and aging to boot.” That could change, of course, but any attack would require massive redeployments. There would be no cakewalk.A2 Allied ProlifNot unique—global proliferation inevitable from Iran, South Korea, and Japan pulling out of the NPTSokolski, 2020, <executive director of The Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, Henry>, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist, The NPT turns 50: Will it get to 60?, pp 63-64, JPK****NCC’20 Novice Packet****What makes much more nuclear proliferation more likely? Three trends, all of which have received too little attention. First is the decay of nuclear taboos. Long relied upon by anti-nuclear weapons groups in states such as Japan as a legal-political barrier to nuclear weapons acquisition, the NPT risks becoming a poster child for such decay. In 2005, the Bush administration announced it would share nuclear technology and uranium fuel with India in violation of the NPT’s prohibition on such commerce, and the world mostly went along. In 2018, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman publicly announced in a 60 Minutes interview that Saudi Arabia would immediately pursue nuclear weapons if he thought Iran had them. Not long after, South Korean legislators, anxious that the United States might reduce troop levels there, called on their government to develop options to make nuclear weapons. Both countries are members of the NPT. Iran has also repeatedly threatened to withdraw from the treaty. But if Tehran does, so too would Saudi Arabia. Turkey, and perhaps Egypt, Algeria, and the United Arab Emirates, might later follow suit. All of these states except the United Arab Emirates insist they have an inalienable right to enrich uranium and to recycle plutonium – activities that can bring states within weeks of acquiring nuclear weapons. Turkey, too, has lost respect for nuclear taboos. In September 2019, Turkish President Recep Erdogan complained that it was “unacceptable” that Turkey could not have nuclear weapons. Later that month, at the United Nations General Assembly, he went much further, making the case that the NPT regime of five recognized nuclear armed states was illegitimate (Gilinsky and Sokolski 2019). There are more than five important states, he explained, and either no one should have nuclear weapons, or all states should be free to acquire them. His comments at the public assembly were met with a rousing applause. Second, and arguably worse, is renewed vertical proliferation – the increase in size and sophistication of nuclear arsenals by states that already have them. Combine possible Middle Eastern withdrawals from the NPT with continued Russian, Chinese, and North Korean nuclear weapons force buildups. Add fraying US security ties with its East Asian allies South Korea and Japan and you have the diplomatic and military ingredients for Seoul and Tokyo to bolt from the treaty, likely prompting the NPT’s total collapse. After a possible Japanese withdrawal, an Australian nuclear weapons program would become conceivable, as would programs in Vietnam, Indonesia, and in any number of other states (think Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, and even Germany). No risk Germany goes nuclear—no support, NPT blocks, and lacks capabilitiesTertrais, 2019, <Deputy Director of the Paris-based Fondation pour la recherche stratégique (Foundation for Strategic Research), Bruno>, Washington Quarterly, Will Europe Get Its Own Bomb?, Summer, vol. 42, #2, pp. 49-50, JPK****NCC’20 Novice Packet****Let us be clear: a number of options and scenarios should be taken off the table of strategic forecasting, given that they have almost zero chance of becoming real in the coming two decades. These include a German bomb, a French-German one, a EU-wide common deterrent, and a British-French deterrent. A German Bomb. In the past two years, several German officials and experts have publicly toyed with the idea of a national nuclear program. However, they do not include any highly influential figures and are hardly representative of the German debate. Such statements reflect more the current national insecurity about the future of the U.S. guarantee than anything else—as well, perhaps, as a laudable effort to lift thought taboos in German strategic thinking.3 Germany gave up any nuclear option on no less than three different occasions, in different legal forms. In 1954, it promised not to produce nuclear, biological or chemical weapons on its soil. True, up until the late 1960s, a national nuclear option was openly discussed in Bonn’s ruling circles and with allies. But a set of institutions and mechanisms was then set up that killed this option for good. Germany subscribed to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT)—a treaty whose support by the Soviet Union was in no small measure driven by the need to avoid a German bomb. In parallel, NATO set up structures and procedures for nuclear policymaking and nuclear use sharing, including the Nuclear Planning Group (NPG), a body through which Bonn’s influence on NATO strategy would become significant. Finally, Germany gave up its nuclear option for the third time through the “Four Plus Two” treaty of 1990 which led the way to unification. There is zero appetite today in mainstream German policy circles for a national nuclear program—and, indeed, continued skepticism in parts of the left for NATO nuclear sharing. Furthermore, Germany does not have the required wherewithal for even a rudimentary program. Not that it would have to start from scratch: it has superb scientists and engineers, and the country is a world leader in machine tools. But contrary to Japan, it neither has any strictly indigenous uranium enrichment nor does it have fuel reprocessing capabilities any longer. Germany’s two enrichment plants located in Gronau belong to the Urenco international consortium created after the treaty of Almelo (1970). The German share in Urenco is not government-owned but belongs jointly to two utilities companies, E.On and RWE. And even though their products serve the market and not only German plants, the future of these plants remain uncertain after Berlin’s decision to give up nuclear power and phase out its existing reactors by 2022. There will be no Nuklear Sonderweg—or, more precisely, the idea of a German bomb is so far off the reasonable range of future strategic thinking that it is not worth thinking about.Public opposition blocks Germany from developing nucsVolpe & Kühn, 2017, <Assistant Professor at the Defense Analysis Department of the Naval Postgraduate School and a Nonresident Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Tristan; Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Ulrich>, Washington Quarterly, Germany’s Nuclear Education: Why a Few Elites Are Testing a Taboo, vol. 40, #3, pp. 19-20, JPK****NCC’20 Novice Packet****This general reluctance toward military power extends and translates directly into the nuclear realm, the second driver of the debate. Since the Adenauer era when then-Chancellor Konrad Adenauer (CDU) secretly fathomed a potential trilateral German-French-Italian nuclear weapons program, the German public has opposed a nuclear-armed Bundeswehr, with rejection rates only increasing. Today, 93 percent of Germans are in favor of an international ban on nuclear weapons (though the German government did not participate in negotiations that only recently resulted in the successful conclusion of such a treaty). Even more telling, a majority of Germans seems to doubt the concept of extended nuclear deterrence, with 85 percent of Germans supporting the removal of all forward-deployed U.S. short-range nuclear missiles from Germany. The public rejection of nuclear weapons, nuclear deterrence, and civil nuclear energy represent the single most critical obstacle to any German nuclear weapons option —even if the federal government decided in the future that the security situation was driving them down this path. The current debate is thus an early educational effort from some elites who want to change perceptions about the necessity of nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence in the twenty-first century.US withdrawal will cause Germany to seek nuclear protection from France and the UK and not build their own bombFix, 2020, <Programme Director International Affairs, K?rber-Stiftung, Liana>, Will NATO Die Aged 70?, February 5, p. , <accessed, 6-5-20>, JPK****NCC’20 Novice Packet****"We are experiencing the brain death of NATO" – this statement of French President Emmanuel Macron has triggered curious reactions in Germany:?Suddenly, most German politicians – even from center-left parties – felt compelled to underline in very clear terms their commitment to the Alliance.?At this year’s Berlin Foreign Policy Forum, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas made the point: "NATO is alive and kicking!". Macron’s remarks have served as a wake-up call for the German political elite. While some European countries – namely France and the UK – can rely on their own security, thanks to?Trident?and?Force de frappe, and others like Poland have started building a special relationship with the US,?Germany has no alternative to NATO as a security provider.?A recent?K?rber Policy Game, conducted in cooperation with the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), posed the "Gretchenfrage" to high-level senior participants from Germany, France, Poland, the UK, and the US: What would be the future of NATO if the US withdrew? The results were telling – and sobering.?Without American security guarantees, the principles of European solidarity were quickly challenged and Europe was at serious risk of splitting into different camps. Confronted with a scenario of Russian escalation, the German team suggested asking France and the UK to expand their nuclear umbrellas to other European countries, since developing a German nuclear weapons capacity was considered an unlikely option. The French team even proposed a new, EU-centered, collective defense alliance after a US withdrawal, which was met with skepticism especially from the German, British and Polish side. The K?rber Policy Game thus demonstrated how existential NATO is for Germany’s security. Yet, is the German public aware of NATO’s crucial role for their country’s security? In the 2019 survey of?The Berlin Pulse, most Germans preferred a nuclear umbrella provided by the French or the British rather than US nuclear protection.?However, despite this skeptical stance towards the US, most Germans still have a favorable view of NATO – which is a positive sign for the future.NATO withdrawal leads to French step up – solves back prolifBruno Tertrais (2018), Deputy Director Fondation pour la recherche stratégique, “The European dimension of nuclear deterrence. French and British policies and future scenarios”, Finnish institute of international affairs, working paper no.106, available from: , accessed 6/7/20, tog NCC-ADA Packet- Wave Demo, p. 9-10 ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****The range of possible scenarios would be different in the event of a significant change in the transatlantic relationship, directly affecting its nuclear arrangements. As Oliver Thr?nert put it, “a decisive Europeanization would only make sense if European governments arrived at the conclusion that the US no longer constituted a reliable Alliance partner in terms of extended nuclear deterrence”.25 Without going that far, dramatic changes in NATO would equally change the perspective, such as a unilateral withdrawal of US nuclear weapons from Europe – an irrational decision for sure, but one which is not beyond the realms of possibility under President Trump. Or an unravelling of the NATO nuclear basing and sharing mechanisms following a unilateral decision by a member country to cease being a part of it (think Turkey in particular). Both are reasonable “what if?” hypotheses. In such scenarios, it is likely that France would be ready to consider playing a stronger, visible role in ensuring that Europe feels protected by nuclear deterrence. Options would include both “sharing” and “basing”. France could base part of its airborne arsenal (say, in the order of ten missiles) in Germany or in Poland (basing) and/or agree that they could be carried by European fighter-bombers (sharing).26 However, for both political and technical reasons (the small size of the French arsenal, about fifty missiles), it is highly unlikely that Paris and its European partners would seek to mirror the scope of current NATO arrangements.27French Doctrine believes should protect EUBruno Tertrais (2018), Deputy Director Fondation pour la recherche stratégique, “The European dimension of nuclear deterrence. French and British policies and future scenarios”, Finnish institute of international affairs, working paper no.106, available from: , accessed 6/7/20, p. 6, tog ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****British and French nuclear deterrents were never designed to exclusively cover strictly national vital interests and always had at least a de facto European dimension. As is well known, since the early 1960s, the UK force has been primarily at the service of the transatlantic alliance. It is less well known that the French have always seen a European dimension to their nuclear deterrent. For de Gaulle, the fate of his country and that of the rest of Europe were closely linked. He privately indicated that the French nuclear force was protecting his immediate neighbours, notably Germany.3 In instructions given to the armed forces in 1964, he specified that France should “feel threatened as soon as the territories of federal Germany and Benelux are violated”.4 Similarly, in 1964, Prime Minister Pompidou made it publicly clear that the national deterrent amounted to de facto European protection.5The broader nuclear contribution of France and the UK to the security of the Alliance as a whole – something de Gaulle himself believed in6 – was officially recognized in the Ottawa Declaration of 1974. Later on (1986) France committed itself to consult with Germany “time and circumstances permitting” in case the use of French short-range nuclear systems – which, on paper, could be used on German soil – was considered. With the creation of the European Union, France has stressed more clearly the European dimension of deterrence. To the traditional French argument of the intrinsic unreliability of the US deterrent was added a new one: the creation of the European Union.French Deterrent is Sufficient, doesn’t violate NPT, or require US helpBruno Tertrais (2018), Deputy Director Fondation pour la recherche stratégique, “The European dimension of nuclear deterrence. French and British policies and future scenarios”, Finnish institute of international affairs, working paper no.106, available from: , accessed 6/7/20, p. 10-11, tog ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****Some would say that a France and/or UK-based nuclear deterrent would not have the necessary credibility.29 This is a debatable question. A smaller arsenal can deter a major power provided it has the ability to inflict damage seen as unacceptable by the other party. This has always been the premise of “deterrence of the strong by the weak,” and is not connected to the size of the other party’s nuclear arsenal as long as no counterforce strategy is sought.30 Most importantly, again, deterrence exercised by a European power might be seen as more credible than when it is exercised by a distant protector.In a severe critique, one analyst has put forward other arguments that lead, in her view, to the need to “put an end” to the emerging debate: a European deterrent would raise legal problems (withdrawing from the NPT); it would not free Europeans from dependence on the United States; it diverts attention away from more urgent problems; and it would be unpopular.31 These arguments are irrelevant:? It is simply not true that European nuclear cooperation would require non-nuclear countries to leave the NPT. This would be the case only if any of them wanted to acquire national nuclear weapons – a non-starter.? A more interesting argument is that a European deterrent would not completely alleviate European dependency on the United States, since London and Paris cooperate with Washington in nuclear defence matters. But while correct for the UK since the British programme is indeed intimately linked to that of the United States, this argument ignores the contemporary nature of such cooperation regarding France: there is no US “technical support” for the French deterrent today.32? To claim that the “euro-nukes debate steers attention away from extremely urgent issues such as development of European conventional capabilities” – an argument also heard in European government circles in the 2000s – is rather puzzling. Neither from the point of view of politics nor that of costs can one seriously foresee any “zero-sum gaming” between the conventional and nuclear domains. The same causes producing the same effects, uncertainties about the future of the US protection, should logically drive Europeans to seek an increase in defence budgets and consider an enhancement in nuclear cooperation.? Finally, it is hard to envisage why “any new German or other European nuclear activities would have to be presented to the population” as long as they remain within the bounds of current international law and practice, including the NPT and nuclear sharing-type arrangements as they exist in NATO.A2 EU Can’t Fill inEU Resources sufficient to replace NATOElie Perot (2019), PhD Researcher European Foreign & Security Policy at the Institute for European Studies, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Master in Public Affairs from Sciences Po Paris (Summa cum laude, 2014) and a M.A. in European Political and Administrative Studies from the College of Europe, Bruges (Chopin Promotion, 2015-2016), “The art of commitments: NATO, the EU, and the interplay between law and politics within Europe’s collective defence architecture”, European Security, 28:1, 40-65, DOI: 10.1080/09662839.2019.1587746, tog,****NCC’20 Novice Packet****This latter remark equally applies to the military means used for collective defence. True, the combined forces of NATO countries are much greater than the military might of the EU alone. As is often stressed by NATO Secretary General, 80 % of NATO defence expenditure will come from non-EU allies after Brexit (e.g. Stoltenberg 2017). But defence numbers should be appreciated in the perspective of the threats they are supposed to meet. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), in 2017, NATO countries spent in total $900 billion in defence expenditure, that is 52% of global military spending, 35 % by the United States alone (Tian et al. 2018). NATO officials have turned this reality into an argument in favour of the Alliance’s indispensability, but an opposite conclusion could equally be drawn from it. The above figures mean that, in 2017, NATO countries spent together 13.6 times more than the $66.3 billion that formed the defence budget of Russia – the nation that arguably looms nowadays as the largest threat in the minds of NATO’s defence planners. Note equally that the combined defence budgets of only the four biggest NATO allies that are also EU member states – France, the UK, Germany and Italy – amounted to $178.5 billion, still 2.7 times the Russian budget, and that by spending a much smaller share of their own GDPs. Note finally that Paris, Berlin and Rome would still spend in total 2 times more than Moscow, even without London’s participation.Of course, budgetary figures are only part of the story. Crudely adding the military expenditure of different countries does not indicate how much real capability is generated in the end. Also, taking defence budgets as a whole does not indicate exactly which proportion of those sums is effectively devoted to defending Europe. It would require a much deeper discussion, for which space is evidently lacking here, to evaluate the capabilities available, or required, for the collective defence of Europe on one hand and, on the other hand, to put them into perspective with the actual dimensions and likelihoods of the threats NATO or EU countries may have to deal with in the future. But again, it would be a mistake to simplistically dismiss out of hand the credibility of any collective defence commitments if it cannot compare on a strictly equal footing with the capabilities presently underwriting NATO’s Article 5, simply because the level set by the NATO yardstick may sometimes be higher than necessary.Lastly, on the qualitative side of means, we need to focus on what has long been considered the fulcrum of collective defence, i.e. nuclear weapons. While this issue has traditionally been viewed as falling within the exclusive remit of NATO, the uncertainties about the US commitment has now sparked debates in foreign policy circles about whether and how Europeans should and could find a substitute to America’s ultimate guarantee. For instance, in an interview in early 2019 Wolfgang Ischinger, former German ambassador to the United States and chairman of the Munich Security Conference, has argued that “[t]he French nuclear capacity should not just cover French territory, but the territory of its European neighbors as well” because, according to him, sheltering under the American umbrella might not be an option available to the Europeans in the future (Hersenzhorn 2019).The current collective defence architecture of Europe can in fact already accommodate this vision. In principle, there is no specific reason why the nuclear forces of France – Britain being on its way out of the European Union – could not act as a deterrent at the service of the EU, in the framework of Art.42.7 TEU. The EU assistance clause potentially entails the use of force without any specific limitations of scale and, by deduction, it could imply the use of French nuclear weapons (Bundestag Scientific Services 2017, p. 11, see also Volpe and Kühn 2017). The topic remains and is likely to remain, however, a political taboo at the EU level. Member states have strongly diverging views about nuclear disarmament and some of them have supported the recent U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Consequently, substantive discussions on policy planning or co-financing, no matter how hypothetical, would have to take place outside any formal EU framework (Tertrais 2018). Even still, it will be a tall order for France to convince its partners of the credibility of its own extended deterrence. The French themselves have often expressed their scepticism about US claims that America was ready to risk a nuclear war on behalf of the Europeans. The French even put forward this very argument as one of the rationales for developing their own independent force de frappe, a nuclear arsenal over which they will want to retain ultimate control in all likelihood (Hollande 2015a).12 Last but not least, all this discussion should not obscure the fact that the UK, with its nuclear deterrent, may be leaving the EU but not NATO. In other terms, we should not forget that NATO’s nuclear umbrella does not and will not rely exclusively on US forces but also on those of France and the UK.13LeadershipMoral HazardNATO has outlived its utility and US commitments create a moral hazardThompson 17 – policy and research analyst at the Charles Koch Institute, Julie, 2/26, “NATO Revamped: Why the Alliance Needs to Change.” ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****Last year, the Center for the National Interest partnered with the Charles Koch Institute to host a foreign policy roundtable. Among the topics addressed was: Has NATO outlived its usefulness to the United States? Click here to watch the rest of the videos in the “Allies and Adversaries” video series.Michael Desch, professor of political science and director of the Notre Dame International Security Center, believes the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has outlived its original purpose to defeat the Soviet Union and should be put to rest. He explains, “This is the corpse of an international institution that’s become zombie-fied. It’s dead! But it continues to exist and chase after the living.” According to Desch, NATO’s confounding factors are the amount of resources the United States spends on the alliance and the “moral hazard” of maintaining a permanent attachment to European countries that may no longer share our interests.That generates tensions and hostilities globallyTAC 18 – The American Conservative, staff editorial, 2/28, “Of Course NATO is Obsolete.” ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****Should the United States go to war with Russia to protect Montenegro, a nation of 5,332 square miles and some 620,000 people? Where is Montenegro, anyway?You can answer the second question by consulting any map of the Balkans, where tiny Montenegro is wedged between Serbia, Bosnia, and Albania. You can answer the first question through a cursory consultation with the logic of national interest. The answer is no.Yet the United States is bound by treaty to protect Montenegro militarily should Russia or any other nation violate its sovereignty. The fate of Montenegro has absolutely nothing to do with U.S. strategic interests. But the diminutive country resides in a region that has been of crucial cultural and geopolitical interest to Russia for centuries.It’s the NATO treaty, of course, that requires U.S. protection of Montenegro. Donald Trump kicked up a storm as a presidential campaigner by declaring NATO “obsolete.” After Hillary Clinton retorted that it was “the strongest military alliance in the history of the world,” Trump explained he merely wanted the other nations to pay their fair share in alliance costs and also wanted NATO to do more to fight terrorism.Later Trump allowed as how he didn’t really think the alliance was obsolete after all. He only said that, he explained, because he didn’t know much about it. But now, he said, he knew a lot more—enough to support the admission of Montenegro into NATO last year.Trump was smarter when he was ignorant. Of course NATO is obsolete. It was founded as a Cold War defensive alliance to thwart any Western invasion by the Soviet Union, which had positioned some 1.3 million Warsaw Pact troops for such an incursion. NATO was indeed one of the greatest military alliances in world history. With America as its leader, it won the Cold War.But that was 30 years ago. The Soviet Union is long gone, along with those menacing troops and the strategic threat they posed. The rationale for NATO has evaporated.And yet it remains. Not only that, but it long since has abandoned its defensive posture and embraced an offensive temperament, moving inexorably eastward in a manifest effort to encircle Russia and remove its influence from territories that had been within its sphere of interest for centuries. Instead of an alliance to prevent war, NATO has become an institution generating tensions and hostilities where none need exist.William S. Smith of the Catholic University of America noted recent meetings pulled together by NATO’s military committee chairman, a Czech army general named Petr Pavel. His sessions with his counterparts from Ukraine and Georgia, crowed Pavel, were “dedicated to Projecting Stability.” Given that those two nations are crucial to Russia’s sense of national security (and have been for centuries), wrote Smith, stability seems the least likely outcome of those meetings.Now we have tensions rising in the Mideast between the United States and Turkey, which have competing interests in Syria. Turkey is a NATO member, which made sense in the Cold War as it was well positioned geographically to thwart Soviet expansionism. But now Turkey is developing friendly ties with Russia while snarling at the United States—and abandoning its previous interest in masquerading as a Western nation so it can join the EU. What happens when two NATO nations, from different civilizations, square off against each other?Trump was right the first time. Those clinging to NATO simply can’t see that the world has changed and now requires new thinking, new geopolitical sensibilities, new alliances. To avoid obsolescence NATO must adjust to these new realities. If it can’t it should be killed off.RestraintUS lack of restraint in the status quo triggers counterbalancing at a variety of levels.Barry R. Posen (2013), professor of political science at M.I.T. and director of its Security Studies Program, “Pull Back: The Case for a Less Activist Foreign Policy” Foreign Affairs, Jan/Feb 2013, accessed 6/20/20 *tog ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****This undisciplined, expensive, and bloody strategy has done untold harm to U.S. national security. It makes enemies almost as fast as it slays them, discourages allies from paying for their own defense, and convinces powerful states to band together and oppose Washington's plans, further raising the costs of carrying out its foreign policy. During the 1990s, these consequences were manageable because the United States enjoyed such a favorable power position and chose its wars carefully. Over the last decade, however, the country's relative power has deteriorated, and policymakers have made dreadful choices concerning which wars to fight and how to fight them. What's more, the Pentagon has come to depend on continuous infusions of cash simply to retain its current force structure -- levels of spending that the Great Recession and the United States' ballooning debt have rendered unsustainable.It is time to abandon the United States' hegemonic strategy and replace it with one of restraint. This approach would mean giving up on global reform and sticking to protecting narrow national security interests. It would mean transforming the military into a smaller force that goes to war only when it truly must. It would mean removing large numbers of U.S. troops from forward bases, creating incentives for allies to provide for their own security. And because such a shift would allow the United States to spend its resources on only the most pressing international threats, it would help preserve the country's prosperity and security over the long run.ACTION AND REACTIONThe United States emerged from the Cold War as the single most powerful state in modern times, a position that its diversified and immensely productive economy supports. Although its share of world economic output will inevitably shrink as other countries catch up, the United States will continue for many years to rank as one of the top two or three economies in the world. The United States' per capita GDP stands at $48,000, more than five times as large as China's, which means that the U.S. economy can produce cutting-edge products for a steady domestic market. North America is blessed with enviable quantities of raw materials, and about 29 percent of U.S. trade flows to and from its immediate neighbors, Canada and Mexico. The fortuitous geostrategic position of the United States compounds these economic advantages. Its neighbors to the north and south possess only miniscule militaries. Vast oceans to the west and east separate it from potential rivals. And its thousands of nuclear weapons deter other countries from ever entertaining an invasion.Ironically, however, instead of relying on these inherent advantages for its security, the United States has acted with a profound sense of insecurity, adopting an unnecessarily militarized and forward-leaning foreign policy. That strategy has generated predictable pushback. Since the 1990s, rivals have resorted to what scholars call "soft balancing" -- low-grade diplomatic opposition. China and Russia regularly use the rules of liberal international institutions to delegitimize the United States' actions. In the UN Security Council, they wielded their veto power to deny the West resolutions supporting the bombing campaign in Kosovo in 1999 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and more recently, they have slowed the effort to isolate Syria. They occasionally work together in other venues, too, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Although the Beijing-Moscow relationship is unimpressive compared with military alliances such as NATO, it's remarkable that it exists at all given the long history of border friction and hostility between the two countries. As has happened so often in history, the common threat posed by a greater power has driven unnatural partners to cooperate.American activism has also generated harder forms of balancing. China has worked assiduously to improve its military, and Russia has sold it modern weapons, such as fighter aircraft, surface-to-air missiles, and diesel-electric submarines. Iran and North Korea, meanwhile, have pursued nuclear programs in part to neutralize the United States' overwhelming advantages in conventional fighting power. Some of this pushback would have occurred no matter what; in an anarchic global system, states acquire the allies and military power that help them look after themselves. But a country as large and as active as the United States intensifies these responses.NATO continually produces a security dilemma – inevitably triggers great power conflictJoel Hillison ’17, Adjunct Professor in Political Science at Gettysburg College, received an M.S.S. from the United States Army War College in Strategic Studies and a PhD from Temple University in International Relations, has been on the faculty at the United States Army War College since 2007, retired as a Colonel in the U.S. Army after 30 years of federal service and 2 years in the Illinois National Guard, “Fear, Honor, and Interest: Rethinking Deterrence in a 21st-Century Europe,” Orbis 61:3, pgs. 340-353, ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****Both the 2015 National Military Strategy and the 2015 National Security Strategy highlighted a strategy of deterring further Russian aggression while cooperating in areas where the United States and Russia share common interests. Philip Breedlove, the former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, stated that NATO was “adding a deterrence component with the goal of deterring Russia from any further aggressive actions.”17 Arguably, those efforts have failed. Russia has responded in kind to efforts by the United States, EU, and NATO to increase deterrence capability and impose costs on Russia. Russia has increased its military presence in Kaliningrad and on NATO's eastern border and continued provocative overflights. Russia also intervened in the Syrian civil war, catching the United States and NATO off guard.Over the last several years, the U.S. and its NATO allies have strengthened their military posture in the Baltics and Central Europe. The 2017 U.S. budget included the $3.4 billion European Reassurance Initiative, up from about $800 million in FY 16.18 This initiative was aimed at improving infrastructure, increasing military presence, enhancing training and exercises, and building partner capacity. It also included the rotation of armored and airborne brigades into Europe, increased air policing in the Baltics, and increased naval presence in Black Sea. U.S. power projection capabilities will also increase with the prepositioning of additional equipment in Europe, especially the European Activity Set in the Baltics. These efforts, along with economic sanctions, were intended to impose high costs on any Russian aggression against the Baltics or other NATO members. Beyond U.S. efforts, NATO also suspended routine cooperation with Russia including the NATO-Russia Council. During the July 2016 NATO Summit in Warsaw, Poland, NATO representatives again expressed their alliance's resolve to halt Russian military adventurism.However, the risk of this deterrence strategy is that the West has misjudged Russia's true intentions. University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer blames the problems in Ukraine on just such a misjudgment by the West. He suggests that current approaches will continue to be unsuccessful and could lead to even more aggression.19 These issues lead to the question of fear in the security dilemma.Fear and the Security DilemmaEven if there are no rational reasons to view an opponent's actions as threatening, fear can lead to miscalculation and retaliation. Thus, deterrence actually can lead to conflict. As Betts noted in his article, states could unwittingly “stumble into [war] out of misperception, miscalculation and fear of losing if they fail to strike first.”20 There is evidence of all three of these risks in Russian-Western relations over the past 18 years.Since the war in Kosovo in 1999, Moscow has grown leery of Western expansion around the world and, in particular, in Russia's historical sphere of influence. The first warning signs appeared during the Kosovo crisis when NATO intervened in a civil war between Serbia, a Russian ally, and the Kosovar rebels. While Russia was too weak at the time to stop NATO actions, they were able to send a strong signal of displeasure. After the conflict ended in June 1999, Russian paratroopers unexpectedly occupied the Pristina airport in Kosovo. Russia's actions surprised NATO leaders and led to a political-military standoff, which was only resolved after Russia's position on the airfield became untenable.21Adding to Moscow's fears, there were a series of “color revolutions” along Russia's geographical periphery that underscored the extent to which Western expansion could potentially serve as a catalyst for political and social instability. In 2003, the “Rose revolution” brought pro-Western Mikheil Saakashvili to power in Georgia. The West viewed the expansion of democracy as a benign force that would improve security and stability in Europe. The Kremlin viewed things differently. “Mr. Putin saw Georgia's successful reforms and its determination to break out of the post-Soviet system and move towards the West as a threat, in the same way as the Soviet Union had felt threatened by liberal reforms in Czechoslovakia in 1968.”22 The following year, the “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine brought to power another pro-West president, Viktor Yushchenko.Perhaps a turning point came in 2008 when Kosovo declared its independence and President George W. Bush supported Georgia and Ukraine's membership in NATO. In his 2007 speech at the 43rd Munich Conference on Security Policy, Vladimir Putin had described NATO expansion as “a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. .. against whom is this expansion intended?”23 In spite of these warning signs, the West miscalculated Russia's response. Later in 2008, Russia invaded Georgia, ostensibly to stop Georgian aggression in a conflict over independence for Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Putin justified that action by citing the precedent of Kosovo. Misperception and miscalculation would also characterize the West's foreign policy with Ukraine.The EU began negotiating with Ukraine to establish closer economic ties after the “Orange revolution.” However, in November 2013, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich declined an association agreement with the EU. In response, tens of thousands of protestors gathered in Maidan Square, Kiev, demanding closer integration with the European Union. The United States and the EU actively supported and encouraged the demonstrators. Eventually, these protests led to a coup on February 22, 2014. President Yanukovcyh fled to a safe haven in Russia. Five days after the overthrow of the corrupt, but democratically elected Yanukovych government, Russia invaded and annexed Crimea and provided covert support for separatist rebels in the Donbass region of Ukraine.24 Russia struck before it lost Ukraine to the West.Leaders in some European capitals express concern that overreaction to Russian aggression in Ukraine could lead to a security dilemma and eventually armed conflict. Russia has actively promoted that view. During the NATO-Russia Council meeting in April 2016, the Russian Ambassador, Alexander Grushko, presented an ultimatum to NATO representatives, “any move by NATO to enhance its self-defense will be regarded by Russia as a threat.”25 In May 2016, Putin doubled down on that position, stating that he would retaliate against NATO's placement of its missile defense system in Romania.26If Russian actions are the result of fear of EU and NATO encroachment, then current approaches to deterrence will continue to be ineffective. Lebow, in his excellent analysis of deterrence in Thucydides, wrote that “deterrence is also a difficult, perhaps even an inappropriate, strategy to use against targets who are motivated by fear. It is likely to confirm their worst suspicions and intensify conflict by convincing them that unless they stand firm. .. they will be perceived as weak and subject to greater threats and demands.”27 International Relations scholar, Stephen Walt, argues that this is the case with Russia. “Russia is not an ambitious rising power like Nazi Germany or contemporary China; it is an aging, depopulating, and declining great power trying to cling to whatever international influence it still possesses and preserve a modest sphere of influence near its borders, so that stronger states—and especially the United States—cannot take advantage of its growing vulnerabilities.”28 Which one of these views is correct depends upon the probability of a Russian attack on a NATO country. These varying views lead to the question of the role of interests.Great power war escalates and causes extinctionHallinan 16 Conn Hallinan, FPIF, May 2, 2016. , NATO’s Dangerous Game: Bear-Baiting Russia: After the Cold War ended, many of the safeguards preventing war between Russia and the West have been allowed to lapse., ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****Since March 2015 there have been over 60 incidents that could have triggered a major crisis between Russia and the United States. Pictured: artist’s rendering of hypersonic glide vehicle. (Photo: Wikipedia / Public Domain) “Aggressive,” “revanchist,” “swaggering”: These are just some of the adjectives the mainstream press and leading U.S. and European political figures are routinely inserting before the words “Russia,” or “Vladimir Putin.” It is a vocabulary most Americans have not seen or heard since the height of the Cold War. The question is, why? Is Russia really a military threat to the United States and its neighbors? Is it seriously trying to “revenge” itself for the 1989 collapse of the Soviet Union? Is it actively trying to rebuild the old Soviet empire? The answers to these questions are critical, because, for the first time since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, several nuclear-armed powers are on the edge of a military conflict with fewer safeguards than existed 50 years ago. Consider the following events: NATO member Turkey shoots down a Russian warplane. Russian fighter-bombers come within 30 feet of a U.S. guided missile destroyer, and a Russian fighter does a barrel roll over a U.S. surveillance plane. Several U.S. Senators call for a military response to such encounters in the future. NATO and the U.S. begin deploying three combat brigades—about 14,000 troops and their equipment—in several countries that border Russia, and Washington has more than quadrupled its military spending in the region. U.S. State Department officials accuse Russia of “dismantling” arms control agreements, while Moscow charges that Washington is pursuing several destabilizing weapons programs. Both NATO and the Russians have carried out large war games on one another’s borders and plan more in the future, in spite of the fact that the highly respected European Leadership Network (ELN) warns that the maneuvers are creating “mistrust.” In the scary aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis, the major nuclear powers established some ground rules to avoid the possibility of nuclear war, including the so-called “hot line” between Washington and Moscow. But, as the threat of a nuclear holocaust faded, many of those safeguards have been allowed to lapse, creating what the ELN calls a “dangerous situation.” According to a recent report by the ELN, since March of last year there have been over 60 incidents that had “the potential to trigger a major crisis between a nuclear armed state and a nuclear armed alliance.” The report warns that, “There is today no agreement between NATO and Russia on how to manage close military encounters.” Such agreements do exist, but they are bilateral and don’t include most alliance members. Out of 28 NATO members, 11 have memorandums on how to avoid military escalation at sea, but only the U.S., Canada and Greece have what is called “Preventing Dangerous Military Activities” (DMA) agreements that cover land and air as well. In any case, there are no such agreements with the NATO alliance as a whole. The lack of such agreements was starkly demonstrated in the encounter between Russian aircraft and the U.S. The incident took place less than 70 miles off Baltiysk, home of Russia’s Baltic Sea Fleet, and led to an alarming exchange in the Senate Armed Services Committee among Republican John McCain, Democrat Joe Donnelly, and U.S. Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, soon to assume command of U.S. forces in Europe. McCain: ”This may sound a little tough, but should we make an announcement to the Russians that if they place the men and women on board Navy ships in danger, that we will take appropriate action?” Scaparrotti: “That should be known, yes.” Donnelly: “Is there a point…where we tell them in advance enough, the next time it doesn’t end well for you?” Scaparrotti: “We should engage them and make clear what is acceptable. Once we make that known we have to enforce it.” For the Americans, the Russian flyby was “aggressive.” For the Russians, U.S. military forces getting within spitting range of their Baltic Fleet is the very definition of “aggressive.” What if someone on the destroyer panicked and shot down the plane? Would the Russians have responded with an anti-ship missile? Would the U.S. have retaliated and invoked Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, bringing the other 27 members into the fray? Faced by the combined power of NATO, would the Russians—feeling their survival at stake—consider using a short-range nuclear weapon? Would the U.S. then attempt to take out Moscow’s nuclear missiles with its new hypersonic glide vehicle? Would that, in turn, kick in the chilling logic of thermonuclear war: Use your nukes or lose them? Far-fetched? Unfortunately, not at all. The world came within minutes of a nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis and, as researcher Eric Schlosser demonstrated in his book “Command and Control,” the U.S. came distressingly close at least twice more by accident. One of the problems about nuclear war is that it is almost impossible to envision. The destructive powers of today’s weapons have nothing in common with the tiny bombs that incinerated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so experience is not much of a guide. Suffice it to say that just a small portion of world’s nukes would end civilization as we know it, and a general exchange could possibly extinguish human life.L: NATO KeyNATO lack of core mission guarantees drift – fraying US/European relations and leading to overstretchDoug Bandow (2019), senior fellow at the Cato Institute, former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan, “The Outdated Alliance? On NATO’s 70th anniversary, it is time for burden shedding—not burden sharing.”, Foreign Policy, April 3, 2019 accessed 6/20/20 *tog ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****The dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 put NATO’s survival in doubt. To give the organization a new raison d’être, officials suggested a plethora of improbable new duties. For instance, Robert Zoellick, then-counselor to Secretary of State James Baker, argued that it was necessary to “transform established institutions, such as NATO, to serve new missions that will fit the new era.” David Abshire, who had been the U.S. ambassador to NATO under President Ronald Reagan, suggested that the alliance “could coordinate the transfer of environmental-control technology to the East.”Curious work for a military alliance.NATO decided to stay relevant in two ways. First, it opted to expand its membership to countries formerly in the Soviet orbit. Second, it opted to undertake activities in nonmember nations. The former violated assurances that NATO had given Moscow in 1990 and 1991, fomenting Russian hostility. The latter transformed NATO into an offensive force, most notably during its mission in Serbia in 1999. Nevertheless, as U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar argued at the time, the choice was simple. The alliance would “go out of area or out of business.”This process continues. Alliance solidarity led Europe into a protracted war in Afghanistan and the United States into a conflagration in Libya, even though neither conflict served the other allies’ interests. Alliance solidarity led Europe into a protracted war in Afghanistan and the United States into a conflagration in Libya, even though neither conflict served the other allies’ interests. Expansion grows ever more far-fetched, with the alliance most recently adding Montenegro and North Macedonia, small states that face no obvious threat and can make no serious contribution to Europe’s defense. Against significant European opposition, moreover, the United States even supports bringing Georgia and Ukraine into the body.As a result, some analysts today call NATO a “global alliance,” with pretensions to patrol much if not most of the world. All the while, Washington remains responsible for the vast majority of its combat capabilities in Europe and beyond.The disparity among allies’ contributions causes constant friction. U.S. President Barack Obama lamented Europe’s “free riders.” In 2011, Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned that there would be “dwindling appetite and patience in the U.S. Congress—and in the American body politic writ large—to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources or … to be serious and capable partners in their own defense.” Future leaders, he suggested, “may not consider the return on America’s investment in NATO worth the cost.” Enter Trump.NATO is at heart of US lack of restraintBarry R. Posen (2019), professor of political science at M.I.T. and director of its Security Studies Program, “Trump Aside, What’s the U.S. Role in NATO?” New York Times, March 10, 2019 accessed 6/20/20 *tog ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****But organizations don’t like going out of business, and NATO was a “good brand,” making it useful for other projects. So NATO took on a new goal: banishing security competition from all of Europe and its periphery, and bringing liberal democracy to former subjects of the Soviet empire. Instead of being re-evaluated, NATO got bigger.NATO’s expansion now requires the United States to defend all the new member states from both conventional and nuclear threats — a tall order given their proximity to Russia and a strategically unnecessary project since they can contribute nothing to American national security.From an organization that could succeed simply by deterring a major military threat, NATO turned into an expansive project to make all of Western Eurasia safe, liberal and democratic — goals that are much more complicated.NATO’s wars in Bosnia, Kosovo and Libya all depended on significant American military capability; none produced functioning liberal democracies. Among three of post-Cold War NATO’s new members — Hungary, Poland and Bulgaria — democracy is now suffering erosion or is in actual retreat. NATO’s 2008 Bucharest summit declaration that Ukraine and Georgia “will become members of NATO” proved alarming to Russia — and helped pave the way to wars. In other words, NATO’s well-intended political project is an expensive failure.Ironically, NATO also encourages fecklessness among its members in ways that can be likened to what financiers call the “moral hazard” phenomenon, in which excessive insurance, offered for an ostensibly good purpose, promotes risky behavior by those insured.America’s wealthy European allies have underfunded their own militaries, secure in the credibility of America’s commitment. Even the most martial European powers, France and Britain, don’t spend enough today to pay for their much-reduced post-Cold War force structures. They barely reach the alliance’s obligation to spend 2 percent of G.D.P. on defense. France and Germany spend roughly half, and Britain two-thirds, of what the United States does per soldier; unless they have achieved remarkable levels of efficiency, they must be cutting corners.Germany today spends only about 1.25 percent of G.D.P. on defense, leaving the German armed forces a sad remnant of their very capable Cold War incarnation. Until 1990, that army could put a dozen heavily armed divisions into the field a few days after mobilization. Today it would be lucky to get one fully equipped division into the field. Less than half of German military equipment is ready for combat.While European and American politicians and pundits wring their hands about the Russian military threat, European governments and militaries practice business as usual. The dysfunctional turn in European domestic politics seems to be enabled by elites who fear no foreign threats because the United States dutifully promises to take care of them.Finally, NATO helps make American military action abroad too easy. The existing base structure in Europe may facilitate intervention in the greater Middle East — but the greater Middle East is another part of the world where the United States should be doing less militarily. When Washington politicians consider military action there, it would be better if they had to negotiate rather than assume access to European bases. It would force policymakers to take a bit more time to think.Supporters of proposed interventions know that the American public likes the idea of having allies. NATO support helps sell an operation to voters. Europeans can applaud our action, enable our deployment to the theater and contribute small military forces to provide the patina of cost and risk sharing. The Allies did contribute troops — and suffered significant casualties — in the extended Afghan counterinsurgency, but the wars NATO enables are the Americans’ to win or lose.L: w/draw keyWithdrawal’s key to solveBandow 15 – Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and a former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan. He is the author of Foreign Follies: America’s New Global Empire (Xulon), Doug, 12/7. “Should the U.S. Leave NATO?” ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****Over the years American officials have pleaded, cajoled, contended, and begged the Europeans to do more. Even during the Cold War such efforts failed to yield much fruit. They have even less chance of working in the future. Reported Jan Techau of Carnegie Europe: “the dependence of European NATO allies on the United States has further increased since the end of the Cold War, not decreased.” Indeed, he added, “while European membership in NATO has nearly doubled since 1990, defense spending by Europeans has gone down by 28 percent since then.”First, the U.S. insists that it will never leave. So long as it frenetically “reassures” allies, trying to convince them that Americans are worthy to subsidize Europe, the latter will respond by not doing much. Second, Russia doesn’t threaten America or most of Europe. The latter have little incentive to spend more. Third, domestic economic concerns remain paramount throughout the continent. There are few votes to be gained from supporting greater military expenditures to meet a phantom threat because it would gladden hearts in Washington, Vilnius, and Kiev.The United States should do in 2016 what it failed to do in 1990. It should announce that the world has changed since creation of a U.S.-dominated NATO. It is time to refashion the alliance for a world in which allies had prospered and enemies had disappeared. One possibility for the future would be a European-run NATO, with America perhaps as an associate member. Another alternative would be a continental defense run alongside the European Union. Maybe there’s something else.But the time for subsidizing, coddling and reassuring the Europeans is over. American taxpayers deserve as much consideration as European ones. U.S. military forces shouldn’t be deployed to advance interests of greatest concern to other nations. Any future alliances forged by Washington should act as serious military pacts, not international social clubs.Withdrawing military forces and terminating membership in the North Atlantic Treaty is the first step toward a more restrained global grand strategy.Ted Galen Carpenter 19. Senior fellow in security studies at the Cato Institute. "Trump Should Have Already Left NATO". National Interest. 4-17-2019. should pursue a strategy to implement an orderly, but prompt, transfer of responsibility for Europe’s security to the nations of democratic Europe. The ultimate goal should be to phase-out U.S. membership in NATO—an alliance that is showing multiple signs of dysfunction. The initial step would be to withdraw U.S. military forces from the European theater. Within two years, the United States ought to complete the withdrawal of all ground units and reduce its naval and air forces in Europe by at least 50 percent. On the seventy-fifth anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty in 2024, Washington should complete that withdrawal and give a one-year notice that it is terminating U.S. membership in the treaty. The option of occasional deployments of U.S. air and naval units should be kept open, based on the specifics of any agreements with the responsible European security organization or individual major powers, and Washington’s own assessment of the overall security environment. Care must be taken, though, that periodic, limited deployments do not become perpetual, large-scale “rotational” deployments that amount to a permanent U.S. military presence in all but name.Unfortunately, the desperation of NATO partisans to preserve their institution is intense. The House of Representatives’ passage of the NATO Support Act in January 2019, barring the use of funds to facilitate U.S. withdrawal from the alliance in any way, is symptomatic of that attitude. The constitutionality of such legislation is highly suspect, since presidents throughout history have enjoyed wide latitude regarding both troop deployments and continued adherence to treaties. A transparent congressional attempt to usurp that authority and seek to micromanage U.S. foreign policy is both unwarranted and unhealthy. Whoever occupies the White House in the future must have the right to implement needed policy changes regarding NATO.Great wailing and despair from the NATO preservation crowd on both sides of the Atlantic will inevitably accompany any meaningful U.S. policy shift. But seven decades is an exceedingly long period for any policy to be relevant and beneficial (much less optimal), and America’s NATO membership is no exception. Indeed, it seems to epitomize the problem of policy entropy. A U.S.-led NATO is now well beyond its appropriate expiration date. It is time to accord the alliance the retirement celebration that should have been held when the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union dissolved.Adopting a new, more restrained posture does not mean that the United States will take no interest in Europe’s affairs. We need to reject the simplistic “light switch model” of America’s engagement in the world—that there are only two possible settings: “off and on.” There are many settings between those two extremes, and there are multiple forms of engagement—diplomatic, economic and cultural, as well as security.Every effort should be made to preserve a robust, mutually beneficial transatlantic economic relationship. The United States also can and should maintain extensive diplomatic and cultural connections with Europe. And Washington should forge a coordinating mechanism either with a new European security organization or on a bilateral basis with the continent’s main military powers to address issues of mutual concern. Beyond that aspect, there is nothing to prevent joint military exercises and even temporary deployments of U.S. air and naval units, if the security environment turns more threatening. But America does not need to continue being Europe’s security blanket/hegemon.That more flexible approach would constitute an updated version of Taft’s policy of the free hand. Moreover, it would be one component of a U.S. global grand strategy based on realism and restraint. America would no longer shackle itself to commitments that have more drawbacks than benefits and lock the republic into obligations that no longer make sense. It would end the thankless, unproductive strategy of trying to micromanage the security affairs of both Europe and the neighboring Middle East. It is perverse for U.S. leaders to seek to deny their own country the essential element of policy choice. A sustainable transatlantic policy for the twenty-first century must rest firmly on the principle of maximum choice for the United States.NukesUS in NATO will lead to deploying low yield nukes to match perceived Russian nuke advantageUlrich Kühn (2018), senior research associate at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation and a nonresident scholar with the Nuclear Policy Program of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “Deterrence and its discontents”, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 74:4, 248-254, ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****The new NPR has incorporated two crucial thought and behavioral patterns from its Cold War-era predecessors. First, the NPR assumes that deterring America’s opponents with nuclear weapons is right, for nuclear deterrence contributed to keeping the world safe from great power war and deliberate nuclear use since 1945.1 Second, it asserts that if those opponents are nuclear-armed and deterrence failure is considered an option, engaging in arms racing, and thereby exhibiting American resolve, is a worthwhile course of action. Incorporating these patterns means following generally acceptable behavior – at least acceptable in the US political and strategic community. Throughout the Cold War, this behavior came at a significant price. Amongst the many negative side effects were constant concern and anxiety about the right measure and forms of deterrence and the potentially catastrophic consequences if deterrence were to fail (Jervis 1985). Concern and anxiety made it necessary for the Cold War political and defense establishment to continuously engage with nuclear deterrence.These anxieties are again particularly prevalent today when it comes to deterring Russia. According to the NPR, Russia possesses “significant advantages in its nuclear weapons production capacity and in nonstrategic nuclear forces over the US and allies.” The NPR drafters go on to argue that Moscow “mistakenly assesses that the threat of nuclear escalation or actual first use of nuclear weapons would serve to ‘de-escalate’ a conflict on terms favorable to Russia.” What they refer to is the fear of extended deterrence failure in the context of Russia attacking one of NATO’s militarily weak member states in Eastern Europe, perhaps in the Baltics. In that scenario – the argument by Western analysts goes (Kroenig 2015) – Russia could resort to the early and limited use of non-strategic nuclear weapons to coerce NATO into accepting a fait accompli. Without the capabilities for an immediate, measured nuclear response, NATO would have little choice but to accept defeat, according to this logic.2Incorporating crucial experiences from the Cold War, such as NATO countering the Soviet missile buildup of the 1970s with its own intermediate-range buildup in Western Europe, the NPR seeks to remedy the fear of deterrence failure by addressing the regional asymmetry in non-strategic nuclear forces, which clearly favors Russia (Zagorski 2011). The NPR suggests the United States should “modify a small number of existing SLBM warheads to provide a low-yield option, and in the longer term, pursue a modern nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM).” In effect, internalization has led the NPR drafters to incorporate the pattern of answering a political problem by engaging in arms racing.But what is that political problem? The NPR hints at it when stressing that “Russia considers the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to be the principal threats to its contemporary geopolitical ambitions.” Unfortunately, the review fails to gauge these ambitions. Prominent US scholars have repeatedly pointed out that Russia’s geopolitical ambitions – unlike those of the Soviet Union – are not global but regional in nature and geared toward preserving a glacis between Russia and an expanding NATO in Eastern Europe (Mearsheimer 2014). In essence, these ambitions reflect the paranoia of a state that has historically rooted phobias of being invaded by Western powers, long-standing socio-cultural links to Russian speaking minorities abroad, and a desperate longing for national pride and prestige (Charap and Colton 2016).In comparison, nothing at stake for the United States in Eastern Europe, not even its alliance commitments, comes close to that; which means that there is essentially a strong asymmetry of interest, and perhaps resolve, at play (Shifrinson 2017). If that is the case, the NPR’s fear of deterrence failure is not unfounded if Washington were to seriously threaten those core Russian interests. But the remedy the NPR offers is not convincing; it ignores the geopolitical problem and tries to offset an asymmetry of interest by addressing an asymmetry in material capabilities. By so doing, it intensifies the security dilemma that has driven much of Russia’s foreign policy since the late 1990s. In addition, it makes escalation of general tensions more likely and could even lead to the exact outcome it wants to prevent: deterrence failure.Russia shellRussian/US relations at nadir – need reject stereotypes to avoid warJoseph Dobbs, 2018, Research Fellow and Project Manager at the European Leadership Network, “Proud and Prejudiced: The risk of stereotypes in Russia-West relations” ELN, Policy Brief 29 January 2018, accessed 6/16/20 *tog ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****The question is an important one, given the state of Russia-West relations at the start of 2018. Even the most pessimistic at the outbreak of the Ukraine crisis in late 2013 would have scarcely predicted that relations would deteriorate as far as they have in the following years. If either side is hopeful of reducing risk and one day improving relations it is crucial that we become mindful of the perils of relying on stereotypes and easy hyperboles as substitutes for effective, and nuanced, analysis. NATO creates an ongoing multi pronged security trap; exposes the US to greater risks defending areas like the Baltics, puts US credibility on the line, causes US to overreact and ignore de-escalation – leads to crisis with RussiaJ.R. Shifrinson (2020), Assistant Professor of International Relations, Boston University. PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “NATO enlargement and US foreign policy: the origins, durability, and impact of an idea”, Int Polit 57, 342–370 (2020). ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****On the other hand, NATO enlargement exposes the United States to a variety of security ills while limiting its ability to respond to these dilemmas. First, ongoing expansion requires the United States to defend several Eastern European states of questionable strategic value, up to and including the use of nuclear weapons. Even if some of the members to which NATO has expanded are useful for denying prospective rivals maneuvering room to prove their mettle (e.g., the European Union) or expanding their geographic reach (e.g., Russia), many of the member states to which the United States offered security guarantees via NATO are of minimal long-term importance. Loss of the Baltic states to Russia, for instance, would do little to shift Europe’s strategic map, while none of NATO’s new Southeastern European members are of use in either reinforcing US power or denying power to others (Shifrinson 2017a, 111). Having taken on the commitment, however, the United States— as NATO’s principal military backer—is now stuck having to try to defend these actors.This is no easy task, especially in the Baltics; local geography is unfavorable, the distances involved make reinforcement difficult, and the proximity to local prospective threats—in this case, Russia—means it is nearly impossible to obtain favorable force ratios. Nevertheless, the United States and other NATO members have tried to engage the problem, committing growing assets along the way (Kuhn 2018; O’Hanlon and Skaluba 2019; Lanoszka and Hunzeker 2019). The alliance is therefore playing a fraught game. The United States and its partners can certainly try to develop military tools to meet NATO’s expanded commitments, but doing so is expensive, may exacerbate tensions with Russia, stands a real chance of failure, and—insofar as allies are under the US security umbrella—risks the United States putting its own survival on the line by extending US nuclear guarantees in the face of a nuclear-armed opponent.12 In sum, US backing for enlargement has left the United States with a suppurating sore of a strategic commitment, putting it on the firing line in Eastern Europe.Relatedly, NATO enlargement limits US fexibility with Russia. Arguably the premier counterfactual in post-Cold War Europe concerns whether US relations with Russia would have turned so contentious absent NATO enlargement. It is certainly true—as the Marten and Lanoszka articles in this issue highlight—that US–Russian friction was likely inevitable after the 1990s as Russian power recovered from its post-Cold War nadir. Still, the persistent warnings proffered by Russian analysts from the 1990s onward that NATO enlargement was likely to be uniquely harmful to Russian policymakers arguing for cooperation with the West suggests that the US push for expansion exacerbated, reinforced, and/or accelerated problems (Wallander 1999; Talbott 2019). By this logic, the enlargement consensus imposes an opportunity cost on Russian–US relations. Even if expansion was not uniquely responsible for the downturn, the continued emphasis on enlargement limits flexibility in dealing with Russia, hindering the United States’ ability to explore options such as retrenchment, spheres of influence, or buffer zones in Eastern Europe that might potentially dampen bilateral tensions. Put differently, with enlargement enjoying substantial domestic support, linked to broader US power maximization, and taken as a sign of US leadership and credibility, policy options that might ameliorate tensions with Russia are screened out of the policy agenda.Along similar lines, the enlargement consensus may exacerbate the intensity with which the United States reacts to challenges to the (now enlarged) alliance. This is partly a product of US efforts to keep NATO the lodestone of European security affairs, as well as of linking US leadership, prestige, and internationalism with NATO enlargement. Seeking, for instance, to assert US prerogatives and to be seen as opposing Russian pressure, US policymakers have led the charge to keep NATO’s door officially open for Georgia and Ukraine irrespective of the problems this poses for East–West relations (e.g., Congressional Research Service 2019, 15; Cirilli 2014; Myers 2008).13 Likewise, US support for and investment in the Kosovo (1999) and Libya (2011) air campaigns seems to have been partly motivated by a desire to avoid questions about the US commitment to NATO and its efficacy outside of Cold War borders. For instance, one former US official remarked during the Kosovo campaign that failure to obtain NATO’s ends in Kosovo could reopen ‘the question of why American troops are still in Europe’ (Rodman 1999; also Cottey 2009). In the case of Libya, meanwhile, US policymakers eventually decided that the United States would take the lead in the bombing campaign despite having sought a European led effort—an action difficult to explain if not for concerns over NATO’s credibility (Goldberg 2016; Gates 2014, 520–522).Any one of these behaviors is not necessarily problematic. Nor are they unique to the NATO enlargement era; concerns with preserving a credible US commitment to NATO were a major feature of Cold War debates, for instance. Still, in an era without great power threats to justify and motivate the US interest in European security, concerns with sustaining US credibility loom larger and have pushed the United States to undertake a range of risky behaviors for unclear ends. The United States is reluctant to allow an enlarged NATO to be seen as a failure for fear of the blowback on the post-Cold War organization. This outcome is again hard to explain without a post-Cold War policy consensus mandating that NATO remain a potent force in European security with options for the future. After all, with the United States having sidestepped allied opposition on issues ranging from the Multilateral Force (MLF) to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty during the Cold War, one would expect it to settle or de-escalate at least some of NATO’s post-Cold War disputes as well. Instead, the United States has proven to be trigger happy and prone to use NATO to escalate confrontations rather than go over NATO’s collective head to defuse crises.The only “reset button” for US-Russian relations is the removal of NATO centrality.Sushentsov and Wohlforth, March 28, 2020 (Andrey, Professor at MGIMO University and William, Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, Author Information, 3-28-2020, "The tragedy of US–Russian relations: NATO centrality and the revisionists’ spiral," International Politics, , DoA 6/16/2020, DVOG) ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****First, the generative processes of the US–NATO–Russia spiral are deeper than they are presented as in narratives featuring fundamentally flawed policies on one or the other side. To get out of the spiral is costly to each side’s deeply set understandings of the requisites of its security. Evidence showing Russia’s willingness to cooperate with NATO centrality has led some analysts to think that compromise deals would have been possible earlier in the game and might still be possible today. That is unlikely. The concessions needed are more costly for each side than that narrative (here captured by positions 1 and 2) suggests.Second, both sides in the US grand strategy debate—those who favor deep engagement and those who urge offshore balancing—may underestimate the downside risks of their preferred strategies when it comes to European security. It is harder than many US analysts admit to reconcile standard Washington understandings of US grand strategy, including US primacy in Europe, with non-antagonistic relations with Russia. As long as Washington defines its security requisites as demanding a leadership role in Europe’s only serious security institution, it will pay the price of antagonism with Moscow, which can incentivize Russia–China alignment. The flip side of this coin is that the price of a restraint grand strategy in Europe could be some form of Russian primacy, depending on estimates of Europe’s ability to create autonomous capabilities and strategy. Through all its turbulent transitions, Russia has consistently maintained a greedy-security interest in the ability to influence the wider European security architecture. That interest is not likely to go away if America goes home. And that means that if America does go home and later perceives a strong national interest in coming back, it may find a European security architecture under a Russian leadership ill-inclined to open its doors to US power.Third, the US and Russia’s deep-set understandings of security are greedy. Each side bargains to get the other to accept a more restrained conception of security, while it maintains greedy security for itself. Changes in the two states’ relative power have also influenced events. The USA attained greedy-security goals and Russia largely did not because USA had power and Russia did not. The spiral has reached new levels of intensity because Moscow thinks that power balancing will force the USA to reduce its security requisites to what it believes would be more reasonable levels; and the USA thinks that sanctions will coerce Russia to do the same. Until and unless those estimates converge to the degree that each side’s estimate of its bargaining power more closely matches the other’s, all attempts to reset the US–NATO–Russia relationship will be transitory interruptions in the spiral.NATO/Russia War goes nuclearAlexey Arbatov, April 2017, head of the Center for International Security at the Primakov National Research Institute of World Economy and International Relations, a former scholar in residence and the chair of the Carnegie Moscow Center’s Nonproliferation Program. Formerly, he was a member of the State Duma, vice chairman of the Russian United Democratic Party (Yabloko), and deputy chairman of the Duma Defence Committee. He is a member of numerous boards and councils, including the research council of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the governing board of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute, and the Russian Council for Foreign and Defense Policy, “ELN Issue Brief: Arms Control Beyond the Nuclear Threshold: Russia, NATO, and Nuclear First Use”, accessed 6/10/20 *tog ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****Even in peacetime, large-scale military exercises of Russian and NATO armed forces close to each other create a threat of collisions and accidents between ships and aircraft with an accompanying risk of escalation. Such a chain reaction might be hard to stop: the Kremlin is keen to prove that the weakness of the 1990s will never return, while the White House is determined to demonstrate that it remains the “toughest guy on the block”.In the present state of confrontation, a direct military conflict between Russia and NATO in Eastern Europe, the Baltic or the Black seas would provoke an early use of nuclear arms by any side which consider defeat otherwise unavoidable. This risk is exacerbated by the fact that tactical nuclear and conventional systems are co-located at the bases of general purpose forces and employ dual-purpose launchers and delivery vehicles of the Navy, Air Force, and ground forces. L: NATO leads to Russia aggroUS in NATO makes NATO Russia war likelyAlexey Arbatov, April 2017, head of the Center for International Security at the Primakov National Research Institute of World Economy and International Relations, a former scholar in residence and the chair of the Carnegie Moscow Center’s Nonproliferation Program. Formerly, he was a member of the State Duma, vice chairman of the Russian United Democratic Party (Yabloko), and deputy chairman of the Duma Defence Committee. He is a member of numerous boards and councils, including the research council of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the governing board of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute, and the Russian Council for Foreign and Defense Policy, “ELN Issue Brief: Arms Control Beyond the Nuclear Threshold: Russia, NATO, and Nuclear First Use”, accessed 6/10/20 *tog ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****One of the great paradoxes of today is that the level of armed forces concentrated on both sides of NATO-Russia common border is much lower than 25 years ago,1 but the risk of armed conflict is much higher. This is due to several factors.In the absence of mutually recognized dividing lines, “quasi-frozen” conflicts in Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Moldova could suddenly erupt and draw Poland, the Baltic states, Turkey, and Romania - together with the rest of NATO - into a military clash with Russia.Discarding the fears of its weaker neighbors, Russia considers NATO expansion to its borders to be inherently unlawful and threatening. Although the present scale of the alliance deployment is modest, these forces are considered only a forward echelon of NATO’s altogether superior conventional military power, which may be promptly redeployed from the rest of Europe and across the Atlantic from the United States. The next war might thus take place much closer to Russia’s heartland than envisioned 40- 50 years ago, which makes Moscow’s fears and stakes in a potential conflict much higher. To demonstrate its resolve and toughness Russia is challenging NATO near its territory, where Russian conventional forces are naturally superior. Staying in NATO risks war with Russia.Ted Galen Carpenter 19. Senior fellow in security studies at the Cato Institute. "Trump Should Have Already Left NATO". National Interest. 4-17-2019. ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****It is imperative to overcome the stifling influence of stale thinking and vested interests regarding NATO. Article V is a de facto automatic commitment to go to war if an ally (however minor or strategically irrelevant) becomes embroiled in an armed conflict, and such an obligation is more imprudent than ever before. The costs and risks of Washington’s security obligations to its European allies now substantially outweigh any existing or potential benefits. When a great power reaches that point with regard to any policy, the need for drastic change becomes urgent. America’s NATO commitment has arrived at that point. U.S. leaders must craft a more nuanced and selective security relationship between the United States and Europe.A fresh strategy would embody several important principles, and adopting those principles may well determine whether the United States enjoys a prolonged era of peace or finds itself repeatedly drawn into petty conflicts that have little or no relevance to the fundamental interests of the American republic. Even more important, embracing the correct principles may determine whether the United States can avoid a cataclysmic military collision with a nuclear-armed Russia.NATO commitments create a tripwire that causes war with RussiaMartin Zapfe ’17, head of the Global Security Team at the Center for Security Studies, holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Constance, Germany, “Deterrence from the Ground Up: Understanding NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence,” Survival: Global Politics and Strategy 59:3, pgs. 147-160, ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****The conventional realm is the conceptual comfort zone of the EFP, which has been organised with an eye to conventional conflict scenarios – the feared ‘land grab’ by Russian forces. Even in conventional scenarios, however, the integrated nature of Russian cross-domain coercion, and its targeting of Western political cohesion, affect the deterrence value of conventional forces, and thus expose the potential shortcomings of the Warsaw compromise.Firstly, NATO’s Baltic battalions constitute a tripwire, not a speed bump. In the absence of prepared and agreed-upon contingency plans, backed up by credible and ready forces with sufficient authority already delegated to operational and tactical commanders, any engagement by the EFP would guarantee only that NATO is affected, and that its political decision-making process would start to work. It would not necessarily determine how, nor even whether, NATO would react. In the absence of agreed-upon contingency plans, the necessity for unanimous decision-making could well block NATO forces from acting decisively, leaving open the possibility of one or more allies choosing to act outside of the NATO framework.While the conventional deterrence value of the EFP below the nuclear level lies mostly in its prospective conventional reinforcements, most analyses express doubt that the prime military instruments foreseen to support the EFP – including NATO’s ‘first wave’, the VJTF – could realistically be expected to fulfil that role.20 While the competences of NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) have been broadened and include the staging and preparation of forces,21 especially with regard to activating the VJTF to support its forward battalions, any significant step beyond these measures, let alone an entire campaign to support and relieve the EFP, would require a unanimous vote of the North Atlantic Council.22 Current and former high-ranking NATO commanders have explicitly or implicitly expressed serious doubt that NATO’s political decision-making processes would be up to the task.23Beyond the VJTF, NATO has placed its faith in its ‘second wave’ force, the Enhanced NATO Response Force (eNRF). In addition to principled doubts concerning the viability of multinational forces in high-intensity conventional warfare, the same weaknesses that plague the concept of the VJTF caution against counting on the eNRF to come to the rescue should the tripwire be disturbed. The force’s ground element is meant to be provided by three brigades, one of which will be the current year’s VJTF, while the other two will be formed by the Spearhead Forces of the preceding and following year.24 While undoubtedly a sound concept for force generation, this also means that NATO’s primary combat force will be only as agile as its slowest component. NATO assumes this to be between 30 and 45 days from notice to movement for the additional brigades – as opposed to deployment or employment in theatre, which will take even longer.When faced with these doubts over NATO’s prime military instruments, officials from the Baltic states and Poland unofficially, yet unequivocally, allude to the Alliance’s ‘silent conventional deterrence’ – bilateral deployments from selected allies (the US, the UK or Denmark, among others), which are expected to intervene independently of, and earlier than, the VJTF and eNRF. Unburdened by the need for allied consensus, and with potentially faster decision-making processes, willing allies could well play a pivotal role in making NATO’s EFP militarily effective. However, three factors urge caution here. Firstly, the bilateral shortcut depends on the credibility of the US in times of crisis. Under President Donald Trump, this credibility, and the American commitment to its Alliance obligations, has been far from rock solid. Secondly, the involvement of allied troops outside of NATO’s command structure and contingency plans would raise serious questions concerning conflict stability and inadvertent or accidental escalation implicating the whole Alliance. Thirdly, it is worth asking what message such bilateral deployments would send at a time when Alliance cohesion appears vulnerable to political threats, particularly if there is deadlock within the North Atlantic Council. Would a unilateral US intervention be seen as a sign of the Alliance’s strength, or just of its most potent member state? What would it mean if such an intervention were to take place against the explicit objections of other major member states? Thus, while the reliance on an intervention of NATO members outside of the NATO framework is a realistic and important factor in the calculations of any adversary, as long as NATO’s official conventional answer to any challenge of its EFP rests on its multinational, rapid-response units, those units must be prepared to respond by themselves to any alarm bells.Secondly, despite increasing calls to further reinforce the Baltics, NATO will not be able to ‘out-presence’ Russia in that region.25 While most debates on the EFP tend to focus on its optimal size – with the RAND Corporation issuing an attention-getting call for up to seven brigades26 – this question will quickly become irrelevant if NATO cannot maintain its access to the Baltics. Should a small force (such as a multinational battalion) be deployed, it would be vitally reliant on reinforcements. And even if NATO decided to deploy a large, heavy, multinational force designed to credibly defend the Baltics against a Russian attack – assuming that such a deployment would be logistically feasible, which is doubtful – it would still be dependent on joint and combined support from air and naval forces outside the immediate theatre. Thus, the EFP necessarily falls short of addressing the military challenge as a whole. A military presence in the region is a necessary condition in all of the plausible scenarios, but is sufficient in very few of them, and in all cases assured access is still required.Thirdly, even within conventional scenarios, the EFP carries with it the risk of potentially dividing allies. For the first time in NATO’s history, Russia will have the ability to target a select group of troop-contributing nations within the allied defence posture. Russian conventional advances could be directed against those areas and allies judged by Moscow to be less likely to fight or to opt for escalation. While such an approach would be time-limited and come with very high risks, Russia might well succeed in exploiting NATO’s political fault lines to undermine allied cohesion and to sabotage the political decision-making and military planning in Brussels and Mons.Such an approach was practically impossible during the Cold War. Facing the multinational force posture under Allied Forces Central Europe (AFCENT), the famous ‘layer cake’ of largely national army corps, the Soviet Union had little hope of opening a limited war in the sector of a single corps. At the flanks, the Allied Mobile Force (AMF), the conceptual precursor of today’s VJTF, included all major NATO allies. And in Berlin, any Soviet advance would have met soldiers from NATO’s nuclear powers. It would have been a very risky bet by the Kremlin to assume that an attack on any of these forces would not escalate into a general war with NATO. Not so today. Disunity among the allies could well lead Russia to believe that a limited conventional war with NATO is a realistic possibility.These considerations imply that the EFP does not necessarily protect against limited Russian invasions, as the allied battalions could, quite literally, be outflanked. This is a function of geography – a single battalion can only be at one place in a vast country – but also a question of how these battalions will be integrated into NATO’s defence plans, and how closely they will interact with the armed forces of their host nations. In military terms, the operational relevance of a single battalion in, say, Estonia, in the face of a limited fait accompli by Russia, is close to zero: whether the battalion was present in the country would not matter militarily. Here, NATO decisions since Warsaw are promising, as it seems the EFP battalions will be integrated into host-nation brigades, which in turn will fall under the command of SACEUR. While NATO will still only exercise limited control, its actions tightly restrained by the member states, this will nevertheless increase the Alliance’s ability to respond more flexibly to limited Russian moves. Still, this does not address the question of size: it might actually be possible for Russia to attack a Baltic country without encountering a single multinational battalion for a considerable time. It would be difficult to overestimate the effect on allied cohesion if NATO troops stood by helplessly while Russia called its bluff.Europe fills in if the US exits --- US commitment does more to provoke than deter war. John Glaser ’17, director of foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, Master of Arts in International Security at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, 7/18/17, “Withdrawing From Overseas Bases,” CATO Policy Analysis 816, pgs. 14-15, ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****NATO was established to contain Soviet growth and influence on the European continent. That objective has been achieved and an American exit from the military alliance is overdue.?116 U.S. presence in Europe, especially in former Warsaw Pact states and former Soviet republics, arguably does more to provoke Russian meddling than to deter it. And bases in Europe do not provide much of an operational or tactical advantage for the United States, even for unlikely contingencies, meaning that even if Washington upheld its current set of security commitments there, it could fulfill those obligations with a dramatically reduced overseas presence.?117 Even though the positioning of U.S. military bases throughout the European nations did once pacify relations between Europe and Russia, the European Union is now rich and powerful enough to achieve that objective on its own.?118NATO simultaneously emboldens allies and hollows out their capabilities - goes nuclearBarry R. Posen 13, Ford International Professor of Political Science and Director of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “Pull Back: The Case for a Less Activist Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs, January/February 2013, pp. 4-5 ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****FRIENDS WITHOUT BENEFITS Another problematic response to the United States' grand strategy comes from its friends: free-riding. The Cold War alliances that the country has worked so hard to maintain -- namely, NATO and the U.S.-Japanese security agreement -- have provided U.S. partners in Europe and Asia with such a high level of insurance that they have been able to steadily shrink their militaries and outsource their defense to Washington. European nations have cut their military spending by roughly 15 percent in real terms since the end of the Cold War, with the exception of the United Kingdom, which will soon join the rest as it carries out its austerity policy. Depending on how one counts, Japanese defense spending has been cut, or at best has remained stable, over the past decade. The government has unwisely devoted too much spending to ground forces, even as its leaders have expressed alarm at the rise of Chinese military power -- an air, missile, and naval threat. Although these regions have avoided major wars, the United States has had to bear more and more of the burden of keeping the peace. It now spends 4.6 percent of its GDP on defense, whereas its European NATO allies collectively spend 1.6 percent and Japan spends 1.0 percent. With their high per capita GDPs, these allies can afford to devote more money to their militaries, yet they have no incentive to do so. And so while the U.S. government considers draconian cuts in social spending to restore the United States' fiscal health, it continues to subsidize the security of Germany and Japan. This is welfare for the rich. U.S. security guarantees also encourage plucky allies to challenge more powerful states, confident that Washington will save them in the end -- a classic case of moral hazard. This phenomenon has caused the United States to incur political costs, antagonizing powers great and small for no gain and encouraging them to seek opportunities to provoke the United States in return. So far, the United States has escaped getting sucked into unnecessary wars, although Washington dodged a bullet in Taiwan when the Democratic Progressive Party of Chen Shui-bian governed the island, from 2000 to 2008. His frequent allusions to independence, which ran counter to U.S. policy but which some Bush administration officials reportedly encouraged, unnecessarily provoked the Chinese government; had he proceeded, he would have surely triggered a dangerous crisis. Chen would never have entertained such reckless rhetoric absent the long-standing backing of the U.S. government. The Philippines and Vietnam (the latter of which has no formal defense treaty with Washington) also seem to have figured out that they can needle China over maritime boundary disputes and then seek shelter under the U.S. umbrella when China inevitably reacts. Not only do these disputes make it harder for Washington to cooperate with Beijing on issues of global importance; they also risk roping the United States into conflicts over strategically marginal territory. Georgia is another state that has played this game to the United States' detriment. Overly confident of Washington's affection for it, the tiny republic deliberately challenged Russia over control of the disputed region of South Ossetia in August 2008. Regardless of how exactly the fighting began, Georgia acted far too adventurously given its size, proximity to Russia, and distance from any plausible source of military help. This needless war ironically made Russia look tough and the United States unreliable. I/L: War likelyRisk of Nuke war high – environmentAlexey Arbatov, April 2017, head of the Center for International Security at the Primakov National Research Institute of World Economy and International Relations, a former scholar in residence and the chair of the Carnegie Moscow Center’s Nonproliferation Program. Formerly, he was a member of the State Duma, vice chairman of the Russian United Democratic Party (Yabloko), and deputy chairman of the Duma Defence Committee. He is a member of numerous boards and councils, including the research council of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the governing board of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute, and the Russian Council for Foreign and Defense Policy, “ELN Issue Brief: Arms Control Beyond the Nuclear Threshold: Russia, NATO, and Nuclear First Use”, accessed 6/10/20 *tog ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****Contemporary Russian and American leaders have not stated that ‘nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought’, as their predecessors proclaimed in the early 1970s and late 1980s. Neither have the present leaders of the other seven nuclear-armed states reaffirmed this philosophy.Conceivably this is not because they believe in nuclear victory, but rather because they underestimate the danger of uncontrolled escalation and assume that, under some circumstances, the first use of nuclear arms could be a rational choice. This belief stems from a deeply rooted idea about the nature of war as the “continuation of politics by other means,” in keeping with the aphorism of General Carl von Clausewitz.10Since the great powers would inevitably sustain devastating damage in a nuclear war, neither side would consciously start one, other than in a response to aggression. This conditionality is present in U.S. and Russian doctrines. But as the history of war has shown time and again, especially after 1945, conflicts can erupt not as a result of planned, largescale aggression, but as a chain reaction of military operations by both sides that lead to an uncontrolled escalation of a military engagement. In such situations, each side believes that it is acting purely defensively, even if it carries out offensive actions, while it is the enemy that has aggressive intent and overreacts.Looking at history, for example, who was the aggressor in the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962? It was sheer luck that saved the world several times from a nuclear catastrophe during this crisis, even though neither side wanted war. But the Cuban crisis was not an exception, although it was the most dangerous episode of the Cold War. Other crises and conflicts have also threatened to spiral out of control, and were linked to some degree with the likelihood of a nuclear war with the involvement of the Soviet Union and the United States: the Suez crisis (1956-57), the Berlin Crisis (1961), and the 1967 and 1973 wars in the Middle East are all clear examples.Back then, the superpowers managed to stop before the precipice of a direct conflict. In today’s more complex world order, which can drag many autonomous (including nongovernmental) players into conflicts, and with the development of new military technologies, this luck may one day run out. And this is true despite a stable mutual nuclear deterrence maintained with the drastically reduced nuclear stockpiles of the two leading powers.Most worryingly of all, it is far from certain that today’s political and military leaders in Russia and the U.S. see this danger, for example, in developments in Ukraine, Moldova, or Syria - in particular after the U.S. missile strike against the Syrian airbase and the Russian response, which included suspending the agreement with the U.S. on avoidance of accidents in Syrian airspace. Consequently, both political leaderships should be informed about this danger and prepared for the scenarios outlined above. They need to understand the potentially destabilizing role of new weapons - and the military strategies linked to them - that create the threat of nuclear first use and may prompt escalation to the all-out war that their predecessors managed to avoid during the worst times of the Cold War. Risk of Nuke war high – doctrineAlexey Arbatov, April 2017, head of the Center for International Security at the Primakov National Research Institute of World Economy and International Relations, a former scholar in residence and the chair of the Carnegie Moscow Center’s Nonproliferation Program. Formerly, he was a member of the State Duma, vice chairman of the Russian United Democratic Party (Yabloko), and deputy chairman of the Duma Defence Committee. He is a member of numerous boards and councils, including the research council of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the governing board of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute, and the Russian Council for Foreign and Defense Policy, “ELN Issue Brief: Arms Control Beyond the Nuclear Threshold: Russia, NATO, and Nuclear First Use”, accessed 6/10/20 *tog ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****There is a great paradox in present-day nuclear deterrence: although the numbers of deployed nuclear weapons have been drastically reduced, the probability of their use in conflict between Russia and NATO is much higher than at the end of the Cold War a quarter century ago. One reason is that deep reductions in the nuclear arsenals of the two major powers since 1991 has turned mutually assured destruction from a horrendous reality into an abstract notion – an unavoidable process during the decades of unprecedented relaxation of tensions. Nowadays the tensions are high, but the strategic nuclear balance looks very stable and neither party is concerned about the possibility of a disarming nuclear attack.6 Yet, in fact, the balance is so stable that limited or selective nuclear strikes are again considered possible, and not necessarily leading to a massive exchange. Such concepts are encouraged by the upgrading of the accuracy, yield variability, and enhanced command-and-control flexibility of the new vintage of nuclear arms.In 2003 Russia borrowed from U.S. strategies of limited and flexible employment of strategic arms, elaborated in the 1960-1980s. Moscow officially declared the possibility of the deployment and employment of strategic forces for “showing resolve” and “deescalating conflicts”.7 In 2003, these pronouncements were largely ignored: a NATO-Russian war seemed unthinkable. But in 2014-2015 in the environment of escalating political and military confrontation they were recalled as requiring close attention.At present, limited strategic nuclear strikes are not publicly mentioned in official Russian or U.S. documents on this subject. Still, there are some leaks on this subject to the mass media in the form of the writings of representatives of the “think tanks” of the Russian Ministry of Defense.8 There are also reasons to believe that analogous thinking is being elaborated in the U.S. strategic community (and will be supported by the Republican administration) in the form of “tailored nuclear options for limited use.”9Such concepts are as artificial as they are dangerous. If presented in a crisis to a cocky, inexperienced and strategically uneducated leader, they could turn into a recipe for disaster. Together with the revived concept of using nuclear arms for “de-escalation” in a regional or local conventional conflict between Russia and NATO, they are the most dangerous innovations in contemporary military strategies, with a high probability of a catastrophic nuclear escalation.M: WarMany scenarios Bandow 15 – senior fellow at the Cato Institute, specializing in foreign policy and civil liberties, former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan, Doug, 12/8. “U.S. Should Leave NATO Instead of Expanding the Alliance.” , ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****Is NATO a military alliance or social club? The “North Atlantic” Treaty Organization just invited Montenegro to join. With 2,080 men under arms, Podgorica is a military nullity.As I point out on National Interest online: “Adding Montenegro to NATO is like accumulating Facebook Friends. They do little more than allow preening Washington officials to wander the globe gloating how popular the U.S. is.”During the Cold War NATO was viewed as deadly serious. For years war seemed to be a real possibility.Then the Soviet Union collapsed. The quintessential anti-Soviet alliance no longer had anything to defend or defend against.As Public Choice economists would predict, institutional instinct took over. Supporters subordinated the military to the political, and NATO became a geopolitical Welcome Wagon for former Warsaw Pact members.The good times came to a halt last year with the Ukraine crisis. The Baltic States suddenly looked vulnerable and alliance members remembered Article 5, which committed them to battle against a nuclear-armed power to protect largely indefensible nations. Americans and Europeans were expected to risk nuclear war as an act of international charity.Proposals to add Georgia and Ukraine would multiply the dangers. Russian aggressiveness, though unjustified, illustrates how important Moscow views its influence in both nations. Nothing in Kiev or Tbilisi is worth a nuclear confrontation.The problem is not just NATO’s recent expansion. Turkey also is undermining U.S. and European security.Ankara spent years prosecuting a brutal campaign against Kurdish separatists and occupied more than one-third of the Republic of Cyprus. Turkey has turned in an ever more authoritarian and Islamist direction as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan dropped his liberalizing pretensions.Worse is Ankara’s irresponsible shoot-down of the Russian plane. Turkey may have been protecting the illicit oil trade or insurgents in an area dominated by the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front, or attempting to punish Moscow for backing Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad.The first two undermine American interests. The latter runs against the more fundamental objective of destroying the Islamic State. Nothing justifies allowing Ankara to drag NATO into a war with Russia.Finally, Europe could, if it was so inclined, defend itself. Why, 70 years after the conclusion of World War II, are Europeans still dependent on America?M: – Baltics ScenarioNATO draws the US into Baltic War - goes nuclearCarpenter 14 – senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a contributing editor to The National Interest, Ted Galen Carpenter, 3/24. The National Interest, "Are the Baltic States Next?", ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****Vice President Joe Biden has become the Obama administration’s point man to reassure nervous NATO allies, especially those on Russia’s frontier, in the aftermath of Moscow’s seizure of Crimea. Following a trip to Poland, the vice president went to the Baltic republics. Standing side by side with the leaders of Latvia and Lithuania at a press conference in Vilnius, Biden reminded Russia that article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty considers an attack on any NATO member to be an attack on all. He added that the United States was “absolutely committed” to defending its allies. “We’re in this with you, together,” he told the Baltic leaders.Those comments confirm that U.S. policymakers have apparently forgotten NATO’s original strategic purpose. Indeed, they have apparently forgotten what the purpose should be of any U.S. military alliance: to enhance the security of the American republic. The commitments to NATO easternmost members threaten to do the opposite: greatly increase the risks to America for the most meager possible benefits.Despite the diplomatic froth about trans-Atlantic solidarity and the promotion of Western values during the Cold War, NATO had a straightforward strategic rationale. It was a mechanism to keep a major economic and strategic prize, Western Europe, out of the orbit of an aggressively expansionist totalitarian power, the Soviet Union. That was a rational goal for the United States, especially given the global circumstances at the time. Adding Western Europe’s economic and military capabilities to those of the USSR would have drastically altered the global balance of power and created the specter of an isolated, beleaguered United States. American leaders were willing to incur even dire risks to prevent Moscow from making the region a satellite, however remote that outcome might seem to us in retrospect.NATO’s relevance to the United States declined dramatically with the collapse of the Soviet Union. One cannot legitimately equate today’s Russia, with an aging, declining population, a military with many antiquated components, and merely the world’s eighth-largest economy, to the capabilities the USSR possessed during its heyday. Russia is a conventional, second-tier power that has some regional interests and ambitions, but it is not even remotely a global expansionist threat, much less a totalitarian expansionist threat.That reality should have impelled the United States to give NATO a retirement party at the end of the Cold War, transferring responsibility for Europe’s defense to the principal European powers and, gradually, to the European Union. Instead, U.S. and NATO leaders scrambled to find an alternative mission to keep the alliance in business. They soon settled on an especially dangerous one—expanding NATO into Central and Eastern Europe, eventually to the borders of the Russian Federation itself. Critics warned that such a move created needless new risks for the United States, and that some of the commitments virtually invited a challenge from Russia once it had regained some strength. That is precisely what has happened, and Biden’s reassurances threaten to make a perilous situation even more so.Although Soviet leaders might have harbored some doubts that the United States would risk nuclear war to defend Western Europe, that region’s importance made the U.S. commitment reasonably credible. In any case, it was simply too chancy for the Kremlin to assume that Washington was bluffing. But Washington’s current pledge to undertake such a grave risk merely to defend such tiny allies as the Baltic republics from a noncommunist Russia is far less credible. Those countries have little strategic or economic relevance to the United States. Conversely, because of historical and geographic factors, they have considerable importance to Moscow. That is a bad combination for the credibility of a U.S. defense commitment.Vladimir Putin has already demonstrated that he will not cower in the face of U.S. geopolitical moves in Russia’s neighborhood. That point became apparent already in 2008, when Moscow responded to provocations in Georgia by launching a military offensive. The Kremlin did so even though Washington had increasingly treated Georgia as a de facto ally and spoke openly of pushing NATO membership for that country. Once fighting erupted, elements of the Georgian military and population apparently believed that NATO would come to their rescue. Except for imposing a few largely ineffectual economic sanctions, though, the United States tamely accepted Russia’s move to sever and protect two of Georgia’s secessionist-minded provinces.The recent takeover of Crimea marked a significant escalation of Moscow’s determination to defend and consolidate its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. This time, Putin not only scorned an implicit U.S. security relationship with a client state (as he did regarding Georgia) he openly defied repeated, pointed U.S. warnings. And again, the U.S. response has been anemic and little more than symbolic, suggesting that such warnings are merely a bluff.Given that track record, it would not be a shock if at some point the Kremlin decided to press its interests regarding the Baltic republics. Russian-speaking inhabitants in both Estonia and Latvia (descendants of settlers sent by Moscow during the Soviet era) have long complained about discrimination at the hands of their governments. Putin has an ideal pretext if he wishes to try to pry those countries out of the Western orbit. True, it would entail a greater risk than his adventures in Georgia and Ukraine, given NATO’s explicit Article 5 security guarantees to members. But Putin has already shown himself to be a bit of a gambler.Any Russian coercive moves against the Baltic republics would create an ugly choice for Washington between a bad outcome and worse one. The bad outcome would be to back down in the face of a Crimea-style action against a NATO member. That would be a humiliation for the United States and raise serious doubts about Washington’s other security commitments. A worse outcome, though, would be to try to fulfill the article 5 pledge and risk a catastrophic war against a nuclear-armed adversary over meager geopolitical stakes.It was appallingly bad judgment for U.S. policymakers to put their country in such a position. Military allies are supposed to augment American power and improve the security position of the United States. The goal should not be to collect allies simply for the sake of collecting allies, regardless of the costs and risks involved. Acquiring an assortment of weak, vulnerable security clients masquerading as useful allies is the height of folly. They are dangerous strategic liabilities, not assets. Yet that is what Washington has done by pushing NATO’s expansion into Russia’s traditional sphere of influence.M: – EntanglementNATO commitments are “transmission belts for war” that escalate minor conflicts.Carpenter 18 – a senior fellow in defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, is the author of 10 books, the contributing editor of 10 books, and the author of more than 700 articles and policy studies on international affairs, Ted Galen, 1/22. “How Rigid Alliances Have Locked Us Into Unwanted Conflicts.” ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****Wise leaders seek to maintain the maximum degree of flexibility in foreign policy. Commitments and strategies that make sense under one set of conditions can become problematic when circumstances change. It is imprudent and potentially dangerous to lock one’s country into rigid, long-term obligations. Unfortunately, U.S. leaders since World War II have repeatedly violated that principle. Often they have limited America’s policy options to “reassure” allies in Europe and Asia that the United States will incur any risk and pay any price to protect its security partners. That policy is not sustainable.Such commitments have bedeviled great powers throughout history. Perhaps the most tragic example occurred during the years leading up to World War I. Europe’s major countries divided themselves into rival security blocs, the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance. When tensions soared in 1914 following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, those alliances transformed an emotional but limited dispute between Austria and tiny Serbia into a continental crisis. Germany felt it must back its shaky Austrian ally’s attempt to coerce Belgrade. When Russia moved to protect its Serbian client, Germany sent warnings to Moscow. France then felt pressured to back its Russian ally, and when Germany attacked France by marching through Belgium, Britain felt obligated to enter the fray by its commitment to that tiny country. Thus was the die cast for war between the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance.The process illustrated Georgetown University Professor Earl C. Ravenal’s later observation that alliances are “transmission belts for war.” A bilateral quarrel became a monstrous conflict that would consume millions of lives.America’s founders opposed “entangling alliances” in part because they feared being locked into dangerous security commitments. In his Farewell Address, George Washington made an important distinction between permanent and temporary alliances. The United States, he said, should “steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world…” Such obligations would tie the republic to partners for unforeseen contingencies far into the future. But Washington acknowledged that “temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.” It was an astute distinction and a shrewd note of caution.Leaving aside Woodrow Wilson’s quixotic foray into World War I, the United States followed Washington’s advice throughout the first century and a half of its existence. U.S. leaders avoided political or security commitments to other nations and involvement in conflicts unrelated to America’s own security. After the second massive disruption of the international system in little more than a generation, though, America’s perspective changed. World War II convinced policymakers that ongoing American involvement—indeed, leadership—in global security affairs was now imperative to prevent a third tragedy. The creation of NATO in 1949 symbolized a watershed policy change.With the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty, Harry Truman linked America’s security with that of democratic Europe to prevent the Soviet Union from conquering or even intimidating those Western countries. Yet the NATO treaty didn’t establish a permanent alliance; after the initial 20 years, any member could leave with a one-year notice. Moreover, although Article 5 of the treaty did specify that an attack on one NATO member would be considered an attack on all, the language did not include an automatic obligation for the United States to go to war. Instead, the congressional power to declare war (at least theoretically) remained intact, giving Washington the option of providing support short of a full military intervention.Still, Truman’s NATO decision generated controversy. Some feared that the protection against an automatic commitment to go to war would be nothing more than a paper barrier. Others, especially Republican Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio, worried that America was tying itself too closely to the fortunes and problems of European countries. In his Senate speeches opposing North Atlantic Treaty ratification and in his subsequent book, A Foreign Policy for Americans, Taft stressed the advantages of preserving maximum flexibility in U.S. policy. He dubbed this the “free hand” policy.Taft feared that despite the treaty’s hedging language, Washington was foreclosing its options. He was right. The administration’s 1951 decision to expand the U.S. occupation army in West Germany and station more than 100,000 troops on the continent created a sizable, long-term tripwire in the event of a Soviet offensive. It would be nearly impossible to avoid direct involvement in a European war if Americans were among the initial casualties. The deployment was supposedly temporary, until the Europeans could build sufficient defense forces of their own. Dwight Eisenhower, NATO’s Supreme Commander in 1951 and Truman’s successor as president, expressed the view that if those units were not withdrawn in 10 years, the NATO project would have failed. Instead, the size of the force gradually increased to more than 300,000. The U.S. military presence, albeit at a reduced level, persists to this day.Eisenhower actually increased the linkage of America’s security to that of Washington’s European allies. His doctrine of massive retaliation made it clear that the United States would treat an attack on another NATO member as it would an attack on America. The U.S. response might include an escalation to thermonuclear war. This was the famous “Ike’s Bluff” explored by Evan Thomas in his book of that title. But, despite some criticism in the United States about the dangerous inflexibility of this policy, the NATO allies seemed relieved. Eisenhower’s stance reduced the danger that Washington would separate American and European security interests. Tight linkage, the Europeans assumed, also would inhibit the Soviet Union from seeking to split the alliance.Conversely, John F. Kennedy’s subsequent adoption of a “flexible response” policy, intended to replace massive retaliation, worried NATO capitals. As Christopher Layne of Texas A&M University documents in his seminal book, The Peace of Illusions, Europe’s NATO members sought multiple assurances of security solidarity. U.S. officials nearly always obliged. Kennedy’s secretary of defense, Robert S. McNamara, was categorical on the point: “The United States is prepared to respond immediately with nuclear weapons to the use of nuclear weapons against one or more members of the Alliance. The United States is also prepared to counter with nuclear weapons any Soviet conventional attack so strong that it cannot be dealt with by conventional means.”This outlook prevailed throughout the Cold War. During the 1970s, the Nixon and Ford administrations vehemently opposed the Mansfield Amendment, sponsored by Democratic Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, which would have reduced, but not eliminated, U.S. ground forces in Europe and elsewhere in the world. President Nixon’s National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger (later secretary of state) fought the proposed reductions ferociously. In his memoirs, he stated that the U.S. deployments, especially in Europe, needed to be enhanced, not diminished. “At heart, Mansfield was an isolationist,” Kissinger declared, invoking the canard typically employed by status quo advocates to dismiss calls for a more flexible and restrained foreign policy. The Mansfield proposal was dangerous, Kissinger argued, because “our allies would lose heart” over fears that Washington’s security commitment to them was no longer reliable.The reassurances went beyond formal statements and resistance to objectionable legislative measures. U.S. conventional deployments remained robust, and Washington escalated matters during the late 1970s and early 1980s. That’s when NATO leaders decided to deploy U.S. medium-range, nuclear-capable missiles in Europe as a way of enhancing the alliance’s deterrent and strengthening the linkage between NATO’s conventional forces and U.S. intercontinental strategic systems. Washington’s options if a war broke out thus narrowed further.U.S. leaders even undercut their own demands for greater burden sharing as other NATO members maintained low defense outlays while enjoying the free ride provided by America. This was not new. As early as December 1953, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles asserted bluntly that the United States might initiate an “agonizing reappraisal” of its defense commitment to Europe if the allies didn’t make more serious efforts to build military capabilities.More than six decades later, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel voiced hints of a limit to Washington’s patience. Hagel admonished the Europeans during a February 2014 meeting of NATO defense ministers, declaring: “Our alliance can endure only as long as we are willing to fight for it, and invest in it.” This was “mandatory—not elective,” he added.NATO’s European members routinely dismissed such warnings as lacking credibility. Alan Tonelson, former associate editor at Foreign Policy, aptly identified the inherent futility of Washington’s burden-sharing approach:U.S. leaders never gave the Europeans sufficient incentive to assume greater relative military responsibilities. The incentive was lacking, in turn, because Washington never believed it could afford to walk away from NATO or even reduce its role, if the allies stood firm. Worse, U.S. leaders repeatedly telegraphed that message to the Europeans—often in the midst of burden-sharing controversies.Still, Truman’s NATO decision generated controversy. Some feared that the protection against an automatic commitment to go to war would be nothing more than a paper barrier. Others, especially Republican Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio, worried that America was tying itself too closely to the fortunes and problems of European countries. In his Senate speeches opposing North Atlantic Treaty ratification and in his subsequent book, A Foreign Policy for Americans, Taft stressed the advantages of preserving maximum flexibility in U.S. policy. He dubbed this the “free hand” policy.Taft feared that despite the treaty’s hedging language, Washington was foreclosing its options. He was right. The administration’s 1951 decision to expand the U.S. occupation army in West Germany and station more than 100,000 troops on the continent created a sizable, long-term tripwire in the event of a Soviet offensive. It would be nearly impossible to avoid direct involvement in a European war if Americans were among the initial casualties. The deployment was supposedly temporary, until the Europeans could build sufficient defense forces of their own. Dwight Eisenhower, NATO’s Supreme Commander in 1951 and Truman’s successor as president, expressed the view that if those units were not withdrawn in 10 years, the NATO project would have failed. Instead, the size of the force gradually increased to more than 300,000. The U.S. military presence, albeit at a reduced level, persists to this day.Eisenhower actually increased the linkage of America’s security to that of Washington’s European allies. His doctrine of massive retaliation made it clear that the United States would treat an attack on another NATO member as it would an attack on America. The U.S. response might include an escalation to thermonuclear war. This was the famous “Ike’s Bluff” explored by Evan Thomas in his book of that title. But, despite some criticism in the United States about the dangerous inflexibility of this policy, the NATO allies seemed relieved. Eisenhower’s stance reduced the danger that Washington would separate American and European security interests. Tight linkage, the Europeans assumed, also would inhibit the Soviet Union from seeking to split the alliance.Conversely, John F. Kennedy’s subsequent adoption of a “flexible response” policy, intended to replace massive retaliation, worried NATO capitals. As Christopher Layne of Texas A&M University documents in his seminal book, The Peace of Illusions, Europe’s NATO members sought multiple assurances of security solidarity. U.S. officials nearly always obliged. Kennedy’s secretary of defense, Robert S. McNamara, was categorical on the point: “The United States is prepared to respond immediately with nuclear weapons to the use of nuclear weapons against one or more members of the Alliance. The United States is also prepared to counter with nuclear weapons any Soviet conventional attack so strong that it cannot be dealt with by conventional means.”This outlook prevailed throughout the Cold War. During the 1970s, the Nixon and Ford administrations vehemently opposed the Mansfield Amendment, sponsored by Democratic Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, which would have reduced, but not eliminated, U.S. ground forces in Europe and elsewhere in the world. President Nixon’s National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger (later secretary of state) fought the proposed reductions ferociously. In his memoirs, he stated that the U.S. deployments, especially in Europe, needed to be enhanced, not diminished. “At heart, Mansfield was an isolationist,” Kissinger declared, invoking the canard typically employed by status quo advocates to dismiss calls for a more flexible and restrained foreign policy. The Mansfield proposal was dangerous, Kissinger argued, because “our allies would lose heart” over fears that Washington’s security commitment to them was no longer reliable.The reassurances went beyond formal statements and resistance to objectionable legislative measures. U.S. conventional deployments remained robust, and Washington escalated matters during the late 1970s and early 1980s. That’s when NATO leaders decided to deploy U.S. medium-range, nuclear-capable missiles in Europe as a way of enhancing the alliance’s deterrent and strengthening the linkage between NATO’s conventional forces and U.S. intercontinental strategic systems. Washington’s options if a war broke out thus narrowed further.U.S. leaders even undercut their own demands for greater burden sharing as other NATO members maintained low defense outlays while enjoying the free ride provided by America. This was not new. As early as December 1953, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles asserted bluntly that the United States might initiate an “agonizing reappraisal” of its defense commitment to Europe if the allies didn’t make more serious efforts to build military capabilities.More than six decades later, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel voiced hints of a limit to Washington’s patience. Hagel admonished the Europeans during a February 2014 meeting of NATO defense ministers, declaring: “Our alliance can endure only as long as we are willing to fight for it, and invest in it.” This was “mandatory—not elective,” he added.NATO’s European members routinely dismissed such warnings as lacking credibility. Alan Tonelson, former associate editor at Foreign Policy, aptly identified the inherent futility of Washington’s burden-sharing approach:U.S. leaders never gave the Europeans sufficient incentive to assume greater relative military responsibilities. The incentive was lacking, in turn, because Washington never believed it could afford to walk away from NATO or even reduce its role, if the allies stood firm. Worse, U.S. leaders repeatedly telegraphed that message to the Europeans—often in the midst of burden-sharing controversies.The perceived need among U.S leaders to limit Washington’s policy options was not confined to NATO. There also was a proliferation of U.S.-led security alliances around the world, including bilateral mutual defense treaties with Japan (1951), South Korea (1953), and Nationalist China (1954). Although these treaties carefully avoided language obligating America to go to war if the security partner were attacked, multiple statements from a succession of U.S. administrations indicated that such an official limitation was not to be taken seriously. Moreover, U.S. warships and aircraft in the extreme western Pacific and tripwire U. S. ground forces in Japan and South Korea made it clear that the United States would be involved in any war that might break out. Once again, American leaders chose to constrain the republic’s policy options.It appeared for a time that Donald Trump might alter the traditional U.S. approach to allies and adopt a more conditional, flexible strategy. In his most definitive foreign policy speech during the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump asserted: “Our allies are not paying their fair share” of the collective-defense effort. He added: “The countries we are defending must pay for the cost of this defense, and if not, the U.S. must be prepared to let these countries defend themselves.” This language strongly suggested that the security commitment was not absolute.In July 2016, Trump indicated that the question of America’s defense of the Baltic republics depended on whether they had fulfilled their alliance obligations. Asked during an interview with the New York Times whether NATO countries, including Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, could count on the United States to extend aid if Russia attacked, Trump answered: “Have they fulfilled their obligations to us? If they fulfill their obligations to us, the answer is yes.” Implicitly, if they had not fulfilled their obligations, the answer would be “no.”Reporters quickly noted that such comments sent “a chill through Europe.” Both domestic and foreign supporters of tight linkage between the security interests of the two regions reacted with anger and apprehension. South Carolina’s Republican Senator Lindsey Graham argued, “Statements like these make the world more dangerous and the United States less safe. I can only imagine how our allies in NATO, particularly the Baltic states, must feel.” He added he felt certain that Russian President Vladimir Putin was “a very happy man.” Graham said Trump was “essentially telling the Russians and other bad actors that the United States is not fully committed to supporting the NATO alliance.” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg added, “Solidarity among Allies is a key value for NATO. This is good for European security and good for U.S. security.”Nevertheless, Trump’s aloofness toward NATO’s Article 5 surfaced occasionally even after his inauguration. Foreign Policy noted that following a public session at the NATO summit on May 25, “in which Trump refused to endorse NATO’s collective defense clause and famously shoved the Montenegrin leader out of the way,” leaders of the 29-member alliance seemed “appalled.”Nor did Trump confine his skepticism to the NATO commitment. Various statements hinted at a willingness to consider fundamental changes in other aspects of U.S. security strategy. Candidate Trump said he wouldn’t necessarily object if Japan and South Korea decided to build their own nuclear deterrents. He also displayed a palpable lack of confidence that the defense obligations in the defense treaty with Japan were truly “mutual.” During a campaign rally in Des Moines, Iowa, he vented his frustration. “You know we have a treaty with Japan where if Japan is attacked, we have to use the full force and might of the United States,” Trump said. “If we’re attacked, Japan doesn’t have to do anything. They can sit home and watch Sony television, OK?”But once in office, Trump and his appointees moved gradually to reassure both European and East Asian allies that the U.S. security commitment remained firm. Vice President Mike Pence made that point categorically: “Make no mistake, our commitment is unwavering. We will meet our obligations to our people to provide for the collective defense of all of our allies…an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.” Likewise, U.S. military leaders in East Asia confirmed that Washington’s extended deterrence commitment to Japan and South Korea would be guaranteed “through all categories of military capabilities including conventional and nuclear weapons.”The United States needs a more flexible security strategy. U.S. leaders should embrace the Robert Taft policy of the free hand. A wise superpower would keep its options open as much as possible. It makes no sense to undertake commitments or deploy U.S. military forces in a manner that could trap the United States in wars unrelated to vital American interests. Yet that is what U.S. policymakers have done for decades and continue to do.NATO’s Article 5 is dangerously close to an automatic commitment to go to war if a member state becomes embroiled in any armed conflict. But determining whether an ally is victim or aggressor can be extremely difficult. The Baltic republics, for example, have rather tense relations with their Russian neighbor. Two of them also have large Russian minorities that would likely look to Moscow for protection if discrimination against them becomes blatant and onerous. If fighting broke out, it would be extremely difficult to refrain from coming to the aid of a treaty ally, even if a Baltic government provoked the incident.There are other worrisome possibilities as well. Consider the November 2015 incident in which Turkey shot down a Russian jet fighter that had strayed into Turkish airspace for a mere 17 seconds. Moscow’s response to that outrageous action was restrained and peaceful. But what would Washington’s options have been if Putin had ordered airstrikes against the offending Turkish missile batteries? One could argue that Turkey was not the victim of aggression but had committed aggression. Yet U.S. leaders would have been under tremendous pressure to honor the security pledge to a treaty member.Continuing the forward deployment of military forces intensifies the risks that rigid U.S. security commitments already entail. It is imprudent to station troops, tanks, warplanes, and missiles in NATO countries near the Russian frontier. Even a minor incident could instantly engulf those units in combat, effectively foreclosing Washington’s policy options. Indeed, that is why those members want the U.S. deployments. Daniel Szeligowski, senior research fellow at the Polish Institute for International Affairs, emphasized, “From the Polish perspective, the deployment of U.S. troops to Poland and Baltic states means a real deterrence since it increases the probability of the U.S. forces engagement in case of potential aggression from Russia.”For the United States to severely limit its policy options regarding war and peace was dubious enough when the stakes involved strategically important allies. But NATO’s membership expansion since the mid-1990s greatly magnifies the folly. America is now incurring the same grievous risks to defend tiny, strategically marginal “allies” (actually, dependents) such as Slovenia, Montenegro, and the Baltic republics.The same effect occurs with the stationing of U.S. forces near the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea. The DMZ would be the flashpoint in any conflict that erupted between the two Korean states, and American military personnel would be drawn into the fighting from day one.Denying U.S. leaders the element of choice about participating in a war that involved U.S. allies was the whole point of deploying such tripwire forces during the Cold War. Such inflexibility was unwise even when the United States faced an existential threat to its security. It is incredible folly to perpetuate those self-imposed shackles when no such threat exists. America needs a policy for the 21st century that maximizes the republic’s options while reducing both its obligations and attendant risks.Withdrawal solves.Carpenter 19 – senior fellow at the Cato Institute, is the author of ten books on international affairs. His latest book (co‐authored with Malou Innocent) is Perilous Partners: The Benefits and Pitfalls of America’s Alliances with Authoritarian Regimes, Ted Galen, 1/27. “Facing the Transatlantic Truth: Divergent US and European Security Interests.” ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****Media reports that President Donald Trump discussed the possibility of US withdrawal from NATO with other officials on several occasions in 2018 have produced enhanced anxiety among Alliance partisans on both sides of the Atlantic. But Trump is hardly alone in suggesting that a new transatlantic security relationship may be needed.NATO's Cold War mission receded into history more than a quarter century ago, and there is growing awareness that while America and Europe have important security interests in common, those interests are far from being congruent. Not all security problems impact all portions of the democratic West equally. It is irrational to assume that disorders in the Balkans, North Africa, or elsewhere on Europe's periphery should be as important to the United States as they are to the European Union countries. Likewise, it is not reasonable to believe that EU members should be as concerned as the United States about problems in Central America, the Caribbean, or Venezuela.Indeed, expressions of that realization surfaced during the first post-Cold War decade — and did so at least as much in Europe as in America. As NATO increasingly pursued “out of area” missions during the 1990s and early 2000s, some NATO traditionalists in Europe became very uneasy about the implications for the Continent. Comments like those of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who suggested that NATO become a force for peace “from the Middle East to Central Africa,” strengthened such apprehension. Albright’s former Clinton administration colleagues Warren Christopher and William Perry went even further than she did, urging that the Alliance be an instrument for the projection of force anywhere in the world the West’s “collective interests” were threatened.French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine cautioned against that approach, warning that it ran the risk “of diluting the alliance”. Without a reasonably tight geographic focus, he believed, NATO could become a global crusader, endangering European interests in remote arenas. Spanish Foreign Minister Abel Matutes was even more specific that Europe did not have a stake in every geopolitical problem the United States might want to address somewhere else in the world. He stressed that what happens “8,000 kilometers from us — in Korea, for example … cannot be considered a threat to our security.” Vedrine echoed his point, saying that NATO “is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, not the North Pacific”. Such comments indicated a graphic recognition that American and European interests were distinct and separable, not identical or even always compatible.Henry Kissinger, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, and other prominent “NATO traditionalists” also made that important distinction from the American side two decades ago. Krauthammer was caustic about the increasing focus of the “new NATO” on out‐?of‐?area missions. “For the clever young thinkers of the [Clinton] administration,” he observed sarcastically, the Alliance’s traditional deterrence mission apparently was “too boring”. He saw them as wanting to refashion NATO as “a robust, restless alliance ready to throw its weight around outside its own borders to impose order and goodness”. Kissinger shared that concern. “Kosovo is no more a threat to America than Haiti is to Europe—and we never asked for help there”. He worried about blurring such important differences and having Washington responsible for resolving every manner of parochial problem in or near Europe.Such concerns were warranted. The United States is still entangled in the Balkans, trying to help resolve quarrels between Serbia and now‐?independent Kosovo. Washington even dispatched a 500‐?person troop contingent in 2017 to bolster the international peacekeeping force there when tensions flared sharply. A major reason that Barack Obama’s administration launched a regime‐?change war in Libya was because of pressure from key NATO allies, especially Britain and France. The US government also is on the front lines of dealing with Russian‐?Ukrainian and Russian‐?Georgian disputes. US leaders still seem to make no meaningful distinction between the interests of the United States and Europe.That approach is both illogical and excessively burdensome. A new generation of critics is renewing the argument that NATO shows serious signs of obsolescence and that U.S. and European interests are not identical. Public opinion surveys also confirm that there are substantial and widening differences between American and European perspectives on a wide range of foreign policy issues. Such a realization might well have taken root and grown after the first round of dissent that surfaced in the late 1990s, but the 9–11 attacks and the onset of the so‐?called war on terror temporarily reinforced a sense of transatlantic solidarity, thereby stifling debate and needed policy changes.Creating a strong European security organization to handle purely European contingencies makes sense for both sides. US leaders should encourage European ambitions for an independent security capability, not blindly emulate previous administrations and seek to sabotage those ambitions. Such an organization ought to take primary responsibility for the Continent’s security affairs and for addressing problems on Europe’s periphery. A mechanism for transatlantic security cooperation should be reserved for serious threats that menace both the United States and Europe.M: – Georgia/Ukraine ScenarioWithdrawal key to avoid getting drawn into conflict over Georgia and UkraineCarpenter 16 – senior fellow for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. He is the author of ten books and the contributing editor of ten books on international affairs, including four on NATO, Ted Galen, 8/25. “NATO is an Institutional Dinosaur.” ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****It is time for the United States finally to conduct Dulles’s agonizing reappraisal. The only way to change the long-standing, frustrating dynamic is for the United States to make clear by actions — not just words — that it will no longer tolerate free riding on America’s military posture. That means, at the very least, gradually withdrawing all U.S. ground forces from Europe and drastically downsizing the presence of air and naval forces. It also means ending Washington’s insistence on U.S. domination of collective defense efforts through its NATO leadership. Indeed, the United States needs to abandon its myopic opposition to the European Union developing an independent security capability.Policymakers need to take a hard look at NATO for two other reasons. First, allies are supposed to enhance America’s security, but recent additions to NATO have done the opposite. Most of the newer members fall into two categories — the irrelevant and the dangerous. In the former category are countries like Montenegro, with a tiny population and economy and a minuscule military. How Montenegro is supposed to help the United States in the event of a military crisis is truly a mystery.But at least Montenegro has few enemies and no great power enemies. The same cannot be said of the three Baltic republics, which are on bad terms with Russia. The only thing worse than committing the United States to defend a small, weak, largely useless ally is doing so when that ally is highly vulnerable to another major power. Yet that is what Washington has foolishly done with the Baltic republics. RAND analysts conclude that a concerted Russian attack would overrun the Baltic states in about 60 hours. That would leave the United States (as NATO’s leader) with an ugly choice between a humiliating capitulation or a perilous escalation.Worse, hawks in the United States advocate making defense commitments to Georgia and Ukraine, which are even more sensitive geographic locales to Russia. Alliances with such client states are perfect transmission belts to transform a local, limited conflict into a global showdown between nuclear-armed powers.Georgian adventurism goes nuclear - deterrence failsBandow 13, Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, The National Interest, August 9, 2013, "NATO's Georgia Nightmare", ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****For a time alliance advocates seemed embarrassed as they searched for new missions. Ideas included battling the drug trade, promoting environmental protection and aiding student exchanges. Exactly how armored divisions, air wings and aircraft carriers would advance such endeavors went unexplained.NATO decided to take on “out-of-area” responsibilities. In short, the alliance would find wars to fight elsewhere. In between sporadic conflicts in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo and Libya, NATO acted as a prestigious social club, inviting the newly freed and created Eastern European states to join.That process continues today. For instance, Rasmussen declared: “Georgia’s full Euro-Atlantic integration is a goal we all share. The decision taken at the 2008 Summit in Bucharest stands as firm as ever. If and when Georgia meets the necessary requirements, it will find a home in NATO.”That’s a dumb idea. Georgia remains a security liability. It doesn’t matter if the current government cleans up the country’s political and legal systems and strengthens its military. Washington should not promise to defend Tbilisi.Unfortunately, Georgia is stuck in a bad neighborhood. Absorbed by the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union, Tbilisi won its freedom when the USSR broke up. Relations went bad and war erupted in 2008. Counting on the commitment made earlier that year to bring Tbilisi into the alliance, the Saakashvili government started the shooting. Western leaders grew more cautious about Georgia’s alliance prospects, but a month after the Russo-Georgian war NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer opined that Georgia’s “road to NATO is still wide open” and “all 26 allies agree that Georgia will one day be a member of the alliance.”This aspiration was most closely identified with Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili. However, observed Davit Bakradze, parliamentary leader of Saakashvili’s party: “NATO membership is an issue which we all agree on.” In June, prime minister Bidzina Ivanishvili declared that his nation will continue on its course of “joining NATO as soon as possible.”The alternative of self-defense would be less certain and more expensive. Said Michael Cecire of the Foreign Policy Research Institute: “Georgia’s military would require significant expansion, training and upgrading, all at a prohibitive cost, to field a heavy force with sufficient deterrence value to be militarily worthwhile.” It’s cheaper to campaign for a NATO security guarantee.Cecire explained, Georgia’s policies reflect “Tbilisi’s desire to shed its reputation as a Euro-Atlantic security liability, dating back to Georgia’s five-day war with Russia in 2008.” The Ivanishvili government is attempting to improve its relationship with Moscow as well as transform the Georgian army. Overall, argued Cecire: “Georgia is slowly but surely overturning a reputation as a liability into that of an asset.”Tbilisi recently promoted military cooperation with NATO members Hungary and Lithuania, agreed to aid European Union military training in Mali, and conducted exercises with the United States. More important, the government announced plans to reorient the Georgian army into a specialized antiterrorism force, consistent with the NATO doctrine of “Smart Defense.” Cecire quoted Georgian defense minister Irakli Alasania: “This is a niche we are offering to our partners to be more useful.” In effect, Tbilisi plans to abandon any serious effort to defend itself, hoping to shift that burden to NATO.For the same reason Prime Minister Ivanishvili recently decided to go double or nothing in Afghanistan, increasing Georgian forces. Of course, the allies maintain that Tbilisi’s contribution has nothing to do with NATO membership. Rasmussen said in Georgia: “I know that many Georgians are asking how many more of their brave soldiers will be lost in order to gain NATO membership. Let me stress. Your soldiers are not in Afghanistan as a means of buying entry into NATO. They are there, first and foremost, because it is in Georgia’s security interests for them to be there.”Actually, Tbilisi gains little from supporting the incompetent, inefficient, dishonest central government in Afghanistan.Georgian officials are open about their objective. Prime Minister Ivanishvili explained: “Next year we should undertake a very vigorous step and get” a Membership Action Plan. In the longer term, “we should become a NATO member state and those soldiers who now serve in Afghanistan contribute most of all to this deed.”In fact, those soldiers are committing their lives to their government’s designs: ten were killed in two bombings since May, bringing total Georgian deaths to twenty-nine. However, Tbilisi’s soldiers will remain pawns in their government’s larger political game. President Saakashvili offered his condolences after the recent deaths, declaring: “Our duty to their memory is to continue our path toward NATO membership.”However, the Georgian people are having doubts. Observed Vasili Rukhadze of the Jamestown Foundation: “For years, the general public narrative was that Georgia’s large-scale participation in the ISAF mission in Afghanistan and earlier in Iraq could help Georgia’s access to NATO, as the North Atlantic Alliance members would see Georgia’s efforts and sacrifices and accept the country into the organization. Some now question whether such a hope is realistic. Many argue that Georgian sacrifices proved futile in convincing Western countries to accept Georgia into the Alliance.” As a result, there is growing support for withdrawal.While NATO membership makes sense for Tbilisi, it would be a bad deal for America. For Washington, the alliance’s purpose should be to advance American security. During the Cold War that meant preventing Soviet domination of Eurasia. Today that possibility no longer exists. Russian threats against Georgia affect no serious U.S. interest.Of course, alliance advocates contend that America’s threat to intervene would deter Russia. But history is filled with instances in which deterrence failed, especially when the commitment seemed inherently implausible. U.S. planners rightly have never thought much about the Caucasus. In contrast, Moscow remains as concerned as ever about border security and international respect.Moreover, a formal NATO security guarantee would encourage Georgia to act even less responsibly. Tbilisi already is sacrificing territorial defense in its quixotic quest for NATO membership.Worse, in 2008 while merely hoping for American support, the Georgian government foolishly provoked war with Moscow. Reported Spiegel International: “On the evening of August 7, Saakashvili decided to ignore all the warnings. The president gave the order to storm the South Ossetian capital. Georgian rocket launchers bombarded Tskhinvali. Saakashvili’s artillery even directly fired on the Russian military base and killed soldiers.” Bringing Georgia into the alliance would make war more likely.Washington should finally and firmly kill Georgia’s NATO ambitions. Of course, that would not stop the Europeans from acting independently, if they believed the benefits of defending Tbilisi to be worth the costs. But Washington should say no to the possibility of war in the Caucasus.Staying in NATO risks war with Russia.Ted Galen Carpenter 19. Senior fellow in security studies at the Cato Institute. "Trump Should Have Already Left NATO". National Interest. 4-17-2019. ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****It is imperative to overcome the stifling influence of stale thinking and vested interests regarding NATO. Article V is a de facto automatic commitment to go to war if an ally (however minor or strategically irrelevant) becomes embroiled in an armed conflict, and such an obligation is more imprudent than ever before. The costs and risks of Washington’s security obligations to its European allies now substantially outweigh any existing or potential benefits. When a great power reaches that point with regard to any policy, the need for drastic change becomes urgent. America’s NATO commitment has arrived at that point. U.S. leaders must craft a more nuanced and selective security relationship between the United States and Europe.A fresh strategy would embody several important principles, and adopting those principles may well determine whether the United States enjoys a prolonged era of peace or finds itself repeatedly drawn into petty conflicts that have little or no relevance to the fundamental interests of the American republic. Even more important, embracing the correct principles may determine whether the United States can avoid a cataclysmic military collision with a nuclear-armed Russia.M: – Middle East NATO draws the US into Middle East conflictsKristan 16 – fellow at Defense Priorities. She is a weekend editor at The Week and a columnist at Rare, and her writing has also appeared in Time magazine, Relevant magazine and The American Conservative, among other outlets, Bonnie, 8/3. “Trump is right: It's time to rethink NATO.” ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****In Cleveland to formally accept the Republican nomination for president two weeks ago, Donald Trump—as ever—made waves. The controversy this time stemmed from remarks made to The New York Times in which he indicated a Trump White House might not feel particularly bound to the United States’ NATO alliance obligations.Asked about how he would respond to hypothetical Russian aggression in Eastern Europe, Trump said in comments he reiterated this week that his America would come to NATO allies’ defense if and only if “they fulfill their obligations to us.” Trump conceded he would “prefer to be able to continue” existing alliances, but refused to make any promises not dependent on allies’ good behavior.Trump is mocked for his foreign policy knowledge, and the D.C. establishment has reacted with horror at the idea of the U.S. pulling back from the alliance. But if we dismiss him, we miss an important point: It is time for a rethink of NATO, and the conversation shouldn’t be whether to reshape our commitment, but how.NATO has gradually become a liability for Americans—and Europeans, too—by abandoning its original goal of defending Europe in favor of imprudent, U.S.-funded adventures in the Middle East and on the eastern front. While it would be irresponsible to suggest that the United States should simply ignore its treaty obligations at will, today’s geopolitical realities call for a reorientation of NATO’s priorities toward defense, strictly defined and funded by a continent more than capable of taking care of itself.A2 NATO key to check Russian AggressionTurn: Russia is only aggressive in response to NATO enlargement attempts, plan resolves.Mearsheimer, 2014 (John Campbell, professor of political science at the University of Chicago, 8-20-2014, "Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault," Foreign Affairs, , DoA 6/16/2020, DVOG) ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****Other analysts allege, more plausibly, that Putin regrets the demise of the Soviet Union and is determined to reverse it by expanding Russia’s borders. According to this interpretation, Putin, having taken Crimea, is now testing the waters to see if the time is right to conquer Ukraine, or at least its eastern part, and he will eventually behave aggressively toward other countries in Russia’s neighborhood. For some in this camp, Putin represents a modern-day Adolf Hitler, and striking any kind of deal with him would repeat the mistake of Munich. Thus, NATO must admit Georgia and Ukraine to contain Russia before it dominates its neighbors and threatens western Europe.?This argument falls apart on close inspection. If Putin were committed to creating a greater Russia, signs of his intentions would almost certainly have arisen before February 22. But there is virtually no evidence that he was bent on taking Crimea, much less any other territory in Ukraine, before that date. Even Western leaders who supported NATO expansion were not doing so out of a fear that Russia was about to use military force. Putin’s actions in Crimea took them by complete surprise and appear to have been a spontaneous reaction to Yanukovych’s ouster. Right afterward, even Putin said he opposed Crimean secession, before quickly changing his mind.?Russia is defensive – their ev has a western bias but they’ve abided by i-law, and revisionism in Ukraine is exaggerated !!Elias G?tz 18. **Postdoctoral Researcher at the Uppsala Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies (UCRS), Uppsala University, Sweden. **Camille-Renaud Merlen, PhD Candidate in International Relations at Kent. “Russia and the question of world order.” European Politics and Society 11/15/2018. T&F. ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****To begin with, there are a number of reasons to be sceptical about the ‘revanchist Russia’ perspective. First, it adopts an overly deterministic position, which negates the open-ended character of history by underlining its predetermined course through certain ‘iron laws’ and the supposedly unchanging ‘essence’ of Russia. In so doing, this perspective effectively denies the role of individual agency: Whoever the leader is, or whatever the regime may be, Russians are subordinate to the quest for imperial greatness. This is a view that incidentally dovetails with that of extreme Russian nationalists, who see Russian history in similar holistic terms of a ‘single stream’ that connects Ivan IV, Peter the Great, Stalin, and Putin. However, Russia has experienced tremendous upheavals throughout history that dramatically changed its society and its relations with the outside world. This happened often at the instigation of one or a few individuals. Both the beginning and the end of the Soviet Union, for example, serve as powerful reminders of the role agency plays in affecting Moscow’s internal and external affairs. Furthermore, essentialist claims about Russian identity do not offer much insight into the dynamics of Moscow’s approach to the liberal international order, which has significantly fluctuated over time (Tsygankov, 2016). Second, Russia’s revisionist behaviour should not be exaggerated. Its intervention in Ukraine has remained relatively limited, as has its military activity in other post-Soviet states (G?tz, 2016, p. 9). In fact, the scope of Russia’s revanchist aims is a matter of debate. It is doubtful whether Moscow has a blueprint for an alternative international order with different norms and principles than the current one. Nor does its promotion of conservative authoritarianism seem to constitute a genuine agenda. As Lewis (2016) writes, ‘the export of conservative social and political values (…) has so far not developed into a coherent campaign, but remains a rather ad hoc and inchoate critique by Russian politicians of “multiculturalism”, LGBT rights and “political correctness” in Europe.’ Furthermore, the ‘revanchist Russia’ perspective is unable to account for the numerous instances in which Moscow has adhered to the norms, rules, and institutions that are associated with the existing liberal order. While it might be a stretch to describe Moscow as a consistent defender of multilateralism (Lo, 2015), it has supported frameworks such as the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. It also acceded to the World Trade Organization in 2012 – after 19 years of talks – and continues to be a member of the European Court of Human Rights. The liberal goals and supranational methods of these institutions hardly fit with a revisionist imperial agenda. Third, Moscow’s behaviour is much more in line with that of an ordinary great power than the ‘revanchist Russia’ perspective makes it out to be. For one thing, Russia is by no means unique in its quest to establish a zone of influence in its near neighbourhood. As Carpenter (2017, January 19) points out, Russia is hardly the only country to regard the [sphere of influence] concept as important for its security. Or do U.S. officials believe that Chinese actions in the South China Sea, Turkey’s policies towards Iraq and Syria, and Saudi Arabia’s actions in Bahrain and Yemen do not involve such a consideration? For another, interference in the domestic affairs of other states is something of a habit for great powers. Whether they are democratic or authoritarian does not seem to make a difference in this regard. The United States, for example, has a long track record of meddling in the internal affairs and electoral processes of other countries (Levin, 2016). It is therefore unlikely that a more democratic Russia will substantially change its key foreign policy objectives and activities. Furthermore, the discrediting of Russian concerns over NATO enlargement as an ‘imagined’ threat, rather than a ‘real’ one, misses the mark. Any international relations scholar worth their salt knows that uncertainty about others’ intentions is central to security dilemma dynamics. Thus, Moscow’s fears should not be brushed aside as idiosyncratic Russian paranoia. In conclusion, it seems fair to say that the ‘revanchist Russia’ perspective faces an array of explanatory challenges and shortcomings. Stereotypes frame all Negs impact claims – not reliableJoseph Dobbs, 2018, Research Fellow and Project Manager at the European Leadership Network, “Proud and Prejudiced: The risk of stereotypes in Russia-West relations” ELN, Policy Brief 29 January 2018, accessed 6/16/20 *tog ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****The challenge posed by stereotypes is in how they frame our perceptions of others and events. A policy-maker who believes another state to be fundamentally peaceful will interpret communications, events and interactions differently to another who views the same country to be aggressive. How a government perceives the Iran Nuclear Deal, for example, will have been shaped by its leaders’ underlying stereotypes about Iran and its role in regional and global security. This is compounded by stereotypes of the ‘self’ and of other actors in the debate. Thus, the more stereotypes a policy-maker subscribes to the more likely that their response to an event will be biased and possibly miscalculated. It is the way in which they impact on threat perception that make stereotypes in international affairs most concerning. Deterrence relies, fundamentally, on perception of the risks and rewards of taking a particular course of action. If a state cannot effectively interpret an adversary’s capacity and resolve due to biasing stereotypes then a failure in deterrence is more likely. For example, if the other country is stereotyped as ‘weak’, ‘indecisive’ and ‘risk-averse’, especially if policy-makers believe their side to be ‘strong’ and ‘decisive’, then there is an increased chance of severe miscalculation. Similarly, if a country or its leader is labelled as “undeterrable”, as if often said of modern day North Korea,10 this assertion - which can be based on stereotype rather than knowledge or experience - can affect policymaking. The balance of power may well be equal but this is irrelevant if states do not perceive it to be so. Equally, stereotypes can perpetuate the exaggeration of risk, which too can lead to ineffective policymaking, such as an unnecessary escalation that creates risk where it was not. Both over and underestimation of risk threaten mutual security. This is especially acute in RussiaWest relations. The role of stereotypes in international relations, especially in Russia-West relations, is worthy of greater attention. It would however be a mistake to fall into the same trap of oversimplification by overemphasising the importance of stereotypes on their own. The real risk of stereotyping is in its reinforcement of flawed policy approaches. Negative stereotypes can lead to demonization and the miscalculation of threat, in both directions. Stereotyping, both positive and negative, encourages intellectual laziness by jumping to conclusions and avoiding the consideration of other viewpoints, or information incompatible with the stereotype. Opportunities to improve a situation may be missed, leaving all involved worse off. Focus on Putin is a link to stereotypingJoseph Dobbs, 2018, Research Fellow and Project Manager at the European Leadership Network, “Proud and Prejudiced: The risk of stereotypes in Russia-West relations” ELN, Policy Brief 29 January 2018, accessed 6/16/20 *tog ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****Understandably, given the power structure in modern Russia and Putin’s longevity at the top of it, more weight is given to the personal characteristics of the Russian President than arguably anyone else in Russia-West relations. The West’s emphasis, particularly in the media, on Putin is evident in descriptions of him variously as a “tsar”,19 a “dictator”,20 being “in another world”21 and of being in complete control of Russian decision making. The evaluation of the Russian threat became far more severe in 2016 and 2017. Russia began, in the minds of some Western actors, to represent an existential threat and Putin emerged as the central figure in most perceived attacks on the West. This represents a marked change from the belief that the Russian President made good dayto-day decisions but lacked a strategic vision. It demonstrates the ability for stereotypes to shift, and for two conflicting oversimplifications to exist simultaneously or for one to supplant another. This also shows that stereotypes of the self, in this case of Western democracy’s weakness, can interact with those of the other. It is not wrong to argue that Putin is personally a very powerful actor but this overemphasis distracts from the important focus on structural drivers, both within Russia and in the West. For example, by focusing too much attention on President Putin’s agency, the West risks neglecting the importance of other critical components of Russian foreign policy. National identity, historical narratives, economic balancing, and the structure of Russian politics and national security all play their own important roles. Putin, of course, has made his own significant mark on many of these factors but he is arguably as much a product of them as visa-versa.22 Within the West the role of Putin as a puppet-master behind all negative developments distracts policy-makers away from the broader, and more nuanced, drivers of Russian policy. Ultimately, one of the clearest ways in which the oversimplification of the role of President Putin impacts Russia-West relations is in how some policy-makers in the West deem it impossible for improvement with Putin in power. Upon leaving his post in 2017 the EU Ambassador to Russia, Vygaudas U?ackas, expressed this view that “Over the course of a six-year presidential term that will follow, it seems probable that the current clash of world views between Moscow and the West will continue.”23 If a policy-maker accepts the premise that Putin is personally responsible for Russian actions, that his plan is to destroy the West, and that Putin’s place at the top of Russian politics is secure for the foreseeable future, then the conclusion that the current state of relations is set to endure is logical. Any Russian attempts to make overtures to the West may well go ignored or dismissed as part of a Putin master plan. Western Expansionism drives Russian “aggression”Joseph Dobbs, 2018, Research Fellow and Project Manager at the European Leadership Network, “Proud and Prejudiced: The risk of stereotypes in Russia-West relations” ELN, Policy Brief 29 January 2018, accessed 6/16/20 *tog ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****For Moscow the belief that Western actions are threatening to Russian security is longstanding. Seeing Russia as an existential threat to the West is something that, until recently, had not been a mainstream position. In the West it has now become commonplace to evoke the perceived expansionist desires of the Kremlin as evidence against any candidate or position deemed as ‘serving Russian interests.’ This much is clear from recent referenda in the Netherlands and the UK, and from elections across the West, such as the 2017 French presidential election during which far-right candidate Marine Le Pen made a controversial visit to Russia.26 Russia’s perennial threat to NATO states, most often the Baltics, is further evidence of the power of the view that Russia seeks to rebuild its former empire. During the UK’s referendum on membership of the EU in 2016, for example, then Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond argued that “the only country that would like us to leave the EU is Russia. That should probably tell us all we need to know,”27 and since the successful Leave vote there have been several allegations of Russian interference in the referendum.28For the West, the belief that Russia is expansionist is arguably well founded given the precedent Moscow has set with its actions towards Ukraine. Russia, of course, would argue that its own territorial integrity and security are its primary policy drivers rather than a desire to ‘rebuild the empire’. Some in the West have gone further in believing that Russia is also a threat to NATO territory, specifically the Baltic States. Politicians from the three Baltic States have issued warnings of the Russian threat of interference akin to Moscow’s alleged actions in Eastern Ukraine.29 Fears of Russia’s 2017 Zapad military exercise, that took place in Belarus in September,30 as possible cover for the occupation of Belarus reflected this perception, as well as those of other Russian exercises.31The expansionist Russia stereotype goes beyond the assertion (which seems to be well-documented) that Russia aims to maintain a zone of influence in its immediate neighbourhood. It suggests that, ultimately, nothing but full subjugation of the former Soviet Union territories will satisfy Moscow leaders. This in turn encourages a more forceful response from the West. From Russia’s perspective the unfettered expansion of Western institutions has demonstrated that its territorial integrity is at risk and that Moscow has not been listened to. Professor Sergei Karaganov, head of Russia’s Council on Foreign and Defence Policy, articulated this position in his widely read letter of disagreement to the final report of the OSCE’s Panel of Eminent Persons in 2015. Karaganov wrote that: “The West continued to pursue a ‘Versailles policy in velvet gloves’, constantly enlarging its sphere of interest and control. Russia made its views known on all these subjects but no one listened.”32 This arguably shaped the way in which Russia perceived the West’s closer relationship with Ukraine in the early 2010s. The belief that Western engagement with Ukraine was aimed at undermining Russia encouraged a far stronger response to the Ukrainian signature to the Association Agreement than most in the West, and many in Russia, would have expected. Indeed, the Ukraine crisis came after a period of relative inaction in terms of pursuing NATO membership for Ukraine.It would be unwise to argue that there is no truth in either Russian or Western beliefs that the other has desires for expansion, they are both based on understandable evidence and logic. There is however a case to be made that they are oversimplifications. Both perpetuate a decision making process in which the other’s actions are construed as imperialistic, and underplay other drivers of policy, including economic concerns and other domestic factors, such as internal power dynamics. An imperialistic lens has arguably coloured the way in which Western policy-makers have approached the establishment and development of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). For some the economic and political bloc of Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan represents a nascent economic project in need of development. For others a potential multilateral framework for engagement in Russia-West relations. But for some it represents an attempt by Moscow to solidify control over its former Soviet satellites.In 2015 several senior European figures including Commission President Junker, Trade Commissioner Malstrom and German Foreign Minister Steinmeier all raised the prospect of EU-EEU cooperation. There was widespread opposition to this move from within Europe, and from the United States. Criticism often focused on ‘legitimacy’ with former US Assistant Secretary of State Kramer writing that “Legitimizing the Eurasian Union would be demoralizing to the countries that were forced to join.”33The view that Russia has imperial designs thus shapes the way in which some in the West view potential areas of dialogue and cooperation. It also removes agency and strategic interest from the states that have closer ties with Russia. For Russia, the same is true when casting Western actions in Eastern Europe as part of a plot to expand and surround Russia, encouraging the exaggeration of threat and corresponding response. Poor command structures guarantee response is ineffectiveThomas-Durell Young ’18, Program Manager, Europe Center for Civil-Military Relations (CCMR), Naval Postgraduate School, Academic Associate for the Comparative Defense Planning Certificate in the Department of National Security Affairs, worked in the national defense organizations of every country in Central and Eastern Europe, save one, “Can NATO's “new” allies and key partners exercise national-level command in crisis and war?,” Comparative Strategy 37:1, pgs. 10-11, ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****Third, in the particular context of Central and Eastern Europe, “command” as an instrument of governance based on Western concepts is only vaguely defined, but at its heart is that it implies absolute control. This lack of differentiation of authorities is particularly troubling, as even in countries that designate the heads of government as “commanders” of the armed forces, these otherwise clear national chains of command do not have legally defined, used, and exercised “command authorities.” Such instruments are essential to ensuring that commanders possess sufficient authorities to command effectively their forces.Fourth and finally, what is disturbing is that these problematic national chains of command and underdeveloped command arrangements have yet to evince concern amongst most of these young democracies in the region. There is an obvious lack of self-awareness and understanding that the exercise of national command remains based on legacy concepts that, when used in a context of democratic governance, will result in confusion in crisis, and therefore, national interests will suffer. Moreover, in new NATO allies where the operational level of command is either nonexistent or exists in name only, it is difficult to envisage a positive outcome should NATO forces of operational size arrive in an Article 5 conflict since it is unclear where such forces would “plug in” into national command structures. In either circumstance, it is likely a member’s sovereign continuity could be challenged or thoroughly undermined, notwithstanding the best intensions of allies.The purpose of this essay is to examine the challenges associated with the continued use of legacy concepts of command that is likely to lead to confusion over national decision making in those governments that possess underdeveloped chains of command. Clarity of institutional responsibilities is further compromised in these countries where legacy concepts continue to be used, especially those that overcentralize decision making. What should be of concern to all NATO allies is that those governments which possess these command arrangements could result in failures in command that have implications for all members. Thus, poor performance or failure of national-level command in any country in the alliance could have serious negative consequences for the ability of the collective to respond effectively in case of an Article 5 (collective defense) scenario. Moreover, this condition holds within the context of a Partnership for Peace member, where such failures would obviate against the ability of nations to respond effectively to entreatments for assistance in crisis. What is even perhaps most troubling is the lack of immediacy shared by governments with these conflicting and/or underdeveloped command arrangements, given that its record of success in the region is nonexistent, e.g., Georgia in 2008, and Ukraine from 2014 until today.In this analysis, the current writer takes care to differentiate between those governments that continue the practice of legacy thinking as expressed in highly centralized decision making by the head of state, as opposed to those that have broken free of this atavistic concept. In exposing to a wide audience the continued reliance by most new NATO members on what are, in truth of fact, communist-legacy concepts of command, the essay demonstrates the widespread nature of this problem. Furthermore, in making this case, the essay posits that absent consistent political pressure from “old” NATO members, these problematic command structures and practices will continue to pose a danger both to these nations, as well as to the alliance as a whole.A2 Other stuffA2 Econ WarEcon war very un-likely under COVIDStephen M. Walt (May 13 2020) Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University, “Will a Global Depression Trigger Another World War?”, Foreign Policy, accessed 6/20/20 *tog ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****But war could still be much less likely. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Barry Posen has already considered the likely impact of the current pandemic on the probability of war, and he believes COVID-19 is more likely to promote peace instead. He argues that the current pandemic is affecting all the major powers adversely, which means it isn’t creating tempting windows of opportunity for unaffected states while leaving others weaker and therefore vulnerable. Instead, it is making all governments more pessimistic about their short- to medium-term prospects. Because states often go to war out of sense of overconfidence (however misplaced it sometimes turns out to be), pandemic-induced pessimism should be conducive to peace.Moreover, by its very nature war requires states to assemble lots of people in close proximity—at training camps, military bases, mobilization areas, ships at sea, etc.—and that’s not something you want to do in the middle of a pandemic. For the moment at least, beleaguered governments of all types are focusing on convincing their citizens they are doing everything in their power to protect the public from the disease. Taken together, these considerations might explain why even an impulsive and headstrong warmaker like Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman has gotten more interested in winding down his brutal and unsuccessful military campaign in Yemen.Posen adds that COVID-19 is also likely to reduce international trade in the short to medium term. Those who believe economic interdependence is a powerful barrier to war might be alarmed by this development, but he points out that trade issues have been a source of considerable friction in recent years—especially between the United States and China—and a degree of decoupling might reduce tensions somewhat and cause the odds of war to recede.Econ War theory false even in long termStephen M. Walt (May 13 2020) Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University, “Will a Global Depression Trigger Another World War?”, Foreign Policy, accessed 6/20/20 *tog ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****If one takes a longer-term perspective, however, a sustained economic depression could make war more likely by strengthening fascist or xenophobic political movements, fueling protectionism and hypernationalism, and making it more difficult for countries to reach mutually acceptable bargains with each other. The history of the 1930s shows where such trends can lead, although the economic effects of the Depression are hardly the only reason world politics took such a deadly turn in the 1930s. Nationalism, xenophobia, and authoritarian rule were making a comeback well before COVID-19 struck, but the economic misery now occurring in every corner of the world could intensify these trends and leave us in a more war-prone condition when fear of the virus has diminished.On balance, however, I do not think that even the extraordinary economic conditions we are witnessing today are going to have much impact on the likelihood of war. Why? First of all, if depressions were a powerful cause of war, there would be a lot more of the latter. To take one example, the United States has suffered 40 or more recessions since the country was founded, yet it has fought perhaps 20 interstate wars, most of them unrelated to the state of the economy. To paraphrase the economist Paul Samuelson’s famous quip about the stock market, if recessions were a powerful cause of war, they would have predicted “nine out of the last five (or fewer).”Second, states do not start wars unless they believe they will win a quick and relatively cheap victory. As John Mearsheimer showed in his classic book Conventional Deterrence, national leaders avoid war when they are convinced it will be long, bloody, costly, and uncertain. To choose war, political leaders have to convince themselves they can either win a quick, cheap, and decisive victory or achieve some limited objective at low cost. Europe went to war in 1914 with each side believing it would win a rapid and easy victory, and Nazi Germany developed the strategy of blitzkrieg in order to subdue its foes as quickly and cheaply as possible. Iraq attacked Iran in 1980 because Saddam believed the Islamic Republic was in disarray and would be easy to defeat, and George W. Bush invaded Iraq in 2003 convinced the war would be short, successful, and pay for itself.The fact that each of these leaders miscalculated badly does not alter the main point: No matter what a country’s economic condition might be, its leaders will not go to war unless they think they can do so quickly, cheaply, and with a reasonable probability of success.Third, and most important, the primary motivation for most wars is the desire for security, not economic gain. For this reason, the odds of war increase when states believe the long-term balance of power may be shifting against them, when they are convinced that adversaries are unalterably hostile and cannot be accommodated, and when they are confident they can reverse the unfavorable trends and establish a secure position if they act now. The historian A.J.P. Taylor once observed that “every war between Great Powers [between 1848 and 1918] … started as a preventive war, not as a war of conquest,” and that remains true of most wars fought since then.The bottom line: Economic conditions (i.e., a depression) may affect the broader political environment in which decisions for war or peace are made, but they are only one factor among many and rarely the most significant. Even if the COVID-19 pandemic has large, lasting, and negative effects on the world economy—as seems quite likely—it is not likely to affect the probability of war very much, especially in the short term.A2 Diversionary WarDiversionary war false – especially under COVIDStephen M. Walt (May 13 2020) Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University, “Will a Global Depression Trigger Another World War?”, Foreign Policy, accessed 6/20/20 *tog ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****One familiar argument is the so-called diversionary (or “scapegoat”) theory of war. It suggests that leaders who are worried about their popularity at home will try to divert attention from their failures by provoking a crisis with a foreign power and maybe even using force against it. Drawing on this logic, some Americans now worry that President Donald Trump will decide to attack a country like Iran or Venezuela in the run-up to the presidential election and especially if he thinks he’s likely to lose.This outcome strikes me as unlikely, even if one ignores the logical and empirical flaws in the theory itself. War is always a gamble, and should things go badly—even a little bit—it would hammer the last nail in the coffin of Trump’s declining fortunes. Moreover, none of the countries Trump might consider going after pose an imminent threat to U.S. security, and even his staunchest supporters may wonder why he is wasting time and money going after Iran or Venezuela at a moment when thousands of Americans are dying preventable deaths at home. Even a successful military action won’t put Americans back to work, create the sort of testing-and-tracing regime that competent governments around the world have been able to implement already, or hasten the development of a vaccine. The same logic is likely to guide the decisions of other world leaders too.Another familiar folk theory is “military Keynesianism.” War generates a lot of economic demand, and it can sometimes lift depressed economies out of the doldrums and back toward prosperity and full employment. The obvious case in point here is World War II, which did help the U.S economy finally escape the quicksand of the Great Depression. Those who are convinced that great powers go to war primarily to keep Big Business (or the arms industry) happy are naturally drawn to this sort of argument, and they might worry that governments looking at bleak economic forecasts will try to restart their economies through some sort of military adventure.I doubt it. It takes a really big war to generate a significant stimulus, and it is hard to imagine any country launching a large-scale war—with all its attendant risks—at a moment when debt levels are already soaring. More importantly, there are lots of easier and more direct ways to stimulate the economy—infrastructure spending, unemployment insurance, even “helicopter payments”—and launching a war has to be one of the least efficient methods available. The threat of war usually spooks investors too, which any politician with their eye on the stock market would be loath to do.to reduce force deployments in the future. ***NEG***A2 Euro Fill inEuro can’tEurope can’t replace NATO – defense spending quantity doesn’t equal qualityJulia Himmrich, September 2017, Research Fellow at the ELN, Dahrendorf Postdoctoral Fellow, LSE, PhD in International Relations at the LSE and a MA in International Peace & Security from King’s College London, “Can CARD Change European Thinking about Capabilities?”, European Leadership Network Policy Brief, accessed 6/10/20 *tog ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****Europe’s ability to defend itself, and be a reliable military ally of the US, has been questioned in recent years. The burden-sharing debate has been dominated by military spending, and therefore by the investment per GDP into military capability, referred to as input. Instead, Europe should focus on its output problem, the fact that Europe’s high investments don’t result in effective real capabilities. Europe deploys six times as many different weapon systems as the US, even though it spends only 40 percent as much.1 The European capability landscape is disparate and caters mainly to specific national needs. This results in a fragmented defence industry, duplication, and issues with interoperability.A2 Russian AggroRealism shows Russian aggression not connected to NATOAlexander Lanoszka (2020), Assistant Professor of International Relations at the University of Waterloo, “Thank goodness for NATO enlargement”. Int Polit 57, 451–470 (2020). ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****In the following section, I make three related arguments. First, there are strong reasons to suspect that Russia would have developed hostile intentions against countries located in Central and Eastern Europe regardless of NATO enlargement. Accordingly, NATO enlargement has provided a useful hedge that raises the cost of aggression. Second, NATO enlargement is largely innocent of charges that it pushed Russia into authoritarianism or aggressive international behavior. Third, deterrence and defense measures appropriate to the Baltic region—where NATO’s commitments appear to be the most vulnerable—are not as costly as commonly asserted. Intentionally or not, NATO enlargement fulflled the need for a useful hedge against Russian aggression. In fact, the arguments that critics of NATO enlargement make themselves point to counterfactuals suggesting that NATO enlargement helped stabilize Europe rather than undermine its security.Take Mearsheimer’s argument that NATO enlargement provoked Russian aggression. According to him, the irresponsible pursuit of liberal hegemony in Russia’s so called sphere of influence—Eastern Europe and the Caucasus—incited Russia’s war against Georgia in 2008 as well as its annexation of Crimea and the subsequent conflict with Ukraine. Setting aside his 1990 warnings about the Kremlin, Mearsheimer is known for offensive realism, which argues that states strive to maximize their power in order to achieve security. For Mearsheimer, great powers ‘seek regional hegemony.’ Crucially, he adds that ‘a regional hegemon might someday face a local challenge from an upstart state, which would surely have strong incentives to ally with the distant hegemon to protect itself from attack by the neighboring hegemon’ (Mearsheimer 2001, 140–141).Offensive realism suggests that Russia would have sought regional hegemony after the Cold War regardless of NATO enlargement. It is a great power like any other—albeit one in relative decline—and so faces incentives to try to maximize its influence within its own neighborhood. From the perspective of Mearsheimer’s theory, regional conflict begins when other countries wish not to align with the regional hegemon and so look to foster closer diplomatic ties elsewhere. Yet this desire for external support is endogenous to the underlying conflict between the aspiring regional hegemon and its potentially wayward neighbors (Lanoszka 2018, 352). Moreover, Mearsheimer’s argument suggests that, had NATO refused to expand eastward, Russia would have had an opportunity to pursue regional hegemony more aggressively once it reconstituted its post-Soviet military capabilities. Polish decision-makers were attuned to this risk. Polish minister of foreign affairs Krzysztof Skubiszewski warned that a neutral Central Europe ‘would easily become an object of competition among stronger states or superpowers. It would be especially true of Poland, located between Germany and the former Soviet Union’ (quoted in Gorska 2010, 69). Because of its direct proximity to Western Europe, instability in Central Europe could not be quarantined as it arguably could be in Central Asia. Even as a unipole, the United States thus had an interest in stabilizing Europe so as to avoid a repeat of the regional wars that befell the continent earlier in the twentieth century— wars to which the United States committed much blood and treasure.NATO not really cause of Russian aggression, merely excuse – sources otherwise are picking up on Russian spinMarten, K. (2020), chair the Barnard Political Science Department at Columbia University, former director of the Program on U.S.-Russia Relations at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute, member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Institute for Strategic Studies, “NATO enlargement: evaluating its consequences in Russia”. International Politics. doi:10.1057/s41311-020-00233-9, tog, ****NCC’20 Novice Packet****At its base, the causal claim that NATO’s geographic expansion by itself caused anything to happen in Russia is complicated by an important fact: NATO enlargement had no direct impact on the Russian state or Russian territory. No borders were changed, and Russia lost no alliances, trade pacts, or other institutional arrangements. In November 1990, Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Charter of Paris, affirming the right of all sovereign states to form their own security relationships. Shortly thereafter Moscow lost what it might have considered the bugger states that shielded its territory from Germany when the Warsaw Pact dissolved in March 1991 on the initiative of the Visegrad negotiating group of Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. This dissolution of the Soviet Cold War alliance occurred without encouragement by any NATO member, and absent any US or NATO promise of a new security architecture for East-Central Europe (Asmus 2002, 79; Solomon 1998, 14; Binnendijk 1991). The Soviet Union itself dissolved that December because of a purely internally driven set of initiatives (which US president George H.W. Bush strongly opposed), led by Ukraine and welcomed by President Boris Yeltsin of what was then the Russian Soviet Republic (Plokhy 2014).Analysis of how NATO’s post-Cold War enlargement per se affected Russia’s relations with the West is further complicated because enlargement (which publicly began with a NATO study in late 1994, peaked from 1997 through 2004 as states bordering Russia were invited to join, and continues today) occurred alongside numerous other significant and largely negative security interactions between Russia and the West. The effects on Russian perceptions and planning of these various events are impossible to disentangle from those caused by enlargement. The most significant of these events include NATO airstrikes and NATO-led peace operations in Bosnia and Kosovo, where Russian diplomats and soldiers played complex and sometimes contradictory roles; US and British airstrikes against the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein in 1998 and the eventual US led coalition invasion of Iraq in 2003, both of which occurred without United Nations Security Council (UNSC) approval and in the face of what would have been Russian vetoes; US unilateral withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty with Russia in 2001–2002, followed by US bilateral agreements with Poland and Romania (with NATO support) to build ballistic missile defense (BMD) systems on their territories against Russian wishes; and the UNSC approved NATO mission against Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya in 2011, which morphed into a regime-change operation that Russia opposed. None of these events depended on NATO enlargement—arguably not even the agreement to build BMD sites in Romania and Poland, given that the USA also has bilateral BMD equipment arrangements with a wide variety of non-NATO members (including Bahrain, Egypt, Israel, Japan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Taiwan, and the United Arab Emirates) (Reif 2019). Russia and the West also found themselves at odds during this fraught time because Russian military forces remained in Georgia and Moldova against the wishes of their UN-recognized sovereign governments, undermining the newly signed Adapted Conventional Forces in Europe (A/CFE) Treaty of 1999. NATO enlargement was not a discrete event in the panoply of Russia’s security relationships with the West and cannot be treated as if it were.There is no question that NATO’s geographic enlargement was a major irritant to Russian leaders and contributed to the decline of the overall relationship between Russia and the West—but there is little evidence that enlargement actually threatened Russia. Instead, NATO enlargement was a marker for Russia’s declining status and the growing influence of the USA in the world; it reflected, rather than caused, a shift in the relative global power balance. Given the long history of Soviet-NATO confrontation during the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Russia’s weakness and instability in the 1990s, any action that showcased the growth of relative US influence, especially in Europe, would likely have raised Russian hackles.As the Eisenhower group correctly foresaw, enlargement challenged the domestic political standing and reform efforts of President Yeltsin in particular and hence played some indirect role in complicating the push for Russia’s Westernization. US leaders were well aware of this problem and tried mightily to work around it by delaying the progress of enlargement while attempting broad outreach toward Russia (Talbott 2002). But Russian elites knew that NATO had never attempted to attack the Soviet Union or Russia and remained fundamentally defensive in orientation and mission. Indeed, every indirect effect of NATO enlargement was filtered not merely through the preexisting psychological and sociological perceptions of Russian leaders and citizens, but also through the intentional manipulations of the Kremlin and of Russia’s vocal, varied, and sometimes violent nationalist and extremist political groups. Those who predicted that nationalists would run with the enlargement issue were correct—but that is a far cry from the argument that the nationalists would defeat reformers because of it.Rather than coming up with a definitive answer to the question of what effect NATO enlargement has had on Russia, this article will concentrate on exploring the difficulties of trying to answer that causal question. First, it will look at the simplest aspect of the question: the objective military postures of the new NATO member states that bordered Russia and how Russia reacted to them. NATO was actually weakened (for both political and geographic reasons) as enlargement continued, and Russia knew it. If that were ever to change, Russia would have significant advance warning—and Russia of course retains a massive nuclear deterrent to protect its territory. Russia indeed did not react militarily to NATO enlargement, doing little to enhance the defense of its NATO-facing regions. The only aspect of geographic change that appeared to cause angst in the Kremlin was a 2006 agreement (the East European Task Force) involving US-supported military facilities upgrades in Romania and Bulgaria. It is possible that the location of these two new NATO states along the Black Sea became justification in Putin’s mind for the wars he launched in Georgia and Ukraine, even if actual NATO military activities there posed no threat to Russia. ................
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