China

First NATO Military Delegation to visit China

Jorge Benitez — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 09:05:35 -0600

From NATO: A NATO military delegation, lead by LtGen. Jürgen Bornemann, Director General of the International Military Staff, will visit the People’s Republic of China from 12-16 February 2012.

This is the first time a NATO military delegation is invited by the Chinese authorities to visit their country, and follows on to an earlier visit by a Chinese military delegation to NATO Headquarters in June 2010. The team of NATO experts and military officers will exchange views with their Chinese counterparts on a variety of subjects with a view to enhancing mutual understanding and cooperation.

This visit is in keeping with NATO’s new Strategic Concept, agreed at the Lisbon Summit in November 2010, which aims to further deepen and expand partnerships with countries and organizations who share common security concerns, in the face of emerging security challenges. (photo: NATO)

Syria Intervention: Ugly Choices

Daniel Trombly — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:28:54 -0600

With Russia and China standing firmly behind Assad’s regime in Syria, it appears increasingly likely that continued violence, and potentially a prolonged civil war, will be the future condition of a country where the opposition is not strong enough to overcome the core elements of the regime’s security forces, and foreign parties lack the willpower or capacity to overthrow the rulers in Damascus.

As Tony Karon explains, civil war is an accurate way to describe the ongoing descent into violence in Syria. The country’s ethnic composition and the regime’s divide-and-rule political strategy makes the specter of civil war an effective engine of consolidation for the regime’s supporters:

… the Assad regime presents itself as the guarantor of the interests not only of Allawites [12% of the population], but also Syria’s Christians (10%), Kurds (10%) and smaller communities of Druze, Yazidis, Ismailis and Circassians — against the specter of a vengeful sectarian Sunni Muslim Brotherhood. No surprise, then, that the regime has, through its own violent strategy, encouraged the rebellion against Assad’s rule onto the path of sectarian civil war.

…

Two thirds of the Iraqi refugees in Syria are Sunni Arabs, and a further 10% are Christian. The lesson for Syria’s minorities is stark: One in seven Christians who lived in Iraq in 2003 is now a refugee in Syria; those left behind are an increasingly embattled community, while even in newly democratic Egypt, the Christian minority is feeling increasingly put-upon by the now dominant Sunni Islamists.

As Karon further notes, the defection of Sunni conscripts to the Free Syrian Army further reinforces the perception that Syria is careening towards large-scale ethnic bloodletting. The Assad regime, like Hussein’s and many others before it, deliberately ensured its top-tier units and the ones closest to political power were less dependent on conscripts from the hostile ethnic majority. It is far less likely that there will be sympathetic defections from such units, which means that they will, in all likelihood, need to be actually defeated on the ground.

Alas, there are no easy solutions.

Safe zone: Benghazi, Misrata or Ibril?

Propositions for “safe zones” have so far remarkably elided the question of how they will be made safe.

Despite the frequent invocations of Operation Provide Comfort as a model for intervention, very few of the plans for intervention in Syria actually describe the most essential prerequisite to Provide Comfort: the defeat and destruction of huge amounts of Iraqi military capability in the first Persian Gulf War.

Furthermore, as Micah Zenko recently explained in Foreign Affairs, the use of ground forces was important to the preservation of safe zones established in southern Iraq during the long containment of the country in the 1990s. Saddam’s ground forces largely ignored the no-fly zones imposed in Iraq, and the U.S. often had to conduct significant military mobilization just to reduce the intensity of his counterinsurgency campaigns. In Operation Vigilant Warrior, the U.S. was only able to dissuade Saddam from moving additional Republican Guard units to southern Iraq by mobilizing the logistical support element of I Marine Expeditionary Force (a clear sign of impending mobilizations to come) and the deployment of two brigades from the 24th Mechanized Infantry Division to Saudi Arabia (Britain, for its part, deployed two warships and brought its ground strength in Kuwait to 1,000 troops). Clinton understood that the only way to deter Saddam from accelerating his offensive against his own people was to threaten ground intervention – and even then, the Iraqi units in the south which predated the two Republican Guard divisions’ mobilization remained and continued to suppress their local population.

Essentially, even a vastly weakened Iraqi military still required a credible ground threat of thousands of soldiers and Marines just to dissuade Saddam from reinforcing his ongoing crackdown of the Iraqi Shia population. What reason do we have to think that Syria’s military, without a thorough shellacking such as the one Saddam’s military (already weakened by nearly a decade of war with Iran!) received in 1991, would fear a foreign-imposed safe zone enough not to challenge it?

While Srebrenica was supposed to be a mutual (albeit poorly or deliberately unenforced, in the case of the Bosniak forces) demilitarization, Serbian forces completely ignored Resolution 819 and surrounded the area with heavy weaponry, and later went on to overwhelm and massacre its inhabitants. While some of the proposed safe areas are in relatively mountainous terrain, it is quite probable that Syria would attempt to kettle or even assault the safe area. Who, exactly, would defend it? The Free Syrian Army? If they were actually capable of holding and defending such a safe zone on their own, there would be no need for a safe zone. The addition of foreign special forces would help, but not by much if the Syrian government chose to mount a sustained assault.

Concentrating FSA and Syrian opposition forces and infrastructure in a safe area would actually give the regime an enormous incentive to strike. Consolidating the FSA, which so far is an extremely loose network of commanders with no real chain of command, and SNC governing officials in a single area would tell Damascus exactly where to strike, and knowing such a location would be the heart of foreign support and nascent “Syrian Benghazi” would provide a huge incentive to destroy it or reduce it through sustained siege. Additionally, guerrilla units could be deployed to harass or destroy supply corridors even after the successful establishment of a safe zone and the suppression nearby of Syrian forces. Even with the addition of Turkish conventional troops, would they be willing to defend an area with their lives against a Syrian military assault or a sustained guerrilla campaign? Even with close air support and airstrikes, it is unlikely that without a sustained offensive that such a safe area could actually provide a viable base of support for an opposition movement. Defending a Syrian safe area would likely devolve into a massive aerial campaign and a significant ground campaign (consider that Turkey’s cross-border incursions just to rout out PKK fighters during the 1990s involved 15,000-35,000 troops), not a mere suppression of air defenses and local forces with a small training contingent of special forces. It is hard to see how a limited action to create a safe area could succeed without ground forces and air forces capable of resisting and repulsing a military with armored formations, artillery, and air support would fare – and it is hard to see how relieving this pressure would occur without an offensive, as in Operation Storm, to permanently secure a safe area.

A dangerous – and perhaps more likely – proposition would be a Syrian Misrata. It took nearly two months after NATO air strikes began for Misratans to finish recapturing their own city, and even then Gaddafi’s forces were able to temporarily deny use of the port through artillery fire. Jisr al-Shughur, the report’s suggested safe zone area, is even more isolated than Misrata. It is, of course, not a coastal city. There are not even significant roads to Turkey without winding through mountain passes that guerrilla groups would be able to harass and temporarily close. It took Misratan forces, with NATO air support and resupply opportunities from the sea and air, months to capture Zliten, just 40 miles away. There is no major airport in Jisr al-Shughur. Aerial reinforcement would have to come either through airborne drops or helicopters. Anyone who has ever read military history – let alone anyone who has had to deploy to a combat zone in such a manner – is probably feeling somewhat nervous right now. Leave aside man portable air defense missiles, even machine guns of sufficiently heavy caliber could make aerial reinforcement or resupply of such a safe zone a very risky prospect. In all likelihood, thousands of Turkish regular troops would probably be necessary just to secure Jisr al-Shughur. Even then, the possibility of Syrian counter-attacks from Latakia would probably require additional major military actions. Why mobilize thousands of troops and risk dozens or hundreds of casualties just to carve out a minor safe area which, if we look at its counterparts in Kurdistan during the 1990s, is probably not going to become a war-winning base of support?

NEXT: The Damning Merits of Invasion.

Daniel Trombly is writer on international affairs and strategy. This essay is based on a longer piece at his blog Slouching Towards Columbia. Photo credit: Reuters Pictures.

Can Germany Summon the Will to Lead?

Jorge Benitez — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 12:52:57 -0600

From John Vincour, the International Herald Tribune: Mr. Putin’s goal is not only to paint an American-led enemy in time for next month’s vote, but to get the West to back off on Iran and on deployment of NATO’s missile shield in Europe through threats and by sowing the notion that America is shoving its friends into confrontations they don’t need.

Germany counts enormously here. It has the West’s biggest economic hold on Russia and, historically, a (sometimes delusional) vision of the two countries’ potential for a golden destiny together. With Germany having gained in power and influence through its appearance of rigor and solidity, if not flexibility, during Europe’s debt misfortunes, the issue now is how assertive Ms Merkel wants to be in naming Mr. Putin’s game. If she chooses to lead, she will make clear that a review of relations with Russia is under way, that its election procedures will be under intense scrutiny, and that in prolonging the extermination of thousands of people by a regime armed by Russia, Mr. Putin will find only contempt in Germany.

The occasion and the urgency are there. The alternative is a Germany seeking to hide behind a comfortable default position as an above-the-fray go-between. It would be a sign of the West’s weakness and a failure of German political instinct.

The precedents and current indicators of a demonstration of German resolve are not terrific: When the heat was on in Libya this spring, Ms. Merkel’s Germany turned its back on France, Britain and the United States, and — abstaining alongside Russia and China — refrained from standing with its allies in approving Security Council intervention. . . . .

Ultimately, Germany, now supposedly leading Europe, faces the question of how much responsibility it wants to take concerning the world’s most jagged political issues. To me, the West seems at a point when a heavy injection of German political courage could make a greater contribution to its role in world stability than Germany’s austerity-for-all economic vision. . . .

So, what are the odds on Ms. Merkel, in a position of rare influence, saying something true and meaningful now about the implications of the awful behavior of Mr. Putin and what to do about the reality of his return to the Russian presidency?

I asked John Kornblum, a former U.S. ambassador and a keen observer of Germany, what he thought of the likelihood of a new kind of German commitment to leadership beyond economics (although the massive trade imbalances favoring Germany are a root factor in Europe’s debt and deficit grief).

“The Germans take more responsibility?,” Mr. Kornblum asked, as if having to field the dumbest question of the week. “They’ll run from it.” (photo: Reuters)

Fixing All the World's Problems

Bernard Finel — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 12:12:16 -0600

Okay, I’m king for a day, and I am going to fix all the world’s problems. Here goes:

Syria: Arm the rebels, impose a no-fly zone, strike any government forces that try to suppress the uprising. Why? Because at this point we’re witnessing a long, drawn-out mass killing scenario, and it is only likely to get worse given the minority character of the regime. Syria is also a rogue regime. It supports transnational terrorism, has played footsie with the North Koreans on nuclear issues, and continues to destabilize Lebanon. There are good humanitarian and regional security justifications for intervention. I’m not enthusiastic about this, but as a practical matter, I don’t think inaction is better. The costs of this sort of intervention should be relatively low. Lack of UNSC authorization is no bar. We can use the Kosovo precedent to act under auspices of regional organization — but this would require Arab League approval.

Iran: Since we’re unlikely to engage in sustained military action, we should take the option off the table. Offer Iran a straight-forward quid pro quo — we commit to not use force to change their regime in return for them normalizing their international status through a new IAEA-based inspection regime of their nuclear facilities. Assuming they don’t accept — as they won’t — continue to use sabotage and assassinations to slow their progress toward nukes. And most importantly dramatically step up efforts to promote change in Iran through aggressive efforts to defeat Iranian government censorship of radio, TV, and internet. Assuming that does not work either, we need to work on promoting regional resilience so that the rest of the region doesn’t freak out about developments in Iran. Mitigation of the Iranian problem is key rather than solving it for now.

China: Look, China is our biggest economic partner. Yes, they are a rising power, and yes they will want a larger role in global rule-setting. Give it to them. As a matter of geopolitics, we have fundamental shared interests — secure sea lanes, vigorous trade, economic stability. They want what we want. The debates we’re having are over how to get it, not about a completely different international architecture. Sure, we’ll need to play hardball on trade issues. But this is NOT like the Cold War. The one issue we do need to resolve is:

Taiwan: Our ability to defend Taiwan is going to inevitably diminish. Our need to plan for its defense is already one of the largest drivers of our defense budget since it requires us to stay a generation ahead technologically of a rapidly rising power. And not only is this a costly commitment, in the final analysis it is just a bridge too far. Within a generation — at most — our ability to project power onto the Chinese coast will decline to the point where protecting Taiwan is a pure bluff. Instead, we need establish a time-line with the Taiwanese so that they understand that at some point in the very near future our commitment to them will come to an end. I am not sure what happens next. But sometimes you just need to acknowledge reality and move on. Hong Kong and long-term internal Chinese trends make me relatively sanguine, however.

Israel: I like Israel. Indeed, like many Jews, I have something of an emotional attachment to Israel. But their approach to the Palestinians is both criminal and criminally stupid, and we can no longer be on the hook for their intransigence. We need to state simply that either a two-state solution is implemented quickly, or that we’re going to have to begin treating Israel as just another country rather than a close ally and beneficiary of American aid. I hate saying this, but the reality is that at this point, we’re acting as enablers for the bizarre obsession among some Israeli with the idea of recreating Biblical Israel. I don’t see how supporting this weird goal is consistent with American interests.

Afghanistan: Transition rapidly to a Plan Colombia-style relationship: intelligence sharing, financial aid, technical assistance, and limited SOF training and direct action. Communicate directly with the existing insurgent groups about our red lines — no support for transnational terrorism, some adherence to international humanitarian norms (think Saudi standards). Encourage negotiations leading to power-sharing and/or regional autonomy agreements that will take at least some of the insurgents off the field. Or not. Who really cares? Afghanistan is an absolute strategic backwater — poor, isolated, irrelevant.

Pakistan: If we can reduce our commitment to Afghanistan and essentially give Pakistan primary responsibility for enforcing our red lines there, I think we can open the door on a more productive relationship with Islamabad. The problem right now is that our entire relationship is currently focused on those things that they either can’t or won’t do. That isn’t healthy. We’d be better off trying to build on those areas of shared interests. One of those is normalizing the status of their nuclear program. Another is in trying to ease tensions with India in a way that is consistent with Pakistani security requirements. That said, this is a dysfunctional state with many broken institutions. It is also too big to influence directly. We’ll be dealing with this one for a long time.

Mexico: I think the first step to understanding the challenge of Mexico is to realize we’re the cause of many of the problems there. We can mitigate those problems through two substantively simple, but politically impossible steps: (1) End the war on drugs. Legalize marijuana outright. Reduce criminal penalties and enforcement of harder drugs like cocaine and heroin. Get military/paramilitary organization out of domestic law enforcement. (2) Fix our immigration policies: amnesty for those in the U.S., a fence to control the border, and a dramatic increase in legal immigration. Look, we currently have fewer legal immigrants coming to the United States than we did in 1906 when our population was about one quarter of what it is today. If instead of 1 million legal immigrants a year, we were allowing 4 million, we’d have virtually no problems with illegal immigration. And legal immigrants would pay more in taxes and would be less of a drain on public services as a consequence. Would that many immigrants change the character of the United States but turning the U.S. in Mexico? No, no more than German immigration turned Pennsylvania into Prussia or Jewish immigration turned the Lower East Side into Israel. Also, by the way, more legal immigration is the answer to our entitlements “crisis” since it increases the ratio of workers to retirees. Anyway, end the drug war and end the war on immigrants, and you’ll find that many of Mexico’s problems become more manageable.

Europe: Tell the Germans to get their heads out of their collective asses. Signal a willingness to accept a sustained period of higher inflation to aid in debt deleveraging and in internal adjustments.

See. Was that so hard?

Dr. Bernard I. Finel, an Atlantic Council contributing editor, is Associate Professor of National Security Strategy at the National War College. His arguments are his own and do not represent the views or opinions of the National War College, National Defense University, or the Department of Defense. This was originally posted on his personal blog BernardFinel.com.

Is Chinese espionage responsible for the rising costs of the F-35?

Jorge Benitez — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:12:06 -0600

From David Fulghum, Bill Sweetman, and Amy Butler, Aviation Week: How much of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter’s spiraling cost in recent years can be traced to China’s cybertheft of technology and the subsequent need to reduce the fifth-generation aircraft’s vulnerability to detection and electronic attack?

That is a central question that budget planners are asking, and their queries appear to have validity. Moreover, senior Pentagon and industry officials say other classified weapon programs are suffering from the same problem. Before the intrusions were discovered nearly three years ago, Chinese hackers actually sat in on what were supposed to have been secure, online program-progress conferences, the officials say.

The full extent of the connection is still being assessed, but there is consensus that escalating costs, reduced annual purchases and production stretch-outs are a reflection to some degree of the need for redesign of critical equipment. Examples include specialized communications and antenna arrays for stealth aircraft, as well as significant rewriting of software to protect systems vulnerable to hacking.

It is only recently that U.S. officials have started talking openly about how data losses are driving up the cost of military programs and creating operational vulnerabilities, although claims of a large impact on the Lockheed Martin JSF are drawing mixed responses from senior leaders. All the same, no one is saying there has been no impact. (photo: U.S. Navy/AP)

China Pivot or Pirouette?

Arnaud de Borchgrave — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 10:20:42 -0600

Amid the gazillion blogs, tweets, Facebookies and LinkedIn aficionados, it has become even harder to find reasoned and convincing arguments for what kind of military drawdown would do least harm to the United States' global posture. Even learned think tanks are tweeting.

Retired admirals and generals, professors and journalists, everyone is weighing in with elite newsletters and gap fillers as U.S. President Barack Obama does the Asia pivot (which is code for China) to reinforce the "western Pacific and East Asia."

"We're out of money. Now we have to think," said a British general.

In Britain, that meant, among other cuts, retiring its only aircraft carrier and three destroyers. And no more out-of-theater operations.

The United States is in the same predicament after spending $1.5 trillion in 10 years on what former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski calls two unnecessary wars, costly both in blood and treasure "that were falsely justified and totally unwinnable."

In Afghanistan, the Taliban enemy knows we are under domestic pressure to wind down the war and U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is talking about a 2013 end to combat operations followed by a major drawdown coupled with an advisory and training mission until the end of 2014.

The Afghan army would need from $7 billion to $10 billion a year for five years in U.S. military assistance to continue to fight on its own. The chances of Congress honoring such a commitment for more than a year or two are slim to none.

A similar commitment was made to the South Vietnamese army in March 1973, when the last U.S. combat soldier left Vietnam. Congress ended all military assistance two years later -- and Saigon promptly fell to the North Vietnamese army.

China's geopolitical ambitions in the western Pacific are now the Obama administration's principal concern.

A two-war defense capability is more than exhausted by Iraq and Afghanistan and an ocean of red ink. The new defense doctrine is one war and two small missions. More realistic would be U.S. Navy SEAL-type operations coupled with recent breakthroughs in robotic warfare.

A pre-emptive Israeli strike against Iran's key nuclear installations could throw the calculus into a cocked hat. Iran's retaliatory capabilities up and down the Persian Gulf and beyond would automatically involve the United States with its Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain. The Navy's mission is freedom of navigation in and out of the gulf through the Strait of Hormuz, close to Iran's principal naval base at Bandar-Abbas, the only exit route for one-fifth of the world's oil supply.

Washington's political establishment is divided between those who see China as the next geopolitical threat that requires a major naval presence in the South China Sea and those, such as Brzezinski, who are opposed to demonizing China as another Soviet Union.

China has 2,500 "Blue Helmets" serving among the United Nations' 12 peacekeeping operations, most of them in the largest one, Congo, one-third the size of the United States and a source of constant crisis since independence from Belgium 52 years ago.

There are no U.S. troops among the 100,000 plus under U.N. command as they are mandated by the U.S. Constitution to serve only under the command of the U.S. president.

Some 6,000 Chinese workers broke ground in the Bahamas last September -- 15 minutes from Nassau airport -- for the Caribbean's largest gambling casino complex, which is destined to rival Macau, the former Portuguese colony now part of China.

The African Union's new Chinese-designed, built and funded, $200 million headquarters opened in Ethiopia two weeks ago, just in time for Organization of African Unity's annual summit. Ultra-modernistic in its design, it looks like a huge spaceship

In his inaugural address, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said, "China's amazing reemergence and its commitments for a win-win partnership with Africa is one of the reasons for the beginning of the African renaissance."

Jia Qinglin led a 100-strong Chinese delegation and handed over a $94 million check. He left behind a group of Chinese technicians to ensure the smooth running of the new OAU headquarters.

He also struck the right notes for the assembled African heads of state: "We maintain that all countries, big or small, are equal and we are opposed to the big, strong and rich bullying the small, weak and poor."

China's trade with Africa hit $120 billion last year, a 12-fold increase.

Almost 6 million Chinese workers are deployed throughout what was once called the Third World, including 1 million in Africa, on a wide variety of industrial and agricultural projects, developing future markets for Chinese products and importing all manner of raw materials.

Canada's Bombardier Aircraft manufacturer now sees China as a bigger market for private aviation than all of Europe.

China also informed Canada last week that it wanted a seat at the arctic table, which means it seeks the same status as the eight countries whose territory lies within the Arctic Circle. It will be Canada's turn to chair the group in 2013.

As a warning to China about its South China Sea ambitions, the United States is transferring 200 U.S. Marines to Darwin, on the northern coast of Australia, to be reinforced by 2,300 more by 2014, drawn from the 3rd Marine Division on Okinawa to form a Marine Expeditionary Unit.

"I am making clear," Obama said on a visit to Australia last November, "that the United States is stepping up its commitment to the entire Asia-Pacific region."

Formidable though U.S. Marines are, 200 of them are unlikely to rattle too many cages. And Darwin is 2,300 miles from the capitals of South China Sea countries. China is also the largest trading partner with most of the countries in the region.

Over the next two years, the U.S. strategic moves from Europe to the western Pacific and South China Sea are likely to be more pirouette than pivot -- spinning on one foot, with the raised foot touching the knee of the supporting leg.

Arnaud de Borchgrave, a member of the Atlantic Council, is editor-at-large at UPI and the Washington Times. This column was syndicated by UPI. Photo credit: Reuters Pictures.

Clinton calls for coalition of 'friends of democratic Syria'

Jorge Benitez — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 08:24:31 -0600

From Matthew Lee, AP: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called Sunday for "friends of democratic Syria" to unite and rally against President Bashar Assad's regime, previewing the possible formation of a formal group of likeminded nations to coordinate assistance to the Syrian opposition.

Speaking in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia a day after Russia and China blocked U.N. Security Council action on Syria, Clinton said the international community had a duty to halt ongoing bloodshed and promote a political transition that would see Assad step down. She said the "friends of Syria" should work together to promote those ends. . . .

"Faced with a neutered Security Council, we have to redouble our efforts outside of the United Nations with those allies and partners who support the Syrian people's right to have a better future," Clinton told reporters after meeting top Bulgarian officials.

Such a group could be similar, but not identical, to the Contact Group on Libya, which oversaw international help for opponents of the late deposed Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. However, in the case of Libya, the group also coordinated NATO military operations to protect Libyan civilians, something that is not envisioned in Syria. . . .

U.S. officials said a friends group would work to further squeeze the Assad regime by enhancing sanctions against it, bringing disparate Syrian opposition groups inside and outside the country together, providing humanitarian relief for embattled Syrian communities and working to prevent an escalation of violence by monitoring arms sales.

"We will work to expose those who are still funding the regime and sending it weapons to be used against defenseless Syrians, including women and children," Clinton said. "We will work with the friends of a democratic Syria around the world to support the opposition's peaceful political plans for change. . . ."

Radwan Ziadeh, a prominent member of the opposition Syrian National Council said countries backing Assad's foes should form an "international coalition ... whose aim will be to lead international moves to support the revolution through political and economic aid."

He said he expected French, U.S. and Arab support for a coalition. (photo: Getty)

What Is NATO Good For?

Jorge Benitez — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 07:35:18 -0600

From Robert Haddick, Foreign Policy: In a briefing delivered at NATO headquarters on Jan. 30, Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen declared that "NATO is the most successful alliance in history." Rasmussen and his colleagues are hoping that success lies not only in the past but in the future, too. While 2011 was NATO's busiest year ever for military operations -- with ongoing stabilization missions in Afghanistan and Kosovo and a surprise seven-month air campaign over Libya -- the alliance still struggles to define a convincing organizing principle that will be relevant in the future, a problem it has struggled with since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Ironically, NATO's leaders may now find the compelling rationale for alliance's future, and the strongest motivation for long-needed institutional reform, on the far side of the world. The emerging security rivalry between the United States and China, and the U.S. government's "pivot" away from Europe to address this challenge, may now focus the minds of European statesmen on their own security shortcomings like nothing else has since the end of the Cold War. . . .

So what should NATO plan for? Primarily, it should consider how Europe will defend itself against likely future threats after the United States is no longer able to support the alliance to the extent European policymakers have become accustomed to over the past six decades.

The sharp decline in U.S. military support for European security began long before the Obama administration's pivot. Over the past decade, the U.S. Navy has permanently transferred more and more of its ships from the Atlantic to the Pacific, a trend that will continue as the Chinese fleet continues to expand. The United States still has a two-ocean navy, but those two oceans are now the Pacific and Indian. Last week, Panetta announced that two of the four remaining U.S. Army brigade combat teams in Europe will be removed. More U.S. bases in Europe will be closed, military staffs reduced, and headquarters downgraded. With China's cost advantages in shipbuilding and manufacturing, the United States will find itself hard-pressed to keep up should Beijing elect to ramp up production of warships and combat aircraft. The result will be even fewer U.S. military capabilities available to NATO.

The shift in U.S. priorities could provide NATO, especially its European members, with the organizing principle it has been looking for since 1991. First, with the U.S. pull-back from the continent accelerating, Europe's defense ministries should cooperate to defend their sea, air, space, and cyberspace "commons." U.S. attention on the Pacific and Middle East should provide a powerful incentive to Europe to use smart defense coordination to acquire the high-end naval, air, space, and cyber capabilities needed to defend their interests in the commons over the continent and in the Mediterranean, the North Atlantic, and the Arctic.

Without a conventional ground threat to the continent, Europe should reduce and fully professionalize its ground forces. In addition to a mobile crisis response force, Europe should develop a broad special operations adviser capability. These advisors would engage in security force assistance and foreign internal defense missions with partner military and police forces in Africa and central Asia, and thus help extend Europe's security perimeter far beyond the continent's borders.

The result of these moves should be an alliance less dominated by the U.S. and instead led by a Europe motivated to become more self-reliant. That need for self-reliance should energize the defense restructuring and reform Europe has long needed. Changes on the far side of the world will make NATO more important a decade from now than it is to today. But NATO will have to endure some wrenching change if it is to stay relevant. (photo: Jacquelyn Martin/AFP/Getty)