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Report: The Costs of NATO Expansion Revisited - World Policy Institute - Research Project
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ARMS TRADE RESOURCE CENTER REPORTS - Press Release For Immediate Release: For further information: The Costs of NATO Expansion Revisited: From the Costs of Modernization to the Costs of War A World Policy Institute Issue Brief Executive Summary Major Findings:
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I. Introduction: From the Costs of Expansion to the Costs of War Non-governmental think tanks made their own cost assessments. Ivan Eland of the Cato Institute put the total tab at about $70 billion, with the U.S. share at $7 billion. And the World Policy Institute projected a worst case, highest cost scenario for NATO growth based on the alliance's "open door" policy: if NATO went on to add as many as a dozen new members rather than just the three nations added in the first round of enlargement, the top end CBO estimate of $125 billion for three to four members could quadruple to as much as $500 billion over a thirteen year period, of which the U.S. share could reach one-third to one-half. The differing estimates on NATO expansion were based on different definitions of what the cost components of enlargement were, and different assessments of the strategic and political factors influencing total costs. For example, the Pentagon's estimate explicitly excludes the costs of modernizing the armed forces of the three new member states, despite the fact that the World Policy Institute has identified over $1.5 billion in grants, subsidized loans, and weapons giveaways which the U.S. government had already committed in order to help countries prepare for NATO membership. The dueling estimates also differed on major issues such as how much it would cost to bring the military infrastructure of new member states up to NATO standards; the costs of modernizing the weapons inventories of new members states; and the extent to which NATO members in Western Europe would need to improve their transport and mobility assets in order to have a credible capability to reinforce the new members in a military crisis. None of last year's estimates of the costs of enlarging NATO addressed the costs of short-term military operations that might be undertaken by an enlarged NATO, which ? given the current air war in Kosovo ? may turn out to be the largest category of cost for the alliance for the foreseeable future. The cost issue was one of the few issues to generate significant political opposition to NATO expansion in the run-up to the spring 1998 ratification vote in the Senate. But interestingly enough, the wide differences in the estimated costs of NATO enlargement had only a modest effect on public opinion. Whether the costs to U.S. taxpayers were going to be a few hundred million dollars or several hundred billion dollars, the basic public attitude was the same: a majority of Americans did not believe that U.S. taxpayers should pick up the tab for helping new NATO members modernize their armed forces. For example, in an April 1998 poll commissioned by Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities and conducted by the Princeton, New Jersey-based firm Opinion Research Corporation International, 56% of those polled came out against NATO expansion once they learned that "estimates of the cost of the first phase of this expansion to U.S. taxpayers range from $400 million to $19 billion." That same month, the Survey Center at the University of New Hampshire found that 79% of New Hampshire residents were opposed to NATO expansion once they were told that "estimates of the costs of NATO expansion to U.S. taxpayers range from $400 million to $250 billion." During the Senate debate on NATO expansion last spring, the cost issue was raised most forcefully by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), who put forward an amendment to cap the costs of U.S. government subsidies for NATO expansion. Although Harkin's amendment was defeated by 74 to 26, it helped give a higher profile to the cost question, which may have contributed to the relative success of Sen. John Warner's amendment calling for a three-year moratorium on additional rounds of NATO enlargement beyond the invitations of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic to join the alliance. Warner's amendment garnered 41 votes, which was substantially more than the 34 votes (one-third plus one) that would be needed to block a second round of NATO expansion. Concerns about costs, alliance cohesion, and the effects of further expansion on U.S.-Russian relations have all come together to convince the Clinton Administration to take a go slow approach to new rounds of NATO enlargement. Prior plans to announce a new round of candidates at this month's 50th Anniversary of NATO commemoration in Washington have long since been put on the shelf, with the most likely timing for another round of expansion (if there is one) now being pushed off to at least 2001? safely past the year 2000 presidential elections. For the foreseeable future, the most important factor determining public attitudes towards the U.S. commitment to NATO in general and NATO enlargement in particular will be the outcome of the current operation in Kosovo. Has NATO been a positive factor in efforts to stop ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and rein in the activities of Slobodan Milosevic? Or has the Clinton Administration's stubborn reliance on using NATO to the exclusion of other, more broadly-based mechanisms ? such as the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe? done more harm than good? The public assessment of these questions will have much to say about whether there will be enthusiasm for additional rounds of NATO expansion in the wake of the Kosovo crisis, or whether there will instead be a contentious debate about the costs and purposes of the NATO alliance and the future U.S. role in it.
II. If I Had a Hammer: The Opportunity Costs of NATO Enlargement Critics of expansion raised several points in opposition to this rosy view of the impact of a bigger NATO on security and military spending in East and Central Europe. Citing NATO member Turkey's 15 year campaign of bombing and burning villages in its war against Kurdish autonomy in the southeastern portion of the country, some suggested that NATO membership might be viewed as a blank check to engage in internal ethnic conflicts and carry out human rights abuses with relative impunity. Other analysts suggested that to the extent that expansion created a new dividing line in Europe, new NATO members might at some future date drag the alliance into outstanding ethnic and border disputes that they had with neighboring, non-NATO members. As was the case in the assessment of NATO costs, analysis of the impacts of NATO enlargement on the security situation in East and Central Europe has also been overshadowed by the war in Kosovo. The relevant question now with respect to NATO in general and NATO expansion in particular is whether the intense focus on "updating" NATO and making it relevant to the new security problems facing Europe and the world has led to the neglect of other security instruments such as the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. A number of advocates of NATO expansion have suggested that the alliance's choice in the post-Cold War period is to "expand or die." And others have asserted that although NATO was originally designed to confront a rival military alliance, the now defunct Warsaw Pact, that given its superior resources and clear command structure it is the most useful tool available to deal with problems like ethnic conflict in the Balkans. But after witnessing a month of NATO bombing raids in Kosovo, Serbia, and Montenegro, it seems that the current NATO effort serves as living proof of an old proverb: if all you have in your tool box are hammers, all your problems start to look like nails. Judging from the performance to date, the most charitable assessment that can be made of NATO's disastrously counterproductive decision to launch an air war in an attempt to stop ethnic cleansing on the ground in Kosovo is that in the face of counter-evidence from their own diplomats and intelligence sources, the leaders of the alliance somehow managed to convince themselves of their own rhetoric? that Slobodan Milosevic would back down after a short period of air strikes and accept NATO's terms for the future of Kosovo. Several sources within the U.S. government have even suggested that the timing of the bombing raids was influenced by the date of the 50th Anniversary of NATO celebrations in Washington, on the theory that it would be too embarrassing to let Milosevic thumb his nose at NATO at what was supposed to be the moment of its greatest triumph. Add to this the repeated assertions by analysts in government and the media that NATO's "credibility" is at stake in Kosovo, and one has to wonder whether in choosing NATO as the main vehicle for resolving the crisis there, the Clinton Administration has simply chosen the wrong tool for the job. The first question that must be asked about the NATO air war is why the United States and its NATO allies never sought the authorization of the United Nations Security Council for what is after all an intervention in an internal dispute that was occurring within the borders of the former Yugoslavia. Under traditional interpretations of international law, a UN mandate is required for military operations for purposes other than self-defense. And even if one tries to carve out a "humanitarian exception" to justify the NATO intervention ? on the grounds that the Milosevic regime is engaged in ethnic cleansing bordering on genocidal conduct ? one has to question why this humanitarian argument was not at least discussed within the UN before NATO launched its air attacks. On a more practical level, doing an end run around the Security Council for a major operation like Kosovo risks not only alienating major players like Russia whose assistance may ultimately be needed to resolve the crisis, but it can also promote hastily-crafted, ill-conceived tactics that lack the kind of international legitimacy and steadiness of purpose that a major undertaking of this kind demands. When a policy like the current U.S./NATO air war in Kosovo fails so utterly to have the desired effect, it's always easier to look back at what could have been done differently than it is to look forward to what needs to be done next. Even so, it's hard not to ask whether the U.S. government's emerging emphasis on the role of the "new NATO" in dealing with a wide range of new security challenges -- from ethnic conflict in the Balkans to international terrorism to the spread of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East ? has blinded U.S. officials to the value of other institutions and other approaches to peacekeeping and conflict prevention. Prior to the bombing campaign, the OSCE had roughly 1,500 human rights monitors in Kosovo attempting both to document and hopefully to prevent the outbreak of ethnic cleansing in the province. Given its modest $112 million annual budget ? the equivalent in cost of a few days worth of bombing raids on Belgrade ? the organization had to pass the hat to raise funds for the mission, which relied in some instances on untrained volunteers whose qualifications involved little more than a proficiency in English. And the OSCE's conflict prevention unit receives only $2 million per year, or the cost of two of the hundreds of Tomahawk cruise missiles that have been fired by NATO forces in the current conflict in Kosovo. As Daniel Plesch and Julianne Smith of the British American Security Information Council have suggested, a better-funded OSCE could develop specially-trained "Civilian Intervention Units" that could be put on the ground in areas at risk of ethnic conflict before the killing starts. Similarly, if the United States were to pay its outstanding dues to the United Nations ? which it could do for less than the cost of just one of the $2 billion B-2 bombers that have been put on display over Kosovo? it would be better positioned to press for a more coordinated approach to UN peacekeeping, with better-funded, better-trained units and clearer lines of authority between the UN and regional bodies like the OSCE or the Organization of African Unity which could be delegated the lead role in peacekeeping missions in their areas. Whether these preventive mechanisms could have averted the current crisis in Kosovo is impossible to say with any certainty. However, it is interesting to note that last summer, the Clinton Administration ignored a proposal from its own representative to NATO, Alexander Vershbow, which would have entailed the development of a joint U.S.-Russian plan to impose a political settlement in Kosovo that the two nations would have jointly presented to the United Nations Security Council. Vershbow's proposal would have involved 30,000 to 60,000 troops to enforce it. In the midst of White House concerns about the terrorist attacks of U.S. embassies in Africa and the political risks of a proposal that might involve sending significant numbers of U.S. troops overseas in advance of the November 1998 mid-term elections, the Vershbow proposal was allowed to languish. By the time the Clinton Administration re-focused its policy apparatus on Kosovo in late 1998 and early 1999, the emphasis had shifted almost exclusively towards using the threat of NATO air strikes as leverage to get the Miloseic regime to agree to the terms of the Rambouillet peace agreement. Now, a month after the bombing campaign first began, there are discussions of finally doing what should have been done in the first place - involving Russia and the United Nations in hammering out and policing a peace agreement for Kosovo. If we are indeed going to have a "new NATO," the lesson of Kosovo may be that this new NATO should use force only to assist a member state in defending itself against aggression or with a clear mandate from the United Nations Security Council. And the United States and its NATO allies should invest in other insitutions, like the OSCE and the UN, that - because of their broader membership base -- are better positioned to engage in conflict prevention, peacekeeping, and peace negotiations. In addition to the human costs associated with the failure of NATO policy to stop ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, it's also worth looking at the economic costs of failing to head off this war. Costs of the War in Kosovo
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Finding 1: Last year's debate on NATO expansion failed to foresee the alliance's largest new cost, the operation in Kosovo. Estimates by government analysts and independent think tanks put the cost of the operation thus far at over $600 million, but as the Clinton Administration's recent $6 billion emergency supplemental budget request for Kosovo suggests, that is only the down payment on what could become a very expensive proposition. Projections by the Congressional Budget Office suggest that if a ground war were to be launched in Kosovo involving 50,000 U.S. military personnel, the annualized cost would exceed $19 billion. This is in line with a rough estimate by Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution that a ground war in Kosovo could cost $10 to $30 billion.
