To maintain themselves in power they underwrite the teaching of fundamentalist Wahhabism around the globe, including in America, demonizing Christians, Jews, and other religious minorities. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who effectively rules what amounts to a collection of city states in the desert, is notable for having forced the elite wealthy to pay ransoms for their freedom while splurging on a yacht, French chateau, and Rembrandt painting.
The KSA is brutally repressive, allowing not a hint of political dissent or religious diversity. The Kingdom is far worse than Iran, which holds elections, unfair but not without result, and allows Christians and other religious minorities to worship, though ever at risk of persecution.
MbS, as the Saudi dictator is known, allows neither. Indeed, he has tightened political repression, arresting bloggers and others for the offense of simply remaining silent, failing to sing everlasting praise of his rule.
He invaded Yemen, which has been at war with itself for decades, turning the latest round of internal conflict into a sectarian war involving Iran. He kidnapped the prime minister of Lebanon, underwrote jihadist insurgents in Syria, funded civil war in Libya, attempted to turn Qatar into a puppet state, and subsidized brutal repression in Egypt. Riyadh no longer matters like it once did. Its energy influence has faded, and it desperately needs to create the sort of society that its own citizens will defend, instead of forever expecting to hire American soldiers as de facto mercenaries.
The spectacle of U. Montenegro is a wonderful tourist destination and movie set. However, U. Corruption is a serious issue. Investigative journalists and journalists critical of the government face pressure, as do many nongovernmental organizations NGOs.
More important, Podgorica is a geopolitical irrelevancy. With a population smaller than a single U. Its vast armored formations consist of eight armored personnel carriers. The navy deploys sailors and five patrol boats, keeping the Adriatic well in hand. In contrast, Germany is a real country.
Last year Berlin was at 1. While its position, 17th of 30 members, is middling, its absolute shortfall is greater than that of any other NATO member. And spending on the armed forces will never reach that level. Merkel will be out of office in a couple years, so her pledges are irrelevant. The next government could be led by the Green Party. Finally, few Germans believe they need defend against foreign threats. Washington policymakers should focus on U.
Historically, Germany often chose allies in name only, moribund states barely able to field militaries, let alone effective ones. Maybe that explains his bad human rights record, encouraging lawless violence against and even extrajudicial murder of drug users and sellers. Worse for U. Earlier this year, angry over the denial of a visa to a political ally, he said he would end the Visiting Forces Agreement, which governs military cooperation between the two nations.
But a few weeks ago he changed his mind — for now. Because the United States will still provide two-thirds of the forces, its Central Command would be responsible for leading combined operations, as in the Persian Gulf War of , albeit with larger contributions by allied forces than now envisioned. NATO's role would be that of developing the necessary plans and programs to ensure that European forces are prepared for Persian Gulf missions and can be deployed there promptly.
Most likely the European countries making major contributions will be those whose forces are best prepared for major operations at long distances: e. If so, the Persian Gulf will be defended essentially by a small coalition of willing and able powers. Of course, a sensible distribution of roles and missions must be crafted for both theaters, based on the capabilities of each nation as well as fair burden-sharing.
For example, the United States should remain responsible for providing integrated command and control though it would share the product fully. A sound war plan might call for U. European forces could be the next to deploy, configured for sustained defense.
Heavy American forces from the continental United States could deploy last, thereby providing the combat power needed for a counteroffensive. In this way, the goals of burden-sharing and military success could both be realized. The specific ideas put forth here are meant only as illustrations of how coalition planning can be achieved. Moreover, we have discussed only MRC-scale operations. The larger point is that if combined operations by U. This kind of coalition effort is not easily mounted, but NATO's history during the Cold War shows that it is achievable—provided the participating nations work together, in peacetime as well as wartime.
At present, on paper, our NATO allies can provide about four divisions—less than half the total allied requirement we suggest of six divisions for Europe and three for the Persian Gulf. In reality, a host of constraints e. Although they could do so within their current defense spending, the allies will not spontaneously reorient their force postures to this extent. The United States will need to initiate efforts, in NATO and bilaterally, aimed at forging a consensus to pursue such changes.
A revised NATO strategic concept must be written, force goals must be set, programming guidance must be adopted, and contingency plans must be created. An effort of this magnitude sounds daunting. Yet, it is no more so than the challenges met by NATO during the Cold War, such as through the conventional Long-Term Defense Program and the nuclear missile deployment of the late s and early s.
To impart political momentum to such reform, the U. Purposeful follow-through is needed by U. The best place to pursue this initiative is NATO's force planning process, which in any case needs to be reinvigorated for new-era missions, and in U. Perhaps not all allies will react well at first, but several of them already recognize that their own interests are best served by strengthening their forces in these ways. France's recent decisions to reform national military strategy and forces for the new era suggest that it is the leading candidate to respond favorably to these American proposals and to challenge its fellow Europeans.
Britain may be wary of new commitments because of its preoccupation with Northern Ireland, but it will be otherwise sympathetic. Germany and others will likely follow suit. The United States can set an example by launching the process of preparing U. This can be done, for example, by allocating the modest sums that will be needed for new infrastructure, prepositioning, and exercises to implement the commitment to new members.
These activities could include:. This will entail harmonized programming and readiness so that another Persian Gulf war could be fought effectively by the United States in concert with its allies, sharing fairly in the responsibilities and risks.
This collaboration should also be fostered by and focused in NATO. Some Europeans may view the status quo as advantageous, in that the United States is maintaining sufficient forces on its own to defend common interests. But the status quo cannot last, and the United States should make sure the allies know this. The United States should commit itself to participate in that force, provided the allies do their share in Europe and also make up for the reassignment of U.
This will set a demanding goal for the Europeans, more than doubling their current power projection capability. But strategic conditions in the new era require this shift anyway, and by starting it now they can strengthen NATO and the U. If the United States is clear in setting the direction, the allies should respond positively, for it is in their interest to do so.
Over the long haul, the burdens facing U. Improved allied capabilities would enlarge the total pool of forces for European and Persian Gulf missions.
The effect would be to give NATO the ability to defend its members' shared interests wherever they might be threatened—a clear and worthy purpose for the alliance in the new era. It would enable American forces to handle lesser but likely demands while still being ready for big regional wars.
The United States would also be more able to pursue the modernization of its forces without fear that current readiness will be weakened. Together, the United States and its partners would be better able to provide security in the growing circle of prosperous democracies and in the face of an uncertain future world.
The benefits are well worth the effort of trying to gain them. John E. Peters , Howard Deshong. The issue paper was a product of the RAND Corporation from to that contained early data analysis, an informed perspective on a topic, or a discussion of research directions, not necessarily based on published research. The issue paper was meant to be a vehicle for quick dissemination intended to stimulate discussion in a policy community.
Permission is given to duplicate this electronic document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Copies may not be duplicated for commercial purposes. The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors. Issue If a future crisis requires that a force be sent to defend Middle East oil supplies, as happened in , the responsibility and risk will again fall almost entirely upon the United States, even though wealthy U.
In that case, depending on them more than we do would produce important benefits: Greater equity : The risks and costs of defense, in dollars or in casualties, would be shared more fairly. Stronger political support : There would be less danger that in some future crisis the Congress and public would decline to support American military action because of a lack of proportionate allied participation.
Better strategy : The United States would be better able to leverage its military resources to protect its global interests and to respond to the wide range of crises that could crop up in the new international security environment.
Less risk : If a major conflict proved to be more demanding than expected, the United States and its allies together would be able to muster more total forces and staying power than would the United States alone, barring a massive call-up of reserves, resumption of the draft, or other extraordinary measures.
Diagnosing the Problem Our point of departure is to understand the reasons why the United States does not depend on its allies today: There is no shared assessment of the new strategic situation nor acceptance of the principle that responsibility for security should be fairly distributed according to interests and economic means. The United States and its allies have no binding obligations or mutual assurances to act in concert in most plausible scenarios in which shared interests might need to be defended.
There is only a commitment in Article 5 of the NATO treaty to the common defense of allied territory, which is currently not threatened. Americans have frequently been told that allies matter, but what exactly does it mean to be a U. And why are relationships deemed so vital to American security frequently so contentious? The result was the decision to establish a set of formal treaty alliances that would create a collective defensive effort to contain Communist expansionism.
The U. The theory behind establishing the U. And it has. While abandoning the Kurds in Northern Syria raises moral and strategic questions, there is no formal alliance relationship with them. Similarly, what makes Ukraine different from a country like Poland or Estonia is that while it has long received American support, the U. The core feature of U. Similarly, the Nixon administration urged Asian allies to play a larger role in their own defense as early as the late s.
Allied defense budgets have waxed and waned—as have U. In the past decade, however, renewed concerns about Chinese and Russia aggression—as well as calls from both the Obama and Trump administrations for greater allied defense spending—have led many U. In Asia, Australia , Japan , and South Korea have all announced plans for significant new defense investments, much of which includes purchases of U.
Only four non-U. NATO members also recently agreed to a new cost-sharing formula that will result in Germany and the U. The largest concentration of U.
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