The Limits of Cooperative Strategy Models

I think we have all dreamed about the possibility of taking a strong position on issues that mean a great deal to us and having the opportunity to say exactly what we want to say to exactly who we want to say it. I have tried this a few times while blogging, and I'll be the first to warn others the results don't always turn out well in the end. Secretary Robert Gates recently took that opportunity in his around the world trip, and contributed two speeches with exactly that intention in mind.

The speeches at the Shangri-La Dialogue, International Institute for Strategic Studies, Singapore on June 3, 2024 and at the Security and Defense Agenda, Brussels, Belgium on June 10, 2024 are classic policy speeches, and yet also represent blunt expressions of personal opinion from a man who has led the United States during wartime for nearly 6 years. Both speeches are regionally tailored to their respective, specific regional audiences and yet, both speeches contain strings that tie each other together.

What ultimately captures my attention is the theme of cooperation for mutually supporting interests. In Asia Secretary Gates highlights the benefits of cooperation and partnership in the context of value to the economic and security stability in Asia, despite bad actors like North Korea and challenges like territorial disputes. The speech reaffirms an enduring US policy that concentrates on diplomatic resolutions to difficult regional issues that is rooted in a shared security regime where burdens are shared by interested, regional parties. This is contrasted in Secretary Gates' speech in Brussels where the benefits of cooperation and partnership are becoming less evident, particularly when confronted with regional challenges like Libya. The Brussels speech suggests a future where diplomatic resolutions to difficult regional issues are no longer possible because the shared security regime underwriting the diplomatic authority of interested parties is becoming less evident with each new challenge.

In Europe, governments are speaking with their wallets in hand, and are rejecting the costs of alliance while demanding the benefits. Political self interest appears to have trumped mutually shared interest in Europe, and Gates is right to warn the point of no return is rapidly approaching, if not already passed. The only question remaining is how long before US elected officials respond to this emerging reality in Europe.

All of this raises several questions, beginning with whether or not strategic thinking in the US is coherent now that we must confront the reality that so much of our strategic thinking in Europe is based on wishful thinking regarding the shared security model. European political leaders will ignore Secretary Gates the same way that ADM Sandy Woodward will be dismissed casually by the British government for his warnings regarding the Falklands. Libya has exposed some very ugly truths about the freeriding of security by Europe, and it is past time for American political leaders to take on the tough issues of the day regarding our future security interests on that continent. Noteworthy, rather than having a serious conversation, the next move was the US moving to add another major US Air Force base in Poland. Hopefully this base will be populated with military personnel and equipment already in Europe, rather than represent an expansion of the US military footprint on the European continent.

The Inconsistent Cooperation Model

Dan Trombly beats me to the point, and laid similar thoughts to my own in this outstanding analysis of Gate's NATO speech. This part in particular focuses in on the issue facing American strategists as we confront the wishful thinking that underwrites our strategic thinking today.

The Obama administration’s National Security Strategy made a commitment to reciprocal burden-sharing and multilateralism quite explicit, and posited such changes to the US grand strategy as a way to put its global responsibilities in balance with US capabilities and resources. Even though intervening in Libya was far more in the interest of its primary European advocates than it was in US interests, the US intervened in part to maintain cordial ties with the allies it would hope to support its own military adventures. The reality is that European states no longer have the capability to assist the US in “hard” security operations in a way that makes US adventurism affordable. Libya is a judgment on the NSS as much as the state of NATO.

He goes on and absolutely nails the problem to the chalkboard so the J5 staff can think clearly.

Unmentioned, and not surprisingly, in Gates’s speech, is the US contribution to the current state of European defense inefficacy. The US, through pursuing a strategy of primacy, and emphasizing NATO while undermining the emergence of the EU as an alternative bloc for European defense, has basically encouraged free riding. There is more relative parity in European military capabilities, and thus less potential for free riding, at a solely European level. With the United States added in, however, many more European states can skimp on defense and reliably expect the US to pick up the burden. After all, the US will have global interests whether the Europeans are helping pay the bill or not, so the US is more likely to pick up the bill for transoceanic power projection than any single European state. Ultimately, the reduction in US defense spending is not just a wake-up call to Europe, but a necessary precondition for a European re-investment in its own defense.

The crisis of NATO has more foreboding implications for the rest of the American NSS. If Europe is unwilling to finance its own power projection capabilities without US respite from its role as global policeman, how will the US be able to apply its cooperative security model to parts of Eurasia where the US has more pressing security interests and less institutional frameworks to compel foreign participation?

It is very easy to suggest the cooperative strategic model doesn't work in Europe when there is no threat, but the fact is Europe should know better than anyone the value of strategic cooperation after having emerged from the shadow of the Soviet Union primarily due to the advantages of a cooperative strategic model. It also raises the question whether cooperative strategic models will ever work absent a threat, and if such a strategic model is even appropriate in places absent a regional belligerent power. In the Pacific, China too often publicly proves their belligerence regionally by inciting territorial disputes, ignoring proliferation of weapons, and turning a blind eye towards belligerent actions by neighbors like North Korea. Cooperative security strategy in Asia is very effective right now primarily because of China's own behavior, and the US doesn't even say much at all to convince the region of the value of cooperative security.

The same is true in the Middle East, largely because the nations in the Middle East are constantly dealing with the security challenges imposed upon national leaders in the region by Iran. Israel may drive popular idealism regionally, but at the state level Iran is who drives Kuwait, Bahrain, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Jordon towards cooperative security strategy with the United States. Wherever the threat factor doesn't appear to weigh on political leadership, for example, the absence of an Iranian threat to Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, or even Iraq - ultimately US influence is diminished because the value of shared security in the eyes of political leadership is diminished.

Difficult Strategic Choices

What Gates speech reveals more than anything is the strategic weakness of cooperative strategy in the National Security Strategy of the United States. The value of burden sharing only exists when there are mutually shared threats to stability and security, not when there are mutually shared benefits of stability and security. Europe, Africa, and South America are all examples, where a mutual threat is shared we find strong partners, and over the vast majority of territory without mutual threats the partnerships exist, but are not enduring in the face of crisis to only one partner.

The emerging security environment is one of multipolar, regional powers where security interests are going to be regionally focused, not globally shared regardless of how interconnected the world is globally. Cooperative approaches to security is sound strategic thinking in regions where a mutual potential threat to security and stability exists between regional partners and the United States, but the same approach is consistently ineffective in regions that lack a mutually shared challenge to security and stability. The United States must recalculate security posture in a way that addresses how to share security burdens in regions absent a mutually shared security or stability threat, something cooperative security does not effectively do and may actually negatively impact through sustained presence - removing the burden of responsibility from regional stakeholders.

Such a realignment will require genuine strategic thought to be effective, because it may even mean conceding high end regional security of large areas (like South America and Europe) to other nations absent any credible, consistent US military presence. Yes, that may actually mean the US Navy's recent commitment to AEGIS BMD patrols for Europe is a bad idea.

I am starting to believe Bryan McGrath is right, that indeed the Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower is potentially a seriously flawed strategy. Indeed, I am starting to wonder if the Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower is helping set conditions in the future where US interests are in greater jeopardy because too much emphasis is made on US power projection and not enough emphasis on the mutual interest requirement for genuine regional stakeholder leadership. While I am not ready to commit to those positions, I will admit they weigh heavily in my thoughts as a result of Secretary Gates' speech.