A second-generation alliance system

WASHINGTON — During the Cold War and in the decade after its end, the United States based its global strategy on an alliance system whose primary elements were NATO and Japan. That system is in degradation, in part for reasons having little to do with the United States, but increasingly for reasons directly related to the policies and attitudes under the present administration.

This trend, if neglected, points towards a situation in which the United States could ultimately stand alone in a hostile world. It is necessary to develop a second-generation alliance system that will serve the long-term security requirements of its participants.

Unlike America's European allies, Japan has a military that is being carefully developed into an impressive regional force. Nevertheless, there is a growing sense that Japan faces rising challenges to its physical security, principally from China. Over time, Japanese experts see reduced American ability to maintain regional stability, and they fear that at the end of the road there may well be a Chinese-American war, probably triggered by a clash over Taiwan. Japanese experts are deeply concerned that the United States' determination to build a ballistic missile defense system will stimulate the Chinese to exceed American expectations by increasing the size of their nuclear forces, rather than by merely deploying more modern systems. They worry that India might be compelled to increase its forces to offset China, thereby further stimulating a nuclear race with Pakistan. They have good reason for concern about North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

The present administration aims to fundamentally change foreign policy. What is to be abandoned is the goal of a world system based on multilateral institutions, underwritten by security alliances anchored in the United States. In place of these things, what is intended is a world order serving US interests, based on US military and economic primacy, although to the maximum extent possible avoiding American engagement in long-range tasks.

The issue to be thinking about is not how to go back but how to go forward. The United States needs a second-generation alliance system. Europe and the United States can take steps to make sure that the emerging Rapid Reaction Force[6] is precisely that part of NATO that has been equipped and trained to fight together with the United States in out-of-area[7] engagements.

Europeans should focus on understanding the revolutionary trends in US military capabilities and doctrines, and plan to have a Rapid Reaction Force develop in such a way as to intercept those capabilities in a certain number of years. This is substantially less demanding in technological and financial terms than trying to upgrade the alliance as a whole. Japan must find a way to cut, or at least loosen, its constitutional Gordian knot [8]. Essential forms of future cooperation with America should be identified and ways should be found either to design these forms to make them compatible with the Japanese constitution or to change the constitution to help Japan and the United States to improve their mutual security relationship.

That issue comes to its sharpest edge in terms of ballistic missile defense. Right now the Japanese assume that their constitution bars any integrated US-Japanese defense against ballistic missiles. That is a negative consequence, because it blocks effective cooperation against the most dynamic part of the security threat facing Japan. There may be ways to work around this problem; the United States and Japan should be making it a very high priority to find them. The United States especially needs to offer an overall idea of how to bring Asia through a period when power relations will be changing to a new equilibrium reflecting China's rapidly growing importance. Washington should aim to do this at least in the first instance by means other than military force.

It should work to bring about constructive change in China and a benign regional adjustment to growing Chinese power. The goal here need not be a formal alliance but rather region-wide interest in collective security, capable of generating coalitions for specific purposes and possessing the means for effective joint operations with the United States.

In both Europe and Asia, governments most friendly to America deeply believe that the purposes of alliance now also extend to the need for collective, forward engagement against environmental collapse and poverty. To the extent that US allies neglect to maintain the capacity for basic collective military defense[9], they are forgetting or ignoring the lessons of history. But to the extent that the United States tries to minimize its engagement with any issues other than physical security, it is failing the prime obligation of leadership: to chart a future worthy of the aspirations of all.

The largest goals of a second-generation alliance system are no longer strictly regional, but global. They are no longer purely military, but societal. For such purposes, the United States is still the indispensable nation, not by custom or some version of divine right but by clear vision and commitment.