Charles W. King

The two iconic weapons of the conflicts of the Cold War and decolonization in the twentieth century are the American M-16 and the Russian AK-47. All over the world the AK and its derivatives are the weapon of choice of freedom fighters and terrorists, exported and licensed freely by the Soviet Union. The M-16 has been an icon of American military technology since the Vietnam War, and it has been the weapon of choice for governments across the developing world. While the United States’ allies like German, the United Kingdom, and France may not employ the M-16, their service rifles use the same NATO 5.56mm cartridge.

The ubiquity of these two rifles is nothing short of miraculous. Since the advent of reliable firearms to Europe the militaries and governments have prized the domestic production of military weapons, frequently choosing to adopt inferior weapons that were designed and made in their own countries. The plight of Serbia and Greece in World War One demonstrate why this was so important. Weapons technology changed rapidly at the turn of the twentieth century; smokeless powder, new firing mechanisms, innovative magazines. As the nations of Europe adopted new service weapons in the heat of this rapid change those nations without the ability to invent and produce these new magazine fed, bolt action, smokeless powder-firing rifles had to choose where they would purchase their from. Serbia and Greece both selected a number of Austrian designed rifles and pistols, primarily from the manufacturer Steyr. Both had good reasons to do this, the weapons were cutting edge technology, well designed and well made, and lucrative contracts with an Austrian arms manufacturer softened diplomatic relations with the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Both Serbia and Greece suffered greatly for their choice. With Serbia being the target of Austria’s war aims, and Greece neutral but effectively a battleground until it joined France and the United Kingdom, both were cut off from supplies of ammunition, replacements, and spare parts. For the duration of the war keeping the Serbian and Greek armies supplied would be a constant problem for both governments. Both would field a variety of incompatible weapons and cartridges as they cast around for arms, frequently signing contracts for weapons that the French, British, or Russians had deemed unsatisfactorily inferior. Supplies were so limited that for Greece the iconic weapon of World War One and their partisan fight against Nazi Germany would ultimately be a single shot black powder rifle.

This is what makes the popularity of NATO compatible weapons in particular so startling. The Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact satellites manufactured AK-47’s and it’s variants by the truckload and shipped them all over the world. The countries of NATO on the other hand made the decision less than a year after its creation that they needed to standardize their equipment to insure interoperability, particularly of ammunition. Ultimately the Alliance adopted the NATO 7.62mm cartridge which continues to be in use today. Most of the other members of the Alliance wanted an intermediate cartridge more like the NATO 5.56mm that would be adopted in the following decade, but the U.S. insisted upon the 7.62mm. The U.S. got the cartridge it wanted, and the rest of the alliance got the rifle they wanted, the Belgian designed FN FAL, known during the Cold War as, “The Right Arm of the Free World.” Today NATO has approximately 1300 different Standardization Agreements (STANAG) that dictate the requirements for compatible equipment. They are so ubiquitous that the thirty round magazine that all NATO service rifles are required to fit is known as the STANAG Magazine.

Nonetheless the nations of the Alliance continue to field domestically designed and produced weapons; the British L85, French FAMAS, German G36, Czech Brens, and American M-16’s and M-4’s. Standardization has proven to be a boon not only to the militaries of the alliance, but also the arms manufacturers who produce weapons for export who have benefited the market share of NATO 5.56mm weapons for foreign militaries and individual collectors. However, the multilateral nature of the alliance has given rise to some complications recently. For the last twenty-five years NATO has been attempting to move away from its current standard 9mm pistol round, and the United States Army and Marines have been trying to find replacements for their M-16’s. Both have been unsuccessful. While the armies of NATO agree that they need a pistol round that performs better against body armor than the 9mm parabellum, which was designed in 1902. Competition between Belgian, German, and American designers has led to a road block that had yet to be resolved. Designed for the twenty inch barrel of the M-16, the NATO 5.56mm round possesses too much powder for the carbine length barrels of the M-4 and other carbines that are now the standard issue service rifle of militaries worldwide. This leads to a multitude of issues, primarily an increase in maintenance and training costs. Arms procurement, including cartridge selection, is an important strategic decision that can cripple militaries or be a great boon.

Charles W. King

For decades now the United States’ European allies have been criticized by some American politicians and policy-makers for failing to maintain their defense spending at 2% of Gross Domestic Product, as stipulated by NATO. These countries are derided as ‘Free Riders’. Some Americans complain about subsiding European nations by taking on their defense burden for them. The United State has in effect taken much of Europe’s defense burden upon itself, but that is not a reason to be critical. Like the Marshall plan, American defense spending was essential for Europe to become a healthy market for American goods after World War Two. The burden of defending themselves from the Soviet Union and Warsaw pact after 1945 could easily have been too cumbersome for Western Europe, and it certainly would have crowded consumer spending out of the economy for defense. The United States has let its European allies flourish under its defensive umbrella for decades and has flourished because of it, and it is not the first superpower to benefit from such an arrangement.

When the Monroe Doctrine was issued in 1823 the United States did not possess the naval strength to enforce it. The US Navy had grown significantly from the original six frigates laid down in 1794, but would still be no match for the naval forces of a European great power like France, Spain, or Great Britain. Throughout much of Europe the doctrine was received with disregard and contempt. Its saving grace was British insistence upon Freedom of the Seas. The nineteenth century was the height of Pax Britannia, and the British economy of was booming as a result of increasing industrialization and trade. Spanish re-conquest of Latin America would have been detrimental to British interests. The United States and its still nascent Navy did not have to invest in enforcing the Monroe Doctrine, because the Royal Navy already was. In a very real way the Monroe Doctrine was an American declaration of an existing British policy. From the War of 1812 to the Spanish American War in 1898 the US was a ‘Free Rider’ on the Royal Navy and British maritime and free trade policy. The British did not implement these policies or invest in the Royal Navy for American benefit. They were beneficial to Great Britain itself.

American policy-makers who are critical of the defense burden that the US bears for its European allies should consider how this spending benefits the United States. Investing in defense abroad makes a war in the American home waters or continent less plausible. The American government spends the money on American made equipment and the training of American personnel, developing domestic industry and increasing readiness in ways that would not be pressing without forward deployed troops. Allied nations who rely on the United States for defense also purchase American made goods and American services. The ability of foreign markets to afford American consumer goods is what made the Dollar the reserve currency of the world for the twentieth century. There may be ‘free riders’ on American defense spending, but that does not mean that it is a waste of money. The British Empire, and the early United States, would not have prospered if not for the Royal Navy and Freedom of the Seas. Investing in ‘free riders’ will protect American prosperity into the twenty first century.

Charles W. King

One of the major concepts in modern Political Science is that of credibility. For a threat to be credible the leaders and policy-makers of foreign powers must believe that the actor making the threat will follow through on it. Credible threats are what make policies of nuclear deterrence and collective defense effective. After World War Two the United States initially threatened a policy of nuclear retaliation for any Soviet aggression, but this was quickly undermined by American unwillingness to use nuclear weapons over the 1948 Soviet coup d’état in Czechoslovakia. The formation of NATO and establishment of Article 5 made American and European threats of retaliation for Soviet aggression more credible. The articulation that, “an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all,” clarified how the US and its allies would respond to what kind of actions. Where previously it has been difficult for rivals and allies alike to predict the American response to Soviet actions, this clarification made US policy more predictable.

Predictability has a range of advantages in international affairs. In the 1980s the Soviet Union developed a system known as the “Dead Hand” or “Hand from the Grave” that would automatically launch a retaliatory strike against the United States if a nuclear weapon detonated in the Soviet Union, a doomsday device in every sense of the word. Contrary to Dr. Strangelove’s exclamation that, “the whole point of a doomsday device is lost if you keep it a secret!” The purpose of the “Dead Hand” system was not to deter American policy-makers, but Soviet ones. Knowing that the “Dead Hand” would automate a nuclear second strike if the Soviet Union was attacked, Soviet leaders would no longer be tempted launch a nuclear strike in response to a false alarm. The predictability of their own system made Soviet policy-makers confident in the credibility of their own threats of retaliation and enabled them to act more predictably towards American policies.

International diplomacy is underpinned by its predictability. Nations know that their diplomats and embassies are protected from molestation, and they know how and where to contact each other publically and privately. In the midst of war nations are able to contact each other directly or through intermediaries, which is essential to the successful resolution of conflicts. The United States does not have diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran, however there is a longstanding policy of contact between the US and Iran through the Swiss Embassy in Iran. The United States’ “One China Policy” and the Shanghai Communiqué allow both the US and the People’s Republic of China to know what is and is not over the line, so that the can avoid crossing it or cross it if they so choose. Without knowing where that line is relations between the US and the PRC would be much more fraught.

Even Richard Nixon’s “Madman Theory” was an exercise not in unpredictability but in predictability. Nixon established that he was willing to respond to Soviet actions more aggressively; this would not have been effective if it was not predictable. Nixon was not unpredictable; rather he leveraged Soviet expectations from previous administrations to create new expectations that his administration believed to be advantageous.

Predictability makes cooperation with friendly nations and deterring rival nations easier. It is the foundation of credible deterrence and effective international trade agreements. The establishment of policies and patterns of behavior on the international state are something that policy-makers must engage with actively, knowing that predictability is advantageous and descalatory, and can be leveraged.

Charles W. King

President Trump has moderated the disparaging comment he made about NATO during and after his campaign but these comments touched upon the identity crisis that NATO has had since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1980’s. Since then NATO has been looking for the unity of purpose that it had when Soviet tanks sat in East Germany. In the 1990’s it expanded east and many former Soviet satellite states joined the alliance, and it intervened to quell the violence in the Balkans. In the 2000’s it responded to the US’s call for aid in its invasion of Afghanistan and turned its sights to terrorism and piracy. Understanding the alliance’s ongoing identity issues requires examining the purpose of the alliance when it was formed in 1949.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is famous for being the military alliance formed to prevent an invasion of Western Europe by the Soviet Union and its satellite states in the Warsaw Pact, but that is not the whole story. By 1949 the Americans, French, and British knew that it was not going to be conventional armies that dissuaded the Soviet Union from striking westward. Plans declassified since 1990 show that the Alliance knew that any effective defense of Western Europe would require the use of nuclear weapons. The Red Army simply had too many men and tanks for anything else to work. This raises the question as to the purpose of the continued presence of foreign forces in West Germany after the end of Allied occupation in 1954?

The answer lies in the fact that West Germany was not a founding member of NATO. When it was founded in 1949 NATO was just as much about deterring German aggression as Soviet aggression. The United Kingdom and France were justifiably concerned that a re-armed West Germany could turn its attentions west for a third time. West Germany only became a re-armed NATO member at American insistence. The French in particular did not want to let an independent West Germany re-arm. A solution was found in the European Defense Community which would’ve established multinational armed forces for Western Europe. The EDC was rejected by the French National Assembly as an unacceptable loss of sovereignty. This loss of sovereignty, particularly by West Germany, was the point. It would’ve prevented a re-armed West Germany from exercising direct control of its military. In the wake of the EDC’s rejection another solution had to be found. France and the United Kingdom were willing continue the occupation of West Germany, but the United States was not. Instead, over the span of a few short weeks, the leaders of the US, UK, France, and West Germany found another solution; West German membership in NATO. Not only would it permit West Germany to re-arm without an independent defense policy, it would permit the NATO militaries to have a continued presence in West Germany. From now on they would be allies rather than occupiers, but it was enough to soothe fears of another German war of expansion.

France, the US, and the UK are no longer afraid that Germany will invade its neighbors. The threat from modern Russia is not the same as when the Red Army occupied all of Eastern Europe. NATO has lost not one but both of its original purposes. Along with other post-war initiatives, it succeeded in mollifying German aggression. The question now must be asked whether or not it is possible to transition NATO to a new purpose. Thought of strictly as a defensive alliance it still can be an effective deterrent to foreign aggression. If policy-makers do not recognize how the alliance changed, dramatically, the geopolitics of Europe, then they fail to recognize how it is continuing to effect European geopolitics as NATO expands west towards Russia, and will not be able to shape those changes.

Further Reading

John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy during the Cold War (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2005).

Melvyn P. Leffler, For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union and The Cold War (New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 2007).

Ralph B. Levering, Vladimir O. Pechatnov, Verena Botzenhart-Viehe, C. Earl Edmondson, Debating the Origins of the Cold War: American and Russian Perspectives, (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2001).

Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century, (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1998).

Charles W. King

Events in recent years including North Korea’s nuclear development and Shinzo Abe’s push for reform of the Japanese Constitution  have prompted some to re-examine the nature of the United States’ bi-lateral relationships and alliances is Asia. The nature of America’s relationships in Asia varies; bases in South Korea and Japan, extensive military relations and arms sales to Taiwan and the Philippines, more limited military-to-military relations with India, Singapore, and Malaysia. It is easier to establish these relationships but they can be more fragile, as the recent decline in U.S.-Philippine relations demonstrates.

It is important to understand why bi-lateral relationships exist and how the U.S. can benefit from the strategic flexibility they offer. The re-militarization of West Germany and Japan after World War 2 established the nature of American relations in Europe and Asia. The Korean War required the re-militarization of Japan as base for American and allied operations, but the war was on the Korean Peninsula. The People’s Liberation Army’s “volunteers” were not the same kind of threat to Japan that the Soviet Army was to West Germany, France, and the Low Countries in 1950. The nature of the Korean War required expedient bi-lateral relations with Japan and South Korea to conduct a war in Korea, not the deterrent value of a large multi-lateral alliance.

Bi-lateral relationships have been the norm in Asia for centuries. From the 16th through the 20th centuries European powers used diplomacy, trade, and military force to establish bi-lateral relationships in Asia, to the exclusion of other colonial powers. The Portuguese, Dutch, English, and French all used bi-lateral trading and colonial relationships to extract resources from Asia. In the wake of the Boxer Rebellion the Western powers carved up bi-lateral spheres of influence in China as well. Earlier the tribute system established a structure of Chinese hegemony, client states, and trade between Imperial China, Korea, Japan, and their neighbors. In this era tribute to and trade with regional hegemons like China, and to a lesser extent Japan, was extensive. Relations and trade between tributary states in Asia was limited. Part of the reason for this was geography; Chinese tributary states had few other neighbors and none with the might or wealth of China. For hundreds of years the geography, balance of military power, and trade patterns of Asia made bi-lateral relationships within hegemons’ spheres of influence the dominant form of diplomatic relations.

It is not surprising that bi-lateral relationships remain the norm for the United States in Asia. Bi-lateral relations in the orbit of regional hegemony have been the norm in Asia through the Imperial, Colonial, and Cold War periods. While it will be important to rally multi-lateral support to confront certain issues—North Korean nuclear development, claims in South China Sea—the United States must recognize that there are historical factors that make bi-lateral relationships the norm in Asia. These trade relationships and alliances can be fickle, but they can also be turned to the United States’ advantage through a willingness to be flexible and examine each relationship strategically.

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Further Reading:

David Kang, East Asia Before the West: Five Centuries of Trade and Tribute (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2012).

Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).

Japan Examined: Perspectives on Modern Japanese History, ed. Harry Wray and Hillary Conroy, (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 1983).

John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, (New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Co., 2000).

Thomas J. Christensen, Worse than a Monolith: Alliance Politics and Problems of Coercive Diplomacy in Asia, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press: 2011).