Maybe President Recep Erdogan is not the only one who can take advantage of an opportunity.
This idea came to me as I calmed down over the anger rising up within me over Erdogan’s demand for his one-time political ally Cleric Fethulla Gulen who lives in Pennsylvania.
My first reaction was – “Let’s call a meeting of the North Atlantic Council and threaten to eject Turkey from NATO.” Of course this is not so easy. No clear article exists about how to go about such a process other than some vague language about being required to “uphold democracy, including tolerating diversity.” But the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea of taking the unilateral action of simply announcing that the United States itself had decided to leave NATO given, among other reasons, a member nation threatening a fellow member nation as part of its trajectory toward a non-democratic, authoritarian Islamist state. It would also solve the problem of free rides by U.S. allies that Barry Posen has identified in his work.
In addition to this provocative type of thinking — NATO Exit or NAXIT if you will — how the U.S. might actually begin a trajectory toward such a drastic policy move? What elements in the articles and fine print of the existing NATO verbiage allow for someone to leave NATO, in whole or in part? Should the U.S. consult with the French, who to my knowledge are the only ones to have actually tested this, at least from its military component?
So what can the President do within his authority to, hypothetically, pull the U.S. out of NATO? Is it like most other treaties that you have to give notification of intent (i.e. Japan’s notification of withdrawal from the Washington and London Naval Treaties in the 1930s)? And what role do the Senate and Congress play overall in such a process — NAXIT that is?
I think these are ideas worth exploring — if for no other reason than one might be horrified by the prospect of the U.S. deciding to leave NATO.
Finally, as every good officer learns (or should learn) when they identify a problem, what would I recommend the U.S. do after NATO pullout, to compensate for the perceived lost advantages?
There are two choices. The first is nothing. You know, unilateral action along the lines of the Farewell Address by President Washington — something about “Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European Ambition, Rivalship, Interest, Humour or Caprice”? Especially with people who do not like us. The U.S. simply acts in its own national interests as an independent sovereign nation. Louis Sears wrote during the supposedly “bad” era of “isolationism” these words of wisdom in 1927: “ . . . inasmuch as friendships are less steadfast than they sometimes seem, international security is best advanced by calm examination of a nation’s interests, rather than by frenzied appeals to an imaginary love.” They still apply today.
There is the separate issue of the UN, but for the time being let us simply accept that the U.S. stays in the UN. There are lots of non-NATO nations in the UN, membership in one does not exclude membership in the other. Which leads to course of action number two, as they say at the Command and General Staff School (CGSS). Form a new collective organization of like-minded sovereign states. Something along the lines of MTAO — Maritime Treaty Alliance Organization; or maybe OTO — Oceanic Treaty Organization. That way the U.S. could unify both its Atlantic AND Pacific AND Indian Ocean security interests into a global collectivist structure. It could include, for example, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and even Great Britain — who would likely leave NATO if the U.S. left, too. Hey, Ireland could join. And the nations of South America. And India.
The U.S. seems to be trapped in an old paradigm — NATO — and thanks to the arrogant and power hungry Mr. Erdogan, we can now see that the existing paradigm need not become our prison.
The views are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.