Contents

XI. Decision-making with more members 79

NATO’s decision-making needs in the new, more fluid era. CJTFs? 82

The options 84

XI. Decision-making with more members

“NATO could establish new memberships with a series of conditions that prevent new members from obstructing consensus among current ones. A ‘consensus-minus-one’ rule could be established to prevent a single aggressor from paralyzing an Alliance response. Well-established procedures for dropping a nation from NATO membership could make clear the dangers of irresponsible behavior. Various weighted voting schemes could be developed to ensure that former adversaries cannot prevent the Alliance’s traditional members from acting.”

– David Abshire [former Ambassador to NATO],

Richard Burt [former Ambassador to FRG], and

R. James Woolsey [CIA Director, 1993-present],

The Atlantic Alliance Transformed

(Washington, D.C.: CSIS, Aug. 1992, pp. 12-13)

In theory, there is no problem with decision-making in NATO – no special problem in reaching decisions, even if more members are added – because there is no legal right of veto in NATO. The North Atlantic Treaty does not specify the method of decision in the Council. Its main American progenitor, Theodore Achilles, was always proud of the fact that this had been left flexible.

This means that the NATO Council is in theory free to set for itself whatever method of making decisions its members see fit. It can make a policy by a majority vote. It can even revise its own decision-making method by a majority vote. This does not mean that a majority of the Council can do anything it likes: it would require a new treaty authority before it could coerce any member state into positive action. But it can make formal NATO decisions that willing members may proceed to carry out in NATO’s name. And as long as it takes care not to act capriciously or abusively, a majority can direct positive actions by the common NATO instruments.

On this basis, new member countries could be added in any number without making it any harder to reach decisions.

In practice, however, there has been an accrued, if not always honored, habit of operating by unanimity in NATO. On the assumption that this will continue as the main (and, in the claims of its public manuals, the sole) method of operation, it has been feared that more members would mean more unit-vetoes.

How the issue has been developed in NATO discussion

After Yeltsin sent his December 1991 letter to NATO declaring that Russia aimed to join, NATO Secretary General Wörner and Belgian Foreign Minister Eyskens both expressed concern that NATO’s decision-making might grind to a halt if a significant number of new members were added. This was the most serious objection ever articulated within NATO to the admission of new members: after various arguments were exhausted, finally this real issue was raised at the end of 1991.

Regrettably, this issue was expressed as a mere objection to having new members, or as an argument for keeping any new members so few in number or so unprecedently tame in behavior as to present no problems. It ought to be raised instead in the form of a challenge to the West. It should not be beyond the democratic maturity of the NATO democracies to find a way of making decisions in a group of 25 or 35 countries.

Commonsense solutions have been offered by Messrs. Abshire, Burt, and Woolsey in their above-cited book calling for the extension of NATO membership eastward. Among their solutions are: establishment of procedures for dropping irresponsible countries from full membership; consensus-minus-one; and weighted voting procedures. All of these methods will have their uses. We will explore them and other procedures at some length: this is a matter important enough that it is worth thorough consideration.

What can be learned from the EC’s experience with the same issue

The issue of how to make decisions with more members is not unique to NATO. It is the same as the issue that the European Community (EC) faced at the end of 1989. The EC faced it constructively, as a challenge. It acknowledged that it had an obligation to admit the East European countries as members. It realized that it could not go on making most of its decisions unanimously if it had a number of new members. It decided to renegotiate its decision-making process so that fewer decisions would be made unanimously and more by 2/3 majority rule (with each country’s vote given a weight roughly proportionate to population). This was the main motivation for the entire effort which led to Maastricht. The provisions within the Maastricht treaty for increased use of 2/3 majority rule must be counted – assuming final ratification – as one of the greatest constructive achievements of the EC since its founding. Would that NATO, instead of bemoaning the difficulty of making decisions with more members, would use this difficulty in the same way the EC used it – as an impetus for constructive reform of the decision-making process!

NATO needs to have the same debate on the relation between “broadening” and “deepening” that the EC had in 1989-1990. This needs to be treated as an opportunity to make changes in NATO that would be needed anyway. In the EC, it was certainly used as an opportunity to muster the will to make changes that were needed anyway, and this proved a spectacularly successful tactic despite all the flaws of Maastricht. NATO can learn from this success of the EC.

As the same time, NATO can learn from the mistakes of the EC. The main source of the flaws in Maastricht was that the EC countries negotiated it among themselves alone, rather than with the prospective new member countries as well. The result was that, instead of the intended result of developing the structural changes in the EC that would be needed for making a success of inclusion of new members, Maastricht came to focus on other structural changes as the old EC members traded off their own special interests with one another without regard to the East Europeans. Only Germany stood up for the interest of the East Europeans, namely: a common EC foreign as well as economic policy based on weighted majority decision, and more power for the European Parliament, in order to pave the ground for functioning with more members. The British and French succeeded in marginalizing this position in favor of their own debate on irrelevant and untimely issues such as monetary union. Fortunately Maastricht did make some extension of majority decision on economic issues and a slight enhancement of the position of the European Parliament, so it ended up partly relevant to new memberships, but not enough to satisfy anyone. New negotiations had to be scheduled for 1996, in order to try once again to prepare the internal reforms necessary for accommodation of new members. New memberships were meanwhile postponed.

The Hänsch Report of the European Parliament drew the logical conclusion from the Maastricht experience: that henceforth the prospective new members should be closely involved in the negotiations over internal EC transformation. In other words, the deliberations over “broadening” and “deepening” need to be wrapped togerher into a single deliberative process. If instead their preparations are kept separate – if, for example, they are divided into two discrete stages, with the negotiations and decisions for the “first stage” (deepening) having to be completed before the negotiations on the “second stage” (broadening) begin – then neither will develop the linkages to the other that are needed for its own full success, and both will fall far short if not fail outright.

Whether or not the EC follows up on this logical conclusion, NATO can and should do so. NATO should not permit its deliberations on internal reform to get sidetracked by old debates between the existing member countries, such as the relative weight of Europe versus America. Rather, it should deliberate together with the other NACC countries on the changes needed in order to accommodate them as members of NATO.

NATO’s decision-making needs in the new, more fluid era

In any case, with or without new members, NATO needs a more flexible system of decision-making. During the cold war it was able to get by, creakingly, with a unanimous-consent system (modified by arm twisting, “American leadership,” abstentions and “footnotes”). The issue was simpler then. The main thing was to agree to fight back if the big war started, and meanwhile to make the preparations for defense in the middle of Europe. Everyone could agree on this. Since the war never came, the time constraints never became operative and the delays never did much harm.

In the new era, there are many more decisions to be made. Most of them smaller, less obvious, and less compelling. And the decisions have to be made in a timely way: the crises are real-life shooting events, they come and go in real historical time, and if the West does not engage itself in them in a timely way, history is already irretrievably changed by that fact. This has been made painfully apparent in the former Yugoslavia.

The old unanimous-consent system cannot acquit itself satisfactorily in the new era. All of the major failings of NATO since 1989 – the failure to engage in Yugoslavia until after two years of war, the failure to take up the issue of expansion of membership for three years after 1989, the fear that new members would mean a weakening or “dilution” of NATO – can be traced to the unanimous-consent system.

At the end of the day, the decision-making rule may turn out to be more important than who exactly are the members of NATO or how many of them there are. It is the decision rule that determines whether an increase in membership means an extension of integrative influence or a loss of internal cohesion.

CJTF’s: administrative flexibility without decision-making flexibilty?

The need for more flexibility in the new era has begun to find its way into NATO practice on the administrative level, but not yet on the political decision-making level. This is the meaning of the decision in January 1994 in favor of “coalitions of the willing,” “separable but not separate forces,” and “Combined Joint Task Forces” (CJTFs). This allows for groups of countries within NATO to organize in skeletal fashion for joint operations on their own, and then to go ahead as a “separable but not separate” group when they are willing to act on a particular problem, using NATO resources and the NATO imprimatur for their operation. Other countries that are not yet members of NATO can also be included in the CJTFs and the joint operations. Thus, a coalition such as the one which won the Gulf War could in theory be set up in the future as a NATO coalition, with considerable benefit both to NATO and to the efficiency of coalition work.

This is a major departure. It creates tremendous new possibilities for the alliance. At the same time, it is viewed in some circles as merely being a device for gradual disengagement by the U.S. and for turning NATO resources over to the Western European Union (WEU), which is the only CJTF whose existence has been broadcast in advance. It also creates a paradoxical situation: groupings of NATO countries can go ahead with action on their own and with the use of NATO’s resources and imprimatur, but in theory (or at least the better-known versions of NATO theory) they still have to get unanimous consent from all members of the alliance.

This points to recurrent tensions, both in the making of decisions for coalitions or CJTFs and when they need to make urgent adaptations to their policies and measures to changes in the situation on the ground. In a sense this situation has already existed since 1966: the core structure of NATO – the Supreme Allied Command in Europe – has been a CJTF consisting of everyone but France, yet too often France has been treated as if it had veto rights when making policies for SACEUR. The resultant tensions were a frequent strain on the alliance.The strain will become much greater in the future if there is real-life action from CJTFs.

Political participation without integration – that is, a right of veto without preparation or intention to act in common: this, as Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick has stated, is “power without responsibility.” It is always a source of trouble.

To relieve the strain, what is needed is an approximation of system of power in NATO to the system of responsibility in NATO. This can be done by (a) generalizing the system of CJTFs to cover all reasonably-sized coalitions of the willing – not just WEU, but also SACEUR or any other adequately-sized grouping so that it can serve U.S.-led coalitions not just French-led coalitions – and (b) adopting a system of making decisions in which such groupings will be able to proceed with an adequate measure of confidence.

It is likely that the only way to do this – that is, to build enough will to make a definite, consistent, reliable improvement on the old unanimity system – is by acknowledging a responsibility to admit new members, and acknowledging at the same time that having more members requires having a more flexible decision-making process. Taken separately, the two issues confound one another; taken together, they find their solution in one another.

Extension of membership is a threat to NATO decision-making only if the present unanimous-consent system is viewed as the best of all possible worlds, than which God Himself could imagine none better. From a more democratic perspective, extension of membership is not a danger but an opportunity to make the changes that are sorely needed anyway in NATO decision-making.

The Options

There are many possible formulas for relaxing the unanimity requirement:

(1) A Security Council or Standing Committee, with a right of veto only for its permanent members.

(2) “Consensus-minus-one (or two)” when the behavior or status of a particular country (or a dispute between two countries) is at issue.

(3) Greater emphasis on the obligation to reach a decision, less on the obligation to reach consensus.

(4) A formal option of voting that is held in the background; continuation of discussion in most cases until consensus is reached, while holding in ultimate reserve the right to call a vote in case of inordinate obstructionism.

(5) Unanimity for setting general framework policies, but weighted majorities for deciding specifics of implementation, follow-up measures, and adaptation of policy in face of external changes and reactions.

(6) Weighted majority to decide on setting NATO policy and using the common NATO instruments; implementation by “coalitions of the willing,” without any obligation on the part of other nations to send their own units into combat.

(7) Regularized voting with power to determine full-scale common actions and to instruct member states to carry them out.

In January 1994, NATO took a step in the direction of (6) with its decision in favor of “coalitions of the willing” and “separable but not separate forces,” but only for implementation of decisions the making of which remains inflexible. NATO also took a step in the direction of (5) when a NATO officer in Italy went ahead with shooting Serb planes without a new higher-level decision. And in fact, procedures (5) and (6), while not yet sufficiently used in NATO to manage even the present problems of peacekeeping and peacemaking, could – if fully developed and established in NATO – solve the problem of decision-making for an entire generation to come.

But before we conclude how the issue should be resolved, let us examine each of the options.

(1). The Security Council model.

This model was suggested for CSCE by the Soviets and East Europeans at the time when the institutionalization of CSCE was under discussion. It was rejected then by the Western countries for a number of reasons, but the unfortunate real reason was that at that time they viewed CSCE as a threat to NATO and did not want CSCE to become stronger or more efficient than NATO.

The Security Council model has been put into practice in the U.N., with mixed results. In theory the sovereignty of the small states has been surrendered to the Security Council, which can trample heavily upon them without any power of veto on their part. In practice for four decades of the cold war, the stand-off in the Security Council rendered the theory nugatory and left the small states with their sovereignty intact vis-à-vis the U.N. Since the end of the cold war, the prospect has arisen for more massive and frequent U.N. infringement on the sovereignty of small members. However, this development is only in its earliest stages, and it is already engendering a sentiment of resistance against the unjust power of the Security Council.

NATO itself tried a similar model in its initial years, with a Temporary Council Committee consisting of Britain, America and France. This worked well, except for one thing: the small member states resented it and wanted a full voice at the table. It also failed to do full justice to the special size and role of the U.S. Soon everything reverted to a beefed-up but veto-ridden North Atlantic Council. NATO-sclerosis set in.

A Security Council-type system would be preferable to the present sclerosis. In an Extended NATO, the Security Council would probably include Germany and Russia as well as the U.S., Britain, and France. This would make the NATO Security Council nearly coincide with that of the U.N. (plus Germany, minus China) – a fact which could greatly expedite cooperation with the UN. It would also build on traditional ideas about “the great powers” and their responsibilities – and on the habits and mores of the great powers themselves in trying to exercise power.

However, a Security Council system in a fully extended NATO would give Russia a full-scale veto in NATO. This is exactly what almost all of the existing and aspiring member countries of NATO want to avoid. Russia has not yet earned that much trust. This is not something to be blamed on Russia’s current leaders; it would be logically impossible for Russia to win that degree of trust for years to come.

In any case, a Security Council system is always perceived as unjust. The more serious the business of the international organization, the more intense the perception of the injustice. Only a homogenous voting system can restore a perception of elemental justice. Homogenous state-by-state voting systems – whether they be by weighted vote, unit vote, or even unit veto – also have their problems of creating perceptions of injustice (only homogeneous person-by-person voting fully escapes the problem), but they all do far better than the Security Council system in this regard.

(2) - (7). The homogenous, voting-related options.

Each of these methods will be appropriate for different kinds of decisions.

(2). In cases where the behavior of a particular member is at issue, leading possibly to sanctions or to demotion from membership, consensus-minus-one might be the preferred procedure. This would be the political equivalent of a judicial procedure: one cannot be a judge in one’s own case.

(3) and (4). If on some issues unanimity is retained as the basic method of decision, greater emphasis will nevertheless be needed on the obligation to reach a decision. This could be reinforced by holding in reserve a formal option of moving to a vote.

(5). Once a policy decision has been taken, even if it is done unanimously, it will become important to be able to implement it flexibly and to adapt it rapidly to changing circumstances. That is to say, majority decision-making will be essential for follow-up decisions.

In the absence of any kind of voting in the follow-up, one would face what is called a “joint decision trap.” A joint decision, once it has been taken with enormous difficulty, becomes almost impossible to amend or reverse. This trap can lead to disaster.

The “joint decision trap” exists wherever unanimity is the decision rule. It was well known in the old EC, and remains well known in those policy sectors of the Community where unanimity is still required. It caused the Common Agricultural Policy to grow from an innovative accomplishment in the 1950s into an unreformable global nightmare in the 1980s.

A striking contemporary case of the joint decision trap is the embargo which the UN Security Council unanimously imposed on the former Yugoslavia in 1991. Within a year, the embargo came to be applied by inheritance to the newly independent state of Bosnia, thus perpetuating the arms imbalance in favor of the Serbian army which was tearing apart Bosnia. This was an unanticipated and unintended consequence of the embargo. Nevertheless the embargo on Bosnia could not be lifted except by a new and opposite unanimity. It was politically inconceivable that this new unanimity would be found. The international legal right of the Muslim population of Bosnia to its own self-defense was lost in the joint decision trap.

In between unanimity to decide in one direction and unanimity to change or adapt the decision, there is a vast gaping hole in which policy-making is impossible. The size of this hole is the size of the “joint decision trap.” Policy can fall into the joint decision hole and remain stuck in it for years and decades on end.

A joint decision gap also exists between a 2/3 majority decision in one direction and a 2/3 majority to change it. Fortunately this gap is smaller and less prone to catastrophic incapacitation of decision-making, but it is still very real and does a substantial amount of damage. Only a simple 50% majority decision rule closes the gap altogether and formally escapes the joint decision trap.

It is especially vital in military matters to be flexible in implementation and to avoid decision traps. Military circumstances can turn upside-down overnight. Opponents can react to measures in unanticipated ways that require sharp adaptations of policy. It can become a matter of urgency to escalate, pull out, or redirect the policy.

Sometimes it is possible temporarily to evade the necessity of use of efficient majorities for follow-up decisions, e.g., by resorting instead to delegation of broad authority to technicians and bureaucrats for implementation. In the case of NATO, however, this would amount to asking the military to start moving out from under civilian control in cases of actual fighting.

An instance of this might be seen when NATO took its first active combat measure ever and shot down four Serb planes in February 1994. This was only an implementation of an agreed general policy, but as NATO’s first act of live combat in the theater, one might have expected the decision to be made on a high political level. In fact the decision was made on a low military level, thus avoiding a decision-making quagmire on the higher level. This was a prerequisite for the success of the action. It also raised some difficult questions. Greece was upset and asked for the decision-making procedures to be reviewed at the next major NATO meeting. And, whatever its pro-Serb motivations, Greece was right in being upset. The precedent of the air action is both valuable and disquieting. It should not merely be thrown away in favor of unanimity, nor merely perpetuated in its present form, but transformed by developing efficient procedures for follow-up decision-making on the political level.

To avoid a “joint decision trap,” it is not necessary to go all the way to use of an efficient voting procedure for all decisions; but it is necessary to be able to use efficient voting for follow-up decisions. The EC has developed in great profusion the modalities for this, e.g., specifying procedures for making “framework decisions” or for adopting “framework legislation” in various policy areas, and at the same time specifying more efficient procedures for making follow-up decisions after the framework has been established. This works. It has become standard practice in the EC. Indeed, it is by now a standard part of Eurojargon. It is remarkable that other international organizations have learned so little from it.