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The Crisis of NATO Political Consultation, 1973–1974 from DEFCON III to the Atlantic Declaration

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The Crisis of NATO Political Consultation, 1973–1974 from DEFCON III to the Atlantic Declaration The Crisis of NATO Political Consultation, 1973–1974 From DEFCON III to the Atlantic Declaration ✣ Evanthis Hatzivassiliou Introduction: The 1973 Crisis and the NATO Context By the early 1970s, the international community found itself facing a new and expanding agenda. “New frontier” issues, such as human rights, scien- tific cooperation (computers, satellites, the sea bed, the environment, etc.), monetary affairs, and the 1973–1974 energy crisis posed thorny problems for diplomats and political leaders, who additionally had to cope with older power struggles, upheavals in the Third World, and the problems accompanying the pursuit of détente with the USSR. An ambitious European Community (EC), strengthened by its northern enlargement, tried to institutionalize its politi- cal cooperation and sought a new voice in its dealings with its major partner, the United States. The U.S. government, under President Richard Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, undertook creative initiatives toward the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China but became im- patient with the European allies and suffered disappointments in the Third World. The “Year of Europe” in 1973, proclaimed unilaterally by Kissinger, embarrassed the Europeans whom it intended to honor and ended inglori- ously when West European officials saw U.S. initiatives during the October 1973 Arab-Israeli war as heavy-handed and potentially dangerous for the se- curity of the alliance. Dependent on Arab oil, many European allies refused to support U.S. policy in the Middle East, and Nixon and Kissinger, for their part, felt that U.S. allies had let them down at a critical moment.1 1. On transatlantic dilemmas and the 1973 war, see, inter alia, Raymond L. Garthoff, Detente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan, rev. ed. (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1994), pp. 404–457; Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 195–201; Geir Lundestad, The United States and Western Europe since Journal of Cold War Studies Vol. 19, No. 3, Summer 2017, pp. 104–133, doi:10.1162/JCWS_a_00755 © 2017 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 104 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JCWS_a_00755 by guest on 24 September 2021 The Crisis of NATO Political Consultation, 1973–1974 This article discusses the crisis that the October 1973 Arab-Israeli war sparked in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The U.S. ini- tiatives caused a strong reaction by the Europeans and led to a search for improvements in allied consultation, especially with regard to “out-of-area” crises. However, it soon became clear that the problem could not be solved merely by the adoption of new procedures and instead was a matter of the “will to consult.” By summer 1974, the crisis had been partly defused with the publication of the “Atlantic Declaration” and a more practical restructuring of consultation in the North Atlantic Council (NAC) and at lower levels. Dur- ing an era of multiple transitions, NATO opted to contain the problem rather than to adopt a radical solution. At the same time, the episode attested to the resilience of institutionalized transatlantic bonds, which NATO expressed. This article is not an account of the wider transatlantic crisis and dilemmas of 1973 but of only one aspect of the problem, the process of intra-alliance consultation. The article is based on NATO, U.S., and British archives. The United States and Britain had pivotal roles in NATO political consultation, and their primary sources offer a valuable picture of intra-alliance delibera- tions, complementing the alliance’s own archival material. NATO was always more than a strictly military structure: It was a union of sovereign (though unequal) states coming together to defend territory as well as values. This aspect of the alliance was one of NATO’s major advan- tages during the Cold War.2 The coordination of fifteen sovereign states in an 1945: From “Empire” by Invitation to Transatlantic Drift (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 142–167; Marc Trachtenberg, “The Structure of Great Power Politics, 1963–1975,” in Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad, eds., The Cambridge History of the Cold War, Vol. 2 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 482–502; Matthew Ferraro, Tough Going: Anglo-American Re- lations and the Yom Kippur War of 1973 (New York: iUniverse, 2007); Andrew Scott, Allies Apart: Heath, Nixon and the Anglo-American Relationship (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 166–195; Salim Yaqub, “The Weight of Conquest: Henry Kissinger and the Arab-Israeli Con- flict,” in Fredrik Logevall and Andrew Preston, eds., Nixon in the World: American Foreign Relations, 1969–1977 (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 227–248; Geraint Hughes, “Britain, the Transatlantic Alliance, and the Arab-Israeli War of 1973,” Journal of Cold War Studies,Vol.10, No. 2 (Spring 2008), pp. 3–40; Alex Spelling, “‘Recrimination and Reconciliation’: Anglo-American Relations and the Yom Kippur War,” Cold War History, Vol. 13, No. 4 (Fall 2013), pp. 485–506; Daniel Möckli, “Asserting Europe’s Distinct Identity: the EC Nine and Kissinger’s Year of Europe,” in Matthias Schultz and Thomas A. Schwartz, eds., The Strained Alliance: US-European Relations from Nixon to Carter (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 195–220; Luke A. Nichter, Richard Nixon and Europe: The Reshaping of the Postwar Atlantic World (New York: Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 2015), pp. 103–157; and Effie G. H. Pedaliu, “‘A Sea of Confusion’: The Mediterranean and Détente, 1969–1974,” Diplomatic History, Vol. 33, No. 4 (Fall 2009), pp. 735–750. 2. Jeremi Suri, “The Normative Resilience of NATO: A Community of Shared Values amid Pub- lic Discord,” in Andreas Wenger, Christian Nuenlist, and Anna Locher, eds., Transforming NATO in the Cold War: Challenges beyond Deterrence in the 1960s (London: Routledge, 2007), pp. 15–30; Beatrice Heuser, Transatlantic Relations: Sharing Ideas and Costs (London: Royal Institute of Inter- national Affairs, 1996); and Vojtech Mastny, “NATO in the Beholder’s Eye: Soviet Perceptions and 105 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JCWS_a_00755 by guest on 24 September 2021 Hatzivassiliou intergovernmental organization (one that worked on the principle of unanim- ity) was a momentous task requiring significant diplomatic skill. The prime aim of NATO—the very precondition for fulfilling its role in defense—was thus the guarding of its own unity. However, unity became significantly more difficult to attain in the 1960s, when the immediate danger of war in Europe receded and Charles de Gaulle mounted his challenge to the United States and NATO. The two major reforms of the alliance, in 1956 and 1967, focused on the need to improve political cooperation that would guard transatlantic unity. The 1956 “Report of the Three” set up a mechanism of allied political and economic consultation; namely, the two standing Committees of Political and Economic Advisers.3 The 1967 “Harmel Report” created a more partici- patory structure for the alliance, which would also assume significant roles in the search for détente.4 Allied cooperation was a multifaceted challenge. It was evident that NATO should consult and plan its actions to defend the North Atlantic area according to Article 5 of the 1949 treaty. However, the problem always appeared in more acute form when “out-of-area” crises arose.5 Consultation among NATO members about these issues was an accepted norm, although they had no obligation to agree on action about them. Consultation on out- of-area problems developed slowly after the 1956 Suez crisis, when the Politi- cal Advisers and specialized expert working groups prepared biannual reports on the Middle East (from 1957), the Far East (1958), Africa (1959), Latin America (1961), and the Mediterranean (1970).6 The problem was that in the 1960s and 1970s the Cold War in the periphery was intensifying—a sign Policies, 1949–56,” CWIHP Working Paper No. 35, (Washington, DC: Cold War International His- tory Project, 2002). 3. Winfried Heinemann, “‘Learning by Doing’: Disintegrating Factors and the Development of Polit- ical Cooperation in Early NATO,” in Mary Ann Heiss and S. Victor Papacosma, eds., NATO and the Warsaw Pact: Intrabloc Conflicts (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2008), pp. 43–57; and Evan- this Hatzivassiliou, NATO and Western Perceptions of the Soviet Bloc: Alliance Analysis and Reporting, 1951–1969 (London: Routledge, 2014), pp. 56–74. 4. See mostly James Ellison, The United States, Britain and the Transatlantic Crisis: Rising to the Gaullist Challenge, 1963–1968 (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 108–116, 170–178; Helga Haftendorn, NATO and the Nuclear Revolution: A Crisis of Credibility, 1966–1967 (Oxford, UK: The Clarendon Press, 1996), pp. 320–374; Andrew Priest, Kennedy, Johnson and NATO: Britain, Amer- ica and the Dynamics of Alliance, 1962–68 (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 135–137; and Andreas Wanger, “Crisis and Opportunity: NATO’s Transformation and the Multilateralization of Détente 1966–1968,” Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Winter 2004), pp. 22–74. 5. Frode Liland, “Explaining NATO’s Non-policy on Out-of-Area Issues during the Cold War,” in Gustav Schmidt, ed., A History of NATO: The First Fifty Years, 3 vols. (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave, 2001), Vol. 1, 173–189. 6. Evanthis Hatzivassiliou, “Out-of-Area: NATO Perceptions of the Third World, 1957–1967,” Cold War History, Vol. 13, No. 1 (Winter 2013), pp. 67–88; and Evanthis Hatzivassiliou, “The Cold War as 106 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JCWS_a_00755 by guest on 24 September 2021 The Crisis of NATO Political Consultation, 1973–1974 of the globalization of Cold War power struggles.7 NATO was not equipped to deal with these crises.
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