By William D. Hartung
April 23, 1999
Last year's debate on NATO expansion failed to foresee the alliance's largest new cost: The operation in Kosovo.
Estimates by government analysts and independent think tanks put the cost of the operation thus far at over $600 million. And the Clinton Administration's recent $6 billion emergency supplemental budget request for Kosovo suggests that is only the down payment on what could become a very expensive proposition.
Projections by the Congressional Budget Office suggest that if a ground war were to be launched in Kosovo involving 50,000 U.S. military personnel, the annualized cost would exceed $19 billion. This is in line with a rough estimate by Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution that a ground war in Kosovo could cost anywhere from $10 to $30 billion.
In its enthusiasm for expanding NATO's membership and core missions, the Clinton administration has neglected other, more broadly-based institutions like the United Nations and the 55-member Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
As a first step towards building a more robust capability for international peacekeeping, the U.S. should pay its back dues to the United Nations, which could be covered for less than the cost of one of the $2 billion B-2 bombers that have been put on display over Kosovo. Strengthening the conflict prevention capabilities of the OSCE would likewise take a small fraction of the funds currently devoted to the war in Kosovo. That organization's entire $112 million annual budget is the equivalent of the cost of a few days of bombing raids on Belgrade. And the $2 million yearly tab for the OSCE's conflict -prevention unit equals the cost of just two Tomahawk cruise missiles.
Meanwhile, despite the leisurely pace at which new NATO member states are upgrading their arsenals, U.S. arms makers are aggressively marketing their wares to the governments of new and prospective members of the alliance.
Poland has recently put out the word that it is interested in buying 60 new attack helicopters, a deal that could ultimately be worth over $1 billion. Boeing has offered the Warsaw government a wide-ranging arms package that includes Hellfire missiles, upgrades of its Soviet-era helicopters, a piece of the action on the company's new L-159 combat aircraft (produced with its Czech partner, Aero Vochody), and a dozen or more surplus F-18 aircraft.
A number of U.S. arms makers are putting up $250,000 each to serve on the host committee for this week's NATO 50th anniversary activities. And these same companies will also be out in force for the NATO air show that will be held in Prague next month. U.S. companies like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and United Technologies are putting their energy into East and Central Europe in the hopes of getting the inside track on fighter purchases by Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic which will occur in five to ten years time. A package deal to sell even a few dozen fighters to the three new member states could be worth more than $3 billion.
The U.S. government has stockpiled over $1.5 billion in grants and subsidized loans that U.S. firms can use to finance arms sales to new and prospective NATO member states. The biggest commitment is the Central European Defense Loan fund (CEDL), which was given over $800 million in lending authority under the Pentagon's Foreign Military Financing (FMF) loan program before Congress terminated new FMF lending authority late last year.
It's clear, then, that NATO can be costly, even when it's not conducting military operations such as the current attacks on Yugoslavia.
To head off the possibility of costly and ill-considered future commitments like the current air war in Kosovo, NATO's new strategic concept should abandon any suggestion that the alliance operate outside of the European theater, and make an explicit commitment to seeking the approval of the UN Security Council for any operation other than the direct defense of the territory of a member state.
Congress should cut subsidies for arms exports to new and prospective NATO member states, and the Pentagon should terminate the Defense Export Loan Guarantee (DELG) program. Unless and until states in the region develop credible plans to invest their own funds in defense modernization, it makes no sense for the U.S. government to be stockpiling subsidies for that purpose.
And finally, the U.S. government should invest time and resources in the development of conflict prevention and peacekeeping capabilities in more broadly-based organizations like the UN and the OSCE . Critically needed funds could be provided to these organizations for a fraction of the cost of the current war in Kosovo.
William D. Hartung is the President's Fellow at the World Policy Institute at the New School and the author of The Military Industrial Complex Revisited.
The Global Beat Syndicate, a service of New York University's Center for War, Peace, and the News Media, provides editors with commentary and perspective articles on critical global issues from contributors around the world.
