The NATO summit in Warsaw is a month away, yet in the United States the event is barely registering outside official government and military channels and specialized programs at DC think tanks. To be sure, the subject of NATO comes up tangentially in U.S. reports on the crisis in Europe, or as talking points in dueling Clinton/Trump campaign statements. But NATO issues rarely rise above the level of grace notes in the Transatlantic symphony.
We could chalk this neglect up to the general decline of Transatlanticism in the Obama era. Or maybe it reflects the larger identity crisis of an alliance that acquired the unmistakable flavor of a security organization in the post-Cold War years. Either way, the fundamental question confronting NATO today is whether it can in fact rise up to the challenge of confronting a resurgent Russia. Perhaps the principal obstacle to that goal is the lack of consensus among NATO leaders heading to Poland on what constitutes principal threats to the alliance.
Over the past decade NATO watchers have focused on the issue of miserly defense budgets, and the exercises and capabilities these funds can purchase. But there is a deeper undercurrent transforming both Europe and the United States in ways that make this discussion moot: the demographic transformation underway on both sides of the Atlantic. Larger population trends have not only shifted the center of gravity away from the Eurocentric world that dominated global security over the past two centuries; they are also bringing about an ethno-cultural transformation that demands a serious conversation about what common values Europe and the United States will share going forward. An ancillary but an equally urgent question for military planners is whether in the coming decades NATO member-states will be able to raise the military-age cohort to staff their all-volunteer forces—provided, or course, that their governments decide to spend enough on defense.
The current population trends in Europe and the United States, including both birth rates and migration flows, paint a troubling picture for the alliance’s future manpower needs. According to the UN World Population Project 2015 Revisions, the overall population of Europe and North America will shift from 738 million and 358 million, respectively, in 2015 to 707 million and 433 million in 2050. Even as Africa will remain the fastest-growing region, a number of countries are projected to see their populations decline by more than 15 percent by 2050, most of them in Europe. Fertility in all European countries is now below the level required for a full replacement of the population in the long run (about 2.1 children per woman), and in the majority of cases, fertility has been below replacement levels for several decades. Fertility for Europe as a whole is projected to increase from 1.6 children per women in 2010–15 to 1.8 in 2045–50, but this increase is not likely to prevent a contraction. At the same time, the UN study projects that most of the population growth between 2015–50 will take place in nine countries outside Europe, with the United States being one of them.
Most importantly for the future of the NATO alliance is the projected delta between the birthrates in high-income countries vs. projected immigration rates. Since fertility in all European countries is now below the level required for full replacement of the population, net migration is projected to be a major contributor to population growth in Europe. Between 2015 and 2050, net migration is projected to account for 82 percent of population growth in high-income countries. Unless the immigrant populations are sufficiently acculturated and absorbed into Europe, it’s doubtful that the European NATO allies will be able to raise large enough military age cohorts for their all-volunteer forces.
Finally, the accelerated aging of the population, especially in Europe, is an unaddressed issue that is going to shape the continent’s ability to field sufficient military forces in the coming years. In some countries it will call into question their ability to field a viable military force at all. According to UN data, in 2015 there were 901 million people worldwide aged sixty or over, comprising 12 percent of the global population. The population aged sixty or above is growing at a rate of 3.26 percent per year. Currently, Europe has the greatest percentage of its population aged sixty or over (24 percent). Here the growing age disparity between the prospective military cohort in the United States and Europe deserves particular scrutiny. The median age, that is, the age that divides the population in two halves of equal size, is an indicator of population aging. Globally, the median age is projected to increase from 30 to 36 years between 2015 and 2050 and to 42 years in 2100. The median age is higher in countries or regions that have been experiencing low fertility for a long time. Europe today has the oldest population, with a median age of 42 years in 2015, which is expected to reach 46 years in 2050 and then 47 years in 2100. Only four European countries have experienced above-replacement fertility during any five-year period since 1990–95. As a result, assuming current trends generally hold, between 2015 and 2050 the median age in Germany, for example, will go up from 46.2 to 51.4.
As NATO attempts to confront traditional state-on-state conflicts, it’s increasingly unlikely that the current manpower structure, geared toward the out-of-area paradigm in the 1990s and COIN in the past 15 years, will be sustainable, even if we assume steady advancements in weapons technology. When the Cold War ended, the United States had a military force of 2.2 million, and NATO’s European allies jointly had a force of 3.5 million, approximately 60 percent more than America. At the height of the Cold War the United States kept about 400,000 troops in Europe, exercising scenarios intended to ensure the Article V defense commitment was credible. The United States received significant assistance from its allies, who, even if their defense spending levels as a percentage of GDP trailed America’s, nonetheless provided capabilities that accounted for almost half of what NATO could field. Europe’s strength during the Cold War rested on conscription; only the United States and the United Kingdom had all-volunteer forces. Meanwhile, NATO’s principal mission was the territorial defense of Europe. Two trends which have defined NATO’s militaries since are, on the one hand, the almost universal shift to all-volunteer professional militaries and, on the other hand, accelerating reductions in force size. Today the European allies field militaries that are too small and too expensive in terms of personnel costs for the resurgent state-on-state conflict scenarios NATO is likely to face. And the projected population trends for Europe make this challenge even more daunting in the future.
There is one more important issue impacting alliance cohesion: the increasingly divergent cultures of the United States and Europe, both of which are being impacted by distinctly different immigration strands. The nature of the immigration into the United States and Europe over the past four decades—the former predominantly Catholic and Latino and the latter increasingly Muslim from MENA—is likely to contribute to the further divergence of the two cores of the West. The Transatlantic culture dividing lines will no longer be drawn solely or mainly between postmodern Europe and America’s residual exceptionalism. Given the cultural drift, will our democracies be as able and willing to mobilize in support of one another?
Trend lines don’t always stay flat, of course, but the general direction in which they are now pointing is troubling nonetheless. The NATO alliance faces some stark choices as it heads into the Warsaw Summit, not only because of Europe’s chronically underfunded militaries, but also increasingly on account of the alliance’s diverging demographic and cultural destinies.