The Political Economy of NATO: Past, Present, and into the 21st Century.

• Author: ELAND, IVAN
• Position: Review

The Political Economy of NATO: Past, Present, and into the 21th Century By Todd Sandler and Keith Hartley Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Pp. xiv, 292. $59.95 cloth, $22.95 paper.

Todd Sandler and Keith Hartley claim that The Political Economy of NATO "presents conclusions based on rigorous analysis rather than ideology" (p. xii), but the book clearly exhibits a bias toward retaining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and expanding its missions. The authors acknowledge that "perhaps the greatest challenge facing NATO is to convince its members and critics ... that the alliance still has a role to play in the post-Cold War period" (p. 7). Sandler and Hartley admit that key questions include whether NATO should be abolished and whether other organizations could confront military threats more successfully than NATO. The book not only avoids discussion of those important issues but never even lays out the arguments expressed by the critics of the alliance.

The authors' pro-NATO bias is demonstrated by two conclusions: first, "That NATO must redefine itself and demonstrate that it still has a strategic role to perform if it is to survive during the post-Cold War era"; second, "NATO security must take on a broader definition in the post-Cold War period to include the protection of the environment, resource supply lines, and informational assets" (p. 251). The first conclusion implicitly assumes that retaining NATO should be a goal. During the Cold War, however, NATO was formed as a means to an end, deterring or defending against a massive Soviet attack on western Europe. Public-choice economists might accuse the authors--academics who study NATO--of benefiting from the alliance's post-Cold War attempt to avoid extinction by combating new threats and adding new missions.

In addition to the threats implied above, Sandler and Hartley identify the following as potential threats to NATO nations: transnational terrorism, increasing inequality in the world distribution of income, and rogue-state aggression and attempts to develop weapons of mass destruction. All such threats may affect nations within NATO, but the authors never make convincing arguments that such threats can be dealt with by an alliance designed for collective defense.

In fact, Sandler and Hartley use game theory to show that nations have incentives to ignore and in some cases to undermine agreements to fight terrorism. Yet the authors still seem to be reluctant...