Angela Merkel, Barack Obama and other delegates walk to the “family photo” session at the G-8 summit in the US presidential retreat Camp David.

The G-8 and NATO try to find their way – By Theo Sommer

Does the West still exist as an effective association of democratic nations dedicated to an enlightened, compassionate and functioning capitalism? Its two summits in May – the G-8 meeting in Camp David and the NATO jamboree in Chicago – engendered plenty of doubts. It is not only the meteoric rise of the Rest, it is the blatant enfeeblement of the West that characterizes today’s global power pattern.

Clearly, the G-8 countries no longer set the world’s economic agenda. At Camp David, they kicked the can down the road, unable to demonstrate much political resolve or bridge the trenches separating their economic philosophies. Growth and “sound fiscal consolidation policies” was the summit’s mishmash mantra, but there were no strategic inputs and impulses. The leaders committed themselves “to take all necessary steps to strengthen and invigorate their economies and combat financial stresses.” They took great care, however, to underline “that the right measures are not the same for all of us.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel can go on calling for austerity and opposing eurobonds, at least for the time being. France’s new head of state, François Hollande, can peddle his more populist growth line. And the embattled US President Barack Obama can continue lambasting the Europeans for their disunity and indecision.

Anyway, resolute action could hardly be expected before the parliamentary elections in France and, more particularly, Greece. Will the next Greek government, possibly formed by the leftwinger Alexis Tsipras, comply with the commitments entered into by the Venizelos cabinet or will it refuse the lifeline thrown to it by its northern EU partners? Will the “Grexit” come to pass, a Greek exit from the eurozone, with serious and possibly catastrophic consequences for the European Union? We’ll simply have to wait and see.

For the rest, the G-8 leaders affirmed and reaffirmed, confirmed, recognized and welcomed a slew of issues and developments, ranging from their divergent climate change policies to energy and food security, foreign aid, the Arab Spring and women’s full and equal rights. They showed themselves united in their “grave concern” over Iran’s nuclear program and North Korea’s provocative actions. Once again, they listed non-proliferation and disarmament among their top priorities. They paid tribute to President Thein Sein and Aung San Suu Kyi for their efforts to deliver democratic reform in Burma. And they “remain appalled” at the humanitarian crisis in Syria. The 65 paragraphs of their final declaration were long on verbiage but extremely short on any hint of concrete action. The leaders proved unable to lift their sights beyond the nitty-gritty – to visionary projects such as a Marshall Plan for southern Europe, or a Transatlantic Free Trade Area that could ignite growth and add many billions to GNPs everywhere.

NATO’s 28 heads of state or government, meeting on the shore of Lake Michigan with two dozen partners from around the world, were hardly more productive or inventive. The alliance was content to rehash old ideas. What used to be called the Defense Capabilities Initiative was repackaged and relabeled “Smart Defense” by Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen. Bundling capabilities and sharing burdens, prioritizing, specializing and cooperating – his recipe has been tried for years, if not decades, and with limited success. Member states keep clinging to their right of sovereign decision-making, while trust in the reliability of their partners remains paltry.

In the final analysis, in times of fiscal frugality, burden sharing simply won’t be enough. What it takes, is some burden shedding. NATO must bring its ambitions in line with its diminished means, rather than betting on getting enough funds to pump the alliance up to be able to function as Globocop. Defense budgets will continue to shrink, there is no doubt about that. And the allies should not delude themselves that they can do more with less.

The US keeps clamoring that in 2000 they paid only 50 percent of NATO’s defense outlays, but that by now their share has risen to 75 percent. This kind of reckoning is what the Germans call a Milchmädchenrechnung, a childish fallacy. For while it is true that Europe’s defense budgets have been shrinking, the real cause of the increased American share was the horrendous rise in the Pentagon’s budget: from $280 billion in 2000 to more than $700 billion in 2010 – 4.9 percent of the federal budget. The Europeans certainly need to get their act together and fill the capability gaps exposed so obviously in Libya, but they should not fall into the trap of over-militarization that has got the United States into such deep trouble.

The NATO allies, too, just kicked a lot of cans down the road. The verbose final communiqués contained the usual phraseology. But beyond admonitions and long-winded declarations of intent there was agreement on only one concrete issue: the endgame in Afghanistan. All are scrambling for the exit. The mission will definitely end in 2014. By then, combat troops will be withdrawn. Starting in mid-2013, the Afghan security forces are slated to take over responsibility for peace and stability.

But crucial questions remained unanswered at the summit. How many foreign troops will remain as mentors and monitors after 2014: 10,000, 25,000 or 40,000? Who is to shell out the $4.1 billion needed every year to fund them? And who will have to pay how much to resource the economic build-up of the country? President Karzai has notified the allies that Afghanistan will need $10 billion annually for the next ten years. This will hardly be enough for the Afghans, and it may turn out to be too much for the allies (especially in view of the fact that the Afghans transferred $4.6 billion abroad in 2011 – with official permission). Another conference, to be held in Tokyo in July, will try to find a solution.

When the Berlin Wall fell and Europe became whole and free again, NATO found itself in a similar position to the Greeks at the end of the wars with Persia two-and-a-half millennia ago. The Greek poet Konstantinos Kavafis (1863-1933) captured the bewildering moment in a few lines:

“Some people arrived from the frontiers,

and they said there are no longer any barbarians.

And now what shall become of us without any barbarians?

Those people were a kind of solution.”

For two decades now, NATO has been a hammer in search of nails. In 1993, US Senator Richard Lugar propounded the new watchword: “Out of area or out of business.” Since then, the alliance (or the one or other individual alliance member) has gone out of area a fair number of times: twice in Iraq, twice in the Balkans, for the last ten years in Afghanistan and, most recently, in Libya. It conducted wars of choice and wars of necessity. An objective assessment of the various outcomes can only evoke mixed feelings. None justifies the boast: “mission accomplished.”

It seems a safe bet that the alliance will never again embark on an operation of the same scale and with the same nation-building ambitions as the Afghan intervention. The West’s reluctance to get involved in Syria indicates that the lesson has been learned: Unrestricted out-of-area interventionism might ultimately mean “out of business.”

Nowadays, NATO does not face any clear and present danger. There is no enemy, no front line, no existential threat. Only few of the new risks and challenges – proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, cross-border terrorism, regional crises, genocide, climate change, organized crime, cyber attacks, mass migration – lend themselves to military solutions. NATO is still useful: as a “fleet in being,” deterring reckless global players; as reinsurance in case new threats arise; as a tool of the United Nations; as a helper in natural catastrophes around the world. But it will no longer be the only, let alone the central organization holding together the US and Europe. Facing the Rest, the West of the future will need a broader foundation than just an ineffective G-8 and a military alliance dying for new missions to turn up.