Contents

The optimal option on decision-making 87

What weighting of voting? Balances to protect each nation 90

An interim practical solution 93

Two immediate policies 95

The optimal option on decision-making

In fact, the EC has tried all of the options on voting that we have outlined – (3) through (7) – and then some. There is nothing esoteric about its experience. The reason to learn from it is not because it is obscure, but because it corresponds to common sense. It shows that common democratic sense is indeed applicable on the international level among industrialized democratic states. It shows that, the greater the use of common democratic sense in the joint decision-making, the better the joint decision-making will be – for the sake of all the countries involved.

The EC tried options in the (3) - (4) range from 1965 (when De Gaulle prevented the legally-mandated shift to regular 2/3 weighted voting on a range of economic issues) to 1985 (when the shift to regular voting was finally made). It found that these methods – placing an emphasis on the obligation to reach a decision and holding an option of voting in deep reserve – do not work very well, because, unless it is made the normal thing to bring matters to a head in a majority decision, national diplomats will tend to give one another the courtesy of going on discussing a matter interminably in the search for consensus. Nevertheless even options (3) and (4) worked better than an unadulterated formal requirement of unanimous consent: observers found that unanimous decisions were made more easily and more quickly in areas where there was formally a legal right to call a vote, than where unanimity really was the legal as well as practical rule. Thanks to the wide area of voting-held-in-legal-reserve, the EC was able at least to mark time after 1965 and avoid deterioration back to economic nationalism, which was no small achievement: it required the making of a large number of joint decisions over the years just to keep “running in place” and holding the EC’s half-way-common market together.

The EC has moved since 1985 toward decision-making processes similar to those in options (5) - (7), with the result that it has come out of its decades of stagnation and made major new progress toward economic union. The voting is still usually done informally: the Chair simply observes that the requisite weighted majority is at hand, rather than formally calling a vote and having the majority vote down the minority. This softens the procedure without changing the substance.

It is worth noting that all of the positive devices of Deutschian consultation-and-consensus ideology are retained in the EC’s majoritarian process. There is the same consultation of all parties, the same effort to build something near to consensus, the same development of package deals that give something to each country – but with this difference: it is all toned upward by the fact of coming to a head in a majority decision instead of being left subject to the vicissitudes of unit veto. Countries have to talk serious turkey in their consultations, because they expect a decision to be reached and cannot veto wantonly. The common interest gets its fair share of attention, alongside the special interests of each country. Package deals are made more easily and on a higher level of synthesis and upgrading of common interests instead of mere symbiosis of special interests. There is less room for obstructionism or failure to act. Discussion turns more on deliberation about the common good, less on arm-twisting or blackmail.

“Deliberation instead of arm-twisting”: this is the essence of the shift from unanimity to weighted majority decision. The liberum veto, despite its libertarian rhetoric, is in practice more not less coercive than voting. Voting may create a possibility of a tyranny of the majority, but this is preventable and is in fact ordinarily prevented by reasonable checks and balances; whereas unanimity or the uni-veto invariably creates a tyranny of the minority – a tyranny of each and every minority when it is applied rigorously, and a tyranny of a powerful minority that seizes the leadership when the chaos proves unbearable.

In most weighted voting systems, countries end up with approximately the same relative weight as they had in the unit-veto system. They do not give up their power; they simply exercise it in a more civilized and useful way. In return for putting to the side their sovereign right to indulge in uninhibited obstructionism, they gain a much more useful freedom from uninhibited obstructionism on the part of everyone else. In place of unlimited theoretical power they increase their practical powers. They need to learn to appreciate the quiet merits of this gain more than the rhetorical bombast that they are giving up.

In practice, the trade-off works as follows: states give up the power of mounting an unlimited separate defense on behalf of those national interests (usually of secondary importance) which fall within the sphere of common decision-making, and in return they gain the capability to act together for common interests in this sphere – interests that really are of primary importance. The truly vital national interests get protected much better aunder this system, thanks to the limitation on the right of each special interest to veto in the name of “vital national interests.” This does not mean that the special national or subnational interests get ignored; rather, they can be integrated into package deals, which is what usually happens – especially when the special interest is genuinely of great national importance – since it is not in the common interest to step too heavily on the toes of the member nations.

The valid portion of Deutsch’s consultationist ideology was where it discussed how consultationism could serve as a school of practices which could be subsequently incorporated within a more efficient democratic system. The invalid portion was its portrayal at times of democratic efficiency as a brute coercive breach in a hitherto unbroken bond of civilized unit-veto consultations.

The old habits and skills of cooperation, which have been built up within (or despite) the unit-veto system in NATO, would not be thrown out in a voting system. Rather, they would be retained and “toned up” by the fact of having the supplementary instrumentality of weighted majority decision at the end of the day. The reformed NATO would not have to learn the habitrs of cooperative decision-making and cooperative implementation out of the blue. It would be able to build confidently on the habits of 45 years of practice of cooperation. Indeed, voting is the safest way for NATO to salvage its learned habits of cooperation, which might otherwise crack or wither in the new era for want of a decision mechanism that can keep pace with the events of the new era.

In one sense, the NATO situation is very different from the EC. Compulsion of one country by a vote of other countries can breed greater resentment when it is a matter of imposing military burdens. Nor is there Treaty authority in NATO for compulsion of national action, although this could be rectified by a supplementary treaty or protocol. For this reason, NATO, unlike the EC, cannot go all the way to option (7) at this time. If there were a common NATO legislature, in which lines of political cleavage cut across national borders, then option (7) – regularized voting in a defined sphere, with authority to compel member states to enact the resulting decisions – would gradually become legitimate. But that is not the present situation.

Unless or until such a legislature is developed, the most sensible solution is a combination of options (5) and (6). This could be set forth as follows:

Decision, in a defined area ___ covering most policy-making in NATO, is by a 2/3 weighted majority. Such decisions serve to set formal NATO policies and direct the use of common NATO instruments and infrastructure. Each NATO policy is carried out by those states which are willing. The other member states are obligated not to obstruct or undermine the policy, but they are not legally obligated to participate actively in its implementation.

In actual combat situations into which NATO has entered actively, follow-up decisions affecting the combat will be made by a 50% weighted majority.

In the remaining areas of NATO policy-making where unanimity is retained as the basic method, each framework decision may provide for follow-up decisions to be made by a weighted majority.

What Weighting of Voting?

In theory the voting could be done by any formula – one state one vote, one man one vote (i.e. proportional representation in a popularly elected assembly), or a bicameral legislature with one branch for each of these formulas. A vote could be won by a simple majority of those voting, an absolute majority, a 2/3 majority, and so on and so forth.

In practice, voting in international organizations is usually done by states, with a weighting of the vote of each state (usually proportioned to population, with some extra weighting given to small states, but sometimes proportioned to GNP or financial contribution), and with a 2/3 majority being required for most decisions. This practice is by no means an ideal model; the EC, where it is best developed, is trying to move beyond it to a more popular democratic role for the European Parliament. Nevertheless it tends to emerge out of the compromises between the forces at play – the relative weight of states in the negotiations for forming the organization, the ability of any state to refuse to join, the status quo of “one state one veto” coupled with the arm-twisting power of strong states, the need to act vs. the fear of being compelled by a majority, the absence of a popular electoral input into the negotiating process...

Balances to protect each nation separately and democratic stability as a whole

In the case of a NATO extended all the way eastward, one state one vote would be out of the question, since it would give a premium to secession and a majority to all the new seceded states that have emerged in the East. Weighting of national votes would be necessary to set the balance right.

Fortunately almost any kind of weighting – by population, by GNP, by financial contribution to NATO, even (what is inadvisable) by estimated military power at this date – would give a preponderance to the stable democratic West. To assure democratic legitimacy and to build mutual respect between member peoples, it is far and away best that the weighting should be by population.

In a fully extended NATO from Vancouver to Vladivostok, no single nation would have more than 25% of the population – far below the amount needed to impose or veto a decision. At the same time, the old NATO-West as a whole would retain about a 60% majority. This would not be enough to impose a decision without the support of some of the former neutrals and Eastern countries, but for reasonable decisions, it could count on such support.

Thus, the former enemies of the West would not be able in practice veto the West from taking actions under NATO auspices in its collective self-defense or for common security interests. However, the West could if it wanted veto attempts by its former enemies to act jointly under NATO auspices, forcing them to act outside of the NATO framework if at all. While a way will be indicated below to moderate this veto power, let us consider it here in its strongest possible forms.

One might think it would be the East that would object, and that the West would embrace this formula with enthusiasm. Actually it is the West that is more likely to be leery, due to inertia and self-satisfaction, while most of the East is likely – as long as its pro-Western mood lasts – to welcome any way in which it can begin to have joint voting together with the West. This is because, even though the West with its greater numbers will inevitably predominate in the club, today the West is already dominating anyway, and at least if there is joint voting the club will finally become serious and a genuine sense of democratic camaraderie and mutual responsibility may be expected to develop through it. In any case, the “Western veto” would mean only that Eastern countries would not always be able to commandeer the name and facilities of NATO for their own purposes, not that they will be interdicted from separate national action.

One of the main objections in NATO circles to an Extended NATO has been that letting in the East would give the unstable new democracies a veto over NATO decisions. As the above formula shows, there is no reason why this need be the case. In fact, this would not be the case under any reasonable formula for weighting of voting, not just the one we have used above. This objection would be much better treated, not as an “objection” but as a “problem to be solved”: then NATO will be able to face its real problems and meet its real needs for the new era.

It was also objected that, if Russia got into NATO and went dictatorial again, it could veto and prevent the West from organizing the common defense against Russia. It would indeed be a necessity to prevent any such outcome, but fortunately this need not detain us long, since it is not difficult to provide full assurance against it. The above voting formula is only one of the ways it can be done. Other, even simpler ways, as indicated in the Abshire-Burt-Woolsey proposal cited above, are to provide for unanimity-minus-one, or for demotion from full membership of any countries that are found to have slipped away from essential democratic standards (see Section XII below for procedures for this).

A much vaguer formulation, recently popularized by Henry Kissinger, was that if Russia joined NATO, “everyone” would be inside NATO, it would be too diverse, and it would lose its cohesion and its ability to translate common purpose into common action. This is the same objection, but in a more impressionistic form, which tends to obscure the specific potential problems and solutions. Fuzzy thinking produces fuzzy answers; in this case, answers based on sarcasm against Russia, i.e. appeals to prejudice. It should not be necessary to belabor the point here that Russia is not “everyone.” Or that NATO’s task today is to build a capacity for common action (in the past it only made common preparations). Or that the prior compatibility of the members is only half of the story of cohesion; the quality of the joint institutions is no less important. Taken by itself, insistence on prior compatibility short-circuits the issue, by suppressing attention to the role of institutions in bringing out compatibility.

Russia would not add as much “diversity” to NATO as the numerous other Eastern European countries. What Russia would add is a possibility of strategic divergence from the West. In the years since Gorbachev, Russians have tended to assess their global strategic interests along basically the same lines as those of the West – the same threats (proliferation, Islamic extremism), the same problems to address (global population, environment), the same basic needs. But Russia does have other psychological and strategic options besides westernization. NATO membership would help validate its orientation toward the West in the short term and thus anchor it for the long term, but could not guarantee this orientation. Even if Russia were to meet the highest democratic standards, the West would not trust it enough to give it a veto in NATO. Russian membership in NATO would compel the West to face up to the need to put aside the unit-veto in NATO.

The actual danger to NATO cohesion is that, because the smaller Central and Eastern European countries are weak, they may be perceived as no threat to NATO “cohesion” and let in without at the same time restricting the unit-veto. For a transitional period, this might be bearable, thanks to the enthusiasm of the new members for joining the West. However, the honeymoon would not endure. Soon all the new unit-vetoes would paralyze the alliance. Then it would be remembered that the main solution to the problem of diversity is not to restrict it through membership criteria but to engage it in a flexible workable system for common decision. But with all the new unit vetoes in place, it would be too late to act on this reality. It is a virtue of an early Russian entry into NATO that the fear of a Russian veto power would force the alliance to face this reality in good time.

In the long run, voting between countries needs legitimation by a parliamentary body. For this reason, the European Community increases the role of the European Parliament every time it increases the use of voting.

In NATO, the nearest equivalent to the European Parliament is the North Atlantic Assembly (NAA). If the NAA were to play a role like that of the European Parliament, it would need a membership better proportioned to population and elected directly. It could then be given meaningful roles in NATO bit by bit; for example, it might be given a formal consultative status in NATO, next a negative power in approving the budget and the personnel of NATO, and finally a share of the positive legislative power in NATO.

This does not mean that the development that the development of the NAA must occur in exactly these stages, or that it must wait for a spontaneous future evolution that might never happen. In theory, all the steps could be taken here and now. In practice they are not likely to be taken all at once. What is worth asking is whether the entry of the new democracies would bring with them enough of a wave of democratic idealism that at least a direct and proportional election of the NAA could be agreed here and now. A commitment could be made at the same time to a future date for negotiations on increased roles for the NAA within NATO decision-making.

An interim practical solution: each Command area can keep its own decision-making system, but with ratification by vote of the whole alliance

The answers to these questions might end up being shaped in practice by how NATO answers a question that would be directly posed by a full Vancouver-to-Vladivostok expansion, namely: How would decisions be made for the new and old NATO military Command areas, respectively?

Let us assume that there would be three main Command areas (see Section II above): the old West European area, a new East-Central European Command area, and a new Russia-Eurasia Command area. Let us assume the least possible change from present decision-making authority, while still laying a basis for maintaining harmony between the three areas, uniting them pro forma within a common decision system, and gradually uniting them in practice more closely. Here is how the result would look:

1) Separate, pre-existing decision processes would to a large extent continue to be used for instruction of the Commanders of the different Command areas (Western Europe, Atlantic, NORAD, East-Central Europe, Russia-Eurasia), but with ratification by a simple majority vote of the whole alliance.

Selection and instruction of the SACEUR could be as before, by consensus among the old NATO members (or whatever improved mutual system of decision the old NATO members might wish to adopt), contingent upon ratification by a 50% population-weighted majority vote of the Extended NATO. Likewise, decisions for the Supreme Commands in East-Central Europe and in Russia-Eurasia would be by whatever mutual decision-making process their respective members agreed upon, plus ratification by a 50% weighted majority of the Extended NATO. The requirement of ratification by the whole would prevent contradictory policies; the method of ratification by 50% vote not veto would prevent obstruction of normal, proper defense planning and preparation.

2) On some issues, concerning the use of any common all-NATO instruments and instruction of any NATO-wide coordinating commander, a common decision process could be used (such as 2/3 weighted majority voting, and 50% for follow-up decisions).

Thus, for the business that belongs primarily to each Command area, the participants in that area could decide by their own method, subject to ratification by 50% of the entire Extended NATO. For an agreed area of common business, including instruction of the common instruments of the entire Extended NATO area, decision would be by a 2/3 weighted majority vote of the whole.

This would fit in with the widespread habit of minimum change, by allowing each Command area to keep primarily its own methods. Yet it would also lay grounds for progress toward eventually consolidating the decision-making processes into a single process, which will be needed if the several Command areas are ever to be consolidated into a truly integrated common Command area.

Two immediate policies

• Have the Partners discuss decision-making for when they become full Members.

• Have NATO develop flexible decision-making for CJTFs.

Consultationist ideology continues to be widespread in NATO. Even the mild use of voting arrangements described above may run into psychological obstacles. In this case, the first step is simply to get the issue of reform of decision-making placed squarely on the table. This should be done whenever the standards for membership are being discussed. It should also be done as plans are further developed for the newly-agreed system of “Combined Joint Task Forces” or “coalitions of the willing.”

The discussion on standards of membership ought to encompass all the major adaptations that would be needed on both sides in order to make an extension of membership work. For this purpose, an NACC “Committee on Extension of NATO Membership” could be set up. Thanks to full participation by all of the “Partner” countries not just the Western countries, the discussion would be better balanced than in the past, protecting against any sort of arbitrary piling on of preconditions by one side at the expense of the other side. The question should naturally arise within this Committee of how it would be possible to go on making decisions and avoid a serious dilution of the alliance if there were so many more Members with vetoes. The Easterners, once they were in this way inside the preparatory process, might turn out to be far more inventive than the Westerners in proposing flexible solutions. The discussions should in all events place the issue squarely on the table and provide guidelines for solutions that would be made definitive not later than in the actual negotiations for new Members.

At the same time, NATO needs to discuss the terms for making decisions for its newly adopted plan for Combined Joint Task Forces (CJTFs), otherwise known as “separable but not separate forces” and “coalitions of the willing.” There should ordinarily be no need for unanimous consent for such coalitions before they can start acting – and certainly no need for unanimity in adapting actions as circumstances change in the external world – but only a duly weighted majority, coupled with a commitment that those who do not participate will not obstruct. This is what is needed if this plan is truly to serve, as intended, to enable NATO to respond flexibly to the new conditions and fill in the security gap to its east. It would also provide a model for joint alliance decision-making for subgroups, which will be very useful in understanding how the alliance can include new easterly regional command structures and find the proper combination of responsibility and autonomy for them in alliance-wide decision-making.