Since Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine nearly three months ago, questions of security and defence have been at the forefront of the political agenda in Europe. Central in these discussions has been the current and prospective role of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, more commonly known as NATO, in the area. While certain countries remain firmly against participation in the military alliance, others, like Sweden and Finland, who are both now abandoning their long-standing alliance-free tradition, are scrambling to send their applications to be admitted into this more than 70-year-old organisation. With all this talk of NATO, you might be wondering what it actually is. If that is the case, then keep reading, because this article will attempt to enlighten you by providing an overview of the history of the organisation, what it does, and what role it plays today.
The founding of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization dates back to the 4th of April 1949, when a treaty was signed by twelve countries who pledged allegiance to the common goal of increased military cooperation and defence capacities. It was preceded by the so called Treaty of Dunkirk, created in the aftermath of World War II and signed on the 4th of March 1947, in which France and the United Kingdom agreed to assist each other in the event of an attack by Germany or the Soviet Union. This treaty was expanded a year later to include the so called Benelux countries (Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg), in what was known as the Western Union. On the insistence of the United States and President Harry S. Truman, the Western Union was further expanded to include North America (the United States and Canada), as well as Denmark, Iceland, Italy, Norway, and Portugal, through signature of the North Atlantic Treaty. While the treaty came into effect in 1949, it was not until two years later that NATO, meaning, the actual organisation, was founded, as a result of the Korean War. An integrated military structure was formed, which included the establishment of the so called Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), that to this day functions as the organisation's Allied Command Operations (ACO) headquarters, responsible for controlling all NATO operations worldwide. During the Cold War era, which in many ways defined the political agenda of the time and laid the ground for the tensions still in place today, the role of NATO was apparent: The alliance was supposed to function as a defence and deterrent against a prospective Soviet invasion. At the height of Cold War tensions, marked by the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, 400000 American troops were stationed across Europe. While tensions between the so called Eastern and Western Blocs had long been rife, making the existence of the alliance a matter of course, the revolutions of 1989, which would ultimately see the fall of the Soviet Union, marked the beginning of a stark change in focus of the organisation.
Through an agreement with the Soviet Union in 1990, which was later “inherited” by Russia and the countries it dissolved into, an era of disarmament ensued. This agreement, known as the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE), resulted in a sharp decline in military spending across the continent. Politically, the organisation emphasised the need for regional cooperation, by reaching out to the newly independent countries of East and Central Europe. With the Soviet Union in pieces, there was no longer a “natural enemy” against which defence was needed. NATO therefore turned its attention to other matters, including its first military interventions conducted after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. In the two decades that followed, NATO would go on to perform a number of military operations in different parts of world, which will be further discussed below. Following Russia's annexation of the Ukrainian peninsular of Crimea in 2014, which received strong condemnation from the international community, the leaders of NATO's member states formally committed themselves to the goal of spending 2% of their country's gross domestic products (GDP) on defence by 2024. Unsurprisingly, this has led to an increase in military spending across the European continent, thus marking a break to the previous era of disarmament.
Today, NATO consists of 30 member states, all of them European apart from the US and Canada. The 2000s saw the widest expansion of the organisation to date, when no less than nine countries were awarded membership. Apart from full members, there are other countries with which the alliance has partnerships. Most notable here is the so called Partnership for Peace programme, which purpose is to increase trust between NATO members and other countries in Europe and Central Asia, through individual bilateral relations between them and NATO. The current head of NATO is former Norwegian prime minister Jens Stoltenberg, who has been the secretary general since 2014. The organisation is divided into two main branches: civilian and military. The civilian part is comprised of the North Atlantic Council (NAC) and NATO Headquarters. The North Atlantic Council is the main governing body of the organisation, and holds meetings at least once a week, which are attended by permanent representatives of each member state, or higher level representatives such as ministers or heads of state/government. The Headquarters are located in the Belgian capital of Brussels, and house the national delegation of each member state, which includes both diplomatic and military staff. The military part is comprised of the Military Committee (MC), Allied Command Operations (ACO), and Allied Command Transformations (ACT). The Military Committee is comprised of each member state's chief of defence, and is responsible for advising the North Atlantic Council on military policy. As mentioned before, the Allied Command Operations is responsible for controlling all NATO operations across the globe, while the Allied Command Transformations is in charge of training NATO forces. The organisation's motto is “animus in consulendo liber”, which is Latin for “a mind unfettered in deliberation”. While this sounds vague and might be difficult to decipher, the officially stated objective is decidedly more precise: “NATO’s purpose is to guarantee the freedom and security of its members through political and military means.” The focus is thus twofold: political and military. This is evident in NATO's own description of itself, where the organisation claims that it “promotes democratic values” and uses cooperation as a means to avoid conflict. It is further “committed to the peaceful resolution of disputes”, but at the same time, “has the military power to undertake crisis-management operations”, which can be carried out either under the organisation's own treaty or a United Nations mandate.
It is this statement of purpose that enables NATO to perform military operations in various locations, for a number of different reasons. These operations, known as “out-of-area” interventions, have often been preceded by resolutions from the United Nations, and performed in cooperation with other countries. After NATO's first military interventions conducted in the beginning of the 1990s, the organisation performed several operations in the wake of the break-up of Yugoslavia, including the enforcement of a no-fly zone over Bosnia & Herzegovina in 1992. NATO also performed a number of air strikes and deployed almost 60000 troops for the subsequent peacekeeping mission. During the war in Kosovo at the end of the decade, NATO conducted a number of both military and humanitarian interventions, including a 78-day bombing campaign in Yugoslavia, and the delivery of aid to refugees from Kosovo. Around this time, efforts were made to require NATO to gain the approval of the UN Security Council before performing military strikes, but this was opposed by countries like the US and UK, who believed that this would undermine the ability of the alliance to intervene when deemed necessary. Moving into the 2000s, NATO was active with a training mission in Iraq for a number of years, which purpose was to assist in the development of Iraq's military force. The organisation also had a long presence in Afghanistan, heading the UN approved International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) from 2001 to 2014, with a mission to enforce peace, and, thereafter, to assist in training of the country's army. In 2005, NATO took on its only wholly humanitarian mission to date, when it provided disaster relief and medical assistance after the earthquake in Kashmir, Pakistan, following a request from the country's government. Towards the end of the decade, NATO, together with several other countries, started patrolling the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean in an effort to counter piracy, which was rife at the time. In 2011, NATO began its military interventions in the Libyan Civil War, which would ultimately reveal the divisions among the alliance's member states, as only a minority of them were participating. The American minister of defence at the time even went so far as to say that the lack of unity among the allies could lead to the organisation's demise, but as we know today, this concern would eventually turn out to be unfounded.
While these out-of-area military operations have in many ways defined the alliance, interventions can of course also take place under the treaty itself. This is one of, if not the most, central and well-known features of NATO. Known as article 5, this clause states that, in the event of an attack on a member state, all other states are required to come to its aid. Also known as the collective defence or solidarity clause, it has, to this date, only been invoked once. This happened after the terrorist attacks in the US on the 11th of September 2001, and was the starting point for NATO's lengthy involvement in Afghanistan briefly mentioned above. In discussions of the pros and cons of joining the military alliance, article 5 is largely considered to be the main advantage of membership: If you are attacked, you are guaranteed help from others. This is of course also one of the greatest disadvantages: Because you have pledged your allegiance to the alliance, you may be required to participate in a war or armed conflict that essentially has nothing to do with you. Others cite the loss of independence as a reason not to join the alliance. Those who make this argument maintain that it is the United States that is allowed to dictate the conditions that govern the alliance, and thus, that other member states have no say in the matter. Furthermore, the US is actively seeking to establish military bases in other NATO member states, which not only calls the principle of sovereignty into question, but also, unsurprisingly, can easily be regarded as a threat, and thereby further destabilise the already tenuous security situation that characterises parts of Europe. Additionally, it is worth pointing out that the nuclear deterrent, that is, the idea that being in possession of nuclear weapons will deter others who own them from attacking, which is often cited as an essential advantage of membership, largely hinges on the participation of the US. This is because the two other countries in Europe, France and the United Kingdom, who are also in possession of nuclear weapons, in no way own enough of them to be able to match Russia's arsenal. Here, it should also be mentioned that some countries in the alliance, such as Norway, are actively lobbying for nuclear disarmament. This is not well-received by the US, which has continuously lobbied against ratification of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), and thus made it very clear that their nuclear armament will remain in place, regardless of what others think.
Perhaps, this is the price of security. Giving up independence in exchange for security is most likely a reasonable deal for countries such as the Baltic states that would hardly be able to hold their own in the face of potential Russian aggressions. With Russia's violent attack on Ukraine as the most blatant example of what can happen if Vladimir Putin decides to continue enforcing his crazed conquest, it is not difficult to understand why the idea of NATO as the probable defender of European security has now reached an all-time high. If the goal of Russia was to avoid an expansion of NATO (Putin has himself stated that this was the case), it is safe to say that it has failed. In the case of Ukraine, the country has wanted to join the alliance for a long time, but not been able to do so, due both to the requirement to implement economic and anti-corruption reforms, and to the potential backlash that membership would receive from Russia. That said, NATO has pledged its support to Ukraine in the ongoing war, providing both money and weaponry to aid the country in its defence. As things are looking now, one can only speculate in what it would have meant if Ukraine had previously been accepted as a member of NATO. Would Russia have launched an attack in anticipation of the country's potential accession to the alliance? Or would it not have made a move, knowing that all other states would come to the rescue? At the end of the day, considering hypothetical scenarios will do nothing to change the bleak reality we are faced with today. While we are all hoping that the war on Ukraine will end at this exact moment, it is unfortunately unlikely that it will happen any time soon. In the meantime, NATO will continue its mission as the defender of security – if you are lucky enough to have gained its protection.
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