The Cold War was a time of uncertainty and doubt for individuals and governments on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. And while this 40-year period was characterized by a constant and seemingly imminent threat, both the West and East were able to focus their energies on balancing each other’s influence, and assessing each other’s actions and power in the easily defined bipolar world. Thus, with the end of the Cold War, and the subsequent fall of the USSR and communism, came a new sense of uncertainty: who would replace the Soviet Union as the West’s counterpoint? And as the only remaining superpower, how would the United States deal with new, innovative security threats emanating from numerous locations across the globe?
Still, not only were countries, governments and the lives of individuals around the world changed at the end of the Cold War, but the international spectrum was also altered beyond recognition. And, perhaps the most interesting question emerged as a result: how would the trans-Atlantic relationship, and its main proponent The North-Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), be impacted by the fall of communism? And more specifically, how would NATO proceed now that its mandate – to counter the USSR and contain the spread of communism – had been accomplished? Now close to 20 years after the fall of the Berlin wall, the role of NATO in international politics is as ambiguous as ever, and has sparked an endless debate between intellectuals, politicians and even NATO member-states themselves. As such, the following paper will examine the beginnings of the organization, its mandate as it pertains to the ever-changing international landscape, and its successes and failures to date, and will argue that since the fall of communism, NATO no longer serves an essential purpose internationally, but only furthers American interests and actions worldwide.
NATO was created in 1949 in an attempt to contain the USSR, the Soviets’ growing international influence and the spread of communism. Led by the United States, NATO was seen as a tremendous success in that it was able to bring Western, like-minded states together to act as a unified force to counter communism during the Cold War. Interestingly, by promoting NATO membership in Western Europe, the US took itself from its policy of isolationism to one of containment (of communism), and as such, the organization “represents a revolutionary change in US foreign policy and the creation of America’s most entangling of alliances.” Yet even before NATO came into existence, Western states (in Europe in particular) had begun assessing the Soviet threat, and found it necessary to create a coalition to protect them from a possible attack. As such, Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg formed the Western European Union (WEU) as a result of the 1948 Treaty on Economic, Social and Cultural Collaboration and Collective Self-Defense, otherwise known as the Brussels Treaty. The Treaty highlighted its signatories’ common political and social priorities, and affirmed their commitment to mutually defend each other should one be attacked in Europe. Most importantly, however, “by demonstrating their resolve to work together, the Brussels Treaty powers helped to overcome the reluctance of the United States to participate in the nascent European security arrangements,” and thereby, as previously mentioned, come out of isolationism.
Indeed, shortly after the European states demonstrated their need (and desire) for a system of mutual defense, the United States and Canada joined the talks, and on 4 April 1949 in Washington, D.C., the North-Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was born. Twelve states joined NATO in 1949: the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Denmark, Iceland, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxembourg. Turkey and Greece joined in 1952 and Western Germany followed suit in 1954, prompting the USSR, fearful that the Germans would take control of US nuclear weapons and target their territory, to create the Warsaw Pact. The Soviets’ alternative to NATO, the Warsaw Pact mirrored NATO’s basic idea – to create a network of like-minded states that would mutually protect each other in case of attack – yet was instead comprised of Eastern, mainly Soviet-occupied and therefore communist states including Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary. And, a major difference between the two bodies was that “NATO – unlike the Warsaw Pact – rested on its members’ free consent, even that of the weakest,” while Warsaw Pact member-states participated primarily because they were occupied, and thereby controlled, by the Soviets.
Ultimately, by joining NATO on their own freewill, the member-states agreed to abide by the organization’s Charter, named the Washington Treaty, which includes 14 articles, none more important than the fifth. Article 5 states that all NATO members will perceive an attack against one of the member-states in North America or Europe as an attack against them all, and therefore, they will take “such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.” While this main proponent of NATO has a seemingly honorable raison d’être, today it serves as a seemingly legitimate reason for the US to pursue its interests around the globe. Indeed, Article 5 can be used by any NATO member-state to justify taking military action, so long as a threat is perceived; US President George W. Bush enforced Article 5 after the 9/11 attacks in order to wage war in Afghanistan. And in order to mount military campaigns that can effectively respond to the realities of today’s world, such as fighting insurgents in Afghanistan, NATO created the Combined Joint Task Forces (CJTF) in 1993 in order to “prepare better-integrated groups of multinational forces,” and make NATO assets available to the member-states that need them for peacekeeping, humanitarian relief or collective defense purposes. Further, the CJTF “will be augmented from other NATO headquarters and by nations and contributing Partner countries as necessary, using a modular approach, in order to meet the requirements of the specific mission.”
Still, in order to decide when, where and under what circumstances NATO troops should be deployed, NATO member-states must come to a consensus. Therefore, unlike decisions made at the United Nations Security Council or General Assembly, NATO decisions are not voted upon, and are instead the product of a long process of discussion, consultation and bargaining between the members, and involves NATO’s highest decision-making body, the North Atlantic Council (NAC). The NAC is comprised of all NATO member-states, which are represented on three different levels – permanent (Permanent Representatives/Ambassadors), ministerial (Foreign and/or Defense Ministers) and summit (Heads of State and governments) – and is supported by numerous committees including a Military Committee, Joint Committee on Proliferation and Political Committee, among others. And ultimately, “this means that when a “NATO decision” is announced, it is the expression of the collective will of all the sovereign states that are members of the Alliance.” Still, such decisions do not come easily, and the process won’t become easier in the future now that 26 countries are now members of the organization. “It may become tricky to preserves its necessary cohesion; any single member, for internal political or any other reasons, could potentially prevent the Alliance from acting or evolving.”
Still, from the very beginning, “NATO has been an organization that has been asked to do too much, with too little, with members from very different strategic backgrounds and cultures.” And while NATO member countries are considered equal, NATO has always been and will continue to be an American-led organization. Indeed, according to Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Advisor to US President Jimmy Carter, the United States has, and continues to, use NATO as a means through which it can cement its presence in Europe indefinitely. “NATO provides not only the main mechanism for the exercise of U.S. influence regarding European matters but the basis for the politically critical American military presence in Western Europe.” There has existed – and continues to exist – a huge gap between the NATO member-states in terms of power and status – “with the United States on the one extreme of the spectrum, and Norway and Iceland on the other.” This has, of course, resulted in numerous problems since its inception, none more pronounced than France’s withdrawal “from NATO’s military command as a result of General de Gaulle’s disagreements with Washington,” and more importantly, a fundamental disagreement with the US-led structure of the organization. Further, the issue of burden-sharing has caused tangible tension within the Alliance, with Americans and Europeans pointing fingers at each other in terms of who contributes what. Yet in the end, despite the petty bickering, it is obvious that “if Europeans resent Washington’s attempts to impose its leadership on its allies without flexibility, and Americans resent Europe’s failure to spend more on its own defense or support the US in regions such as East Asia or the Persian Gulf, NATO will suffer.”
It is also important to mention that the issue of burden-sharing came to a head in the early 1990s, when “it seemed to many in Europe and North America that the time had come for a rebalancing of the relationship between the two sides of the Atlantic and for concrete steps to be taken by the European member countries to assume greater responsibility for their common security and defence.” As a result of ongoing tension, The European Security and Defense Identity (ESDI, one of NATO’s most important initiatives) took shape, in an effort to get European states more involved – and give them the necessary resources and tools needed – in the defense of their own territory and interests. Further, by giving the European member-states access to NATO military planning capabilities, NATO hopes the European Union itself will become more secure, not to mention more open to a friendly, open relationship with its allies across the Atlantic. “Where NATO takes the lead, Europe will carry a fairer share of the burden. Where NATO, as a whole, is not engaged, Europe will have the capacity to take the lead. This means that North America won’t have to become directly involved, through NATO, in every security crisis in the neighborhood simply because Europe can’t handle it. ESDI makes sense,” said former NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson in 2000. Still, some argue that ESDI would further divide the Alliance, giving as how its European members would no longer need the United States for support. Yet, if the organization’s enlargement in the last decade is any indication, NATO’s break-up seems to be a far-off notion, to say the least.
In fact, shortly after the fall of communism, the Baltic States – Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia – became geopolitically important for the United States. Yet Kent R. Meyer, US Army Claims Commander, warned in 2000 that the possibility of welcoming the Baltic countries into the Alliance (they formally joined in 2004) wasn’t beneficial to the organization itself. “Article 5 of the NATO Charter should serve as a clear reminder that NATO is not a club but a military alliance,” he wrote in a Le Monde Diplomatique article. “In the [US] Administration’s efforts to convince us that we must expand NATO to create a new Europe without lines, it forgets that military alliances are all about lines—lines that separate the territory that alliance members are sworn to defend from those areas that the members have no obligation to defend.” Still, since that time, the Partnership for Peace (PfP), a new program to better help certain states ascend to full-member status within the organization, was created. Formally, it is a “security agreement that will facilitate the exchange of classified information” between the state in question and NATO, and today is the preamble to membership. Further, states entering into the PfP agreement must make “a number of far-reaching political commitments to preserve democratic societies; to maintain the principles of international law; to fulfill obligations under the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Helsinki Final Act and international disarmament and arms control agreements; to refrain from the threat or use of force against other states; to respect existing borders; and to settle disputes peacefully.”
Today, it is argued that the PfP model needs to be augmented, thereby “placing NATO at the center of a global network of partnerships, to afford NATO forces more security, capacity and, all-important, regional legitimacy.” In fact, NATO’s Charter “states that NATO is open to any European state willing to adopt the principles of the treaty and to contribute to the collective security of the region.” In other words, by making sure that NATO membership, preceded by PfP status, is only given to countries that agree with the American way of life and its definitions of democracy, the US has ensured its control of the organization. Adamant opposition to Russia has been, if one examines NATO expansion within the last ten years, a major selling point for new membership, however in October 2008 NATO and Serbia, one of Russia’s longstanding allies, signed a PfP agreement. Further, recent developments suggest that Serbia (and Georgia) will likely join NATO in the near future, not to mention may bypass the normally required steps needed for membership. This, therefore, signals the increasingly bold steps taken by NATO to expand its reach, and forces Russian officials to wonder how far it will truly go, and how much influence it will lose as a result.
Indeed, NATO now encompasses 26 countries, including nine former Warsaw Pact members. And as previously mentioned, since the fall of communism, NATO membership has begun stretching further and further East, engulfing many of Russia’s formerly occupied territories, including most importantly Poland and the Czech Republic. These countries had to conform to NATO’s Membership Action Plan (MAP), launched in 1999, which provides “advice, assistance and practical support on all aspects of NATO membership” to states that wish to join the Alliance. Russia, for its part, hasn’t been overly keen on NATO expansion, especially in light of losing its sphere of influence as a result. Not only that, but “under the cover of the war in Afghanistan, the US has established what are clearly designed as long-term bases in Uzbekistan and Kirghizstan, obtained military facilities in Tadzhikistan and Kazakhstan, and even extended its tentacles as far as Georgia.” Thus, it is no surprise that recent plans to build missile defense systems in Slupsk in northern Poland and in the Brdy region of the Czech Republic, just outside of Prague, has only added fuel to the fire, and has ignited a firestorm of controversy – and tough Russian rhetoric – directed at Europe and the United States.
“I have every reason to say that there are no [intercontinental ballistic missiles] in Iran or North Korea, nor are there going to be any [in the foreseeable future]. So the real question is, against what countries will this system be used?” asked former Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov in December 2006 about NATO plans. This skepticism on the part of Russia should, however, come as no real surprise, considering the fact that “historically, a fundamental objective of Russian national strategy has been to ensure that a buffer of weak nations, held firmly within the Russian sphere of influence, protected their frontiers.” Still, Russian threats (placing their own missiles in Kaliningrad, attacking the NATO bases, etc.) only fueled Poland and the Czech Republic’s desire to become involved: “[Russia’s] increasingly shrill and occasionally threatening reactions to the aspirations of the Central Europeans merely intensified the determination of the former satellite states – mindful of their only recently achieved liberation from Russian rule – to gave the safe haven of NATO.” In fact, not only have these formerly occupied countries pushed for NATO membership; they have wholeheartedly embraced the West in virtually all aspects of life. “[Poles] like the [American] style of life; rags to riches and zero to hero. The United States has never let us down. It was the natural choice [to align with the US]. Poland is gradually becoming a Western oriented country,” Bartosz Wisniewski, an analyst at the Polish Institute of International Affairs, said in April 2008.
Ultimately, NATO’s missile defense system, said to protect its member-states against rogue states such as Iran and North Korea, demonstrates the expansion of its mandate to beyond its own territory. Indeed, many of the threats perceived by NATO members to their national and common security are located outside the treaty area, and “require new political tools and military capabilities to combat them.” For instance, NATO’s role in two bloodied Yugoslavian civil conflicts in the 1990s is a prime example of the organization stepping outside its immediate boundaries to intervene militarily. In 1995, during the United Nations mandated Operation Deliberate Force, NATO dropped approximately 3515 bombs on Serbia, and was deemed “the largest and most complex operation NATO has ever undertaken, a mission to help bring peace and stability to Bosnia and Herzegovina,” by NATO Defense Ministers. Still, what occurred in Kosovo in 1999, and constituted NATO’s only real war effort at the time, is an even more contentious issue, seeing as how countless civilians were not only displaced, but also killed, as a result of NATO involvement. Indeed, according to Human Rights Watch, NATO bombs killed approximately 500 civilians between March and June 1999.
After a slew of diplomatic and UN-led sanctions against Slobodan Milosevic’s Serbian government proved unfruitful at the time, a decision was made by the NATO member-states to take direct military action in Kosovo. “By May 1999, 90 per cent of all ethnic Albanians had been expelled from their homes in Kosovo – about 900,000 fled across Kosovo’s borders and more than 500,000 were refugees inside Kosovo.” While whether their intervention was necessary to stop ethnic cleansing in Kosovo remains debatable, the means – air strikes and bombings near, or directly in, civilian areas – used by NATO have faced harsh criticism, and duly so. “So now we have a million refugees, and NATO has been caught with its collective trousers down,” wrote The Guardian (UK) columnist Derek Brown in April 1999. “Robin Cook [British Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, 1997-2001] wants us to believe that long before NATO launched its air strikes, Slobodan Milosevic was carefully planning the ethnic cleansing of the Kosovar Albanians. So why didn’t NATO do something about it? Why were there no emergency stockpiles of tents and food and medical supplies? Why, above all, did we not intervene militarily?”
“The argument that, because of humanitarian concerns for the refugees, we were forced to act is not plausible. Our efforts dramatically increased the refugee problem,” said US Senator Ron Paul in 1999 before the US Congress. Further, NATO’s involvement in the region didn’t end with the last dropped bomb – instead, 15,000 allied forces have been stationed in Kosovo since June 1999. Initially, troops were implanted in the region to protect against another breakout of ethnic fighting, and today, its goal remains a peacekeeping one, and involves the return of displaced citizens to their homes, providing medical assistance and rebuilding the infrastructure of an area entirely torn apart by war. Still, according to Ron Paul, NATO’s sustained presence in Kosovo isn’t a good thing. “In the effort to expand NATO and promote internationalism, we see in reaction the rise of ugly nationalism. The U.S. and NATO policy of threats and intimidation to establish an autonomous Kosovo without true independence from Serbia, and protected by NATO’s forces for the foreseeable future, has been a recipe for disaster. This policy of nation-building and interference in a civil war totally contradicts the mission of European defense set out in the NATO charter,” he said.
In fact, NATO’s involvement in Kosovo was brought before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2004, which eventually ruled that it did not have the jurisdiction to make a legally binding judgment. Serbia and Montenegro argued that NATO’s 1999 bombing campaign violated international law, while the defendants, the NATO member-states, reiterated the idea that “their action was justified by what they said was Belgrade’s ethnic cleansing of Kosovo’s majority ethnic Albanian population.” Ultimately, while no decision was made, the damage to NATO’s reputation was done. And yet according to former NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson, there was no other alternative. “So with 20-20 hindsight, knowing what we knew then and what we know now, I am proud that NATO took action in Kosovo. It was not only the right thing to do — it was the only thing to do,” he said in 2000. Still, if anything, NATO’s practices in Kosovo have done one thing: placed added pressure on its new offensive military mission today in Afghanistan. Indeed, in keeping with this new mandate that extends beyond the Alliance’s borders, the 9/11 attacks proved that “given the nature and the source of the challenge, NATO must go global.” In fact, the attacks on the World Trade Centers only cemented this new need to move beyond NATO’s own boundaries in order to effectively respond to the changing nature of security threats, many of which, as the near total destruction of downtown Manhattan demonstrated, originate abroad. The mission in Afghanistan is, in fact, the first time that NATO has entered into a military operation outside North American or European territory, and its success will greatly impact the cohesion and future of the transatlantic alliance. All eyes are watching, and the US, EU and NATO are all keenly aware of that fact.
NATO forced joined the war in Afghanistan in 2003, and presently, it is being fought on two fronts: Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) led by the US against the Taliban and al-Quaeda network, and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) led by a majority of troops from NATO’s 26 member-states. The ISAF was created as a result of UN Security Council Resolution 1386, passed on December 20, 2001, and includes 11 specific elements related to the ISAF mission within the country. More specifically, Resolution 1386 states that the ISAF must “assist the Afghan Interim Authority in the maintenance of security in Kabul and its surrounding areas, calls upon Member States to contribute personnel, equipment and other resources to the ISAF, and authorizes the Member States participating in the ISAF to take all necessary measures to fulfill its mandate.”
Presently, American, Canadian, British and Dutch forces are in the eastern and southern, and most volatile, regions of Afghanistan. Due to heightened danger in this region of the country, the countries fighting therein have been highly critical of the remaining NATO member-states who, while participating in the war, have chosen to remain in less hostile areas. For instance, while Germany has contributed 3,000 troops to the war effort, most are deployed in a northern, far less dangerous, area of Afghanistan. “German troops reportedly patrol only in armored personnel carriers, and do not leave their bases at night. This has led some to suggest that the implementation of excess force protection measures by the Germans has made their work, even in a safe area, far less effective.” Ultimately, while NATO agreed to participate in the war effort in Afghanistan, which states will send troops (how many, and to what region of the country) remains an extremely contentious issue that won’t be resolved, it seems, in the near future. “Allies with forces in harm’s way continued to criticize other allies that will not send combat forces or commit to areas where the Taliban are active.”
Right now, despite having the fact that the member-states have pledged to contribute more troops and ground forces, “the upturn in violence in 2007 and 2008 led U.S. and NATO commanders in Afghanistan to conclude that they needed about three more brigades (10,000 troops) to be able to stabilize the still restive southern sector.” Ultimately, the war in Afghanistan is a long-term military effort with no end in sight, and as such, it is truly a test for NATO to prove that it can sustain a military effort and come out victorious. Indeed, especially after its questionable practices and decisions during the 1999 war in Kosovo, NATO’s very existence, not to mention the viability of American leadership within the organization, rests on the outcome of Afghanistan. “The allies believe that the success of the mission will also be a test of the United States’ ability and commitment to lead NATO, even if they do not always agree with every element of U.S. policy in the country. The ultimate outcome of NATO’s effort to stabilize Afghanistan and U.S. leadership of that effort may well affect the cohesiveness of the alliance and Washington’s ability to shape NATO’s future.”
On a deeper level, it can be argued that NATO is being used by the US as a means to grant legitimacy to its otherwise questionable military missions around the world. Most notably, in 2003, the US attempted to get the go-ahead from NATO for an aspect related to the war in Iraq. Instead, Belgium, France and Germany denied the US from implanting “defensive equipment for Turkey in anticipation of a possible war against Iraq” and prompted a slew of articles questioning the future of the organization. Indeed, tension within NATO combined with German, Russian and French insistence at the United Nations Security Council for more time to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq pending the invasion, “fractured longtime allies on the even of an increasingly likely conflict in the Persian Gulf region.” Some even argue that NATO’s mission in Afghanistan was merely a way for the US to gain control of the military capabilities and manpower of the member-states, thereby “transforming the European members of the Atlantic Alliance, most of them member states of the EU, into auxiliaries to assist the US armed forces in worldwide imperial expansion.”
According to neo-conservative American scholar Robert Kagan, a shift in the cohesiveness of the transatlantic relationship could be seen as early as 1990, and “the underlying cause was simple: the allies did not need one another as much as before. The impulse to cooperate during the Cold War had been one part enlightened virtue and three parts cold necessity. Mutual dependence, not mutual affection, had been the bedrock of the alliance. When the Soviet threat disappeared, the two sides were free to go their own ways.” Indeed, nearly 60 years after its creation, and with its goal of countering communism accomplished, one may wonder why “if the Atlantic Alliance was primarily a tool for winning the Cold War, why not just declare victory and let the Alliance fade?” That very question has plagued academics and governments since 1990, and sparked debate in virtually all corners of the globe. Still, the most obvious answer to such a query is simple: NATO should just fade away since in the meantime it is parading around the international spectrum as a hollow replica of what it once was, growing exponentially with no specific purpose in sight.
Still, “many challenges to shared US and European interests remain, and common culture and values, while not a sufficient condition for partnership, will continue to create a bias towards transatlantic cooperation.” And, while NATO still struggles to find real purpose in today’s world, it will most likely remain an active international decision-making body, if only for the sake of Western ideology and tradition. “Its preservation is vital to the transatlantic connection. On this issue, there is overwhelming American-European consensus. Without NATO, Europe would not only become vulnerable but almost immediately would become politically fragmented as well.” Further, NATO is a unique military organization and it would be foolish to disregard the important political, social and military structures it has created in the last 50 years. “So long as it is plausible that European and US forces might be called upon to undertake military tasks together – and they keep having to do so, from the Persian Gulf to the Balkans – it makes sense to preserve an integrated command structure and shared assets.”
Ultimately, the merits of NATO can be judged by its contribution to the fall of communism, its – to be frank – botched intervention in Kosovo in 1999, its expansion Eastwards, Russian-provoking policy of missile defense, and its currently contentious mission in Afghanistan. And while the organization’s major success – helping bring an end to the Cold War – will not soon be forgotten, it may become eclipsed if the present war in Afghanistan continues along the same beaten and controversial path it presently is on. But in the end, despite the organization’s many ups and downs, successes and failures, it seems that NATO will remain a prevalent force in international relations for many years to come; so long as the United States continues to view it as a organization that can further its interests and give it the semblance of international legitimacy, that is.
