In the atmosphere of mutual escalation between the West and Russia on the axis of the Ukrainian crisis, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg stated on February 7, 2022, that "the alliance seeks to establish a long-term military presence in Eastern Europe to enhance its deterrence power." .
This statement is not just a declaration of intent or a passing sentence in a war of words, but an actual strategy practiced by the West towards Russia, which has never ceased to consider it its number one enemy, despite the changing circumstances and contexts in which NATO was established: the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the collapse of the bipolar system, The Cold War ended, Germany was unified, the European Union was formed, China rose, the international environment in which NATO was established changed radically, Russia remained the West's number one enemy, and the Alliance continued to expand in the east without stopping.
Military alliances and mutual threats have never been a prominent topic in international relations, as was the case during the Ukrainian crisis, which became an arena for a potential clash between the West and the Russians.
The titles differed at different stages in the history of relations between nations. In some of those stages, the titles of world peace, globalization, international cooperation and joint action were overshadowed, especially since the end of World War II and the establishment of the United Nations Organization with its various bodies aimed at fostering international peace and security.
Perhaps international peace and security have not been seriously threatened with the level of seriousness that the Ukrainian crisis has reached.
Where the two largest military powers in the world stand face to face and are in the highest levels of tension and readiness for war.
This situation is only comparable to the Cuban missile crisis sixty years ago (1962), when the Soviet Union stationed its nuclear-tipped missiles off the American coast (less than 100 miles away) and pushed the tension between the two powers to its extreme.
Whether the Ukrainian crisis develops into a Russian invasion and an armed conflict whose extent, sides and results cannot be predicted, or the tireless efforts of mediation have succeeded in reducing tension and resolving the crisis diplomatically through negotiation, the fact that this development emphasized is the continuation of the centrality of NATO in international conflicts in general and in the relationship Between the West and Russia in particular.
How has this international organization been able to maintain its survival and feasibility for more than seven decades, despite the profound change in the structure of the international system and in the balance of international relations?
What is the significance of this survival and this continuous adaptation to the changing strategic environments in the relations of the West with the East?
NATO: the offspring of the Cold War and one of its main engines
When, on April 4, 1949, representatives of twelve countries gathered to sign the North Atlantic Treaty, the world was rapidly dividing into two blocs in what throughout the Cold War era became known as the eastern and western camps.
This is a situation that arose after the end of the Second World War, from which Europe emerged exhausted, especially at the economic level.
This prompted many of its countries to reduce spending on armaments and reduce the number of their military forces.
In contrast to the countries of the West of the continent, the Soviet Union emerged from the war as a striking military power, helped by the rapid rise of communist parties in a number of Eastern European countries and others, to extend their hegemony and form a political-military bloc under the umbrella of what was called at the time the "Iron Curtain".
While the components of the Eastern bloc were converging and the alliance between them was strengthened against the background of the ideological link, its relations with the West were deteriorating, taking the form of a cold war between the two parties that lasted for decades.
The year 1955 witnessed a pivotal transformation on both fronts.
As West Germany joined NATO, and in Eastern and Central Europe, the Organization for Cooperation, Friendship and Mutual Assistance was formed with its military front, the "Warsaw Pact".
Berlin, which was under joint administration between the victorious allies in the context of their sharing of defeated Germany, became a symbol of the division between them, which continued until the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact.
Throughout the Cold War era, NATO and the Warsaw Pact were military umbrellas for dividing the world into two opposing camps representing different paradigms in politics, economics, and ideology: a liberal capitalist west led by the United States and a communist socialist east led by the Soviet Union.
Although the conflict between the two allies during the Cold War remained under control and did not reach the point of direct confrontation, that era witnessed a number of proxy wars in which the two allies played varying roles.
Among those wars that took place in many parts of the world, most of which turned into spheres of influence belonging to this or that alliance: the Korean War (1950-1953) and the Vietnam War (1953-1975) in Asia;
the Yemen War (1962-1970) and the Moroccan-Algerian Sands War (1963) in the Middle East;
the Dominican War (1965) and the Bolivian War (1966-1967) in Latin America;
and the Congolese War (1960-1965) and the Chadian Civil War (1965-1979) in Africa.
Stability in a changing strategic environment
The arms race, which reached its climax with President Ronald Reagan's 1983 announcement of his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), opened the door to what was then known as Star Wars.
Since its inception in the late 1940s, NATO has continued to expand geographically, to include more member states, and to develop its military strategies and partnerships from outside the member states and from outside the Euro-Atlantic space.
All this continues despite the profound change in the strategic environment, in the balances of global power, and in the form of the international system in which the Alliance was established.
The Cold War, in which the Alliance was formed and pushed its members to the bloc to confront its security and strategic challenges, has ended and is a thing of the past.
And the Warsaw Pact, which was born in the same international environment to achieve balance with the North Atlantic, disintegrated at the beginning of the nineties of the last century due to the change in the political and economic conditions of its components and their successive withdrawals from its membership.
The arms race, which reached its climax with President Ronald Reagan's announcement in 1983 of his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), which opened the door to what was known at the time as Star Wars, has been replaced by truce agreements such as the START Agreement signed in 1991 between The United States and the Soviet Union to reduce strategic offensive arms, preceded, in a different context, in 1968 by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
And the civil and regional wars by proxy have diminished from the two allies after the collapse of the international framework that covered or nourished them and provided them with military, financial and political support.
And the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the pillar of the eastern camp tent, the pole of the Warsaw Pact, and one of the two models around which it was divided politically, economically and ideologically for decades.
In short, the bipolar international order that gave NATO its meaning has collapsed, playing for decades advanced roles in defending the security of its members and maintaining a delicate strategic balance with the Eastern bloc.
That system collapsed and the United States led the world as the sole superpower remaining from the conflicts of the past, especially after the failure of the bloc's attempts to form a new multipolar world order.
Economically and technologically rising China, which has been expanding outside its traditional sphere of influence by linking more than seventy countries in the continents of Asia, Europe and Africa with its economy through the new Silk Road, has not been able to fill the void left by the collapse of the Eastern Bloc.
Challenges from within
It is true that NATO has been proven despite all the variables, of which we have presented examples, but during its more than seventy-year history it was exposed to internal challenges that sometimes led to questioning its feasibility and the thinking of some of its members to dispense with it with other alternatives.
The French withdrawal from the unified military command of the alliance, in 1966, was the first and largest shakeup that NATO had seen in structure and leadership since its founding.
The withdrawal of France and the subsequent deportation of NATO forces, bases and military equipment from French territory came as a result of disagreements between Paris and Washington on several issues, not all of which are related to the affairs of the Alliance.
The era of the fifties and sixties witnessed the end of colonialism in many countries of the world;
While France was one of the most prominent colonial powers, the United States supported the right to self-determination, in keeping with not only Wilson's principles, but also the fear that the colonized peoples would sympathize with the Soviet Union and join the communist camp after its independence.
Africa and Asia in particular were two arenas in which the French-American dispute became evident on more than one occasion.
France's withdrawal from NATO continued for more than four decades, and it was not until 2009 that Paris regained its position in its command structure.
Before the decision to withdraw France from the NATO command, a group of European countries had crystallized the idea of the so-called "European Defense Community".
It is true that the ratification of the treaty establishing this force, which was also known as the "Treaty of Paris", which included the three Benelux countries in addition to France, Italy and West Germany, was not ratified, but the idea of establishing a common European force continued to resonate in European circles and is of increasing importance as it begins Questioning the usefulness of NATO or escalated differences on both sides of the Atlantic.
If the establishment of the “European Defense Agency” in 2004 to coordinate the defense efforts of the members of the European Union, with the exception of Denmark, is a natural matter in a European system whose interests are intertwined and its institutions are to a large extent integrated, the repeated thinking of sending a common European defense force as an alternative to NATO expresses European concern towards the policy of complete and continuous reliance on the strength of the Alliance.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, in her September 2021 State of the Union address to the European Parliament, summed up this concern by emphasizing the need to “strengthen European defense capabilities to meet security challenges and global crises.”
Von Derlein's speech came after the chaos caused by America's unilateral withdrawal from Afghanistan, which surprised its European allies in the absence of prior coordination, whether within the framework of NATO or others.
The Europeans' need for a joint military force of their own was heightened by Britain's exit from the European Union and the doubts cast by Trump's European policies about the continued commitment of the United States to its Euro-Atlantic partnership within the framework of NATO.
Trump's "America First" policy has gone so far as to threaten to withdraw from the alliance after pressure on its partners to increase their spending.
The Europeans' need to strengthen their common defense from outside NATO will remain as long as their suspicions remain about their American partner, in light of its changing administrations, policies, and priorities.
These are doubts confirmed by some US options, policies and alliances;
The Anglo-Saxon link seemed to prevail over the Euro-Atlantic link, sometimes at its expense.
Continuous expansion in light of mutual security concerns
The change in the strategic and international environment in which NATO was established did not affect its steady expansion, and the mutual doubts between its parties did not make it lose its usefulness or the conditions for its survival.
The Ukrainian crisis has renewed the debate about NATO and made it a major theme in East-West relations.
Between the time when the alliance was formed in the late 1940s, and the time when its forces were camped on Russia’s borders in 2022, the membership of this military organization expanded and its geographical and operational reach expanded dramatically.
When the first nucleus of NATO was formed, only twelve countries signed the document: the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Portugal, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, Luxembourg and Iceland.
Over the past seventy years, its membership has gradually expanded to reach in the year 2020 thirty countries, twenty-seven of which are European, and the rest are the United States, Canada and Australia.
During this expansionist process, we can stand on three main stations:
1955
Germany's accession to NATO represented an important shift in the balance of power between East and West, and this step prompted the Soviet Union and the countries that were in its orbit to form the Warsaw Pact.
Germany, which the West shared with Russia after its defeat in World War II, and throughout the Cold War, its western part leaned toward NATO in the mid-fifties, and then leaned completely in the same direction after its unification in 1990.
1999
The accession of Poland, on whose soil the Warsaw Pact was born, represented an important symbolic shift after the alliance had effectively dissolved eight years earlier.
Poland, since its accession to NATO, has been an outpost of the West in Eastern Europe.
Its importance was demonstrated, for example, in the role it played during the refugee crisis that Belarus erupted at the European Union borders in November and December 2021, and in facilitating NATO armaments for Ukraine in its recent crisis with Russia.
2004
The accession of the three Baltic states (Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia), despite their small size, in addition to four other countries from Eastern Europe, represented an important strategic shift in the balance of power.
This move put NATO directly on Russia's eastern borders.
If the alliance accepts the demands of Ukraine and Georgia joining it, the military arm of the West will have completely encircled Russia from its east and south.
From here we understand the danger of these two countries joining NATO on Russia's direct security, and we understand, therefore, Moscow's insistence on Western security guarantees that take into account its concerns.
Conclusion
The recent Russian-Belarusian maneuvers proved that the Russian military threat remains a powerful deterrent to the West, which should be taken into account in any arrangements for European and global security.
Whatever NATO’s upcoming plans and the limits on which it can stand in the future, the Ukrainian crisis has brought it back to the fore, renewed the West’s need for its continuation, and unified the ranks of the allies on both sides, despite the hesitation shown by some of its members, such as Germany, which has great interests with Russia, most notably its investments. The huge Nordstream gas line.
The truth revealed by this return is that instead of losing its usefulness with the end of the Cold War and the disintegration of its rival, the Warsaw Pact, NATO has grown stronger and Western countries have been able to renew its legitimacy and affirm the constant need for it.
Besides, in the field of international military alliances, NATO is no longer only a single player without a competitor, but its nature has changed relatively from defense to attack, and from deterrence to intervention.
Despite this continuous expansion, and this uniqueness on the international scene, Russia remains the number one enemy of NATO, especially after its return as a strong player, not only in its near geopolitical field, but also in farther fields such as Syria, Libya and some sub-Saharan African arenas.
The recent Russian-Belarusian maneuvers have proven that the Russian military threat and the destructive power of its strategic offensive and nuclear weapons still constitute a strong deterrent to the West, which should be taken into account in any arrangements concerning the security of Europe and the world.
In light of this equation, the economy remains Russia's soft side, so the West chose to focus its media, political and diplomatic discourse regarding the prospects of a Russian invasion of Ukraine on imposing very severe economic sanctions and not on a military response.