Has NATO achieved the goals for which it was founded 75 years ago?

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg delivers a speech during the 75th anniversary ceremony of its founding on April 4, 2024 (Anatolia)

On April 4, 1949, the treaty establishing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was signed with the aim of “providing collective security against the Soviet Union.” Despite the fall of the Union, the alliance maintained its continuity and expansion.

However, in recent years, the alliance has witnessed major challenges regarding its role and status due to the discrepancies and disagreements regarding the war in Ukraine, the American-Chinese conflict, and the sharing of the economic burdens of the alliance’s work, which calls for reviewing the goals for which it was established, and evaluating the extent of its success in light of its 75-year history. And the challenges facing his work.

Creation of NATO

The Office of the Historian at the US State Department summarizes the circumstances that led to the creation of NATO, saying that after the devastation of World War II, European countries struggled to rebuild their economies and ensure their security.

This would have required a massive influx of aid to help war-torn areas re-establish industries and food production, and to provide guarantees against a German return or incursions from the Soviet Union.

Former US Secretary of State George Marshall, who proposed a plan to help European countries rebuild what was destroyed by World War II (social networking sites)

The United States viewed a strong, integrated, and economically remilitarized Europe as vital to preventing communist expansion across the continent. As a result, Secretary of State George Marshall proposed a program of large-scale economic aid to Europe. Western European countries were willing to consider a collective security solution.

In May 1948, Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg proposed a resolution proposing that the US president seek a security treaty with Western Europe that would adhere to the UN Charter but exist outside the Security Council where the Soviet Union had veto power. Indeed, the Vandenburg Decision was issued, and negotiations regarding NATO began.

The result of these intense negotiations was the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty in 1949, which included the United States, Canada, Belgium, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and the United Kingdom.

Then-US President Harry Truman signs the NATO Treaty in 1949 (social networking sites)

These countries agreed to consider an attack on one as an attack on all, in addition to holding consultations on threats and defense issues. This collective defense agreement officially applies only to attacks against signatory states in Europe or North America, and does not include conflicts in colonial territories.

In 1952, members agreed to accept Greece and Turkey into NATO, and added the Federal Republic of Germany in 1955. West Germany's accession led the Soviet Union to respond by forming the Warsaw Pact, which served as NATO's military adversary until the end of the Cold War.

NATO's collective defense arrangements have brought all of Western Europe under the American "nuclear umbrella."

In the 1950s, the principle of "massive retaliation" emerged, or the idea that if any member was attacked, the United States would respond with a large-scale nuclear attack. The threat of this type of response was intended to act as a deterrent to any Soviet attack on the continent.

Although its formation was a response to the exigencies of the Cold War, NATO continued beyond the end of that conflict, and its membership even expanded to include some former Soviet countries.

In order to achieve NATO’s missions, the alliance’s members pledged to enhance their individual and collective capacity for resilience, technological superiority, and the promotion of good governance (Reuters)

Alliance objectives

The document establishing NATO centered on the procedures for the actual implementation of the military alliance and the areas covered by its work. With the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO faced new challenges and made adjustments to its objectives to include responding to new crises and conflicts, “fighting terrorism,” and supporting international stability.

In the year 2022, the “NATO Strategic Concept 2022” document issued by the NATO summit identified the main purpose of the alliance as ensuring collective defense against all threats coming from all directions, and its foundation on “the existence of common values ​​among its members, namely: individual freedom, human rights, democracy, and sovereignty.” the law". Emphasizing commitment to the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter, and the importance of preserving the rules-based global order.

While it identified three basic tasks for the Alliance: deterrence and defence, crisis prevention and management, and cooperative security.

In order to achieve these missions, Alliance members pledged to enhance their individual and collective resilience and technological superiority, promote good governance, and integrate climate change, human security and the women, peace and security agenda into all Alliance missions.

Achievements

Initially, NATO played a pivotal role in limiting the influence of the Soviet Union until the union was dismantled and its flag was lowered from the Kremlin and the Russian flag was raised in August 1991.

In the last three decades, the number of NATO member states has exceeded 30 countries, and its role has been strengthened by the United States’ efforts to impose a unipolar “new world order.”

Throughout the history of the alliance, none of its countries has been subjected to an attack that required a request for military assistance from the rest of the alliance’s members, with the exception of the attacks of September 11, 2001.

On 14 March 2024, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg issued his 2023 Annual Report, detailing NATO’s work and achievements over the year, including the Alliance welcoming Finland as its 31st Ally, and holding the Vilnius Summit where the Alliance strengthened its collective defense and made Ukraine Closer to it, deepening cooperation with NATO partners in India, Pakistan and the Pacific.

The report indicated that defense spending will increase in 2023 by an unprecedented rate of about 11% across Europe and Canada. He expected that two-thirds of the allies would achieve or exceed the goal of investing 2% of GDP in defense in 2024.

Challenges

But this report does not indicate the depth of the differences and concerns between the European and American wings of the alliance, which have surfaced in recent years.

Conflicting trends have emerged regarding economic relations with China and Russia during the rule of US President Donald Trump. While the United States pushed to limit these relations, many European countries resisted this trend out of political and economic motives, as they did not want their economies to be harmed as a result of a trade war between America and China.

The United States is also not a substitute for Russian gas, which European countries rely on to generate electricity, in addition to the desire of the “old continent” to pursue a foreign policy that is less dependent on the United States, in a way that achieves its own interests and avoids any unnecessary risks, and in a way that avoids it from waging political and military proxy wars. About the United States.

On the other hand, defense spending constituted a major issue of contention between the two parties, as the Trump administration objected to the failure of the majority of the European alliance members to adhere to the agreed upon percentage of defense spending, which is 2% of gross domestic product.

This was followed by the issuance of many shocking statements by Trump to Europe, threatening to withdraw some American forces from their countries, and even encouraging Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, to “do whatever they want” with any NATO member state that “failed” to pay the costs of its defense, as he said in his statements on the 10th. From February 2024.

There are also corresponding European calls to strengthen European military power based on the lack of confidence in the United States’ commitment to defending its European allies in the event of a war, as in the statements of the foreign ministers of Germany, France, and Poland on April 3, 2024.

Despite the improvement in US-European relations during the presidency of US President Joe Biden, they witnessed challenges no less dangerous than before for the NATO countries. The United States’ encouragement of Ukraine to join NATO was the spark that led to the Russian invasion of Ukrainian lands.

The United States’ encouragement of Ukraine to join NATO was the spark that led to the Russian invasion of Ukrainian lands (Reuters)

This created a strategic threat to European countries, while fulfilling the United States’ desire to undermine Russian-European relations politically and economically, as well as European-Chinese relations. While the United States' impact on the war in Ukraine was limited compared to what is the case in Europe.

The growing popularity of the nationalist right in Europe also poses an additional challenge to the alliance, as this trend shows increasing dissatisfaction with international institutions, and an aversion to mutual obligations and bearing the burdens of protecting other countries, which is the same logic spoken by former US President Trump.

Failures

The Afghanistan war is considered a prominent failure for NATO, which invaded it after the events of September 11, 2001, and remained there for nearly 20 years, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths and a large scale of destruction, without being able to install a regime different from the previous regime of the war, as the alliance was forced to withdraw under the impact of Taliban strikes, and his forces left the Afghan capital, Kabul, while it was under the movement’s control.

NATO forces in Kabul, Afghanistan (Reuters - Archive)

The result of NATO’s intervention in Libya is also considered a failure, in the opinion of Horace J. Campbell, professor of African American Studies at Syracuse University in New York, enumerated the aspects of this failure in his book, “Global NATO and the Catastrophic Failure in Libya,” where at the forefront are the state of chaos that Libya has entered, the destruction of infrastructure, the negative repercussions of reliance on private sector contractors, and the dominance of Armed militias, and the killing of many civilians, including the American ambassador there and a number of its embassy employees.

In the book “What's Wrong with NATO and How Can It Be Fixed?”, researchers Mark Weber, James Sperling, and Martin Smith review some of the major post-Cold War developments that threaten NATO's survival:

• Excessive strategic geographical extension.

• An impractical package of security policies.

• Failure to address capacity shortfalls and meet defense spending standards.

• American boredom and European caution, which puts NATO in doubt.

• Disagreement within the alliance over Russia's place in the European security system.

• How to deal with Moscow's "destabilization" of Georgia and Ukraine.

In the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip, the failure of the NATO countries, led by the United States, to protect the rules of the international system and protect human rights has emerged, which undermines a basic justification for the alliance’s work outside its borders, which is “humanitarian intervention” or “responsibility to protect,” as happened in His military intervention in the Balkans and Afghanistan.

The possibility of Trump returning to the presidency again constitutes a nightmare for many European leaders and NATO alike (French)

At present, the escalation in the Middle East is increasing, and the possibilities of war expanding there are increasing, at a time when the conflict in Ukraine is escalating with Russia declaring a state of war, and the expected date for China’s invasion of Taiwan is approaching.

While the possibility of President Trump returning to the presidency again constitutes a nightmare for many European leaders and NATO alike.

The impact of these challenges is evident in undermining the missions of “deterrence and defence, crisis prevention and management, and cooperative security” that the Alliance has set for itself.

In conclusion, although NATO has achieved basic successes in protecting the countries involved in it, its external interventions have been characterized by clear failures, while the differences and divergence of interests between its components are increasing, and its countries are unable to protect the principle of the rules-based global order, which likely puts it on the path of strategic decline in coming years.

Source: Al Jazeera + websites