 "A stabilised or destabilised Europe: After 75 years, NATO must stop expanding")
NATO was constructed with the reason, whether one believes it or not, that it was going to defend Western Europe from Russian assault. Once the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union was beginning to collapse, that reason was gone. So, the first question: why does NATO exist?
— Noam Chomsky
On April 4, 1949, 12 countries, including the United States (US) and Canada, signed the Treaty of Washington, forming the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to “safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilisation of their peoples” and “promote stability and well-being in the North Atlantic area” and “resolved to unite their efforts for collective defence and the preservation of peace and security”.
NATO was formed 75 years ago to act as a bulwark against Soviet dominance and to contain Communism in Europe after WWII. Its first secretary general Lord Ismay had said that NATO was formed “to keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down.”
In the coming decades, NATO and the USSR were involved in the Cold War, extending beyond Europe to Afghanistan. However, Mikhail Gorbachev and US President George HW Bush declared the end of the Cold War at the Malta Summit in December 1989 after the withdrawal of Soviet Forces from Afghanistan earlier that year. One month ago, the Berlin Wall had fallen, followed by the gradual collapse of Communist regimes in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Romania and Bulgaria. The Warsaw Pact formally ended in July 1991 and the Soviet Union collapsed in December.
NATO’s membership has grown from 12 founding members to 32, including the latest members, Finland and Sweden, apparently based on the “principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law”.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsHowever, as Chomsky logically argued, “Why does NATO exist?”
NATO proponents argue that the reason for continuing the military alliance post-Cold War is to curb Russia’s territorial and hegemonic interests in Europe, especially former Soviet satellite states.
However, the US, the biggest financial and military contributor to the alliance, always wanted to project its power and influence and legitimise its ambitions in Europe on the pretext of NATO, which became the core of America’s European expansionist policy.
Publicly, the Brussels-headquartered alliance promoted ‘stability’ in the North Atlantic area and was a collective defence against Russian revanchism. Privately, it aimed to serve US naked self-interest and aggrandisement in Europe and prevent the continent’s nations from asserting themselves through the European Union.
Justifying Vladimir Putin’s fears of NATO’s expansion can’t justify his autocracy, the dangerous dream of rebuilding Russia with military might, the annexation of Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk, and threats to Russia’s democracy. However, the US always wanted to expand NATO eastward and contain Russia despite a series of Western assurances to Gorbachev about Soviet security during the German reunification process in 1990-91.
Declassified US, Soviet, German, British and French documents posted by the National Security Archive at George Washington University on December 12, 2017, reveal how Gorbachev was tricked into believing that NATO will not expand eastward despite Bush’s assurance.
Then-US secretary of state James Baker told Gorbachev in Moscow on February 9, 1990: “For the Soviet Union and other European countries to have guarantees that if the United States maintains its presence in Germany within the framework of NATO, there will be no extension of NATO’s jurisdiction or military presence by a single inch in the eastern direction.”
On May 18, 1990, Baker assured Gorbachev that the US was trying “to ultimately transform the CSCE [Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe] into a permanent institution that would become an important cornerstone of a new Europe”. Though the CSCE wasn’t a treaty, it was an essential aspect of the détente process to minimise political and military tensions between East and West.
Gorbachev even suggested that the Soviet Union would announce that “we want to join NATO too” if the US insisted on Germany joining NATO.
Around one-and-a-half years later, the Soviet Union collapsed and NATO was unstoppable. Under the successive Bill Clinton, George Bush and Barack Obama administrations, America used NATO for its geopolitical aspirations and shaping post-Cold War politics in Europe with the bloc’s membership almost doubling from 16 members in 1991 to 30 in 2020. Unhindered and overambitious, America also used NATO for its (mis)adventures outside the North Atlantic area in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan.
Instead of making Europe safe and stable, NATO’s expansionism has brought the continent to the brink of WWIII. Using NATO in the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine is a saga of miscalculation of Putin’s military capabilities, a massive waste of the taxpayer’s money of several nations in the form of financial and military assistance and America’s endless and futile wars.
NATO’s enlargement is increasingly proving dangerous. Several of Russia’s neighbours, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland and Finland, joined the alliance, causing consternation in the Kremlin. Besides, Ukraine, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Georgia have NATO aspirations.
Despite Joe Biden saying that Ukraine isn’t joining NATO anytime soon, secretary general Jens Stoltenberg has said that it is “inevitable”, but only if the war ends.
Such statements, regardless of intention, rile Russia and stoke its fears. Moscow sees them as a threat. An antagonised Putin considers them increasing Western hegemony in Russia’s bordering countries. NATO’s statements on Ukraine have further complicated the situation with Kyiv not meeting the conditions to become a member yet antagonising Russia.
NATO’s open-door policy and the US preoccupation with weakening and cornering Russia have been the biggest cause of friction with Putin.
Moreover, Article 5, the crux of NATO’s formation, states that “an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all” and the bloc can take “such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area”.
However, Russia never attacked a NATO member and Article 5 has been invoked only once, post-9/11, with the terrorist event having no connection to Russia.
Today, the sole purpose of the alliance’s formation is defeated. Neither Russia attacked any NATO member nor has any such intention. Instead, the US and NATO’s expansionist spree and provocative statements have made the situation more volatile with a greater chance of military confrontation.
The biggest reason for the US to rethink its strategy of using NATO for its geopolitics, dominance and power in Europe is China. The department of defence considers China, not Russia, its biggest threat today.
The next power struggle will be in Asia, not Europe, with China eyeing Taiwan, Ladakh and Arunachal, dominating the South China Sea, collaborating with Russia to form a multipolar world and trying to portray itself as an alternative to the US in settling global disputes and persuading foes to become friends. For example, China brokered the Saudi Arabia-Iran deal in March 2023, ending years of bitter rivalry that had destabilised Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Bahrain.
The inevitability of America’s focus shifting from Europe to China will gradually affect its commitment to NATO. In case of a Taiwan-China war, the US will face the biggest dilemma.
If Biden is re-elected, he will have no option but to divert resources from the Ukraine and Israel-Hamas wars to help Taiwan. A direct confrontation with China over Taiwan will result in frightening losses for the US. Several wargames, including by the Washington DC-based think tank Centre for a New American Security and the Pentagon, have shown devastating US losses with China targeting every American base in the Indo-Pacific. In 2018 and 2020, two other war games showed the same results with China targeting Guam.
If Trump returns, the possibility of a weak NATO will increase considering his non-interventionist agenda and demand from other members to spend more. He caused an uproar in February after saying that he “would encourage them [Russia] to do whatever the hell they want” to NATO countries that spend less on defence. The former president and Trumpsters in the House of Representatives are already against assisting Ukraine.
If the US-China rivalry comes to the brink of a military confrontation, Washington will be less invested in NATO, whose members would not prefer to get entangled in another war.
French President Emmanuel Macron expressed the futility of getting caught up in a US-China war over Taiwan. During a three-day visit to China in April 2023, he also discussed Taiwan with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping. “Europeans cannot resolve the crisis in Ukraine; how can we credibly say on Taiwan, ‘Watch out. If you do something wrong, we will be there?’ If you really want to increase tension, that’s the way to do it,” he said.
Washington can’t pressure other NATO members to help it against Beijing if a war breaks out. During an interview after his China visit, Macron clearly said that Europe risks becoming a US “vassal” if “tension between the two superpowers heats up” and the continent “gets caught up in crises that are not ours”.
The US post-Cold War mission in Europe is useless today with NATO’s original purpose fulfilled. Russia will not attack a NATO neighbour due to Article 5. Besides, adding members like Ukraine or Georgia will only destabilise, not stabilise, Europe. Riling Russia further by adding more countries to NATO will only bring Moscow and Beijing closer as seen after the Ukraine War.
It is high time that the US left Europe to decide its future by letting other NATO members forge a close alliance to counter future threats. Washington should step back from playing the Big Daddy of European security and let global powers like Germany and France take matters into their hands—and if they fail, the US will always be there to take command.
The US has also been sharing the maximum burden of NATO by committing around 3.5 per cent of its GDP to the bloc’s defence expenditure in the last decade. The problem of more defence spending by the US and less by the other members dates back to the 1950s with Dwight D Eisenhower complaining of “having the whole defence burden placed on US shoulders”.
Obama complained twice. In 2014, he said, “… I have had some concerns about a diminished level of defence spending among some of our partners in NATO—not all, but many.” In 2016, he said, “Every NATO member should be contributing its full share towards our common security … sometimes Europe has been complacent about its own defence.”
NATO’s annual budget is around $3.5 billion and members agreed after the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 to spend two per cent of their GDP on defence to ensure the blocs’ military readiness.
However, defence expenditures of NATO members as a percentage of GDP in 2023 before Sweden joined showed that only 11 countries spent more than two per cent.
Poland was highest at 3.9 per cent, followed by the US at 3.49 per cent, Greece 3.01 per cent, Estonia 2.73 per cent and Lithuania 2.54 per cent. Luxembourg was lowest at 0.72 per cent, followed by Belgium at 1.13 per cent, Spain 1.26 per cent, Turkey 1.31 per cent and Slovenia 1.35 per cent.
The writer is a freelance journalist with two decades of experience and comments primarily on foreign affairs. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.
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