NATO at 75

Isn't it remarkable that an organisation that is 75 years old is still absolutely at the heart of European and transatlantic security issues? Other parts of the post-Cold War’s international security architecture are all looking their age and finding it increasingly challenging. Think of the UN Security Council: inevitably, when the major powers are at loggerheads, the Security Council cannot act on issues such as Ukraine, or indeed on anything to do with the growing menace from China. That blockage was foreseen by those who negotiated the UN Charter; the British were very prominent on that point with the Americans. And even when the delegations were signing the UN Charter in San Francisco in the summer of 1945, the British Foreign Office negotiators, including my own personal hero, the permanent secretary at the time, my lineal predecessor, Alec Cadogan, knew that the Security Council was flawed because at any time when the great powers were against each other, it could not work. And so even then, in 1945, the Foreign Office started planning for a Western security organisation for the post-war period. It did not share the optimism that Winston Churchill had in those days that the tactical alliance of the 'Big Three' during the war would continue into the post-war period. And that scepticism was shared when we had a new foreign secretary. The Labour government came in at the time of Potsdam in the summer of 1945. Ernest Bevin had absolutely no illusions about Joseph Stalin, and he turned immediately to his Foreign Office officials who had in their files the first plans for organising European security. We had the Dunkirk Treaty with France in 1947. We had the Western European Union, the Brussels Treaty, in 1948. And then, even as the Brussels Treaty was being signed, Bevin was sending papers to George Marshall, the US secretary of state, with his ideas for an Atlantic Pact. And it was really Bevin and Marshall and people such as Senator Arthur Vandenberg in the US who were the godfathers of the NATO Treaty signed 75 years ago.

How can one explain NATO’s longevity? Why is it still an effective organisation 75 years on? The answer lies – partly – by looking at the treaty. The NATO Washington Treaty is terse. It sticks to principles and objectives. It is 14 articles long. Compare that with the Treaty of Rome at 248 articles, four annexes, countless protocols. They are very, very different things because, of course, the EU is a supranational, law-based organisation, with all the complexity that has. And the NATO treaty, to my mind, found an elusive point of balance between being a very solemn political commitment between the allies, but leaving each ally maximum discretion as to how it carries out that commitment. I am sure everybody taking part in the celebrations can recite Article 5 by heart: ‘The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all’. And that, consequently, they agree that they ‘will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area’. So, there is no binding obligation to do anything. The US Senate would never have accepted that for the Americans. But it has given NATO a strength in its flexibility. NATO's strength is not in its treaty text, but in its shared political objectives and trust between allies. And that is why it has had a capacity to flex and adapt as security priorities have changed. In the Cold War it was the essential vehicle for deterrence and territorial defence against the Soviet Union.

I am old enough that I first joined the UK Delegation to NATO in 1978. It was at the height of the Cold War. We used to practise nuclear release procedures every winter in a Wintex exercise. So, the nuclear deterrence of NATO was a real thing and was exercised and practised regularly. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, NATO turned to so-called out-of-area operations: expeditionary interventions. These have a rather a bad name now, but it is worth bearing in mind that the interventions in Bosnia, in 1995, and in Kosovo, in 1999, did succeed in their objective of damping down ethnic cleansing, which was the terrible crisis at that point. And although not every country in the region has taken the opportunity, they were given the chance to build more stable, peaceful societies. I might note that in this year of anniversaries, it is the NATO-led KFOR’s (Kosovo Force) 25th anniversary. KFOR is still at work in Kosovo, helping peace and stability there. Of course, interventions then got more difficult. During the early period of ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) in Afghanistan, it did succeed in working in and around Kabul to help the Hamid Karzai government put down roots. Things went wrong after that. But it is not true to say that the expeditionary interventions of NATO all proved to be disastrous. NATO was not directly involved in the Iraq intervention in 2003. That was a very difficult period in the Alliance. At that time, I was back as permanent representative for the UK and there were deep divisions between allies, genuinely held differences of conviction, which made life quite interesting around the North Atlantic Council table for some time.

But within a year after that, NATO was back together again, and the NATO Training Mission in Iraq was established at the Istanbul Conference summit in 2004 and helped to bring allies together again after that very bruising period. One more piece of reminiscence: by 2011, I was national security adviser. The Libya air campaign was another test for NATO's capacity to flex, adapt and innovate. Because, as you remember, President Barack Obama decided that the US would not be directly involved. So, senior US officers in the command structure were pulled back. European officers and Canadian officers took their place and NATO managed a complex air campaign, in that rather new guise. Again, things did not turn out too well. We did not have boots on the ground. We were not able to control the situation, but the NATO machine, in my mind, worked well and showed once again it could adapt to new circumstances.

Now we are back to NATO at its original purpose. Thank you, President Putin, for that! We are facing the most serious threat to European security since 1945. And I think NATO has risen very well to the challenge. I can say that as an outsider. But watching NATO function was very impressive. The US reinforced Europe using those plans that had been in SHAPE’s filing cabinets for decades. Other allies pushed their forces under the enhanced forward presence operation into the territories of the NATO allies, eight battle groups at the moment, with the UK playing a major role. NATO deterrence has worked: President Vladimir Putin has not put one Russian boot across a NATO border. And in many ways, the aggression against Ukraine has already been a strategic disaster for Putin. The Russians have achieved none of their objectives, despite taking enormous numbers of casualties. The Russian armed forces have been shown up to be poorly equipped, badly led with low morale. And when confronted with Western weapons, the Russians have not done well. Their economy will be weakened by sanctions in the medium term; at the moment, it is surfing on the oil price. But in terms of technology and investment, Russia will increasingly lag behind. We now proudly have Finland and Sweden as staunch members of the Alliance, enormously strengthening the northern flank. I remember in my time as NATO permanent representative that Finland and Sweden were proud neutrals, extremely active in the partnership council, in many ways more active than many allies. But I could never have imagined them being members. Thank you again, President Putin, for that. It is a change that will long outlast Putin and what he has been trying to do.

To me, NATO feels more united, more purposeful, and, of course, larger, than it has been certainly since the end of the Cold War. I would also say that the EU has responded effectively as well. The fact that Western Europe has weaned itself off dependence on Russian oil and gas is a major strategic advantage for us. It has broken a piece of leverage that Putin held in his hands. We have seen the EU break through some very long-held taboos about the use of the EU budget to fund arms deliveries to Ukraine. Again, this is not something I would have expected from decades of watching the very slow process of European political cooperation. And the decision to open accession negotiations with Ukraine and many other countries – Georgia, Moldova, and countries in the Western Balkans – is a very significant downpayment on future European stability.

Of course, such an enlargement will take many years to achieve, but it is a big step in the right direction. Personally, I would like to see NATO sending even stronger signals in the same direction at the Washington summit. NATO–EU cooperation was for decades not easy; there were all kinds of complexities. I am sure they are still there, in the institutional sense, but things are improving, certainly. In the Vilnius summit conclusions, I read some very positive words about NATO–EU cooperation.

I chair a House of Lords European Affairs Committee, and we recently published a report on the impact of Ukraine on UK and EU relations. We expressed our hope that the undertaking in Vilnius for the non-EU allies – that of the fullest involvement in EU defence – is something that the British government will take active steps to lead on.

I give high marks to Western countries for the response to Ukraine so far. But there are major problems ahead. Everybody is very well aware of the central issue, which seems to me to be that of finding the political will as well as the resources to sustain Ukraine into the next phase of this grinding long war that it is facing. And the stakes are very high. The Ukrainian armed forces have shown extraordinary courage and resilience, as has the whole population, but they are more and more dependent on continuing Western military and economic support. It is clear beyond doubt that Ukraine needs right now a lot more artillery shells, anti-missile interceptors and other weapons. So far, looking at the figures, the US has supplied the lion's share of military resources for Ukraine. The figures that I have indicate that, in the first two years of the war, US military support amounted to around $43 billion, against about $38 billion for European countries collectively, including the UK.

And of course, we are all watching very carefully the fate of this $60-billion package, which is now stuck in the US House of Representatives. If it continues to be delayed, and given how depleted our own stockpiles are in most growing non-US NATO countries, it seems to me the only solution in the short term is to do the sort of thing that the Czech government has been very forward in pursuing: buying in materials from South Korea and other places. But that, in itself, is a wake-up call to all countries in Europe.

The honest truth is that for far too long, far too many European countries have been spending far too little on defence. Of course, that has been changing and it has been changing since 2014. Thank you again, President Putin. Perhaps we should also give credit to the pressure Donald Trump exerted when he was president, but it is mainly due to President Putin. RUSI’s Malcolm Chalmers has a very recent paper about the trends in this area, and he identified a 60% increase in European defence spending in real terms since 2014. If that is right, then that is a very impressive figure. And it looks like we should get to 18, perhaps 20, members of NATO meeting the 2% of GDP defence spending target this year. This is definitely better late than never. The new cash, of course, now needs to be turned into real capability. And that is not going to happen immediately. It means removing, as far as possible, the obstacles in the way of European defence-industrial cooperation. The House of Lords report has some points about that, in particular in relation to the pretty restrictive arrangements for the European Defence Fund, which do not make it easy for the UK to partner with other European defence industries.

Another element to consider about rising defence spending in Europe is it has to be sustained, if it is going to be of any use. The threat landscape in Europe has changed durably, and whoever is in the Oval Office next year, Europeans need to be showing that they are on a path to take on more of the burden of security in Europe than has been true in the past.

I am sure NATO also needs to review its own collective defence in the light of what we have learned from watching the first drone-age war in Europe. Ukrainian armed forces, I am sure, will have a great deal to tell us which will be important for NATO's collective defence planning. There are all sorts of other issues on NATO's agenda. I am very conscious that China is a rising concern in many of our countries. Consultations on China are vital between allies. This is also the case between NATO allies and the Asian allies, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Japan. And I personally wonder whether some sort of NATO+ format could be the right forum for wider consultations on the threats from China.

In any case, the breadth of the agenda is proof of the vitality of this sprightly 75-year-old that is NATO. But if it is going to survive for another generation, it has to ensure that Putin does not win in Ukraine.

The views expressed in this Commentary are the author’s, and do not represent those of RUSI or any other institution.

Have an idea for a Commentary you’d like to write for us? Send a short pitch to commentaries@rusi.org and we’ll get back to you if it fits into our research interests. Full guidelines for contributors can be found here.