NATO: Overview

Introduction

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is an international defense alliance established in 1949. It was created by the United States, Canada, and several countries of Western Europe primarily for mutual protection against potential attack by the Soviet Union. Throughout the Cold War, NATO served as the main European military defense against the Soviet threat.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, NATO underwent a major restructuring. No longer confronted with a conventional military threat as its main opponent, NATO became a peacekeeping force, and deployed to areas in the former Yugoslavia on several occasions in the 1990s while redefining its new role in the international arena. Following the September 2001 terrorist attacks against the United States, NATO nations agreed to invoke Article V of their charter, which states that an attack against one member is treated as a collective attack against the alliance. Subsequently, NATO forces joined US operations in Afghanistan against al-Qaeda and the Taliban regime, remaining until their last soldiers were withdrawn from the country in the summer of 2021. The Taliban's subsequent rapid retaking of Afghanistan prompted debate and criticism among NATO members as well as other international bodies and figures.

Meanwhile, controversy also surrounded the extension of NATO membership to some countries in Eastern Europe in the years after the Cold War. Several nations that were formerly members of the pro-Soviet Warsaw Pact alliance were approved for NATO membership, to the displeasure of many Russian leaders, including Russian president Vladimir Putin, who continued to view NATO as a potential (and existential) threat. Under the administration of US president Barack Obama (2009–17), the US government expanded its security assistance to countries in the Baltics and Central Europe through NATO, particularly following the Russian annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in 2014. However, longstanding US support for NATO wavered during President Donald Trump's first term (2017–21). Trump and many of his allies argued that the US carried too much of the financial burden of providing security through NATO compared to other members of the alliance, and questioned the organization's overall effectiveness. Although the administration of President Joe Biden (2021–25) reaffirmed US commitment to NATO, Trump's criticisms continued to shape partisan debate over foreign policy.

Ongoing tensions between NATO and Russia escalated further in 2022 when Russia, under Putin's leadership, launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. NATO member nations soon agreed to substantially increase support to Ukraine, including providing medical supplies, military training equipment, vehicles, and weapons, although they avoided direct military involvement in the conflict. The situation also drove renewed interest in NATO membership from several previously unaligned nations, including Finland, which joined in 2023, and Sweden, which joined in 2024. Yet although NATO remained an important factor in the global geopolitical situation, some figures in the US continued to criticize the alliance and its operations, particularly regarding American economic interests.

Understanding the Discussion

Cold War: A period of heightened political tension and conflict between the United States and Western Europe against the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe that lasted from 1945 to 1991.

Containment: A theory of diplomacy by which the NATO countries would not attack Soviet allied countries but would instead try to “contain” or stop their influence from spreading to other parts of the globe.

Détente: A French term, meaning “relaxation,” used to describe the easing of tensions between NATO allies and the Soviet Union from 1968 to 1980.

Peacekeeping: A form of military deployment in which soldiers are expected to maintain collective security for inhabitants of regions affected by war.

Warsaw Pact: A defensive alliance formed in 1955 between the Soviet Union and several communist Eastern European countries.

History

By 1945, World War II had brought total ruin to much of Europe. The three major powers (the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union) had successfully destroyed the Nazi regime in Germany but soon found themselves in conflict due to their political-economic ideologies. Both sides had significant troop presences in Europe, and tensions between Soviet and Western governments grew in the immediate postwar years.

Fearing Soviet military intentions, Western governments decided to form a defensive military alliance to repel any potential Soviet invasion. On April 4, 1949, twelve states (United States, United Kingdom, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Norway, Iceland, Italy, Denmark, Portugal, and Canada) signed the North Atlantic Treaty in Washington, DC. The treaty was formed around Article V, which committed each member state to treat any attack against a fellow member state as a collective attack against them all. Each member was to send a political and military delegation to the North Atlantic Council, which was tasked with planning and enacting a common defense policy. In order to maintain a balance of direction, the political and military leadership was divided. A secretary-general (to be held by a European member on a rotating basis) served as chair of these meetings. Military affairs were placed under the command of a senior American military official.

Turkey and Greece joined the NATO alliance in 1952, but it was the 1955 addition of West Germany that provoked a strong Soviet reaction. Condemning the addition of their former enemy as a belligerent act, the Soviet Union formed the Warsaw Pact with its allied communist states in Eastern Europe. Across Europe, national governments mobilized large standing armies in anticipation of war.

In 1956, NATO declined to intervene on the side of Hungarian rebels who were fighting against Soviet dominance during the Hungarian Revolution, even though intervention would have been consistent with the containment theory. While many Western observers condemned this inaction by NATO, the Soviets interpreted it as a sign that NATO was in fact a defensive alliance and not interested in confronting the Soviet Union offensively and militarily.

The alliance was severely strained by French President Charles de Gaulle's withdrawal from NATO in protest of the United States' dominance of the organization in 1966. From 1959 to 1966, France had gradually moved its troops and fleet out of the alliance, a maneuver which ultimately led the formal 1966 split and NATO to be forced to move its headquarters from Paris to Brussels, Belgium. (France ultimately rejoined the alliance in 1993.)

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, NATO pursued a nonaggression strategy. This was consistent with an overall policy of détente, a postcontainment diplomatic strategy employed to ease tension between the two nuclear-armed superpowers of the United States and the Soviet Union.

However, the election of Ronald Reagan as US president in 1980 brought an end to détente. The Reagan administration pursued a complicated arms race strategy to put pressure on the Soviet economy. Between 1983 and 1984, Reagan convinced NATO to station nuclear-armed Pershing cruise missiles on bases in Germany. This alarmed the Soviets and sparked several antinuclear peace movements throughout Western Europe.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, many observers wondered what role NATO would fulfill in a post–Cold War Europe. Conflicts in the former Yugoslavia erupted in 1992, and severe economic crises plagued several Eastern European countries. NATO, which had for the previous forty years been primarily a military alliance, began to assume a more comprehensive role with greater political importance.

By 1997, the Eastern European countries of Poland, Czech Republic, and Hungary had all been invited to join NATO. By 2004, Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia had also joined. These former satellites of NATO's previous adversary (the Soviet Union) enhanced the alliance and formed the first steps in bringing these Central and Eastern European states into a broader European community. It also pressed the influence of the NATO nations up to the edge of the Eurasian region and the new Russian Federation.

The addition of Eastern European countries was criticized by those concerned with the poor quality of military equipment and training in most of the formerly communist countries. Others feared that a NATO expansion to the Russian border would be viewed as a clear provocation. To placate the Russian government, NATO members formed a closer alliance with Russia (and several other nonmember states) via such initiatives as the “Partnership for Peace” program. While tensions and suspicions remained, tempers cooled.

NATO soon became involved in actual military operations. Beginning with the enforcement of a United Nations–mandated no-fly zone over Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1994, NATO was a major component of the peacekeeping effort in the ethnic conflicts in the former Yugoslavia. These efforts escalated to a full-scale bombing campaign against Serbia during the 1999 Kosovo War. NATO troops also deployed into the Kosovo area as peacekeepers while operating under a United Nations mandate.

The 2001 terrorist attacks against the United States caused NATO to invoke Article V of its charter for the first time in its history. In the Mediterranean Sea, NATO naval vessels searched ships for terrorist materials. Soon after the US invasion of Afghanistan, NATO ministers placed the International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF) under NATO command. Every NATO member, including recent additions from Eastern Europe, contributed a measure of troops to Afghanistan.

This deployment was not viewed as favorably as previous NATO deployments. From the beginning, critics argued that there were not enough military troops present in Afghanistan to provide the country with a secure and peaceful infrastructure. Attacks by the Taliban in 2006 led to further troop requests by NATO military commanders, a request that few national governments wished to honor.

With little security on the ground, Afghan drug production surged while members of the Taliban launched offensives against NATO forces. Aware of the growth of the international antiwar movement, the Taliban increased attacks, hoping to produce further strain on the alliance. NATO operated as an active trainer of Iraqi security forces from 2004 to 2011, in an effort to bolster Iraqi self-sufficiency.

NATO became heavily involved with antipiracy efforts beginning in 2009 when the organization deployed warships to combat Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean. In the spring of 2011, under order of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973, NATO members began to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya in response to civil war and violent protests in the region. The Libya mission ended in October 2011.

In December 2014, it was announced that NATO had ended its combat operations in Afghanistan and would be withdrawing the majority of its troops. At the same time, thousands of international soldiers were kept in the country as part of a new training phase, in which they would offer counterterrorism and logistical assistance to security forces. However, by late 2015, NATO soldiers had come under attack on two different occasions. In late August 2015, two men wearing Afghan security forces uniforms opened fire on a military base in Helmand, killing two NATO soldiers. On October 11, a NATO convoy was the target of a car bomb explosion that killed at least twelve people, including civilians.

NATO Today

Following the Russian invasion of Crimea in eastern Ukraine in 2014, NATO expressed its support for Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity. In April 2014, NATO foreign ministers met with Ukrainian officials and agreed upon measures to bolster Ukraine's ability to ensure its own security. NATO supported the Minsk agreements of September 2014, in which Russia agreed to stop its financial support of separatists and militants in the region and withdraw its military installations.

Several security experts have advocated NATO deployments in crisis hotspots. However, such deployments are costly and many NATO governments appear reluctant to pay the cost these peacekeeping missions entail. These deployments and comprehensive strategies, coupled with declining economic trends and rapid expansion, have increased the potential disputes within the organization. The question is whether the common goals and interests outweigh the differences. When NATO and US forces ultimately completely withdrew from Afghanistan in the summer of 2021 and the Taliban then easily recaptured power in Kabul, international criticism around the organization's longtime operations and presence in the country increased, including within NATO member countries.

US president Donald Trump was strongly critical of NATO during his first term. He considered financial contribution cuts and even withdrawal, arguing that the United States did not benefit from NATO in proportion to the nation's financial and military commitments to the organization. However, that stance proved controversial even among many of Trump's cabinet members and fellow Republican policymakers. Notably, Trump's first secretary of defense, James Mattis, stated during his confirmation hearing that "if we did not have NATO today, we would need to create it." Ultimately, the US remained part of NATO throughout Trump's first administration, although his high-profile critiques substantially influenced public debate on the issue, shifting the predominant Republican platform toward a more skeptical view of the alliance.

The United States' support of NATO was strengthened again upon the 2020 election of President Joe Biden. Meanwhile, however, tensions with Russia escalated, particularly around relations with Ukraine. Pro-Western leaders in Ukraine had continued to prioritize joining NATO, solidifying this commitment with a constitutional amendment in 2017 and making it part of the country's 2021 National Security Strategy. In response to these developments, Russian president Vladimir Putin oversaw increasingly aggressive moves that were widely seen as aimed at preventing Ukraine from further allying with Western nations.

During this period, NATO also gained new member states. In 2017, the former Yugoslav republic of Montenegro, independent since 2006, became the first NATO member state admitted since 2009, bringing total NATO membership to twenty-nine countries. The number then rose to thirty with the addition of North Macedonia as a member in 2020. This growth did not sit well with Russia.

In December 2021, Putin announced that he would not invade Ukraine if Russia was given the power to veto NATO expansions and that NATO withdrew its security promises to nations in Southern and Eastern Europe. Western leaders dismissed these demands and threatened harsh sanctions in the event of an invasion. Nevertheless, in February 2022, Putin formally recognized territories in eastern Ukraine that had come under the control of Russian-backed separatists, and soon after Russia launched a full-fledged invasion of Ukraine. The North Atlantic Council, as well as individual NATO members, including the United States, publicly condemned Russia's aggressive actions as unjustified. Jens Stoltenberg, NATO's secretary-general, quickly announced that a meeting between its member nations to consult on the matter had already been scheduled as the organization promised to defend its nearby European allies. However, as Ukraine was not an official NATO member, direct military intervention was largely ruled out.

Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, representatives from NATO states continued to publicly condemn the attack and offer support to Ukraine, including in the form of consultation as well as supplies and equipment. The administration of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky pushed for even greater aid as well as NATO membership for Ukraine, but most Western leaders remained wary of becoming directly involved in military conflict with Russia. The invasion of Ukraine did lead to the decision by Finland to seek NATO membership in 2022. The country had long desired to stay out of the military alliance, believing it was safer to remain independent. In April 2023, however, Finland officially joined NATO, significantly strengthening the alliance by doubling its land border with Russia.

As the war between Russia and Ukraine continued throughout 2023 and 2024, many NATO countries continued to offer financial and material support for Ukraine's war effort. NATO countries also stationed additional military forces in Poland, Bulgaria, and other NATO member states in Eastern Europe as an added security measure. Meanwhile, negotiations continued regarding the inclusion of additional countries in the treaty organization. In March 2024, Sweden joined NATO, expanded the alliance to a total of thirty-two member states. However, some American politicians and other observers continued to criticize NATO, including its approach to Russia as well as the US financial commitment to the organization. Trump's reelection in 2024 was widely seen as a challenge to the NATO status quo.

These essays and any opinions, information or representations contained therein are the creation of the particular author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of EBSCO Information Services.

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