Insight
NATO at 70: Twilight years or a new dawn? by Sophia Besch and Ian Bond 3 April 2019
As NATO celebrates its 70th anniversary, the most serious threats to its survival are as much internal as external. NATO’s founding Washington Treaty was signed on April 4th 1949 by the representatives of 12 countries. Its first Secretary General, Lord Hastings Ismay, appointed in 1952, famously said that its purpose was “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down”. Seventy years later, the alliance has grown to include 29 countries. NATO is still keeping the Russians out and the Americans in; but these days it is more worried about how little Germany spends on defence than resurgent German militarism. And it is facing new challenges, internal as well as external: a difficult Turkish regime is undermining the alliance’s posture vis-à-vis Russia; allies disagree about which threats NATO should prioritise; the current US administration remains sceptical of the overall value of alliances; and China’s growing power and assertiveness pose new risks. NATO has been an extraordinarily successful alliance. It deterred conflict in Europe until its main adversary, the Soviet Union, collapsed. Rather than dissolving when the Cold War ended, the alliance reinvented itself as a collective security organisation and welcomed in nine former Soviet bloc countries and four Western Balkans states. It went to war in the Balkans to protect Bosnian Muslims against Bosnian Serb and Yugoslav forces in 1994; bombed Yugoslavia and drove its troops out of Kosovo in 1999; and led a coalition of NATO and partner countries fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan from 2001-2011, deploying at its height more than 130,000 troops. After Russia’s annexation of Crimea and invasion of Eastern Ukraine in 2014, NATO pivoted back to Europe and its original task of defending its members against a conventional military attack, but also providing various forms of assistance and training to partner countries like Ukraine and Georgia that faced a Russian threat. For many NATO members, especially in Central and Northern Europe, Russia remains the primary threat to their security. Although Russia’s defence budget has been shrinking since 2017, prior to that it had grown every year since 1998 and funded significant military modernisation. Russia has created CER INSIGHT: NATO at 70: Twilight years or a new dawn? 3 April 2019
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