NATO

• NATO

  North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, created in 1949 to promote security cooperation between Western nations (implicitly as a bulwark against the USSR and then Russia)
• NATO commanded the UN mandated International Security Force in 2003-2014, and from 2015 has led the Resolute Support Mission to train, advise and assist Afghan security forces and structures
• NATO is the most powerful military alliance in the world, whose spending makes up over 70 % of global military spending.
• NATO carried out 77 days of air strikes to remove Milosevic’s Serbian troops from Kosovo in 1999
• NATO achioved its goal of protecting Western states during the Cold War and can point to successes in Bosnia-Herzegovina from 1995-1996 and Kosovo in 1999 since the Cald War ended
• NATO suffered from controversial and problematic missions in Afghanistan and Libya in 2011
• NATO is overly reliant on the USA (which provides 67% of the defence spending of the Alliance). This has led to US criticism that NATO allies are not pulling their weight.
• Recent action of NATO

  • 1995 Operation Deliberate Force launched air strikes against Bosnian Serb forces after Srebrenica (with UNSC authorisation)
  • 1999 NATO air strikes to protect Kosovar Albanians from Milosevic’s Yugoslavian Army atrocities (despite Russia veto on UNSC)
  • Enforcing an arms embargo and no-fly zone on Libya in 2011 before air strikes on Gaddafi targets
  • Since Russia’s encroachment in Ukraine in 2014, the alliance has refocused on the military threat from Russia, deploying multinational battle groups in eastern Europe
• NATO

  • Established in response to Stalin’s blockade of West Berlin 1948
  • Founded in 1949 to protect Europe against Soviet attack during the Cold War 
  • Collective military security agreement
  • Article 5 of the NATO treaty: an attack against one NATO member is considered an attack on all of them, increasing the risks for any potential aggressor
  • USA as dominant power means NATO membership is a de facto alliance with the USA
  • Commits members to ‘Washington Consensus’
  • Located in Brussels with 30 members- North Macedonia joined in 2020
  • Secretary General acts as CEO and main spokesperson
• Failures of NATO

  • Trump 2016 campaign heavily criticised NATO
  • The USA covers 69% overall defence spending by NATO member states
  • Members make commitment to spend 2% of GDP on military spending but in 2015 only 5 members met that pledge
  • E.g. Trump’s decision in October to green-light a military incursion by Turkey, a NATO member, into neighbouring Syria to challenge Kurdish forces
  • US unilateral withdrawal from Afghanistan humiliated other members and undermined collective NATO action.
  • AUKUS military alliance was seen as a betrayal by France
• NATO Case study: Ukraine

  • A strong, independent Ukraine is vital for the stability of the Euro-Atlantic area
  • Relations between NATO and Ukraine date back to the early 1990s and have since developed into one of the most substantial of NATO’s partnerships
  • Since 2014, in the wake of Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea, cooperation has been intensified in critical areas 
  • Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, NATO and Allies have provided unprecedented levels of support
  • Mearsheimer argued that Russia’s invasion was provoked by NATO’s increasing encroachment into Eastern Europe