With a war threatening the region and the US in doubt for the future: This is how NATO reaches its 75th anniversary

Founded on April 4, 1949 by a dozen countries that sought to guarantee a joint response – both political and military – to an eventual attack by the Soviet Union during the first years of the Cold War, NATO played a fundamental role in the objective West to stop the spread of communism once the Second World War ended.

“NATO was born to protect political liberalism against communist interventionism. To protect freedom and human rights from Soviet totalitarianism“, he comments to Trade the Peruvian historian and international analyst based in France Rodrigo Murillo.

Despite the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, NATO continued to strengthen to position itself as the world’s leading military alliance.

Over the years, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Canada, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Portugal, Iceland and Luxembourg were joined by Albania, Germany, Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Czech Republic, Romania, Turkey and, this year, the accessions of Sweden and Finland were officially completed, bringing the total to 32 nations.

For a long time the alliance remained without threats, until in 1999 its members decided to bomb Serbia to protect Kosovo. Subsequently, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 led to the activation of Article 5, which responds to the principle of collective defense on which NATO was founded, to support the United States in its invasion of Afghanistan.

In 2003 and 2012 the alliance would act again in both the Iraq and Syria crises with a deployment of missiles and artillery.

However, it would not be until 2014 that NATO would once again perceive a real threat to its members. Russia’s annexation of Crimea raised tensions between the organization and the Kremlin.

Vladimir Putin’s government was increasingly concerned about the expansion of Western forces with the accessions of countries close to its borders and NATO’s resistance to agreeing on a growth limit did not help to calm the tension.

The invasion ordered by Putin to Ukraine in February 2022 ended up bringing the relationship between Western governments and Moscow to a point of no return.

The truth is that the war has revitalized an alliance that by 2019, in the words of French President Emmanuel Macron, was “brain dead”.

Although it has made efforts not to involve itself directly in the conflict with troops, NATO has sent billions of dollars in military, technological and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. However, the greatest threat to the alliance may not be on the battlefield but within itself.

– Challenges on the horizon –

“NATO arrives under severe strain, not only due to factors external to it. In addition to the conflict in Eastern Europe and the rise of China, increasingly closer to becoming an undisputed world power, there are internal factors that greatly strain relations and NATO’s own political-military viability. Today, many European countries and the United States face extremely dangerous political polarization. There are two paths in all the countries that make up the alliance for their next elections. On the one hand there is a continuous and liberal path embodied by what Joe Biden, Emmanuel Macron or Olaf Scholz represent. But within those same countries there is another political proposal that can come to power and that has already won in countries like Poland or Hungary. They are candidates who oppose the values ​​for which the alliance was born at some point. We see more militaristic proposals that seek to regain sovereignty in the management of their borders”says Murillo.

The clearest example of this internal threat to the alliance were the statements of the former president and current Republican candidate Donald Trump, who assured that if he returned to the White House in November of this year he would let Putin do what he wanted with the countries that do not contribute enough to NATO.

According to the bases of the alliance, each country must spend 2% of its GDP on defense, but until 2014 only the United States, the United Kingdom and Greece complied with this. By 2021, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Lithuania, Romania and France have also achieved this goal and the alliance hopes that by the end of 2024 at least twenty states will meet the requirement.

However, these promises have done little to calm the voices seeking to disengage from the alliance and, according to Murillo, the extension of the conflict in Ukraine would only aggravate this situation.

“As the Ukrainian conflict prolongs and a Russian victory becomes more tangible, coupled with the bankruptcy of the United States in projecting its military power – in reference to the freezing of the last aid fund for Ukraine by Congress -, France’s initial position and Europe, which is overwhelming against Russia, is going to have to moderate. The Europeans themselves, in the absence of the United States, realize that they do not have the industrial or economic potential to confront Russia. In France, every day they discuss how Europe can regain its autonomy. If France distrusts the United States, we can say that this is replicated in other NATO members. So I estimate that we will see much more measured positions from the alliance as long as the conflict in Ukraine continues.”, comments the expert.

According to the analyst, this fracture between Europeans and Americans would not only respond to budgetary problems but also to differences in the identification of main threats.

“For Americans, especially the Republican Party, China’s takeover is extremely worrying. I would say that it is as important or more important than the outcome of the conflict in Eastern Europe. But the Europeans do not contemplate that, for them the main rival is Russia. This additional point suggests that the alliance will suffer even greater tension”explains Murillo.

Despite the complicated moment that the alliance faces, however, the analyst assures that “It is far from being the most complicated in its history”.

“It is a complex moment at the political level because there are different interpretations about its immediate objectives, but it will be clarified within the framework of future elections in the member countries. When the missile crisis occurred in 1962, the Soviet Union was ahead of the United States at the nuclear level and had much greater artillery production than several European countries combined. It was a much more powerful enemy, today Russia does not have that potential. The specter of war worries Europeans, especially because of its economic effects, but I believe that today NATO is not worried militarily”, he points out.

Although he recognizes that this tranquility may not last long. “However, in the medium or long term, Chinese potential, especially naval plans for 2049, could put NATO at a time when it would not have the military capacity to overcome a rival.”, he warns.