A
short history of NATO
It is often said that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was
founded in response to the threat posed by the Soviet Union. This is only
partially true. In fact, the Alliance’s creation was part of a broader effort
to serve three purposes: deterring Soviet expansionism, forbidding the revival
of nationalist militarism in Europe through a strong North American presence on
the continent, and encouraging European political integration.
The aftermath of World War II saw much of Europe devastated in a
way that is now difficult to envision. Approximately 36.5 million Europeans had
died in the conflict, 19 million of them civilians. Refugee camps and rationing
dominated daily life. In some areas, infant mortality rates were one in four.
Millions of orphans wandered the burnt-out shells of former metropolises. In
the German city of Hamburg alone, half a million people were homeless.
In addition, Communists aided by the Soviet Union were threatening
elected governments across Europe. In February 1948, the Communist Party of
Czechoslovakia, with covert backing from the Soviet Union, overthrew the
democratically elected government in that country. Then, in reaction to the
democratic consolidation of West Germany, the Soviets blockaded
Allied-controlled West Berlin in a bid to consolidate their hold on the German
capital
The heroism of the Berlin Airlift provided future Allies with some
solace, but privation remained a grave threat to freedom and stability.
A treaty for our age
Fortunately, by then the United States had turned its back on its
traditional policy of diplomatic isolationism. Aid provided through the
US-funded Marshall Plan and other means fostered a degree of economic stabilisation.
European states still needed confidence in their security, however, before they
would begin talking and trading with each other. Military cooperation, and the
security it would bring, would have to develop in parallel with economic and
political progress.
With this in mind, several Western European democracies came
together to implement various projects for greater military cooperation and
collective defence, including the creation of the Western Union in 1948, later
to become the Western European Union in 1954. In the end, it was determined
that only a truly transatlantic security agreement could deter Soviet
aggression while simultaneously preventing the revival of European militarism
and laying the groundwork for political integration.
Accordingly, after much discussion and debate, the North Atlantic
Treaty was signed on 4 April, 1949. In the Treaty’s renowned Article 5, the new
Allies agreed “an armed attack against one or more of them… shall be considered
an attack against them all” and that following such an attack, each Ally would
take “such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force” in
response. Significantly, Articles 2 and 3 of the Treaty had important purposes
not immediately germane to the threat of attack. Article 3 laid the foundation
for cooperation in military preparedness between the Allies, and Article 2
allowed them some leeway to engage in non-military cooperation..
While the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty had created Allies,
it had not created a military structure that could effectively coordinate their
actions. This changed when growing worries about Soviet intentions culminated
in the Soviet detonation of an atomic bomb in 1949 and in the outbreak of the
Korean War in 1950. The effect upon the Alliance was dramatic. NATO soon gained
a consolidated command structure with a military Headquarters based in the
Parisian suburb of Rocquencourt, near Versailles. This was Supreme Headquarters
Allied Powers Europe, or SHAPE, with US General Dwight D. Eisenhower as the
first Supreme Allied Commander Europe, or SACEUR. Soon afterward, the Allies
established a permanent civilian secretariat in Paris, and named NATO’s first
Secretary General, Lord Ismay of the United Kingdom.
With the benefit of aid and a security umbrella, political
stability was gradually restored to Western Europe and the post-war economic
miracle began. New Allies joined the Alliance: Greece and Turkey in 1952, and
West Germany in 1955. European political integration took its first hesitant
steps. In reaction to West Germany’s NATO accession, the Soviet Union and its
Eastern European client states formed the Warsaw Pact in 1955. Europe settled
into an uneasy stand-off, symbolized by the construction of the Berlin Wall in
1961.
During this time, NATO adopted the strategic doctrine of
"Massive Retaliation” – if the Soviet Union attacked, NATO would respond
with nuclear weapons. The intended effect of this doctrine was to deter either
side from risk-taking since any attack, however small, could have led to a full
nuclear exchange. Simultaneously, "Massive Retaliation” allowed Alliance
members to focus their energies on economic growth rather than on maintaining
large conventional armies. The Alliance also took its first steps towards a
political as well as a military role. Since the Alliance’s founding, the
smaller Allies in particular had argued for greater non-military cooperation,
and the Suez Crisis in the fall of 1956 laid bare the lack of political
consultation that divided some members. In addition, the Soviet Union’s launch
of the Sputnik satellite in 1956 shocked the Allies into greater scientific
cooperation. A report delivered to the North Atlantic Council by the Foreign
Ministers of Norway, Italy, and Canada – the “Three Wise Men” – recommended
more robust consultation and scientific cooperation within the Alliance, and
the report’s conclusions led, inter alia, to the establishment
of the NATO Science Programme.
From defence to détente
In the 1960s, this uneasy but stable status quo began to change. Cold
War tensions re-ignited as Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev and US President
John F. Kennedy narrowly avoided conflict in Cuba, and as American involvement
in Vietnam escalated. Despite this unpropitious start, by decade’s end what had
been primarily a defence-based organization came to embody a new phenomemon:
détente, a relaxation of tensions between the Western and Eastern blocs driven
by a grudging acceptance of the status quo.
During this decade, NATO
and SHAPE unexpectedly moved to a new home. In March 1966, France announced its
intention to withdraw from NATO’s integrated military command structure and
requested the removal of all Allied headquarters from French territory. A new
SHAPE Headquarters was established in Casteau, Belgium in March 1967, and NATO
HQ moved to Brussels in October of the same year. Significantly, France
remained within the Alliance and consistently emphasized its intention to stand
together with its Allies in the event of hostilities. France also proved to be
among the Alliance’s most valuable force contributors during later peacekeeping
operations. Flexibility was always key to NATO’s success, and the French
withdrawal from NATO’s integrated military command structure demonstrated that
NATO, unlike the Warsaw Pact, could tolerate differing viewpoints between its
members.
As a reminder of this point, in August 1968, the Soviet Union led
an invasion of Czechoslovakia that put an end to a period of political
liberalization in that country known as the Prague Spring. Like a similar
invasion of Hungary in 1956 and military repression in Berlin in 1953, Soviet
actions demonstrated what became known as the Brezhnev Doctrine: given the
choice between short-term control of Eastern European client states and
long-run political and economic reform, the Soviet Union would choose to
maintain short-term control. The end of this policy would await a Soviet leader
willing to choose long-run reform.
Détente had many faces. West German Chancellor Willy Brandt’sOstpolitik sought
to encourage European stability through closer relations between Eastern and
Western Europe. US President John F. Kennedy’s strategy of “Flexible Response”
sought to replace Massive Retaliation’s absolute dichotomy of peace or total
nuclear war. Adopted in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Flexible Response
enhanced NATO’s conventional defence posture by offering military responses
short of a full nuclear exchange in the event of conflict. Also during this
time, a report entitled “The Future Tasks of the Alliance”, delivered in
December 1967 to the North Atlantic Council by Belgian Foreign Minister Pierre
Harmel, recommended that NATO should have a political track promoting dialogue
and détente between NATO and Warsaw Pact countries. The role of NATO had become
not merely to preserve the status quo, but to help change it.
The Harmel Report helped to lay the foundation for the convening
of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe in 1973. Two years
later, the Conference led to the negotiation of the Helsinki Final Act. The Act
bound its signatories – including the Soviet Union and members of the Warsaw
Pact – to respect the fundamental freedom of their citizens, including the
freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief. Soviet rulers internally
played down these clauses within the Act, attaching more importance to the
Western recognition of the Soviet role in Eastern Europe. Eventually, however,
the Soviets came to learn that they had bound themselves to powerful and
potentially subversive ideas.
The Cold War revived
The 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Soviet deployment
of SS-20 Saber ballistic missiles in Europe led to the suspension of détente.
To counter the Soviet deployment, Allies made the “dual track” decision to
deploy nuclear-capable Pershing II and ground-launched cruise missiles in
Western Europe while continuing negotiations with the Soviets. The deployment
was not scheduled to begin until 1983. In the meantime, the Allies hoped to
achieve an arms control agreement that would eliminate the need for the
weapons.
Lacking the hoped-for agreement with the Soviets, NATO members suffered
internal discord when deployment began in 1983. Following the ascent of Mikhail
Gorbachev as Soviet Premier in 1985, the United States and the Soviet Union
signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 1987, eliminating
all nuclear and ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with intermediate
ranges. This is now regarded as an initial indication that the Cold War was
coming to an end. The 1980s also saw the accession of NATO’s first new member
since 1955. In 1982, a newly democratic Spain joined the transatlantic
Alliance.
By the mid-1980s, most international observers believed that
Soviet Communism had lost the intellectual battle with the West. Dissidents had
dismantled the ideological supports of Communist regimes, a process aided in
retrospect by the Soviet Union’s own ostensible adherence to human rights
principles outlined by the Helsinki Final Act. By the late 1980s, the communist
government of Poland found itself forced to negotiate with the formerly
repressed independent trade union “Solidarity” and its leader, Lech Wałęsa.
Soon other democratic activists in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union itself
would begin to demand those very rights.
By this time, command economies in the Warsaw Pact were
disintegrating. The Soviet Union was spending three times as much as the United
States on defence with an economy that was one-third the size. Mikhail
Gorbachev came to power with the intention of fundamentally reforming the
communist system. When the East German regime began to collapse in 1989, the
Soviet Union did not intervene, reversing the Brezhnev Doctrine. This time, the
Soviets chose long-run reform over a short-run control that was increasingly
beyond their capabilities, setting in motion a train of events that led to the
break-up of the Warsaw Pact.
Be careful what you wish for
The fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 seemed to proclaim
a new era of open markets, democracy and peace, and Allies reacted with
incredulous joy as emboldened demonstrators overthrew Eastern European
Communist governments. But there were also frightening uncertainties. Would a
united Germany be neutral? What would become of nuclear weapons in former
Soviet republics? Would nationalism once again curse European politics? For
NATO, the question was existential: was there any further need for the Atlantic
Alliance?
NATO endured because while the Soviet Union was no more, the
Alliance’s two other original if unspoken mandates still held: to deter the
rise of militant nationalism and to provide the foundation of collective
security that would encourage democratization and political integration in
Europe. The definition of “Europe” had merely expanded eastward. Before the
consolidation of peace and security could begin, however, one spectre haunting
European politics remained to be exorcised. Since the Franco-Prussian War,
Europe had struggled to come to terms with a united Germany at its heart. The
incorporation of a re-unified Germany into the Alliance put this most ancient
and destructive of dilemmas to rest.
In 1991 as in 1949, NATO was to be the foundation stone for a
larger, pan-European security architecture. In December 1991, the Allies
established the North Atlantic Cooperation Council, renamed the Euro-Atlantic
Partnership Council in 1997. This forum brought the Allies together with their
Central European, Eastern European, and Central Asian neighbours for joint
consultations. Many of these newly liberated countries – or Partners, as they
were soon called – saw a relationship with NATO as fundamental to their own
aspirations for stability, democracy, and European integration. Cooperation
also extended southward. In 1994, the Alliance founded the Mediterranean
Dialogue with six non-member Mediterranean countries: Egypt, Israel, Jordan,
Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia, with Algeria also joining in 2000. The
Dialogue seeks to contribute to security and stability in the Mediterranean
through better mutual understanding.
This fledgling cooperation was soon put to the test. The collapse
of Communism had given way to the rise of nationalism and ethnic violence,
particularly in the former Yugoslavia. At first, Allies hesitated to intervene
in what was perceived as a Yugoslav civil war. Later the conflict came to be
seen as a war of aggression and ethnic cleansing, and the Alliance decided to
act. Initially, NATO offered its full support to United Nations efforts to end
war crimes, including direct military action in the form of a naval embargo.
Soon the enforcement of a no-fly zone led to airstrikes against heavy weapons
violating UN resolutions. Finally, the Alliance carried out a nine-day air
campaign in September 1995 that played a major role in ending the conflict. In
December of that year, NATO deployed a UN-mandated, multinational force of 60
000 soldiers to help implement the Dayton Peace Agreement and to create the
conditions for a self-sustaining peace. In 2004, NATO handed over this role to
the European Union.
The Yugoslav conflict – and other contemporaneous conflicts in
Nagorno-Karabakh, Georgia, and elsewhere – made clear that the post-Cold War
power vacuum was a source of dangerous instability. Mechanisms for partnership
had to be strengthened in a way that would allow non-NATO countries to
cooperate with the Alliance to reform still-evolving democratic and military
institutions and to relive their strategic isolation. As part of this evolving
effort, Allies created the Partnership for Peace programme, or PfP, in 1994.
The Partnership for Peace allowed non-NATO countries, or “Partners”, to share
information with NATO Allies and to modernize their militaries in line with
modern democratic standards. Partners were encouraged to choose their own level
of involvement with the Alliance. The path to full membership would remain open
to those who decided to pursue it.
This process reached an important milestone at the 1999 Washington
Summit when three former Partners – Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary –
took their seats as full Alliance members following their completion of a
political and military reform programme. Through enlargement, NATO had played a
crucial role in consolidating democracy and stabilty in Europe. Even before the
new Allies joined NATO in Washington, however, a new crisis had already broken
out.
By the end of 1998, over 300 000 Kosovar Albanians had fled their
homes during conflict between Albanian separatists in Kosovo and Serbian
military and police. Following the failure of intense international efforts to
resolve the crisis, the Alliance conducted air strikes for 78 days and flew 38
000 sorties with the goal of allowing a multinational peacekeeping force to
enter Kosovo and cease ethnic cleansing in the region. On 4 June 1999, NATO
suspended its air campaign after confirming that a withdrawal of the Serbian
army from Kosovo had begun, and the deployment of the NATO-led Kosovo Force
(KFOR) followed shortly thereafter. Today, KFOR troops are still deployed in
Kosovo to help maintain a safe and secure environment and freedom of movement
for all citizens, irrespective of their ethnic origin.
The 9/11 catalyst
NATO’s experiences in Bosnia and Kosovo demonstrated that the
debate of whether NATO was to enforce a European peace was moot: events had
forced the Alliance’s hand. Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, NATO had been a
static organization whose mere existence was enough to deter the Soviet Union.
Balkan
intervention began the Alliance’s transformation into a more
dynamic and responsive organization. Gone was the Cold War doctrine of nuclear
retaliation, and in its place, the determination to use, after all peaceful
means had failed, measured and carefully applied force in combination with
diplomatic and humanitarian efforts to stop conflict, and to do so, if
necessary out of NATO’s traditional North Atlantic sphere.
Accordingly, the Alliance adopted a new Strategic Concept
describing the Alliance’s purpose and priorities. Most previous Strategic
Concepts had been classified. In 1991, the Alliance had issued, for the first
time, an unclassified Concept in the wake of the Soviet Union’s decline. The
Concept that followed in 1999, stated that since the end of the Cold War, the
world had come to face “complex new risks to Euro-Atlantic peace and security,
including oppression, ethnic conflict, economic distress, the collapse of
political order, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.” These
words would soon prove prescient.
The 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center
and the Pentagon demonstrated to the Allies that political disorder in distant
parts of the globe could have terrible consequences at home. Substate actors –
in this case, the al-Qaida terrorist group – had used Afghanistan as a base to
export instability to the industrialized world, adopting hijacked airliners as
improvised weapons of mass destruction to kill thousands of civilians.
Subsequent attacks, including bombings of the Madrid commuter train system on
11 March 2004 and the public transport system in London on 7 July 2005, made
clear that violent extremists were determined to target civilian populations.
In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, a coalition of countries –
including many NATO Allies – militarily intervened in Afghanistan in the fall
of 2001. The goal of the mission, Operation Enduring Freedom, was to deny
al-Qaida a base of operations and to detain as many al-Qaida leaders as
possible. In December 2001, following the overthrow of the Taliban regime, UN
Security Council Resolution 1386 authorized the deployment of the International
Security Assistance Force (ISAF), a multilateral force in and around Kabul to
help stabilize the country and create the conditions of a self-sustaining
peace. In August 2003, NATO took over command and coordination of ISAF.
Meanwhile, NATO continued to accept new members and to build new
partnerships. The NATO-Russia Council was established in 2002 so that
individual NATO member states and Russia could work as equal partners on
security issues of common interest. In 2004, the Alliance launched the Istanbul
Cooperation Initiative as a way of offering practical bilateral security
cooperation to countries of the broader Middle East region. Finally, subsequent
rounds of enlargemen
brought more Allies into the fold – Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia,
Slovenia, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania in 2004, and Croatia and Albania in
2009.
A new approach for a new century
In Afghanistan, as in Bosnia and Kosovo, Allies have found that military
power is no longer enough to secure any tangible victory. Peacekeeping has
become at least as difficult as peacemaking. During the Cold War years, Allied
security had entailed the defence of the North Atlantic Allies; now the
definition of “security” has radically expanded to include the individual’s
freedom from the violent extremism bred by instability and nation-state
failure. For instance, much of the world’s attention in 2011 was focused on the
crisis in Libya where NATO played a crucial role in helping to protect
civilians under attack from their own government. The level of violence used by
the Libyan security forces against pro-democracy protestors was such that the
international community agreed to take collective action. And it can be said
that NATO’s operation helped end the Libyan crisis and give hope that
reconstruction and reconciliation are possible.
Successful peacekeeping has come to entail not merely providing a
baseline of security, but assisting in the construction of modernity itself.
This task is beyond NATO, and the Allies know it. The Alliance is not and
cannot be a civilian reconstruction agency, but NATO can make a significant
contribution provided that it is part of a coherent international response. In
this way, the Alliance’s efforts are only as effective as its ability to work
with others, and NATO must liaise with countries and organizations that can
provide resources and expertise in civilian reconstruction. To achieve a
lasting peace in Kabul, Pristina, or Sarajevo, NATO needs the cooperation of
other international organizations that can bring their superior reconstruction
and civil-society-building capabilities to bear.
In the new Strategic Concept agreed in 2010, the Alliance
committed itself to dealing with “all stages of a crisis – before, during and
after” - an all-embracing principle that implies a greater role for cooperative
security. This idea is at the heart of the “comprehensive approach”.
Geopolitical instability demands complex remedies that combine military might,
diplomacy, and post-conflict stabilization. Only the widest possible coalition
of international actors can provide elements of all three. Accordingly, the
Alliance is not only developing security partnerships with countries across the
Mediterranean, the Gulf region, and even the Pacific area, but it is also
reaching out to other fellow international organizations and non-governmental
organizations that have mandates in such areas as institution-building,
governance, development, and judiciary reform. For example, UN-NATO
cooperation during the 2011 crisis in Libya demonstrated inter-institutional
dialogue and coordination in key areas. During the operation, NATO also made
unprecedented contacts with the Arab League, whose support for the overall international
efforts was essential.
Since its founding in 1949, the transatlantic Alliance’s
flexibility, embedded in its original Treaty, has allowed it to suit the
different requirements of different times. In the 1950s, the Alliance was a
purely defensive organization. In the 1960s, NATO became a political instrument
for détente. In the 1990s, the Alliance was a tool for the stabilization of
Eastern Europe and Central Asia through the incorporation of new Partners and
Allies. Now NATO has a new mission: extending peace through the strategic
projection of security.
This is not a mission of choice, but of necessity. The Allies
neither invented nor desired it. Events themselves have forced this mission
upon them. Nation-state failure and violent extremism may well be the defining
threats of the first half of the 21st century. Only a vigorously
coordinated international response can address them. This is our common
challenge. As the foundation stone of transatlantic peace, NATO must be ready
to meet it.
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