What is NATO?

What is NATO? What is NATO? That's actually a complicated question. The simplistic answer is that it's a defensive military alliance. A more complicated one is that it's a cornerstone of American power projection. If you want to get even more complicated, you could say that it is a determining factor in deciding what we politically and culturally think of as The West. Truthfully, well, we're not entirely sure what NATO is anymore.

Things were much more clear when NATO was formed. In 1948 the Treaty of Brussels was signed between Belgium, France, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, which brought them together in a mutual defense pact. Notably absent was the United States. The alliance was openly designed as a Western European anti-Communist compact, but people started to realize almost immediately that the member states lacked the strength to exert much influence. Dean Acheson, the American Under Secretary of State, warned that France was in danger of falling to the communists. Without France, this alliance would have just been Britain and the Low Countries. Hardly a revolutionary new alliance system. The United States made the calculation that this organization was worth saving. They wanted in.

A year later a new treaty was negotiated and signed in Washington, D.C. This time, the original 5 opted in, plus the United States and 6 additional countries. They were: Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Italy, Norway, and Portugal. Only the United States had the influence to convince these diverse nations to make common cause with each other. This is the diplomatic power of the United States, and the ultimate significance of NATO.

In the years that followed, NATO went through several phases of expansion. Phase 1 was pretty obviously designed to set up a solid wall of defense against the Soviets. It brought in Greece, Turkey, and West Germany. All key strategic countries. This was the status quo for a long time. Phase 2 simply consisted of Spain being brought into the alliance after their fascist dictatorship ended. The next phrases of expansion all happened within recent history.

In 1999, several years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, we have Phase 3. This was the first NATO expansion into the post-Soviet sphere. The Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland all joined the alliance. Five years later, in 2004, a second expansion took place that gobbled up a lot of smaller post-Soviet countries. The was Phase 4. Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia joined. In 2009 we have Phase 5, when Albania and Croatia joined.

We take all of this for granted now, but we really shouldn't. This was a huge deal. NATO's expansion into the former Soviet sphere of influence was not a natural consequence of the end of the Cold War. In fact, it would have been more natural to expect NATO to slowly turn irrelevant and die. New, smaller alliances could have easily popped up as needed. But that's not what happened. NATO expanded, and expanded more quickly than ever before.

Even more unusual was the fact that this all happened in the absence of any clear objective. Hastings Ismay, NATO's first Secretary General, famously said that NATO's purpose was to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down. All three of these things were either accomplished or irrelevant by the early 1990s. The Soviet Union had dissolved, leaving Russia as weak as ever. The United States was the world's lone superpower and had decided to permanently align itself with Europe. Germany had voluntarily chosen to pursue a pacifist/non-interventionist foreign policy. As far as NATO was concerned, mission accomplished.

You may be thinking to yourself so what? There was a power vacuum, and NATO expanded into it. Nobody forced these countries to join NATO. They wanted to join, so NATO let them in. What's the big deal? The big deal is that this rapid expansion of NATO caused (and continues to cause) a deep existential crisis within Russia. It's the main cause of Russia's geopolitical anxiety. And this is understandable.

Just look at some of the counties that are currently lobbying for membership in NATO. One is Georgia. The United States currently supports the idea of eventual NATO membership for Georgia, despite the fact that Russia considers Georgia deep within its sphere of influence. And if we're being honest, it is. It spent the entire 19th century within the Russian Empire, and was the birthplace of Joseph Stalin. Russia fought a brief war with Georgia in 2008 in an attempt to scare NATO away, peeling off some breakaway republics in the process. And this was moderately successful. NATO backed away for a number of years. But now NATO is back, and is presently needling Russia by offering Georgia a slow pathway toward eventual NATO membership, which Russia considers totally unacceptable.

Another country that has been periodically toying with NATO membership is Ukraine. In 2008, Ukraine coordinated their bid for NATO membership with Georgia. After Georgia got invaded, NATO's enthusiasm towards Ukraine cooled. Ukraine officially dropped their bid for membership in 2010, but their application had been dead in the water for long before that. The Americans, the French, and the Germans had all unofficially killed it around the time of the Georgian invasion. Ukraine is arguably even deeper within the Russian sphere of influence than Georgia is. In fact, for much of their early history, Russia and Ukraine were indistinguishable from each other. Many Russians still mistakenly see Ukraine as part of the Russia's geopolitical core. This is why many of them find it inconceivable that Ukraine would willingly align themselves with the West.

As a direct result of the Russian incursion, Ukraine has officially restarted their bid for membership in NATO. This is a weird little Catch-22, because this is exactly the kind of thing that Russia was hoping to prevent by moving into Ukraine in the first place. Frankly, nobody really knows what's going to happen next. What we do know is that NATO will be acting with a renewed focus and a renewed vigour over the next several years, so it's best to start wrapping our heads around what kind of institution it is, and what it can turn into.