The Treaty and its Expansion
The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) celebrated its 75th anniversary through convening a summit of its now thirty-two member states in Washington DC on July 9-11. The summit coincided with the on-going Ukraine war; there is little doubt that its shadow loomed over the deliberations of NATO leaders. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has been condemned by US and its European and other allies since it began in February 2022. Equally, Putin has often strongly criticized NATO’s expansion after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Indeed, he has also questioned the rationale for the continuance of NATO after the Cold War was over. He has even revealed that he had asked that Russia be made a NATO member if US and European states apprehended a threat from it. He was obviously indicating that a significant way to counter a country from which a threat was perceived was to co-opt it in an alliance system. It is clear that NATO did not take Putin’s offer seriously and US and Europe decided in the 1990s that the Organisation must continue as the basis of their collective defense.
Before proceeding further, a look at the reasons for not only continuing but greatly expanding NATO, after the end of the Cold War would be useful for assessing its durability and the role it is likely to play in European security structures. For this purpose, a brief examination of the thought processes in the US and Western Europe which contributed to the formal signing of its Treaty in July 1949 is essential.
The European states have been suspicious of Russia throughout history. They have never considered it fully part of the continent. Europe’s wariness of Russia increased manifold after the success of the Communist Revolution in 1917 and the formation of the Soviet Union. Its ideology, along with its commitment to spread it world-wide, was naturally perceived as a threat by the imperialist and capitalist states. In the 1940s the Western powers, locked in a life-or-death struggle with Nazi Germany, accepted the Soviet Union as an ally but once the war was over in 1945, the question of how to deal with the Soviets came to the fore. It led to a debate in the US and in Western Europe.
The end of the Second World War had witnessed the consolidation of the Soviets in many countries of Central Europe. It was clear that this would lead to the communist parties in these countries to come to power with Soviet help. At this time, the Deputy Chief of Mission of the US embassy in Moscow, George Keenan, sent what is one of the most celebrated telegrams in diplomatic history. In this ‘Long Telegram’ of February 1946 he argued that Russia was traditionally an insecure power and the addition of communism to it had made for an explosive mix. Based on this view he advocated that the Soviet Union had to be ‘contained’. A month later, in March 1946, Winston Churchill, then an opposition MP, having led the Conservative Party to a defeat in the July 1945 election, made a historic speech at Westminster College in Missouri, US, in the presence of US President Harry Truman. Generally known as the ‘Iron Curtain’ speech Churchill appealed for the unity, first of all of the English-speaking peoples to combat the Soviets whom he indirectly equated with tyranny. Indeed, this was reminiscent of the Western view of Russia being an absolute autocracy before the Revolution.
In the speech, Churchill said “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in many cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow”.
This thinking led to the establishment of NATO initially with 12 member countries. In 1952 Greece and Turkiye joined. In 1955 West Germany followed in 1982 by Spain. Putin is convinced, as are many Russians, that an essential aspect of Soviet acceptance of the unification of Germany was that NATO would not be expanded. This was not reduced to writing but it was the understanding on which the Soviet leadership proceeded. He is therefore convinced that all five rounds of NATO expansion beginning with 1999 were done only because of the perception of Russian weakness after its defeat in the Cold War. This cannot justify his aggression against Ukraine but it does show a degree of insensitivity on the part of the Western powers regarding Russian interests. It also demonstrates that their view of Russia being tyrannical and expansionist has not changed. Ironically, the current Ukraine war and the amalgamation of Ukraine’s territories into Russia only strengthen Churchill and Kennan’s theses, though the latter did seek clarify that his idea of Russia’s containment was not how successive US administrations implemented it.
After 9/11, NATO invoked for the only time Article 5 which relates to collective defense. Thus, all NATO members joined the war on terror. While that article cannot be invoked now for Ukraine is not a member, it is clear that NATO, especially with Sweden and Finland now joining I t will remain the cornerstone of the defense of almost all Western countries against Russia.
The real issue is if NATO will risk letting Ukraine join it. That will lead to incalculable consequences, as Putin has warned.
