At 75, NATO has forgotten its purpose

The 75th anniversary of NATO is a momentous occasion, marking one of the longest-lived international partnerships in history. Yet its Washington Summit showed that the Atlantic alliance has forgotten its purpose.

NATO must answer two fundamental questions. First, what will the structure of European security look like in light of the Ukraine war? Second, what capabilities are critical to deter Russia?

Neither question was answered in Washington this week. The longer both questions hang unanswered, the more the West’s adversaries will gain political advantage.

The specter of a second Trump administration has revived fears that the U.S., in a fit of pique, might quit the Atlantic alliance, as Trump allegedly threatened to do in 2018. The first Trump administration focused on a long-standing American gripe with NATO, that its European members free ride on American capabilities.

NATO formalized its 2 percent-of-GDP spending target in 2014. However, a decade later, only two-thirds of its members have met this benchmark. A year ago, only 10 of the Atlantic alliance’s members met this benchmark. As of 2014, only three did.

There is obvious merit to demands for higher European defense spending. The events of 2014-2015 (Russia’s annexation of Crimea, first invasion of Ukraine and intervention in Syria, alongside the rise of ISIS in the Middle East) generated a far more threatening international environment to Europe.

Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine intensified this threat. The Kremlin has geared up for a long-term struggle with the West, directing the Russian economy towards military production, and transforming Russian society with an eclectic variant of fascism. It is only sensible for the European powers to increase their defense capabilities. 

Moreover, the Russia threat comes alongside an increasingly ambitious China, aggressive Iran and a North Korea with a modernizing nuclear arsenal. The American political climate and budgetary realities make a force posture shift away from Europe probable in the next administration, regardless of who wins the election. Demands for higher European defense spending are thus sensible.

Similarly, NATO’s refusal to issue a clear roadmap to Ukraine is politically intelligible. The U.S. and Germany remain skittish over Ukrainian membership, primarily due to fear of direct conflict with Russia. Meanwhile, other members, most notably Hungary, object wholesale to Ukraine’s accession, in no small part given their increasing closeness to the Kremlin. 

The Atlantic alliance must resolve several internal political friction points if it is to remain coherent — but this complicates Ukrainian accession today.

Fixation on Ukrainian NATO membership and the 2 percent target obscure the fundamental issues the Atlantic alliance faces: the need to prepare for war with Russia and the need to ensure Ukraine has a viable security bridge between a potential ceasefire and NATO accession.

Spending cash on military equipment, personnel and other defense-related investment is a prerequisite for generating military power. But NATO’s advantage is not simply that it is an alliance, but that it is an alliance with an unprecedented degree of transnational political-military integration. NATO has several permanent joint staff headquarters with representatives from NATO nations that share a strategic culture and doctrine.

NATO members exercise alongside each other at a far deeper level than almost any other alliance — Steadfast Defender, run from January to May, included 90,000 military personnel, 1,100-plus combat vehicles and more than 50 ships from all NATO nations. 

The point of the Atlantic alliance is to leverage these combined capabilities for an impact far greater than the sum of their parts. This comprises NATO’s competitive advantage. It is not simply 32 member states contributing pieces to an aggregate pie, but 32 organizations integrated into a coherent, interoperable force structure.

NATO was effective during the Cold War because of this. West Germany did not field the same forces as the Netherlands, Italy, the UK or the U.S. Each NATO member, to varying degrees, optimized its force structure to fit into a broader whole.

NATO must again embrace that logic. Its individual member states are rearming. But even if every NATO member spends 2.5 percent of GDP on defense by January 2025, this alone will not generate an effective military force. NATO’s members must instead develop a coherent strategic construct, one that plays to each ally’s strengths.

The front-line states, for example, have the political capital to field large-scale ground forces, and could reintroduce conscription. The western European states will struggle to convince their populations to bear the burden of national service. Yet they can provide critical airpower and other high-end capabilities that require cash and focus but not significant manpower.

The broader point is that NATO rearmament must consist of more than the political signal of increased defense budgets. It must come with a coherent plan to structure the alliance’s military forces to deter, and if necessary, defeat Russian aggression.

The most likely vector of aggression, in turn, is in the south and southeast, where Russia has already gained a geographical position that dominates the Black Sea, cultivated friendly capitals along the Danube and built a position in the Middle East. Ukraine is central to this strategy. Hence preparing for confrontation with Russia requires recognizing that Ukraine, in one way or another, must be integrated into allied structures. 

This need not mean immediate Ukrainian NATO membership, although there is an obvious case for de-linking Ukraine’s NATO accession process from the war itself to demonstrate to Moscow that the West’s calculations are hard to manipulate. Yet it does require a formal series of robust, long-term security commitments providing Ukraine with support between a notional ceasefire and NATO accession. Fixation on the language of Ukraine’s NATO status in repeated communiques only distracts from this more fundamental issue.

NATO’s Washington summit deserves credit for seeking to ensure long-term assistance to Ukraine as well as expanding the Atlantic alliance’s strategic vision to include China’s growing support for Putin’s war against Ukraine. But a vision of how each NATO member contributes to the alliance’s deterrent ability remains muddy. Defense spending increases do not guarantee this, yet they are the surest proof against whichever way the American political winds blow.

Seth Cropsey is president of Yorktown Institute. He served as a naval officer and as deputy undersecretary of the U.S. Navy and is the author of “Mayday” and “Seablindness.”