Without NATO, our world might be very different today

The convening of a special NATO summit in Brussels on March 24, in response to Russia’s  unprovoked attack on Ukraine, has brought renewed attention to the seven decades-old North Atlantic Treaty Organization. At this crucial moment in history, NATO once again is demonstrating its resilience and critical importance for U.S. national security interests.

NATO has been subject to opposition and criticism since its inception. Thirteen U.S. senators, led by the isolationist Sen. Robert Taft, voted against U.S. membership in NATO. Some policy experts, including Cold War containment theorist George Kennan, also opposed the U.S. joining NATO, arguing that a non-military approach to countering the Soviet Union would be sufficient.

If NATO’s critics had prevailed, the security dynamics of the Cold War and post-Cold War world may have been much less favorable to the U.S. and its democratic allies. Fortunately, its opponents did not prevail, especially since NATO’s deterring a Soviet attack on Western Europe was a key factor in the victory of Western democratic nations over the Soviet Union and led to the unraveling of the Soviet empire.

What is less appreciated is that, during the Cold War, NATO also established a security environment that enabled Western European nations to become politically stable and economically prosperous democracies; provided a framework for Germany to integrate politically and militarily within Europe and for traditional adversaries such as Greece and Turkey to minimize differences and actively collaborate; and pressured NATO members Greece, Turkey and Portugal to move towards democracy.  

After the Cold War, some academics and policy experts argued that NATO had become irrelevant, provided no meaningful benefits for U.S. security, and would disappear over time.

This was the message, for example, of a 2002 Council on Foreign Relations article entitled “NATO Fading Away by 2010, Says Council’s Europe Studies Director Charles Kupchan.”  Harvard professor Stephen Walt asserted in 2010 that “NATO does not have much of a future,” would become “increasingly irrelevant,” and if it were to disappear, “it won’t matter very much.”

However, the Alliance not only has continued to exist but, more importantly, it still plays a critical role in protecting and advancing U.S. and European security interests. Most importantly, NATO’s decision beginning in 1999 to admit membership to the newly free nations of Central and Eastern Europe (initially Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, and subsequently 11 more nations) prevented a regional power vacuum that Russia undoubtedly would have exploited. NATO ensured regional stability and democracy by making the resolution of longstanding regional territorial disputes and the establishment of democracy preconditions for its members, but at the same time reached out to develop security connections with other nations — including Russia and Ukraine.

The U.S. has benefited significantly from NATO’s multinational logistics capabilities. For example, although NATO did not formally participate in the 1991 Gulf War, its resources, supplies, bases and other infrastructure were made available to the U.S.-led coalition and provided crucial support for successfully forcing Iraq’s Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait.

The U.S. currently has access to numerous military facilities and resources located in NATO member nations. In this regard, if NATO did not exist, the U.S. would need to develop a complex network of bilateral and multilateral security arrangements — subject to domestic political constraints — to maintain the kind of military access and flexibility that NATO provides.

Thus, NATO continues to be alive and well, and its accomplishments and activities refute any suggestion that the Alliance has been moribund. NATO’s most important security capability has been hiding in plain sight: a standing multilateral, integrated military command structure. Such a capability ensures that NATO always has available for rapid use the core elements for mobilization, deployment, sustainment and interoperability of substantial military forces.

This capability is augmented by regular training and exercises that develop habits of cooperation, all of which allow the U.S. and its allies to take coordinated military actions much more quickly, with greater effectiveness, and at less cost than if NATO did not exist. This is immeasurably important in crisis situations such as that NATO confronts now with Russia’s war in Ukraine.  

In 2016, Richard Haas, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, asked: “If NATO didn’t exist today, would anyone feel compelled to create it? The honest, if awkward, answer is no.” But I argued in response: “NATO exists today precisely because all of its members wish it to exist and, especially in light of recent Russian behavior, all current members would undoubtedly want to create and be associated with a multilateral security organization with a strong standing military capability if NATO no longer existed.” 

Some NATO critics contend that Russia’s brutal attack on Ukraine was in response to NATO’s enlargement and its security relationship with Ukraine. The reverse is true, however. Russian President Vladimir Putin has made clear that he seeks to rebuild a Russian empire by reintegrating neighboring nations that once were part of the Soviet Union, and thus he would have sought to dominate Ukraine anyway.

Further, if NATO had not expanded, Putin would have sought to dominate Central and Eastern Europe in the same way that he has attacked Ukraine — with a resulting zone of instability that by now might have spread all the way to the German border.

If we had listened to NATO’s critics and followed their advice, we would not be holding a NATO summit on the crisis in Ukraine and would have no existing multilateral military organization ready to rapidly implement a response to Russia. NATO’s members must utilize the Alliance’s strengths and capabilities to provide increased military support for Ukraine and to deter (or respond vigorously to) any Russian attack on NATO members or Russian use of weapons of mass destruction.

NATO has demonstrated beyond doubt its crucial importance for the security of the U.S. and its allies. The world has entered another uncertain era in international politics, and NATO must step up to play a strong role again.

Bruce Weinrod was Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for European and NATO Affairs under President George H.W. Bush, and the (dual-hatted) defense adviser to the U.S. Mission at NATO and Secretary of Defense representative for Europe under President George W. Bush. He served as Acting U.S. Ambassador to NATO during the summer of 2008.