The idea behind the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is that an attack on one is an attack on all. But is that only for those who can pay?
The 30 member flags and large steel NATO Star sculpture at the main entrance of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) headquarters in Brussels. Photo courtesy of USNATO.
Editor’s note: On 10 February 2024 former U.S. President Donald Trump, who is the leading candidate to oppose current U.S. President Joseph Biden in the 2024 presidential election, said at a campaign rally that he believes that the United States is not obligated to defend members of NATO who fail to pay their membership dues and that he would allow, and even encourage, Russia to attack such nations. In April 2023, Finland became the 30th nation to join the NATO alliance.
To help our readers understand the role of NATO and the importance of such international alliances, we republish an article by political journalist Christine Keilholz that we originally published in 2019 on the 70th anniversary of NATO.
We launched Decoder Replay to help readers better understand current world events by seeing how our correspondents decoded similar events in the past.
Today, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is celebrating a big birthday: It’s been 70 years since the world’s most successful military alliance was founded.
But the festivities will be relatively muted. In Washington, DC — the city where NATO was established — foreign ministers, not heads of government or state, will gather alongside NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.
The absence of top leaders underscores how NATO’s status has evolved in a world order that has changed dramatically since 1949 when the alliance was formed. It also highlights Washington’s ambivalence towards the alliance since Donald Trump was elected U.S. president in 2016.
NATO was created in the wake of two World Wars to ensure the collective defence of Western powers and promote the “community of values of free democratic states.”
Its purpose was to restrain the rising influence of the Soviet Union in Europe. NATO’s first secretary general, British diplomat and general Hastings Ismay, summed it up well. NATO was supposed to “Keep the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down.”
NATO countered the Warsaw Pact.
The treaty imposed an obligation on all 12 founding states to come to the mutual defence of fellow members: Any attack by the Soviet Union or any other external party on a member would be considered an attack against all NATO members and would trigger an obligation on them to respond.
During the Cold War, the treaty proved instrumental in countering the influence of the Warsaw Pact — a collective defence treaty between the Soviet Union and the communist states in Central and Eastern Europe.
But while the Warsaw Pact was dissolved in 1991 following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, NATO has only grown since then, adding 13 new member states from Central Europe, the Balkans and the Baltics. The latest to join was Montenegro in 2017. The next candidate is North Macedonia.
But NATO’s growth to 29 members conceals some cracks in the bloc’s foundations.
First, there is the matter of funding. In principle, all members are expected to spend at least two percent of gross domestic product on defence to ensure contributions are commensurate with their economic power.
Cracks in NATO’s foundations
In practice, 21 members fall short of this guideline: Spending money on the military is not popular in many cash-strapped European countries.
What is more, Trump has been sharply critical of NATO, and Washington’s security concerns under the controversial leader have been directed more at China.
Trump has suggested that NATO is useless and has threatened to pull the country, long NATO’s linchpin, out of the alliance if its European allies do not increase defence spending. Washington’s message to its European partners is this: Pay your fair share!
NATO has failed to curtail Russia’s continental ambitions. President Vladimir Putin is keen for Russia to reclaim world power status and its dominance over countries that once belonged to the Soviet bloc.
Putin’s designs became glaringly apparent in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine. NATO and Kiev decried the move as a violation of international law. NATO cut off cooperation with Russia and beefed up its forces in Europe.
But Moscow said it was defending itself against NATO’s advance into its own sphere of influence. This past February, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov denounced a “rampant expansion of NATO” and promised that Russia would continue to defend its own interests.
What is NATO’s future?
NATO is watching Russia extend its influence outside of Europe, notably in Syria, where Moscow is backing dictator Bashar al-Assad, and in Africa. Trump’s pledge to withdraw U.S. forces from Syria has some NATO member states worried that Russia will strengthen its toehold in the Middle Eastern country.
All of these challenges raise questions about NATO’s future.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is at pains to emphasize NATO’s continued importance.
“We should never forget that we have founded NATO not just as a military alliance but as a community of values in which human rights, democracy and the rule of law are the guideline for joint action,” Merkel told the Munich Security Conference in February.
But without action, those words are not as reassuring as they may sound. Germany, like many NATO member states, is cooperating with non-members in security issues. And it balks at paying more into the NATO treasury.
Three questions to consider:
- What assurance does NATO provide to its members?
- Why is NATO coming under increasing strain?
- Are military alliances like NATO still necessary?
Christine Keilholz is a political journalist based in Dresden, Germany. She writes about German policy for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Welt, Cicero and others. She has studied history and German at the University of Leipzig. She was a past fellow of the Munk School of Global Affairs in Toronto.
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