Whither NATO? (Part I)

With the Obama administration's recent announcement of a "pivot" to Asia, the question arises of what the future holds for the US's relationship with Europe. But as the pivot is essentially a military-diplomatic move, the question is particularly pertinent regarding the US's European allies in NATO.

NATO has been the military-diplomatic backbone of the liberal world order since it was formed in 1949. NATO was an alliance created for the nominal purpose of the collective defense of its members against unprovoked aggression. Its unstated purpose was specifically to prevent a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. But the US had an even more silent purpose in entering into the alliance because, given the importance that Western Europe had to US national security, there was little question that the US would act to defend Western Europe in the event of a Soviet invasion.

By legally binding itself to defending Western European countries, the US was attempting to accomplish two things. First, there was the assurance given to both friend and foe of the US's intention to defend Western Europe. The US put its reputation on the line by formally allying with Western European countries, which would help push those countries away from communism or some kind of modus operandi with the Soviets. Second, the US was attempting to break the cycle of engagement with and retrenchment from the world that had characterized US foreign relations to that point. By entering into a legally binding agreement to defend Western Europe, US policymakers were trying to get the American people to support an effort to use American power to actively manage world affairs, or, they at least hoped to get the American people's resigned acquiescence.

While the alliance's defensive rationale never had to be used against the Soviets, during the course of the Cold War it had been a fairly successful alliance. To the extent that it helped achieve the unstated goals of keeping the Western Europeans and Soviets at arms-length from each other—at least for the first years of the alliance—and convincing the American people to assume a global superpower role, it was a success. It’s highly doubtful that NATO was the decisive factor in preventing a communist takeover of Western Europe, but even there it—along with the Marshall Plan—played a role by giving the Western Europeans the financial breathing space required to get their economies up and running again.

And while NATO had reached a point of existential danger of sorts when France began pulling out of the alliance in the late-1950s (ending with its exit from the integrated military command in 1966), the first event that really raised a question about the alliance’s existence was the event that marked its greatest triumph: the collapse of the Soviet Union on December 25, 1991. For an alliance whose existence was built upon defending Western Europe from a Soviet invasion, the fact that the Soviet Union no longer existed naturally raised the question of: now what?

In the next post I'll discuss a little about the post-Soviet history of NATO before ending with a third post on what I think the future of NATO should be, or if there even should be one.