INTRODUCTION
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which was established in 1949 to protect Europe and the United States from Soviet aggression, continues to be the cornerstone of this cooperation. Since the end of the Cold War, an expanding group of NATO partners has taken on a wide range of tasks, many beyond the Euro-Atlantic zone, in nations like Afghanistan and Libya.
A significant revaluation of NATO members’ foreign policies and defence commitments has been sparked by Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, a non-member, in early 2022. The greatest tensions with the alliance in the post-Cold War era have been caused by the threat from Russia.
WHAT IS NATO?
The North Atlantic Treaty (also known as the Washington Treaty), signed in April 1949 by the United States, Canada, and several Western European countries, established the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as a military alliance to offer collective security against the Soviet Union.
Currently, there are 30 member states.
The countries of Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States were among its founding members.
Greece and Turkey (1952), West Germany (1955, renamed Germany in 1990), Spain (1982), the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland (1999), Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia (2004), Albania and Croatia (2009), Montenegro (2017), and North Macedonia (1999) joined the original signatories (2020).
Although it continued to be a member of NATO, France left its seat in the organization’s integrated military command in 1966. In 2009, it returned.
Finland, Sweden and Ukraine have recently expressed interest in joining NATO.
WHAT AIM DOES NATO SEEK TO ACHIEVE?
The fundamental and permanent goal of NATO is to protect each member state’s freedom and security via political and military action.
Political goals: NATO encourages the values of democracy and allows members to consult and work together on defence and security-related matters to solve disputes, foster trust, and, in the long run, prevent conflict.
Military Goals: NATO is dedicated to settling problems through peaceful means. It possesses the military might to conduct crisis-management operations if diplomatic efforts are unsuccessful.
These are carried out on their own or in collaboration with other nations and international organisations by a United Nations mandate or the collective defence provision of NATO’s founding treaty, Article 5 of the Washington Treaty.
Only once, on September 12, 2001, after the 9/11 attacks on the US World Trade Center, did NATO invoke Article 5.
HOW IS NATO ORGANISED?
- Despite having an integrated military command structure, relatively few of NATO’s forces or resources are wholly owned by the alliance.
Until member nations agree to carry out NATO-related responsibilities, the majority of forces remain under total national command and control.
- The Alliance’s decisions must be unanimous and consensual, and its members must uphold the fundamental principles that support the Alliance, including democracy, individual liberty, and the rule of law. All 30 allies have an equal voice in the Alliance.
- Civil wars or internal coups in NATO members are not covered by the alliance’s protection.
- NATO’s members provide its funding. Three-quarters of the budget for NATO is provided by the United States.
WHY DID NATO ORIGINATE?
Western Europe was economically depleted and militarily weak following World War II in 1945. (the western Allies had rapidly and drastically reduced their armies at the end of the war).
The Marshall Plan, which the United States established in 1948, provided enormous amounts of economic aid to the nations of western and southern Europe in exchange for their cooperation and participation in collaborative planning to speed up their respective recoveries.
The Western European Union, a collective-defence arrangement, was established by the United Kingdom, France, and the Low Countries—Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg—under the terms of the Brussels Treaty of 1948.
However, it was soon realised that a stronger alliance would be needed to offer the Soviet Union an effective military counterweight.
Following a communist virtual coup d’état in Czechoslovakia in February, the three governments started talking about a multilateral collective-defence plan in March 1948. This plan would strengthen Western security and advance democratic values.
France, the Low Countries, and Norway finally participated in these discussions, which led to the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty in April 1949.
The Cold War began after World War 2 when relations between the US and the USSR began to deteriorate.
The US perceived the USSR’s communist ideology as a threat to its way of life, while the USSR intended to increase its influence in Europe by promoting it.
The Warsaw Pact was created by the Soviet Union in 1955 while the Cold War was intensifying. It included socialist nations in Central and Eastern Europe (1955). A political-military partnership in essence, the Pact was seen as NATO’s direct geopolitical rival.
It included Hungary, Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Albania (which departed in 1968), and East Germany.
As soon as the Soviet Union collapsed in early 1991, the Pact was formally dissolved.
WHAT ARE THE ALLIANCES OF NATO?
In addition to its 30 member nations, NATO is a member of three other alliances.
- EAPC: A 50-nation international platform for discussion and debate on matters of politics and security is known as the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC).
The Partnership for Peace (PfP) programme establishes the overarching political framework for NATO’s collaboration with partner nations in the Euro-Atlantic region as well as for the bilateral partnerships formed between NATO and particular partner nations.
A programme of practical bilateral collaboration between individual Euro-Atlantic partner nations and NATO is known as the Partnership for Peace (PfP).
It enables allies to develop unique relationships with NATO, deciding on their own areas of collaboration.
The North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC), which was established in 1991 immediately following the conclusion of the Cold War, was replaced by the EAPC, which was established in 1997.
- The Mediterranean Dialogue: It is a cooperation conference that aims to strengthen connections and understanding between participating nations and NATO Allies while also promoting security and stability in NATO’s Mediterranean and North African neighbourhood.
The Dialogue now includes participation from the non-NATO nations of Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia.
- The Istanbul Cooperation Initiative (ICI): It is a collaboration platform that gives non-NATO nations in the larger Middle East region the chance to work with NATO. It seeks to contribute to long-term global and regional security.
Currently, the Initiative is supported by Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates.
WITHDRAWAL FROM NATO
The legal and political process by which a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) withdraws from the North Atlantic Treaty and subsequently stops being a member of NATO is known as withdrawal from NATO. The Treaty’s article XIII outlines the formal procedure. This states that any nation wishing to withdraw from the alliance must send a “notice of denunciation” to the United States (as the depositary), which the United States would then forward to the other nations in the alliance. The nation that wants to depart would no longer be a member after a one-year waiting period.
The North Atlantic Treaty’s Article XIII is the one that member nations utilise to alert other parties or members that they intend to exit the organisation. It reads as follows:
“After the Treaty has been in force for twenty years, any Party may cease to be a Party one year after its notice of denunciation has been given to the Government of the United States of America, which will inform the Governments of the other Parties of the deposit of each notice of denunciation.”
This means that any member state that desires to leave only needs to alert the United States that it wants to leave, and then after a year it formally leaves. The treaty was signed in 1949, making it 20 years after that year, or 1969.
NATO-UN RELATIONS: a future outlook following ten years of expanding collaboration
There are close ties between NATO and the UN. A Joint Declaration adopted in September 2008 outlined a systematic framework for cooperation, building on the conversation and cooperation that emerged after the end of the Cold War.
NATO’s founding instrument, the North Atlantic Treaty, specifically mentions the goals and tenets of the United Nations Charter. Both NATO and the UN were created in the same spirit of post-World War Two multilateralism, and the two organisations share a profound commitment to shared values. NATO’s primary missions still show this connection almost 70 years later. A UN Security Council mandate can be crucial to crisis management, collective defence has its roots in Article 51 of the UN Charter, and the ultimate goal of cooperative security is to strengthen global peace and security.
As the two organisations adapted to post-Cold War reality, the initial rationale for a systematic framework for NATO-UN collaboration and discussion became more and more clear. Field-level interactions increased steadily in the Western Balkans and later Afghanistan, and new opportunities for cooperation were made possible by NATO’s increasing network of alliances. Due to the Alliance’s reenergized versatility, it also participated in certain limited humanitarian support activities, such as providing aid to Pakistani flood victims and escorting World Food Programme ships off the coast of Somalia.
However, this strong normative agreement has not always been reflected in the pragmatic engagement between NATO and the UN. Politics and bureaucracy created significant barriers to collaboration both during and after the Cold War. The Joint Declaration on UN-NATO Secretariat Cooperation (the “Declaration”), signed in September 2008 by the two Secretaries General, was a significant step toward removing some of these obstacles.
The opportunities for mutually advantageous cooperation with the UN and, thus, the rationale for a structural partnership, increased as NATO increased the functional and geographic scope of its activities. In the instance of NATO and its “Comprehensive Approach,” a purposeful attempt to enhance interconnection strengthened a natural urge to seek out and advance international alliances.
NATO, the UN, and the use of FORCE
Three issues are at the heart of the discussion around NATO’s transition from a collective defence alliance to a group largely focused on crisis management:
- When should NATO threaten to use military force? The standard test, Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty’s self-defence against an armed attack on any member’s home territory, is too limited. There is no question that NATO could launch missions involving the use of force if its members so desired to address crises or threats that do not directly affect allied territory but may have implications for significant national or humanitarian interests (such as addressing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction or genocide), though to what extent is still up for debate within the alliance. The potential of joint military action in a situation other than one covered by Article 5 shouldn’t be subject to unanimous approval. Even if just a portion of allies take action, an alliance that offers quick and effective responses to crises inside and outside of its borders is preferable to one that requires perhaps unachievable unanimity.
- How wide should the territorial reach of NATO be? The European allies do not generally agree with the American goal of a worldwide NATO. The majority of Europeans believe that NATO’s primary goal is to safeguard Europe. They now acknowledge that NATO has a role in the Balkans, but they feel that this is about as far as it should go because, in their view, NATO should remain a regional organisation with a focus on the Euro-Atlantic area.
- What is the legal justification for NATO threatening or using force in any of these circumstances? Two opposing viewpoints have emerged: one from France, which believes that NATO’s use of force should be authorised primarily by the U.N. Security Council, and the other from the United States, which believes that NATO has the right to use force whenever its members’ interests so demand. Regarding whether Kosovo set a precedent for the future, the NATO allies are still divided. By restricting NATO to operations that have Security Council approval, China or Russia may effectively veto the alliance. Because of this, NATO shouldn’t commit to a posture that forbids action in contingencies other than those covered by Article 5 if U.N. consent is not forthcoming. However, the threat or use of force must have a solid enough legal foundation to be supported by the U.N. Charter, the Helsinki Final Act, or the 1990 Charter of Paris. This legal foundation must be acceptable to both the NATO public and the vast majority of the worldwide community.
The question of when and how the North Atlantic Treaty Organization would or could employ force was settled for the majority of its fifty-year existence. NATO aspired to prevent and, if necessary, defend against an invasion by the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies against the territory of one or more of its members as a military alliance created to provide for the collective defence of its members. NATO’s military response against Warsaw Pact territory in the event of such an attack would have been immediate and automatic. The commitment to collective defence outlined in Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty—which is based on the right to individual and collective self-defence guaranteed by Article 51 of the United Nations Charter—would have provided the justification for this response.
The question of whether and how to use force for purposes other than collective defence didn’t arise until the 1990s, as the greatest threat to NATO diminished with the fall of the Soviet Union and the Alliance’s goals and missions started to change. As a result of the fall of communist and Soviet imperial control, NATO members started debating whether the Alliance should have a role in managing the various crises that were emerging in post-Soviet Europe. The Alliance was increasingly perceived as having the military capability to help others avert, regulate, and lessen the effects of domestic crises throughout Europe, particularly in the Balkans, in addition to being a tool to defend friendly territory against intentional attack.
CONCLUSION
On the global scale, NATO actively and significantly contributes to peace and security. It promotes for democratic principles and is dedicated to resolving conflicts amicably. It does, however, possess the military capability necessary to carry out crisis-management operations, either on its own or in collaboration with other nations and international organisations. The Alliance’s crisis-management efforts show both its readiness to be a force for good in the world and its capacity to handle the security concerns of the twenty-first century.