NATO, THE UNITED STATES & THE WORLD

When Russia invaded Ukraine, NATO’s twin dynamics of eastward expansionism inside Europe and consolidated military operations abroad brought the world to the verge of a massive war. But what genuine interest does Washington have in the Alliance?

By definition, a military alliance is a commitment to using force against a foe. However, this is not their only or even main function. Additional alliance activities, which are by no means all-inclusive, include maintaining internal order, promoting trade, and spreading ideologies. They may also function as pacts of restraint, through which a strong power governs its weaker allies, potential antagonists seek amicable resolution, or contracting parties agree to mutual forbearance, in addition to providing a framework for collective defense and therefore for coercive diplomacy. All of these roles have been filled by NATO since its founding in 1949, albeit not all of them have been equally important or weighted throughout time.

The North Atlantic Treaty’s creators had little doubt that their agreement would be useful militarily from the start. A few poorly equipped American divisions could hardly be relied upon to change the course of events in the unlikely scenario of a Soviet onslaught on Western Europe. The forces available to the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) increased with the militarization of the alliance at the turn of the 1950s (acquiring its ‘organization’ and integrated command as Chinese troops crossed the Yalu), and by the middle of the decade, they were armed with 280mm M65 atomic cannon. However, plans to mount a defense at the Fulda Gap or on the North German plains were always unrealistic and acknowledged as such. In the first years following the war, the adversary at home was of greater concern. NATO was seen by European leaders as a defense against domestic subversion as well as the Red Army. These factors shed light on another aspect of the relationship. Its mandate included ‘values’ in addition to protection for propagandists back then as it does today. In addition to “maintaining the security of the North Atlantic area” above the Tropic of Cancer, did the 1949 Treaty not obligate signatories to “protect the freedom, common heritage, and civilization of their peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty, and the rule of law”?

I.

A confederation that included the Estado Novo and colonial French Algeria among its founding members might not immediately strike one as a poster child for democratic virtue. Its assurance of civilian control was also not perfect. Within ten years of joining the alliance, elected governments were overthrown in Turkey (admitted in 1952 alongside Greece, the first case of expansion), France, and Greece. In 1967, Greek putschists used a NATO contingency plan for domestic counter-insurgency operations as the basis for their plot. The membership of Montenegro (2017) and Albania (2009) has put theories of the rule of law to even greater test. It is best to interpret NATO’s claim to be a “alliance of democracies” in limiting terms. It has intentionally restricted the exercise of sovereignty by its constituent publics, shielding existential choices about war and peace from the churn of electoral politics. Here, the alliance might be compared to the European Union’s institutions, which were founded during the same period and developed inside the framework of the nuclear umbrella under Washington’s control.

The US government gave no indication that it was too concerned with the Washington Treaty’s preamble because it was unconcerned by any immediate threat of chaos on the Central Front and content to supervise conservative reconstruction west of the Elbe. In the face of geostrategic imperatives to buttress a southern flank, rumors of the inclusion of Salazar’s Portugal in Canada, Norway, and the Netherlands eventually died down. The 1953 treaty between Washington and Madrid, which established bilateral agreements, was sufficient to allay concerns raised by the potential inclusion of Francoist Spain. Germany unavoidably presented a more difficult problem at first. Particularly France was reluctant to consent to the rearmament of its longtime foe. The failure of subsequent negotiations, which centered on a different plan for a European Defense Community, led to a simple quid pro quo, with the United States funding French colonial counterinsurgency in exchange for accepting a revived Wehrmacht into the NATO fold.

According to a Central Intelligence Agency analysis, the 1955 formalization of the Bundesrepublik’s membership in NATO resolved the issue of “who is going to control German potential and hold the balance of power in Europe.” The alliance successfully handled an issue of its own making not for the first time. After deciding to remilitarize, the Americans were forced to station tens of thousands of soldiers in West Germany, both to reassure its neighbors and to dissuade the Soviets. In the early postwar decades, a vocal minority in the US foreign policy establishment believed that this mistake had doomed the nation to a neo-imperial policy of dominance rather than leadership in a more pluralistic society. But by the end of the 1940s, such perspectives were out of date. They disregarded our superiority’s size and the scope of our goals, which included integrating Europe, the Mediterranean region, and the Pacific Rim into a global capitalist order. In this elaborate plan, NATO’s primary goal was to prevent any alternative bloc from forming in the geographic center of Eurasia — the confluence of the Rhine and the Ruhr. The basic argument was typically acknowledged even by Treaty detractors. The Monroe Doctrine’s most vociferous opponent in the Senate debate over ratification, Robert Taft of Ohio, suggested that it simply be extended to Europe.

As prodromes of the European Community, other institutions also grew to oversee the continent’s postwar reconstruction. NATO supported this trend by relieving member states of the burden of ensuring their own defense, while also acting as a check on unwarranted claims to independence. It served as a safeguard against European integration as much as a way to it. The alliance’s organizational structure, which was overseen by the North Atlantic Council and soon acquired a parliamentary body of its own, revealed the balance of power within it: the civilian secretary general position has traditionally been held by a European, and Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (shape) is under American command. NATO “remains essential to the us as a well-established and easily available instrument for exercising American political influence in Europe,” a State Department review from the mid-1960s concluded. This assessment was supported by succeeding decades. The Atlantic Community, as it was afterwards known, was not without disagreement. De Gaulle was obstinate, even going so far as to remove France from alliance integrated leadership in 1966. The demands of a stronger West Germany that was still recovering from its Wirtschaftswunderjahre and was being seduced by the lure of reunification and the promise of economic opportunities in the east grew more pressing. American officials had a crucial tool in NATO when they openly discussed the necessity to “contain” Bonn.

Contrary to British history, one particular aspect of American imperium was the close integration of the economic, military, and ideological sectors, marketed as “security” and sold as a public good. NATO served as an example of this trend by correlating defense spending with the respective national incomes of member states, as monitored by alliance conclaves. Washington was unafraid to use its military presence as leverage in a variety of situations, including the dollar’s hegemony and global trade. While periodic escalation against the USSR helped block bilateral agreements with the Soviets in contravention of American diktat, it also helped ensure German cooperation on monetary policy. To the dismay of the allies, sanctions and embargoes against the Eastern Bloc were initially proposed as a part of NATO strategy during the “Second Berlin Crisis” of 1961. However, Europeans would find this topic to be more difficult to discuss because they knew who would be affected the most by these measures. When it came to the “hot” theaters of the Cold War, such as the Middle East, Vietnam, and Oceania, NATO and Europe were mostly ignored. The United States wanted freedom of action.

II.

Inter-allied tension, which had been restrained during the height of US hegemony, increased throughout the 1970s amid a worldwide recession and a new spirit of hostility in Washington. Nixon’s administration became more overt in tying together military, economic, and the ambition to “counter Europe by using NATO,” in the words of Kissinger, his national security adviser. The 1973 Yom Kippur War infuriated European leaders, who in turn rejected American requests to airlift NATO military supplies ‘out of area’ to Israel. During this conflict, the White House engaged in unilateral nuclear escalation without even the appearance of consulting allies (they were ‘notified’ after the fact). As things are, the Europeans “get free defense and give nothing for it,” as Kissinger bemoaned. ‘They are just like an adolescent; they want to be taken care of and at the same time, kick the hell out of their parents,’ he added.

The argumentative dependents were simply brought into line after being threatened with abandonment. The resurrected Atlanticist offensive of the late 1970s, however, saw the emergence of Natopolitan think tanks, cenacles, and advisory boards as well. At the time, the worrying advancement of West German Ostpolitik prompted a coalition of neoconservative and neoliberal hawks to launch a crusade against “neutralism,” a sign of continental “Finlandization.” US psychological warfare, also known as public diplomacy, was initially conducted by the United States Information Agency (USIA), then joined by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and gained support from organizations like the Ford Foundation and the Atlantic Council, which fostered European elites.

The tone of Kissinger’s successors varied, but substance was rarely a problem. The United States would no longer present itself as the world’s impersonal benefactor of capital. The 1985 Plaza Accord was the result of violent arm-twisting over the German and Japanese currency rates after Bretton Woods was annulled and the fiat dollar was established. The tendency was verified by escalating tensions between the superpowers. The deployment of cruise and Pershing II missiles by NATO in Western Europe under Reagan, which was intended to allay fears that the United States would launch nuclear Armageddon in response to a Warsaw Pact offensive, had the opposite effect, sparking a massive public protest movement and igniting neutralist stirrings in the FRG. Inconsistencies within the Western camp and reform in Moscow, where Mikhail Gorbachev spoke of a “common European home,” appeared to foreshadow the end of the Cold War and the bipolar alliance system it had spawned by the late 1980s.

At the beginning of the decade, NATO could boast that it had won the East-West conflict “without firing a shot.” Defensive emplacements in Europe were never put to the test, therefore speculations about their deterrent effect remained purely hypothetical. US military activities abroad were conducted outside of the alliance’s framework and were bloody enough. The American nuclear arsenal was of greater importance. The USSR was worn out in part as a result of the Euromissiles, which were specifically designed as an instrument of economic warfare. In the meantime, Washington had a ready instrument to prevent a reconciliation between London and Paris thanks to British reliance on the US for its submarine-launched Trident systems and French angling for position. This provided a solid foundation for Kissinger’s threat to “bust the Europeans.” The concept of broad deterrence was directed in all directions. Another function was as a requirement for the exercise of political power in the North Atlantic region, with acceptance of the bomb serving as a synecdoche for NATO itself. This suggests a more important standard. The alliance’s usefulness as a management and control tool — institutionalizing our dominance over the western littoral of Eurasia, the center of global power — were significant even though its ability to wage war had not been tested and its ideological hold had been questioned. Junior partners discovered that recruitment had a price: ‘diluted’ sovereignty, delegated foreign policy, and risk of nuclear war. The ruling classes in Europe considered this to be a price worth paying.

III.

Political scientists have been perplexed by NATO’s continued existence following the demise of its ostensible rival. However, there were long-term plans in the councils of power to not only maintain but further strengthen the alliance in the case of a Soviet collapse. Two George H. W. Bush advisors recalled in the early 1990s that the fall of the Berlin Wall had no impact on the justification for maintaining US forces in Europe because these “had become vital to projections of American power elsewhere in other areas, such as the Middle East,” in addition to serving “as the ante to ensure a central place for the United States as a player in European politics.” After that was resolved, it became evident that Washington’s main concern with the changes sweeping the continent was to prevent Germans from agreeing to reunification in exchange for neutrality or the forfeiture of American nuclear weapons on their soil. We negotiators were happy with the accomplishment of this project by a combination of bribes and deceit. The formal Anschlu? of the German Democratic Republic was skipped by a contented Bush. Even while the size and timing of future enlargement remained undetermined, it was immediately apparent that the ddr would not be the last Warsaw Pact country to join NATO. This was initiated by the Bush Administration with the goals of exploiting Russian vulnerability and preventing the emergence of any independent European security arrangement that may threaten our hegemony. Over time, loftier details would be introduced as politicians found it useful to cite shared “values,” the plight of Central and Eastern European nations, democracy, and other concepts. The cardinal decision did not include any.

When the Persian Gulf War broke out in 1991, the US security state, still tainted by the Vietnam War disaster, seemed to have won. Pentagon strategists struggled to map the boundaries of their recently acquired superiority. The Bush Administration’s 1992 Defense Planning Guidance, which was the most important endeavor, provided a stark overview of American interests from the Bering Strait to the Horn of Africa. Priority naturally placed on access to oil in the Middle East and Southwest Asia; East Asia and Western Europe needed to be watched for any emerging regional rivals; and the former Soviet Union’s states needed to be integrated into the EU. The memo, which was leaked to the media during an election year, drew criticism from Democratic presidential hopefuls; Senator Joseph Biden said it amounted to “literally a Pax Americana.” In the end, the Administration rejected its own work out of concern for Berlin and Tokyo’s sensitivities. Despite its rhetorical bluntness, the DPG mirrored truths that had long informed American power. Despite being widely despised, its worldview persisted throughout succeeding presidential administrations, regardless of partisanship.

According to the CIA’s analysis from January 1992, the United States still had “strong cards to play” on the battlefield. NATO provided a priceless resource in securing “corresponding European agreement” on “economic security decisions of vital interest to Washington” in order to combat both resurgent Russian bellicosity and an overbearing Germany. When Germany’s post-unification weight caused concern, it did not take long to demonstrate its thankfulness. That June, Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel made a commitment to help the US against French opposition in the final Uruguay Round GATT discussions. American leaders engaged in franc-parler, which was unheard of in Atlanticist circles on the old continent, as they basked in the warmth of triumph. Senator Richard Lugar predicted that NATO will “go out of business” in August 1993. A level of stability and security in the international environment, which only American power and leadership can offer, was necessary for full participation in “the international marketplace.”

William Jefferson Clinton’s election to the presidency at the start of the year did not endanger crucial continuity in foreign policy. Armed might still had a place even if the former Arkansas governor’s administration declared a shift in emphasis from political-military puissance to “economic statecraft” or “geoeconomics.” The first combat mission in NATO’s forty-five year history took place on February 28, 1994, just a few months after Bill Clinton was inaugurated. American-piloted F-16s were sent to enforce a no-fly zone over Bosnia-Herzegovina, and they shot down four Bosnian Serb fighter-bombers. Operation Deny Flight, which was begun in April 1993, was already the first NATO force deployment outside of its immediate vicinity, paving the way for further-flung operations. NATO, “a crucial source of our influence,” matched the description. ‘We can’t pretend that difficult security concerns in Europe are not our concern as well,’ Ochmanek wrote in a document, ‘if we want a seat at the table when the Europeans make decisions about trade and financial policy. The National Security Agency’s recently retired director, General William Odom, backed up the claim. He asserted that Western Europe would eventually regress from its current level of economic and political cooperation unless NATO was strengthened and the US played a key role. If meaningful action is not taken in Yugoslavia, this drift will quicken.

IV.

For half a century, national defense in Western Europe had been largely replaced by the Atlantic Alliance. The opposing scenario, or “re-nationalization,” worried American policymakers in the 1990s. This recurring theme from the time period has confusing undertones that cover everything from trade restrictions to inter-state military conflict and war. The hallmark of the globalist philosophy of the Clinton period was the interconnectedness of these problems and the holistic nature of their solution. In September 1993, National Security Advisor Anthony Lake exulted that “America’s core ideas — democracy and market economics — are more broadly accepted than ever.” The administration received a “moment of immense democratic and entrepreneurial opportunity” with the liberation of Eastern European countries from the Communist yoke. It was now time to transition “from containment to enlargement.” Clinton declared a week later that “during the Cold War, we sought to contain a threat to the survival of free institutions.” We are currently working to increase the number of countries that are governed by those free institutions. NATO and shock therapy were a part of the same package in terms of the “new democracies.”

In retrospect, it is notable that the Visegrád trio’s formalized membership at the 1997 Madrid Summit should not have met with as much local opposition in the United States as it did. Congress was accommodating enough, but a few establishment grandees, including the secretary of defense, voiced their displeasure out of concern for alienating Russia. Differences mainly related to how and when the alliance expanded, rather than the group’s primary goal. In the end, the Kremlin’s worries were disregarded, and Clinton called worries about a Russian response “silly.”

Independent of political intrigue and personality eccentricities, several factors guided the move east. NATO first emphasized the logic of our primacy to the newly christened European Union, which would soon be outfitted with its own currency. The enduring loup-garou of continental geopolitics, German predominance in Central Europe, was to be contained, as it always had been. Additionally, military might offered security against a future comeback of Russia, which was uncontrollable through simply economic means. Last but not least, the Drang nach Kiev revealed the desirable possibility of a Polish-Ukrainian Black Sea tunnel, opening the door to the riches of the Caspian and Central Asia. Zbigniew Brzezinski, the principal proponent of NATO expansion and Madeleine Albright’s mentor, had this as his “prize” in mind. As the “geopolitical pivot” of Eurasia, Ukraine was prominently featured in Brzezinski’s enchiridion for American rule. He predicted that eventually, maybe between 2005 and 2015, Ukraine would join the North Atlantic alliance. But there was no point in pretending that this possibility might not have any impact on Russia; the entrance of Ukraine would unavoidably raise the question of whether Moscow was ready to accept the benefits of Atlantic civilization or if it would be condemned to hostility and isolation. According to Brzezinski, “the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from banding together,” to use terminology from the more brutal era of ancient empires.

As the alliance’s airplanes bombarded Yugoslavia in 1999, NATO celebrated the accession of the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland on the occasion of its 50th anniversary. Clinton concluded, “I strongly supported the expansion of NATO.”

… and I supported the idea that the United States, Canada and our European allies had to take on the new security challenges of Europe of the 21st century, including all these ethnic upheavals on their border. Why? Because if this domestic policy is going to work, we have to be free to pursue it. And if we’re going to have a strong economic relationship that includes our ability to sell around the world, Europe has got to be a key. And if we want people to share our burdens of leadership with all the problems that will inevitably crop up, Europe needs to be our partner. Now, that’s what this Kosovo thing is all about.

The campaign, which in this case coincided with the introduction of the unified currency, reasserted our dominance once more. Ulrich Beck, a German sociologist, gave in to his wish that “Kosovo could be our military euro, creating a political and defense identity for the European Union in the same way that the euro is the expression of economic and financial integration.” When Operation Deliberate Force was over, a different conclusion emerged: the scandal strengthened US authority over NATO, not its “credibility,” and even less so a distinct European identity.

Practical issues within the alliance were quickly resolved after being exposed in Serbia and further afield by the American monopoly on targeting decision-making and the obvious operational incapabilities of European allies who depended on the US for command-and-control, signals intelligence, and in-flight refueling. Utilizing its nuclear arsenal as evidence of its material and technological superiority, the US had long demanded a military labor division inside the alliance. In this view, allies were required to provide soldiers at request while yet maintaining “interoperability” with the American arsenal. While simultaneously attempting to make matters worse, American leaders bemoaned the weaknesses of the Europeans on the battlefield and put pressure on their allies’ troops to either carry out light-infantry expeditionary missions or clean up as “peacekeepers.” Incentivizing Europe to contribute more to its own defense (‘burden-sharing’) would not preclude stringent restrictions on the range of operations of any EU force, prohibitions against ‘duplicating’ existing NATO capabilities, prohibitions against ‘discriminating’ against non-EU alliance members, or any other hints of ‘decoupling’ from America. In a 1998 speech in Haren, Albright outlined the “three Ds” and called developing European military coordination “a very useful way to think about burden-sharing.” Plans to establish a Rapid Response Force (RRF) with its own European chain of command and staff structure, announced by EU defence ministers prior to a summit in Nice in December 2000, drew a swift rebuttal. At a NATO meeting in Brussels, US Secretary of Defense William Cohen made it clear that the initiative would result in the breakup of the alliance. The United States had a general veto power over any action using personnel or equipment that was billeted to NATO. Washington preferred a multinational fig leaf to ‘adult supervision’-free hard power assets for American initiatives. From the perspective of the US, integrated command structures offered an additional benefit because the allied officers assigned to them could be relied upon as a bastion of Atlanticist fealty — impressed by their stateside training sessions, desirous of preferment, admiring of cutting-edge quincaillerie, and on the lookout for budgetary windfalls at home.

NATO in the 1990s showed clear traces of continuity despite all the fuss of change and adaptation. The alliance, as it had done during the Cold War, sought to ensure US hegemony in Europe by subordinating a now-unified Germany, demoting a weak Russia, deploying forces and military equipment up to the borders of the former USSR, and creating ideological cover for domestic and international endeavors. Success was recorded for the decade on all counts. Even though it wasn’t a NATO operation, Desert Storm, which was conducted with Moscow’s approval just months before the Soviet Union fell, set the scenario. Under the auspices of the “international community,” destruction was broadcast on television and rained down on Baghdad, befitting the heir to the Free World. The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Bosnian Serbs were the targets of separate, outside-the-area strikes that were intended to enhance the reputation of “humanitarian warfare” that had already proven itself in the deserts of Iraq.

Even though NATO bore some of the blame for the bloodshed that resulted, the fortunes of its Kosovo Force (KFOR) were mixed even if involvement in the Balkans reduced the viability of independent power in Europe. Even new allies were indecisive. The achievements of a vigorous public relations campaign managed by the NATO Press and Information Office in Brussels were undone when the Czechs retaliated since they had been deemed insufficiently “informed” to vote on joining the alliance two years earlier. In Ukraine, the first cis nation to join the Partnership for Peace (PfP), parliament strongly denounced the airstrike on Belgrade and voted in favor of a resolution to re-acquire nuclear weapons as a concession to Russian concerns over expansion. Brzezinski was aware of the possibility that Kiev would choose to discuss a concordat with Russia. He stated with his customary candor, “In such a case, when the West would have to choose between a democratic or independent Ukraine, strategic interests — not democratic considerations — must determine the Western stance.”

V.

In response to the collapse of the World Trade Center, NATO for the first time invoked Article 5, the collective-defence provision that serves as the cornerstone of the 1949 Treaty. American commanders initially looked down on coalition help, which was reluctant to “wage war by committee,” debilitated by complaints in the Balkans, and was initially ignored. However, allied support was subsequently welcomed to manage the occupation of both Iraq and Afghanistan. With continuing enlargement working in favor of Atlanticism, Europe underwent a more extensive reorientation at the turn of the millennium. On the eve of the 2003 invasion, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld observed that “the center of gravity is shifting east” if you examine all of NATO Europe as it stands today. The following year’s concurrent plans for another round of NATO and EU growth were not impeded by complaints from Paris and Berlin regarding the younger Bush’s bumptious manner. All seven of the prospective members — Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and the Baltic states — as well as the three Visegrád members — issued statements in support of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq during the month Rumsfeld made his remarks. Germany and France quickly followed suit, offering diplomatic protection and logistical help. One should not emphasize the divisions caused by the incident in Mesopotamia. In March 2003, Ian Brzezinski, the son of the former national security adviser, stated that “Europe remains essential to the maintenance of a forward presence for United States military forces.” ‘US forces forward deployed in Europe were among the first to take up positions in the fight against Iraq, securing not only America’s security, but Europe’s as well,’ he continued.

At the 2008 Bucharest Summit, as Bush pushed for the inclusion of Georgia and Ukraine, French and German leaders balked at a ‘fast-track’ Membership Action Plan (MAP), but they co-signed a compromise statement guaranteeing that the two former SSRS ‘shall become members of NATO’. The event, designed to celebrate France’s regaining full membership, was saved from degenerating into impolite squabbling. Over the course of Bush’s first term, the assault against Russia gained momentum with the unilateral departure from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002, covert support for the Ukrainian “Orange Revolution,” and an acceleration of NATO aggrandization. Ukraine belongs to “our core zone of security,” according to Richard Holbrooke, a mainstay of Democratic administrations and omnipresent “special envoy.” ‘Why only Ukraine?’ questioned a Washington Post columnist. The West desires to complete the task started by the fall of the Berlin Wall and carry on its march toward the east.

The Kremlin, which so admirably supported operations in Afghanistan and recognized NATO’s swallowing of the Baltic republics with surprise joie de vivre, had long been warned against unnecessary provocation by the State Department. Under Putin, Russia’s economy had begun to stabilize, and it was no longer the financial disaster it had appeared to be in the 1990s. Before the 2008 meeting in Bucharest, William Burns, the ambassador to Moscow, published a number of stern cables on the issue. In an email sent to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in February, he reiterated his concerns:

Ukrainian entry into nato is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in nato as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests. At this stage, a map offer would be seen not as a technical step along a long road toward membership, but as throwing down the strategic gauntlet. Today’s Russia will respond. Russian-Ukrainian relations will go into a deep freeze . . . It will create fertile soil for Russian meddling in Crimea and eastern Ukraine.

Such concerns were ignored by the White House, which praised Kiev’s support for the Implementation Force (IFOR) in Bosnia, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, and the American-led coalition in Iraq. Kiev also formed a joint UkrPolBat with Poland. During a visit to Ukraine in April 2008, President Bush remarked with satisfaction that “Ukraine is the only non-NATO country supporting every NATO mission.” The PfP agreement between the North Atlantic Council and Ukraine was approved in 1995, and by the end of the decade, no fewer than 469 manoeuvres and joint exercises had been conducted. These began in 1997 and featured repeated “Sea Breeze” naval drills in the Black Sea, which Moscow deplored and which occasionally drew protests from the people of Crimea. In 2000, Cossack Steppe-2000, one of 200 training exercises undertaken on the eastern tip of the peninsula that year alone, was particularly inflammatory. Its premise was a ‘ethnic insurrection’ in the area that was supported by Russia. The signing of a Charter on a Distinctive Partnership in 1997, which established a consultative crisis-response system and expanded the scope of cooperation in civil-military interactions, defense planning, and arms acquisition, strengthened military and political ties with NATO. NATO Information and Documentation Center opened in Kiev that same spring. The NATO Defence College in Rome, the shape operating academy in Obergammergau, and the Ukrainian National Defence Academy soon began exchanging information. All of this was done without paying undue attention to Ukrainian public sentiment, which at the time of the Bucharest summit was largely opposed to joining NATO, or to the whims of Kiev’s political leadership, which alternated between the West and the East.

Sadly, President Mikheil Saakashvili began attacking the Russian-controlled breakaway province of South Ossetia in August 2008, shortly after Bush suggested that Georgia was also headed for NATO membership. This sparked a violent retaliation. Joint military exercises between the US and Georgia that were held in July under the aegis of the NATO Immediate Response 2008 exercise, as well as a top advisor to Vice President Cheney’s visit to Tbilisi prior to the attack, aroused concerns about whether Saakashvili may have received American assistance. Whatever the reason, there was strong partisan support for expulsion of Russia from the G8 and from the World Trade Organization from both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party during the 2008 US election cycle. Republican candidate John McCain proposed sending NATO combat troops directly to Georgia. McCain adviser Robert Kagan saw the “return of History” in the conflict between Russia and Georgia. The specifics of who did what, Kagan remarked, “aren’t really that important.” The ideas of a peaceful, prehistoric Europe were giving way to more primitive principles. The goal of the day was to rearm.

VI.

The basics of the outlook from Washington remained unaltered after the Democratic triumph in the 2008 election. Obama substantially increased the NATO mission in Afghanistan while running for office as an opponent of the Iraq conflict. Compared to his predecessor, he was more cordial with European leaders, but he still had a dim opinion of their conceit and helplessness. Early in Obama’s presidency, a report for the German Marshall Fund criticized the still-twitching reflexes of ’re-nationalization’ in Europe, evident not only in debates over NATO’s push into the former USSR — revealing the persistence of ‘national, rather than collective, defence goals’ — but also on the ground in Afghanistan, where the Bundeswehr’s legalistic rules of engagement (relaxed shortly after) invited mockery.

In these conditions, the NATO airstrike on Tripoli in 2011 was perceived as reversing the course of coalition warfare under the guise of humanitarianism. ‘Ten years previously, in NATO’s war in Kosovo, the United States was responsible for dropping 90% of all precision-guided weapons,’ wrote SACEUR James Stavridis and the US ambassador to the alliance. The ratios were inverted in Libya. Little Norway and Denmark combined to destroy as many targets as Great Britain. Together with Qatar, Sweden also took part in the event. Six months after Operation Unified Protector ended on October 31, 2011, the same writers praised a “model intervention” in a more thorough audit. NATO had not only achieved success “by any measure,” but it done it inexpensively, costing American taxpayers only $1.1 billion throughout the Great Recession — a pittance in comparison to the sums spent in the Balkans, Iraq, and Afghanistan — and without a single soldier dying in battle. In a later statement, Obama said that the operation “was part of the anti-free-rider campaign,” an effort to get other NATO members to contribute fairly. On that premise, Americans may take pride in themselves.footnote64 Making decisions among the allies had also been less heated than in 1999. The destruction of “soft targets” and civilian infrastructure was now preferred by US commanders, while the more difficult task of “plinking” armored vehicles and artillery was preferred by French and other European air forces. Muammar Gaddafi was caught by rebel militiamen and killed there and then after being located by British and American special forces with the assistance of electronic warfare aircraft.

Undoubtedly, the clouds hid the otherwise radiant scene. The bulk of NATO members had opted out of helping to remove Gaddafi. Germany, in particular, chose not to participate in the relevant UN Security Council vote and declined to deploy its armed forces, though it did donate weaponry and offer to increase sorties over the Hindu Kush as recompense. The Libyan war established a tipping point outside of NATO. China and Russia were upset that a nominally humanitarian project had turned into an experiment in regime change after giving in to US demands that they not block the UN’s approval of the Libyan mission. The two nations opposed attempts to obtain an identical license to overthrow the Syrian government the next year. Uncertain about Gaddafi’s overthrow, Turkey pleaded in vain for NATO intervention against its Ba’athist neighbor; in response to the US’s preference for proxy or covert means, Ankara sought a brief reconciliation with Moscow, a va-et-vient doomed to destabilize the theater.

NATO soldiers who had never participated in Balkans operations or related “peacekeeping” duties had been trained in conflicts in the Greater Middle East. However, as the war on terror reached its second decade, the alliance experienced a military and ideological deadlock from Zuwara to Helmand, while Washington shifted its attention more and more to the Pacific. Support for NATO waned in Germany and other countries as a result of the protracted, unpopular war in the Middle East, as well as the 2013 disclosures of NSA spying on US allies and a covert killing campaign in Afghanistan. However, comfort could be found in the three-pronged invasion of the former Soviet Baltic republics, the Black Sea, and the Balkans (Albania and Croatia). Eastern expansion was a hegemonic move, with EU equerries trailing behind. across addition to giving newly formed post-Soviet member states the chance to set themselves apart from the Old World’s “axis of petulance,” service under unified command helped spread shared methods of thinking across allied military.

Candidacy itself, formalized in the map process after the first round of expansion, revealed a variety of mechanisms for interfering in the affairs of potential allies, ranging from promoting “good governance,” working with NGOs, and enacting economic reforms, to drafting legislation. If there was a “paradox” in the promotion of “democratic norms” in such an undemocratic manner, it was excusable. Additionally, expansion resulted in tangible territorial gains, extending the network of American bases and logistical hubs that already spanned the world. However, its dynamics and the prospect of upcoming agreements hastened the long-anticipated conflict with Russia, which has now emerged from its post-Soviet abyss. The Ukrainian crisis at the end of the year was a magnificent surprise. With an agreement on early elections, the Maidan protests against Ukrainian President Yanukovych appeared to be coming to an end. However, they received an unexpected boost when sniper fire, the source of which is still being debated, justified the storming of government buildings and forced Yanukovych to flee. Putin’s men in green appeared outside regional government buildings in Crimea as the State Department’s Victoria Nuland and her colleagues named the new Ukrainian government’s leaders, while counter-Maidans gathered strength in the Donbass with Russian support.

VII.

At the Wales summit in September 2014, NATO formally ended any pretense of amity with Moscow, marking the PfP’s twentieth anniversary. At its conference in Newport, the alliance decided on a “Readiness Action Plan” for the pre-positioning of equipment and the semi-permanent stationing of combat units in Poland and the Baltic states, in violation of the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act. The 65-kilometer-wide Suwaki gap connecting Belarus and Kaliningrad is considered a potential battleground by military strategists. NATO and the nominally neutral countries of Finland and Sweden signed a joint Memorandum of Understanding that permits alliance soldiers to operate out of those countries’ borders and commits NATO to further up its “military-technical assistance” to Ukraine.

In order to negotiate an end to the ongoing war in southeast Ukraine, delegates from Russia, Ukraine, France, and Germany met in Belarus around the same period as the Wales summit. But long before the Minsk Accords were signed, a strong group of American hawks worked to prevent a deal with Moscow. When fighting broke out in the Donbas in the spring of 2014, Allied Supreme Commander Philip Breedlove took the initiative to warn of an impending, full-fledged eastern offensive. Breedlove worked to sabotage diplomacy and persuade the White House to arm the Ukrainian armed forces for a lengthy conflict on the advice of Wesley Clark, another former NATO supremo, and a network of neoconservative operatives operating in Nuland’s sphere of influence.

The war party saw no reason why things shouldn’t escalate. Not only would decisive action indicate firmness to Beijing, but it would also intimidate Russia and curb German regional ambitions. China is keenly observing, Clark notified Breedlove in an email in April 2014:

China will have four aircraft carriers and airspace dominance in the Western Pacific within five years, if current trends continue. And if we let Ukraine slide away, it definitely raises the risks of conflict in the Pacific. For, China will ask, would the us then assert itself for Japan, Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, the South China Sea? . . . If Russia takes Ukraine, Belarus will join the Eurasian Union, and, presto, the Soviet Union (in another name) will be back . . . Neither the Baltics nor the Balkans will easily resist the political disruptions empowered by a resurgent Russia. And what good is a nato ‘security guarantee’ against internal subversion? . . . And then the us will face a much stronger Russia, a crumbling nato, and [a] major challenge in the Western Pacific. Far easier to [hold] the line now, in Ukraine than elsewhere, later.

Breedlove and his colleagues grumbled about Obama’s alleged reluctance to give Ukraine more sophisticated equipment. To the surprise of European spy agencies, the General repeatedly forewarned of a coming Russian victory of Donbas in the new year as a precarious ceasefire began to hold. The director of French military intelligence claimed that American sources dominated NATO danger assessments, escalating a propensity for exaggerated doomsaying. Berlin was so irate that it complained to the North Atlantic Council; according to German diplomats, every time prominent US commanders and politicians visited Kiev, it made their Ukrainian counterparts more eager to reclaim the separatist oblasts by force.

Despite strong bipartisan support in Congress and widespread agreement within his own administration, Obama chose not to immediately deliver anti-tank weapons to Ukraine out of concern that doing so may jeopardize German and French backing for sanctions against Russia. Technically arranged by the EU, these have been unanimously renewed every six months since 2014 as a sign of “bloc discipline,” or, in the words of Sergei Lavrov, the foreign minister of Russia, “stricter than the discipline that existed within the Warsaw Treaty Organization.” Obama did, however, give in to hardliners’ requests to increase American presence at the Yavoriv training center, which hosts joint NATO exercises since the 1990s and is located on the Ukrainian-Polish border. After being undermined even before taking office by Democratic collusion with Ukrainian nationalists, his successor in the White House deferred to the same coalition of interests, despite heretical claims on the campaign trail that the alliance was “obsolete” and Ukraine might not be a national priority. Trump’s agreement to provide FGM-148 Javelins did not shield him from impeachment for failing to deliver them promptly. On the eve of the 2018 NATO summit in Brussels, outrage greeted his disapproving remarks about allied budgets and trade policies — complaints made by American leaders for generations. The President’s careless handling of America’s international entanglements was aggravating more for rhetorical reasons than for substantive ones. The New Yorker lamented that it was destructive and counterproductive to treat those obligations like transactional protection rackets.

A significantly expanded galaxy of think tanks, whose numbers have increased in line with NATO’s ever-more expansive idea of “security,” which now includes everything from fossil fuel usage and pandemic preparedness to digital media, defended the Natopolitan worldview. They provide consistent insider information and op-eds to the Atlanticist media. It was now apparent that containment never really sparked the imagination; at best, it was a message of caution and caution alone. More inspiring content was produced in the areas of democratic standards, economic advancement, and global governance. This phrase served as the driving force behind NATO expansion in the 1990s. The area of ‘hybrid dangers,’ where ‘disinformation’ takes center stage, has drawn focus since the turn of the decade (2010). This phrase, used to describe Chinese and Russian attempts to sway Western governments’ politics, is actually better understood as a way to circumvent conventional diplomacy and exaggerate threats in order to justify higher defense spending and “public-private partnerships” in fields like surveillance, artificial intelligence, and cyberwarfare. Accordingly, the US is considered to have the strongest external influence on European politics, in part through organizations like the German Marshall Fund and the Atlantik-Brücke in Berlin, the International Institute for Security Studies and Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London, and the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington, DC. A total of twenty NATO “Centres of Excellence,” alliance-accredited think tanks that operate in line with our strategic goals, supplement these.

For what it’s worth, historical comparisons may be sought after less in the mid-century thaw between the two blocs than in the late-70s détente crisis that ignited the so-called “Second Cold War.” The Carter-Reagan push was conducted against the backdrop of waning American economic and military superiority, escalating Western camp divisions, and a shift in focus away from the European theater. These years also saw a striking turnaround of most of the European left, with anti-Soviet sentiment surpassing opposition to American imperialism after a flurry of protest. The parallels are interesting, if unintentional, given that the US unilaterally reneged on Cold War-era arms-control agreements for two decades, from the collapse of the ABM to the 2019 repeal of the INF ban, the agreement that ended the so-called Euromissile Crisis. In this way, the allied nations’ entrance into the Sino-American confrontation suggests deeper strategic objectives. Macron responded angrily to White House demands on NATO allies to adopt a more assertive stance with Beijing in 2019. Is Russia currently our enemy? At a press conference, he rhetorically questioned, “Or China?” Is NATO attempting to label them as enemies? I don’t believe so. But later events produced a different conclusion. In the middle of our efforts to “leverage” action on Ukraine into “more concrete support for its policies in the Indo-Pacific region,” NATO for the first time publicly set China (dubbed a “systemic challenge”) in the gunsights at its June 2022 summit in Madrid.

American strategists have purposefully recalled the escalating tensions of the 1970s in recent years, when the justification for pressuring Europe to increase its NATO spending was to free the US up to expand operations farther afield. In a 2019 digest, Rand highlighted Andrew Marshall’s 1972 research for the think tank, Long-Term Competition with the Soviets, as the source of ideas for ‘cost imposing’ methods against Moscow. ‘One historical reference point for such measures’, the report noted,

can be found in the policies of the Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan administrations through the 1980s. These included a massive us defence build-up, the launch of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, also known as Star Wars), the deployment of intermediate-range nuclear-armed missiles to Europe, assistance to the anti-Soviet resistance in Afghanistan, the intensification of anti-Soviet rhetoric (the so-called evil empire), and support to dissidents in the Soviet Union and its satellite states.

Stepped up support for the Ukrainian military — ‘already bleeding Russia in the Donbas region’ — was another means of ‘extending Russia’, raising the likelihood that the Kremlin

might counter-escalate, committing more troops and pushing them deeper into Ukraine. Russia might even preempt us action, escalating before any additional us aid arrives. Such escalation might extend Russia; Eastern Ukraine is already a drain. Taking more of Ukraine might only increase the burden, albeit at the expense of the Ukrainian people.

Such a strategy wasn’t risk-free. ‘Us prestige and credibility’ may suffer if Ukraine was subjugated or made to accept a Carthaginian peace. The idea of flooding the theater with weapons also brought to mind some risks. However, they added, “Ukraine is undoubtedly a more capable and dependable partner than others to whom the United States has provided lethal equipment — for example, the anti-Russian Afghan mujahidin in the 1980s.” Similar considerations, updated in a militant synthesis by the Atlantic Council, shaped the Biden Administration’s policy beginning in early 2021.

In order to participate in a multi-domain surface, air, and subsurface combat simulation with the Ukrainian navy, Turkish frigates, F-16 fighter jets, and a P-8 reconnaissance plane, two US destroyers deployed to the Black Sea for seventeen days starting in January 2021. Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal announced plans to build new bases in the Black Sea and the Azov Sea during a speech at NATO headquarters in Brussels, while SACEUR Tod Wolters praised NATO’s “enhanced forward presence” in the area, “with superb support from Georgia and Ukraine.” A Russian patrol boat fired a barrage of warning shots as the British destroyer hms Defender entered Russian national waters off Cape Fear that June. Following Defender-Europe 21, one of the biggest NATO exercises since the Cold War ended, the Royal Navy participated in the yearly Sea Breeze exercise and the Cossack Mace land drill in Mykolaiv Oblast. A report by RUSI noted that London is seen by the Kremlin as “willing to go to the edge” and having “fewer reservations about confronting Russia” than other alliance members. The UK took the lead in modernizing Ukraine’s Command, Control, Communications, and Computers (C4) capabilities and the development of a “mosquito fleet,” outfitted with British anti-ship missiles. The US and UK promised to have trained tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers by the end of 2021, effectively bringing the army up to NATO standards.

The alliance increased its “air-policing” operations over the Baltic during the course of the year, flying reportedly 370 missions. Throughout 2021, Russia’s military buildup on the border was accompanied by belligerent notes in Washington and Kiev, which were exacerbated by indications that Ukraine was acquiring a combat drone capability based on the Azerbaijani model. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, provided a four-part blueprint of “US interests and strategic objectives” during a briefing in the Oval Office in October:

1. Avoid a kinetic clash between NATO and the US military with Russia.

2. Prevent fighting within Ukraine’s national borders.

3. bolster and uphold NATO unity.

4. Give Ukraine the tools and the power to fight.

Before the end of the month, a Bayraktar TB2 built in Turkey operating under Ukrainian control launched the first drone attack on the rebel forces in Donbas.

The setting for the rapid withdrawal from Afghanistan in the summer of 2021 was this ongoing escalation in the region of Ukraine. While applauding Obama’s 2009 “surge,” Brzezinski Sr. had issued a warning that a NATO defeat in the nation would have disastrous repercussions for American credibility and transatlantic cohesion. The end of Pax Americana was heralded when Kabul fell to the Taliban on August 15, 2021, and the US withdrew without so much as consulting its friends. The 20-year conflict cost $2.3 trillion and claimed the lives of incalculable numbers of Afghans in addition to over 7,000 invaders. NATO foreign ministers met behind closed doors in December 2021 at the ATTA Centre in Riga to examine the findings of a “Afghanistan Lessons Learned Process,” which was made public in the form of a page-long booklet. Despite regretting the (non-NATO) ‘international community’s’ failure to reestablish a functioning state, this text struck a generally optimistic tone. While this was going on, the Biden administration redirected sanctions against Kabul and seized $9 billion in central bank deposits, ruining the nation and leaving millions of people in danger of starvation and death.

All could have been forgotten a few months later as Russian troops and armor flooded across the Ukrainian border. Two weeks after the offensive started, the New York Times declared that “NATO has been revitalized, and the United States has reclaimed a mantle of leadership that some feared had vanished in Iraq and Afghanistan.” A new chapter in NATO’s unwritten history is opened by the conflict in Ukraine. What balance sheet of the alliance’s history can be created? On closer inspection, its promises to be a guarantor of peace in Europe — from the Balkans to the Dnieper — display their opposite — a history of brinksmanship, Machtpolitik, and provocation. When it comes to capability aggregation and military heft, the Franco-British showboating in North Africa and the failure to defeat the Taliban after 20 years speak for themselves. Ankara’s role as a gatekeeper for the membership of Finland and Sweden, along with its ongoing campaign against the Kurds in Iraq and Syria, sheds light on the boundaries of the Atlantic “community of values.”

However, in other ways, NATO leaders may be justified in claiming that their organization is “the most successful alliance in history.” The range of its tasks, even if they are not always consistent with its values, attests to the prepotency of its helmsman. These missions include being the midwife to the liberal rebirth in Eastern Europe, sheriff of globalization, and warden of worldwide outlawry. In the first three decades following the end of the Cold War, NATO’s membership more than doubled as new members were admitted into an alliance that was in all but name unconstrained by the North Atlantic Treaty’s territorial restrictions. The Lisbon Treaty of 2009, which specifies that no European security policy may imperil obligations to the Atlantic Alliance, codifies the EU’s dependent on it. Its success in maintaining American hegemony over Europe as a method of punishing allies, mediating their conflicts, and handling imperial issues cannot be disputed. Even while it is by no means the only such tool, it is frequently abandoned when it becomes unnecessary. Standardizing ammunition, improving doctrine, and synchronizing command procedures are not the only aspects of integration. In addition, if not more so, NATO aims to promote “mental interoperability.” Atlanticism “is in the US, among our ruling layers and those of our neighboring countries,” de Gaulle famously remarked. “It’s in our minds.”