What is NATO?
In a speech marking the 75th anniversary of NATO at the organisation’s summit in Washington on 9 July, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg called it “not only the most successful and strongest, but also the longest-lasting alliance in history”.
Certainly, in terms of the military firepower wielded by its members, NATO is indeed the strongest such alliance ever. But some historians might dispute whether NATO’s 75-year endurance might have been exceeded by alliances that the French and English monarchies formed against each other during the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453). And success or lack it of course depends on goals, which should be discussed in a little detail.
When NATO was formed with a dozen members in 1949, the ostensible purpose was to defend Western Europe in the event of a Soviet invasion, which was only slightly more probable than an invasion from Mars, given the enormous military, population and economic losses the USSR had suffered in World War II. The eagerness of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin for a lasting accommodation with Western capitalism was shown by his 1944 agreement with British PM Winston Churchill that postwar Greece should be a British “sphere of influence”, which meant that Greek Communists and other leftists were left without any external support as they were slaughtered in the country’s 1946-49 civil war, and by the Italian and French Communist parties, under instructions from Moscow, collaborating in the re-establishment of their respective capitalist states.
So, in terms of the alleged goal of preventing a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, NATO was certainly successful, if probably unnecessary. And this goal was achieved with remarkably little military effort: while NATO conducted military exercises that should more accurately be called “war rehearsals”, it conducted no actual military operations during the entire Cold War.
Some naive people might have thought, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, that NATO, having succeeded in its proclaimed goal, would be closed down, perhaps after a celebratory champagne reception. No. Having been deprived of one enemy, NATO went looking for more. Unsurprisingly, these enemies were always countries or organisations doing things the US government didn’t want them to do. The collapse of the Soviet “threat” made it easier to pursue openly the real aim of NATO, which was never defensive, but aggressive: extending the power and domination of the US and its allies further into Europe and Asia.
Governments of the participating countries generally refer to this military alliance by its initials, not by its name: North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In 1949, the name made some geographical sense since its dozen members were the US, Canada and ten Western European countries. But “North Atlantic” was never intended to limit the alliance’s scope of military interventions.
Moreover, NATO was not the only imperialist alliance that the US had in mind. The 1950s were a particularly active period. Greece and Turkey were added to NATO in 1952, and West Germany in 1955. Also in 1955, the US launched two not very successful military alliances in Asia. In February of that year, under the urging of the US and with the carrot of US economic and military assistance, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and Turkey established with Britain the Middle East Treaty Organization or Central Treaty Organization (CENTO). The US joined its military committee in 1958. CENTO accomplished very little, partly because of conflicts between Turkey and Iraq, and the Pakistan government’s annoyance at CENTO’s unwillingness to join Pakistan’s wars with India. The organisation was wound up in 1979, after the Islamic Revolution led to Iran’s withdrawal.
1955 was also the year of the founding of the South-East Asia Treaty Organization. This included exactly two South-East Asian countries—Thailand and the Philippines—one South Asian country (Pakistan) and five Westerners: the US, Britain, France, Australia and New Zealand. While this alliance did very little, it claimed to “protect” South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, which was later a pretext used by both the US and Australia for their war against Vietnam. It was dissolved in 1977.
Beginning within months of the dissolution of the USSR, NATO began more than a decade of military interventions (1992-2004) in the former Yugoslavia, involving naval, air and ground troop operations. This was part of a more general strategy of expansion into Eastern Europe.
One formal or legal obstacle for NATO expansion concerned Germany, which was divided into two states, West and East, until the end of 1990. Under the 1945 Potsdam agreement, Germany was under the ultimate control of the four WW2 allies: the US, UK, France and USSR. This meant that Moscow had a right to demand conditions on the absorption of East Germany by the West—and there were still Soviet troops stationed in East Germany. The US and West German government got around this problem by lying to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev about their intentions.
The National Security Archive (NSA) at George Washington University in the US has published declassified documents that show numerous assurances from NATO members that there would be no eastward expansion following German reunification. These promises were not written into a treaty, but they were recorded “in multiple memoranda of conversation between the Soviets and the highest-level Western interlocutors”, including US President George H.W. Bush, Secretary of State James Baker, CIA Director Robert Gates, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, French President François Mitterrand, UK Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and John Major and NATO Secretary General Manfred Woerner. In reality, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland were invited to join in 1997 and Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia in 2002. NATO now includes 32 countries, and hopes to include Ukraine in the future.
Article 5 of the treaty establishing NATO commits member countries to a joint defence of any member that suffers an armed attack. It has been invoked only once in 75 years: by the US after the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks organised by Osama bin Laden. Since bin Laden was not acting officially on behalf of any state (and was a citizen of US ally Saudi Arabia), the US decreed that it was at war with an enemy called “terrorism”. This absurdity has served a purpose: any military intervention by NATO members, anywhere in the world, if it can be portrayed as fighting terrorism, can then be justified as an obligation under Article 5.
Thus in October 2001, “to detect and deter terrorism”, NATO launched naval patrols in the Mediterranean that have continued under different names to the present day. From 2009, NATO naval patrols were expanded to the coast of Africa. More recently, NATO members the US and UK have been involved in fighting the Houthi forces in Yemen, supported by NATO members Canada and the Netherlands.
NATO forces were involved in Afghanistan for 20 years (2001-21) as either combatants or “trainers” of the government military. In 2011, NATO aircraft enforced a “no-fly zone” that aided in the overthrow of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. Since 2012, NATO has provided Patriot missile systems to help defend Turkey against Syria if the latter launches missiles in response to Turkey’s frequent and ongoing incursions to attack Kurds in Syria.
More recently, as the US seeks additional allies and prepares for a possible war with China (which Australia is now enlisted in through AUKUS), NATO is stepping up “partnership” with US allies in Asia. As the NATO website puts it, “NATO is strengthening dialogue and cooperation with its partners in the Indo-Pacific region—Australia, Japan, the Republic of Korea and New Zealand ... NATO and its partners in the region share common values and a goal of working together to uphold the rules-based international order”.
Upholding the “rules-based international order” is the US code for its trade war against China and the construction of military alliances and bases. The recent NATO summit issued a communiqué that accused China of “ambitions and coercive policies that continue to challenge our interests, security and values” and said that Russia and China were seeking “to undercut and reshape”—guess what—“the rules-based international order”. You will seldom find such a blunt admission that “the rules-based international order” and US/NATO interests are the same thing.
