NATO Review

The return of great power competition is reinvigorating the study of military alliances. In this article, Dr Pilster reviews three remarkable books from recent years: A. Wess Mitchell and Jakub J. Grygiel’s “The Unquiet Frontier” (2017); Mira Rapp-Hooper’s “Shields of the Republic” (2020); and Alexander Lanoszka’s “Military Alliances in the Twenty-First Century” (2022). The authors straddle academia and policy: Lanoszka is a political scientist with a specialisation in alliances; Grygiel, Mitchell, and Rapp-Hooper all served in the US State Department; and Mitchell was co-chair of the independent reflection group on NATO 2030. The common denominator among the three books is that they systematically analyse the benefits, costs, and challenges of the Western alliance system.

Today, the battle for hearts and minds is unfolding on the devices in the palms of our hands. The media environment operates with unfamiliar rules and without systems of checks and balances, and information proliferates at an extraordinary pace. How do governments and international organisations get ahead in this new war of narratives, and how do we secure the victory for truth?

I’d never served in the Armed Forces before. Hadn’t even done compulsory military service. I’d always been a journalist – both before 2014, when I lived in Crimea, and after 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea and I had to move to Kyiv. Then in 2022, on day two of Russia’s full-scale invasion, I went and joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

The last article that we are republishing as part of 70 Years of NATO Review was written by consistent and long-time NATO Review author, Michael Rühle, in April 2015. While that might not seem like very long ago, this piece is evidence of just how much has changed in the last eight-or-so years. In the 2000s and early 2010s, deterrence had become a dormant concept, all but cast aside at the end of the Cold War to make space for countering new challenges and enlarging the Alliance. In 2014, following Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea, deterrence was pulled out and dusted off to take centre stage as one of NATO’s traditional core tasks and the backbone to Article 5. Russian aggression in Ukraine highlighted the necessity of ensuring that NATO’s deterrence and defence posture was and would remain credible and effective.

This article, written by former NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson at the end of his tenure in 2003, reflects on his four years at the helm. He oversaw one of the most turbulent periods in NATO’s history. The Cold War had ended. The troops were going home. Without the ever-present threat of Soviet invasion, Allies were rapidly demobilising their forces – eager to spend the 'peace dividend' on social programmes for their citizens at home, rather than on armed forces stationed abroad. Doomsayers were – as always – foretelling the imminent disintegration of the Alliance. The Warsaw Pact had been relegated to the ash heap of history, and, according to them, NATO was about to go the same way.

In 2022, the spectre of nuclear weapons use has returned to centre stage in Europe. From the very beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February of this year, Russian President Vladimir Putin has brandished his country’s nuclear sword in an attempt to compel Ukraine to capitulate to Russia’s demands and to deter NATO from intervention. This is the most significant attempt at prolonged, consistent, and conscious nuclear coercion against NATO and its partners in almost forty years. We must therefore reflect on Russia’s nuclear coercion with considerable scrutiny.

Knowledge security entails mitigating the risks of espionage, unwanted knowledge transfers, intellectual property theft, data leakage and the misuse of dual-use technology (technology that is primarily “focused on commercial markets but may also have defence and security applications”).

In the context of research on and the development of high-end technology, knowledge security is vital to NATO’s ability to deter and defend against adversaries and protect the prosperity of its members.

This article was written in April 1990 by Sir Michael Alexander, who was serving as the United Kingdom’s Permanent Representative to NATO. It reflects on the historic months that followed Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms in the Soviet Union and the subsequent fall of the Berlin Wall – the so-called ‘end of history’, per Francis Fukuyama.

In the article, Sir Michael offers an eerily prophetic take on the future of the Alliance in the post-Cold War period. Highlighting the need to nurture the transatlantic bond and NATO’s growing role as a forum for political consultation with partner countries outside of the Alliance, he optimistically discusses new opportunities, like stronger relations with a transformed Soviet Union and the former Warsaw Pact countries. He warns that the Soviet Union may eventually backslide and re-emerge as an aggressor, particularly under new leadership, and foresees new dangers emanating in the late 1990s as a result of developments in the South and Middle East. On a more positive note, he also anticipated a unified Germany becoming part of the Alliance.

Sir Michael was not, however, Nostradamus, and he did get a couple of things wrong. We will let you discover the rest on your own, but regardless of his accurate or inaccurate predictions, this article – written at the dawn of an exciting and hopeful time in NATO’s history – presents remarkable parallels with events that are presently shaping NATO’s direction. It was as true then as it is now: NATO’s purpose withstands the test of time. NATO’s role in a changing world is to provide security for its members while remaining capable and flexible enough to tackle emerging and (perhaps) unpredictable challenges.

Climate change presents major challenges that NATO faces today, and will have to confront tomorrow. Space technology is playing an increasingly important role in helping to monitor rapid environmental change and identify related hazards.

This article was written in 1982 by Sir Clive Rose, a former Permanent Representative to the North Atlantic Council from the United Kingdom. In it, Sir Clive provides a personal view on the 1982 NATO Summit in Bonn, Germany, where Allied leaders agreed to invite Spain to join NATO. Forty years later, having just concluded the 2022 NATO Summit in Madrid, we can look back and see many familiar themes in Sir Clive’s words – but also notice some key differences between then and now.

The 1982 Bonn Summit set the course for the Alliance for the last decade of the Cold War – just as the 2022 Madrid Summit has redefined NATO’s strategic direction for the future.