NATO, EXPLAINED
How is the alliance changing?
January 12, 2025
NATO was founded as a defensive alliance of 12 states, expanding to 32.
The alliance is increasingly involved with international conflicts post-1990.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was founded in 1949 as a military alliance between the United States, Canada and ten Western European countries, including France, Italy and the UK.
During the Cold War, Europe was divided between a US-led capitalist Western bloc and a Soviet-led socialist Eastern bloc with each side fearing another’s aggression.
After the Second World War, Western European countries could only rely on US military and economic resources to defend them against potential Soviet pressure.
The Soviet Union and the US were the only two countries with nuclear weapons until the UK built its first warhead in 1953, followed by China and France in 1964.
NATO’s first Secretary General once described the organisation’s purpose as having to “keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down”:
Counteracting the influence of the Soviet Union
Supporting American political and military presence in Europe
Preventing the re-emergence of fascist movements after Hitler’s defeat
NATO has grown to 32 members by 2024.
Cold War Enlargement
During the Cold War, NATO enlarged to include Greece and Turkey (1952), West Germany (1955, East Germany joined in 1990 as part of German reunification), and Spain (1982).
Reason:
strengthen the alliance
prevent the countries from growing close to the Soviet-led bloc
Post-Cold War Enlargement
After the Cold War NATO continued to expand and included members of the Soviet Union’s former military alliance.
Reason:
NATO membership, along with the European Union (EU) membership, was a way of integrating with the Western financial and political institutions.
Some joining countries negatively viewed their experience under the Soviet rule or influence and saw NATO as a way to protect themselves from Russia.
In 1999 and 2004, a total of ten European countries joined NATO. The 2004 enlargement was the first time that territory previously belonging to the Soviet Union (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) joined NATO.
Between 2009 and 2020, four Balkan countries (Albania, Croatia, Montenegro and North Macedonia) joined the alliance.
Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Finland and Sweden applied to join NATO, becoming members in 2023 and 2024, respectively.
Finland’s membership doubled the length of NATO’s border with Russia.
Turkey blocked the two countries’ joining until it received concessions including removing bans on arms import to Turkey and deals for fighter jets equipment.
Hungary also opposed the joining without clear motivation.
Officially, NATO is a mutual defence pact whose priority is the defence of its members.
The core of NATO is Article 5 of the founding treaty, which states that an attack against one member of NATO would be considered an attack against all members of the alliance.
Reason:
Improve the ability of members to defend against an attack
Preventing an attack in the first place (deterrence)
The treaty does not state how each country is supposed to respond.
NATO’s continued expansion since the end of the Cold War made the alliance the most powerful security organisation in Europe.
There is no strict set of entry requirements, but many candidate countries were given “Membership Action Plans”, which outlined a set of expectations including:
Civilian control over the military
Commitment to democracy
Political, economic, security and legal reforms
The two most senior NATO figures are the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (a military officer) and the Secretary General (a political leader). By convention, the first position is held by an American while the latter is occupied by a European.
There is no defined selection process for the Secretary General but does require unanimous consent among all members.
Presidents, prime ministers, foreign ministers and defence ministers informally meet and argue in favour of their candidates until one is approved by all members.
Most Secretary Generals were previously high-ranking politicians.
The North Atlantic Council is NATO’s main political decision-making body and is headquartered in Brussels, Belgium.
Areas of NATO cooperation include:
Standardised equipment
Joint training
Joint air patrols
Information sharing
Counterterrorism training
At the peak of the Cold War, NATO had 3,000,000 troops, including 400,000 US troops stationed in Europe and elsewhere around the Soviet Union, in preparation for a potential war.
Since the end of the Cold War, military units, and in particular ballistic missiles, have been positioned further east, on the territory of the newly-admitted members, such as Romania.
Such deployments serve many purposes, including (1) to deter a potential attack, (2) to promote a common defence policy, and (3) to reassure smaller allies of the reliability of security commitments.
NATO’s international missions
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the main potential challenge to NATO disappeared. Beginning in the 1990s, NATO increasingly focused on issues outside of the alliance’s border.
Bosnia
The first time NATO ever carried out military action during an ongoing conflict was in Bosnia, in 1995.
In 1991, a civil war broke out in Yugoslavia, previously a major country of the socialist bloc, when two of its republics, Slovenia and Croatia, declared independence.
This led to a series of conflicts across the Balkans, including in the religiously and ethnically diverse republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Efforts by the EU and the United Nations (UN) to end the conflict with a negotiated peace failed, resulting in the establishment of a no-fly zone in 1993.
A no-fly zone is a ban on flights in a certain airspace with the intention of preventing a military from using the air forces in a conflict.
The no-fly zone in Bosnia was enforced by NATO.
In July 1995 Bosnian Serb forces managed to shoot down an American jet while in August they shelled a marketplace in the capital city of Sarajevo.
With the EU and the UN unable to end the war, NATO carried out airstrikes against Bosnian Serb forces trying to push them to the negotiate.
Kosovo
Though conflicts in Bosnia and other parts of the former socialist Yugoslavia ended by the 1990s, ethnic tensions remained, most notably between Serbs and Albanians in the Serbian province of Kosovo.
Non-violent efforts to resolve these issues failed, leaving way for more militant Kosovar Albanian separatists.
In Kosovo, Albanian insurgents and Yugoslav security forces began clashing, resulting in civilians fleeing their homes and both Serbs and Albanians being killed.
In 1999, NATO once again deployed its armed forces and bombed Yugoslavia (then just Serbia and Montenegro) with the hope of getting Yugoslav forces out of Kosovo.
NATO’s official reason for intervening was to protect Kosovar Albanian civilians from Yugoslav repression and to prevent a repeat of the Bosnian War.
Poor relations between the West and the Yugoslav leadership, dating back to the Bosnian War, also led to scepticism in NATO towards the Yugoslav government.
There were approximately 500 confirmed civilian deaths during the NATO air campaign.
Initially expected to last only a few days, it ended up being seventy-eight days before Yugoslav forces eventual withdrew from the province of Kosovo. NATO led another peacekeeping mission on the ground.
The missions in Bosnia and Kosovo resulted in NATO not just being a defensive alliance but also an active military force abroad operating beyond its members’ borders.
Russia and India opposed the bombing, especially because it did not get a UN Security Council approval.
Afghanistan
On September 11th, 2001, around 3,000 people were murdered in the US in terror attacks on the World Trade Center by the radical Islamic group al-Qaeda, then based in Afghanistan.
The US then invaded Afghanistan to prevent it from being used as a base for future terrorist activity.
Beginning in 2003, NATO led the coalition in Afghanistan as part of the Global War on Terror. At its peak in 2011 there were 130,000 personnel from 51 NATO countries and partners deployed.
The war in Afghanistan is the only time that a NATO member (the US) has triggered the Article 5 mutual defence obligations.
NATO trained and armed the Afghan military in preparation for NATO’s gradual and eventual withdrawal. Despite these efforts, the Afghan government collapsed when the US and its partners withdrew in August 2021.
The war in Afghanistan was the first time NATO deployed outside of the North Atlantic region.
Libya
In 2011, a civil war broke out in Libya between the long-standing dictatorship of Muammar Gaddafi and anti-government rebels.
Gaddafi had an extremely negative relationship with the West for decades because of Libyan support for various anti-Western movements, including terrorist organisations.
Beginning in 2003, Gaddafi’s relationship with the West improved because of his cooperation with the Global War on Terror.
Libya had the highest standard of living in Africa, according to the UN’s Human Development Index.
Gaddafi had a very poor human rights records, which included the use of torture and repressions against his political opponents.
In an effort to protect Libyan civilians from the government during the civil war, the UN Security Council authorised NATO to establish a no-fly zone over Libya, preventing the Libyan Air Force from being deployed.
The intervention did prevent Gaddafi from holding on to his dictatorial rule through force but contributed to a long-lasting civil war and the destabilisation of the neighbouring countries like Niger and Mali.
Russia, Ukraine and NATO
In 2008, NATO announced that Ukraine and Georgia would join eventually. Later that year Russia invaded Georgia, taking control over about a fifth of its territory.
Since the end of the Cold War, the Russian leadership, including Vladimir Putin, has viewed NATO expansion, especially into former Soviet territory, as a threat to Russia's security and national interests.
In late 2013 mass protests started in Ukraine after President Viktor Yanukovych refused to sign an association agreement with the EU, which he initially supported.
As a result, Yanukovych fled Ukraine to Russia, amendments to the constitution weakening the authority of the president were restored and the central government was replaced.
Russia responded by taking over the Crimean Peninsula in southern Ukraine, which hosted the Russian Navy’s Black Sea fleet.
Following the annexation of Crimea, a civil war began in eastern Ukraine between Russian-backed separatists and the Ukrainian government, pushing Ukraine closer to NATO.
After a series of agreements failing, in 2021 Russia posed a series of radical demands, which included stopping most NATO activity in Poland and the Baltic states, as well as formal agreements that Ukraine and Georgia would never join NATO.
With these demands not met, Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Russia hoped to overthrow the Ukrainian government quickly but failed, which resulted in a long war with hundreds of thousands of casualties and Russia occupying around 20% of Ukrainian territory.
In response, most NATO countries imposed sanctions on Russia while also providing hundreds of billions of dollars worth of military and economic support to Ukraine.
This has led to the conflict being called a proxy war between NATO and Russia.
As the world anticipates a potential peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine, a key area of conflict remains whether Ukraine would join NATO, and what security guarantees it would receive from the West and other countries.
Future challenges
In recent years, especially since Donald Trump first became the President of the US, there has been growing disinterest toward NATO among some US politicians.
A major reason for this is the view that the US is paying for the security of Europe, while it needs to focus on Asia and countering China.
NATO members have a non-binding commitment to spend 2% of gross domestic product (GDP) on defence. Several members currently spend less than 2%.
Concerns about US interest in NATO have led to calls for an independent European security policy, sometimes called “strategic autonomy”.
According to its founding treaty, NATO’s commitment is limited to the North Atlantic and Europe. However, in recent years, it has increasingly expanded its focus.
Aside from its military deployments in Afghanistan and the intervention in Libya, the organisation has also begun coordinating more with countries like Japan and South Korea to counteract China.
Author Naman Habtom
Editor Anton Kutuzov
You can help us secure our long-term future!
Please consider sending us a regular donation.
Find out more: