The problems plaguing NATO | TheHill – The Hill

When world leaders gathered in London last week to celebrate NATOs 70th anniversary, they put an international spotlight on a partnership that is profoundly ailing. Seventy years after the signing of theNorth Atlantic Treatyand the formation of the Atlantic Alliance, the Wests most powerful and enduring military bloc is suffering from deep systemic dysfunctions.

That all is not well in the Alliance was clear from the wrangling between President TrumpDonald John TrumpSenate gears up for battle over witnesses in impeachment trial Vulnerable Democrats tout legislative wins, not impeachment Trump appears to set personal record for tweets in a day MORE and French President Emmanuel MacronEmmanuel Jean-Michel MacronTrump is right to shake up NATO The problems plaguing NATO France, Brazilian states to announce international effort to fight Amazon fires MORE, who traded recriminations ahead of the summit and pointed barbs at press-conference time. But the problems run far deeper than simple personal politics, and stem from at least two sources.

Today, perhaps NATOs most pressing challenge is the lack of a clearly-defined mission. The alliance was formed following World War II in order,as its first Secretary-General, Lord Ismay, put it, tokeep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.In the decades that followed, that formula helped transform Germany into a crucial ally and successfully deter Soviet aggression. But it more or less fell by the wayside with the collapse of the USSR, replaced by the broad objective of establishing and then broadening a zone of peace and stability across the European Continent, and eventually beyond.

Today, NATO is once again focused on Russia, which in recent years has demonstrated that it is eager to subvert the post-World War II democratic order in Europe. Since Russias 2014 invasion of Ukraine and subsequent annexation of Crimea, the alliance hassignificantly stepped upits military deployments around and assistance to Eastern Europe and the Baltic States as a means of deterring further military adventurism by Moscow. Yet, politically, the modern-day alliance isnt necessarily united regarding the importance of that mission, or even what might be needed to accomplish it.

Back in 2017, a simulated wargame carried out by the prestigious RAND Corporation think tankfoundNATO woefully unprepared to effectively counter aRussianland offensive against the Baltics and warned that its defenses would collapse within 36 to 60 hours of aRussianinvasion. Some two-and-a-half years on, little has changed.Earlier this fall, outgoing Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford told Newsweek that "the NATO advantage over a resurgent Russia has eroded," and that the alliance was losing its edge in strategic competition with an increasingly technologically advanced,militarily capableand politically aggressive Kremlin.

NATO leaders, meanwhile, dont appear uniformly committed to fixing the problem. Just weeks before the London gathering, President Macron made global headlines when heargued forcefully in an interview withThe Economistthat Europe needed to rethink its approach to Russia despite the fact that the Kremlin hasnt done much to warrant the lifting of sanctions that had been leveled by the EU back in 2014 in response to its invasion of Ukraine.

At the same time, President Trumps calls for greater military contributions from member states as a way of shoring up the alliances strategic capabilities have been met with much political resistance and, at least so far, too little substantive movement. As of mid-2019,according to official NATO estimates, the median defense expenditures among the alliances 28 member states was a paltry 1.63 percent of national GDP, and just eight countries the U.S., Greece, Estonia, the U.K., Romania, Poland, Latvia and Lithuania were spending more than the recommended 2 percent of GDP annually on defense.

The difficulties dont end there, however. NATO also suffers from serious internal friction.

Alliances, they say, limp along at the pace of their most grudging member, and today NATOs most recalcitrant participant is unquestionably Turkey. Over the past decade and a half, the country that once served as the blocs southeastern flank and its geopolitical outpost in the Middle East has become a less-than-reliable strategic ally.

Under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development Party, Turkey has trended in a distinctly anti-Western direction. Although officials in Ankara still pay lip service to their countrys longstanding goal of joining Europe, the actions taken by Erdogans government in recent years from theacquisition of advanced Russian air defensesagainst NATOs urging to itspermissive attitude toward regional extremists have given decidedly different indications.

Indeed, just a week before the NATO summit in London, Turkey effectivelyheld the alliance hostagewhen it refused to endorse a plan to bolster defense of the Baltics unless it got more backing from Europe for its recent invasion and occupation of Syria. It subsequentlymoderated its stanceas a result of international pressure. In the process, though, it injected still more doubt into the notion that it remains a committed member of the NATO coalition.

All of this matters a great deal for the future of the alliance. NATOs London summit closed with a communique that painted adecidedly rosy pictureof the organizations health, and spent precious little time discussing the real systemic problems now facing the worlds most important military bloc. Thats a real shame, because until NATO can clearly, unequivocally begin to address its own shortcomings, the state of its union cannot truly be strong.

Ilan Berman is Senior Vice President of the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, a non-profit dedicated to supplying expert analysis to those who make or influence U.S. foreign policy and to assisting world leaders with building democracies and market economies.

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