Category Archives: NATO

The outcome of the upcoming U.S. presidential election is going to have major consequences for the relationship between the U.S. and its allies. While President Joe Biden is a firm believer in the value of the transatlantic alliance, Republican contender Donald Trump has for years railed against U.S. participation in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the military alliance commonly referred to as NATO.

In February 2024, for example, Trump said that if he were reelected president, he would tell Russia to do whatever the hell they want against NATO members that are delinquent in not having invested enough in their own military capabilities. Foreign policy commentators viewed that as an invitation for Russia to attack these NATO countries.

In September 2022, six months after Russias full-scale invasion, Ukraine applied to join NATO. Now, Ukraines potential membership is one of the top questions that representatives from NATOs 32 member countries in North America and Europe will consider when they meet in Washington in July 2024.

At the root of debates over policy toward alliances such as NATO is the assumption that NATO requires its members to step in and help with defense if another member of the alliance is attacked.

As political scientists who study the role of international organizations like NATO, we think it is important to understand that, in reality, alliance agreements are more flexible than people think.

In practice, it is possible for the U.S. and other Western countries to stay out of a conflict that involves a NATO country without having to break their alliance commitments. The NATO treatys language contains loopholes that let member countries remain out of other members wars in certain situations.

One key part of the NATO treaty that countries sign when they join the alliance is called Article 5. This says that an armed attack against one NATO member in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.

In the case of such an attack, NATO countries agree to assist the country that requires help, including through the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

But the treaty does not include a clear definition of a what an armed attack actually is.

This mattered in February 2020, when Turkey asked for a NATO meeting and requested that NATO intervene with military force in response to Russian and Syrian forces attacks on its territory, which had killed 33 Turkish soldiers, during the Syrian civil war. NATO allies chose not to defend Turkey with military force, arguing that the level of violence against Turkey wasnt enough to call it an armed attack.

Even when NATO members decide that Article 5 should apply to a specific situation, each country can still individually decide how to act. That is, while NATO does have administrative staff based in Brussels, there is no central NATO authority that tells each country what it must do.

Instead, each country tells NATO what it is and is not willing to do.

NATO members have only formally invoked Article 5 once following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon outside of Washington.

At that time, 13 NATO countries sent fighter aircraft to help the U.S. patrol its skies from mid-October 2001 to mid-May 2002.

But most NATO allies chose not to send troops to Afghanistan to support the U.S. in its fight against the Taliban. This lack of action on the part of some NATO allies was not seen as breaking the treaty and didnt prompt a major debate and the countries that chose not to join the fight were not sanctioned by or ejected from the alliance.

The NATO treaty also provides some exceptions based on geography. When Argentina went to war with the United Kingdom (a NATO member) over the Falkland Islands in 1982, the U.S. and other NATO members were able to use the fact that the alliance only applies to the North Atlantic region as a reason to stay out of the conflict.

Some political scientists argue that voters will demand their leaders take the country to war to defend an ally. This implies that what really binds the members of an alliance together is not the legal text of an international treaty itself, given that no international court is empowered to enforce the treaty, but rather the publics expectations of what it means to be an ally.

As part of our research into how the American public thinks about international legal obligations, we decided to construct an experiment to see if presidents could use alliance loophole language to justify keeping the U.S. out of a war involving an ally.

In 2022 and 2023, we conducted a pair of survey-based experiments that involved asking nearly 5,000 American adults to consider a hypothetical scenario in which a U.S. ally comes under attack from a powerful neighbor.

Some of the respondents were told that the text of the alliance treaty would allow the U.S. government to avoid having to send troops to defend the embattled ally, while others were not told that information. Though the survey did not mention a specific alliance, we described the terms of the alliance in a way that matches the language used in treaties like NATOs. We then asked the respondents to tell us their views on sending U.S. troops to defend the ally under attack.

Our results revealed a big difference between the people who were told about the flexibility in the alliance treaty and those who were not. While respondents from both groups were generally inclined to come to the defense of an ally, their willingness to do so was significantly lower when they were told that the alliance treaty did not necessarily require the U.S. to send troops.

This suggests that political leaders can, under certain circumstances, manage to convince a large segment of the public that its OK to abandon an ally in a time of need.

So, when it comes to debates about U.S. policy toward its alliance partners and whether it should admit new members like Ukraine it is important for both sides to appreciate that alliance commitments are not quite as binding, either legally or politically, as the conventional wisdom suggests.

The rest is here:
Joining NATO binds countries to defend each other but this commitment is not set in stone - The Conversation Indonesia

1. Stoltenberg: Record number of NATO allies hitting defense spending targets during war in Ukraine  Voice of America - VOA News
2. Record Number of NATO Allies Hit Military Spending Targets  The New York Times
3. More than 20 countries will meet NATO spending targets, Stoltenberg says  POLITICO

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Stoltenberg: Record number of NATO allies hitting defense spending targets during war in Ukraine - Voice of America - VOA News

The Biden administration sometimes refers to the need to build a bridge to NATO membership for Ukraine. Its an apt metaphorjust not in the way its proponents might think.

One might think of a bridge as a mere symbol of hope. But, invoked in a military context, a bridge is best understood in its role as wartime infrastructure. And that metaphor works precisely because building a bridge in wartime is an incredibly difficult and complex operationone that military planners call a wet gap crossing. Conducting a contested wet gap crossing is periloussee Ukraines evisceration of a Russian battalion attempting to cross the Siverskyi Donets River in May 2022but the possible strategic rewards are high. In 1944, George S. Pattons Third Army crossed the Moselle River at Nancy, turning the German defensive line and opening a strategic position for the Battle of the Bulge.

Much like a wet gap crossing, bringing Ukraine into NATO would be risky and costly, but it could lead to strategic success. If NATO nations are truly serious about bringing Ukraine into NATO, then creating a bridge to NATO cannot just be a clever diplomatic metaphor, and it should not be attempted merely in order to get to the other side, like the Russians at Siverskyi Donets. It has to be approached like the difficult, sophisticated, multifaceted operation that it is, and it must be part of a broader strategy for postwar Euro-Atlantic security, as was the Moselle crossing in World War II.

Diplomats and politicians planning for Ukraines future role in NATO at Julys NATO summit in Washington would do well to understand the U.S. militarys own approach to wet gap crossings. The lessons are instructiveand sobering.

Step 1: Try to go around

Because wet gap crossings are so difficult, the preferred option, if possible, is to avoid them altogether. Some would say we should not bring Ukraine into NATO because it is too risky. But that ignores the fact that there are no good options short of NATO membership for Ukraine, and the risks of not bringing Ukraine into NATO are greater in the long run. As in military operations, crossing a river often is the fastest, most effective way to an objective.

Despite the known risks and difficulties inherent in combat bridging, militaries still maintain this capability because they know that sometimes the strategic opportunity afforded by a successful wet gap crossing is worth the risks and difficulties. They also know that sometimes, going around is not an option. Russia has invaded its neighbors and rattled its nuclear saber, but one thing it has not done is attack NATO directly. That is because NATOs Article 5 remains an effective deterrent. Nothing else has worked.

Those arguing against Ukrainian membership in NATO assert that perhaps we should choose an Israel model of continued materiel support to Ukraine or that a combination of countries, such as the G-7 nations, providing long-term economic support to Ukraine, would convince Russia that it cannot win. The Israel model will not work because Israel has nuclear weapons and Ukraine does not. In fact, thats the whole point. Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in 1994 when Russia, among other nations, agreed to respect Ukraines sovereignty and territorial integrity. Similarly, Swedens and Finlands decisions to join NATO despite already being members of the European Union demonstrate that bringing Ukraine into the EU and affording it the EUs Article 42.7 mutual assistance clause would be insufficient to deter Russian aggression.

Step 2: Plan and rehearse

Once a decision has been made to conduct a deliberate wet gap crossing, planning is crucial. Simply moving your forces up to the edge of the water and trying to figure out a way across when you reach it would guarantee disaster. You must reconnoiter potential crossing sites, assess which will likely be successful given the terrain as well as your and your enemys strengths and weaknesses, and prepare multiple crossing sites.

There are several options for bridging Ukraine into NATO, all of which should be considered but not all of which seem promising. The firstdeclaring Ukraine a NATO member while hostilities are ongoingis theoretically possible but likely politically untenable given the need for unanimity among the 32 allies to bring in a new member. The fact that it took a year to bring the geographically blessed and militarily advanced Sweden into the alliance belies this harsh fact. If, somehow, this became politically tenable, then NATO would have to quickly deploy forces into Ukraine to make the Article 5 guarantee more than just lip service.

The second option would be to bring Ukraine into NATO as part of a guarantee during negotiations over a cease-fire or cessation of hostilitiesi.e., as soon as a cessation is in place, Ukraine will accede to NATO. This likely would not work because Russia would continue fighting rather than agree to a cessation of hostilities that triggered Ukrainian membership in NATO.

The third option would be for a critical mass of NATO nations to guarantee Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity following a cease-fire by deploying forces on Ukrainian territory. This has the benefit of offering concrete security guarantees to Ukraine while allowing time to bring onside skeptical NATO nations.

While the future shape of Ukraine is unknowable, and the timeline for Ukrainian admission to NATO is unknown, the alliance should start working now to achieve unanimity of political support among NATO nations for Ukrainian accession and also to determine how, where, and when forces from NATO nations will be used to guarantee the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine. Both measures will be unavoidable, regardless of which option is deemed most credible.

Step 3: Prepare the battlespace

In combat bridging, you dont just line up all your vehicles in a convoy and drive directly to the location where you want to build your bridge and then start putting things in the water. That would be suicide. You plan, rehearse, prepare your forces, and conduct a preparatory campaign to establish favorable conditions. Similarly, simply declaring a Ukrainian bridge to NATO without doing any planning or preparation would just leave Ukraine in the same strategic limbo it faced following the 2008 Bucharest declaration and similarly would motivate Moscow to redouble its efforts to undermine Ukrainian sovereignty before it is able to join NATO.

For NATO, this means that members need to begin whipping together votes in favor of Ukrainian NATO accession now. Diplomats need to understand who in the alliance already is on board with bringing Ukraine into NATO and under what conditions. For those whose position is never or not until the war is over, more creative solutions must be proposed, discussed, and solidifiedin private. This cannot be a one-off discussion; it must be a constant campaign to prepare the battlespace for eventual Ukrainian accession.

Regardless of whether the war ends with Ukraine in control of its 1991 borders or Kyiv settles for something short of that, troops from NATO nations will need to be stationed on Ukrainian soil to provide the time, space, and security necessary to complete the bridge into NATO. These forces should include a coalition of key alliesideally including NATOs three nuclear states (Britain, France, and the United States) to signal that despite a lack of Article 5 security guarantees, NATOs nuclear nations are committed to upholding the agreed-on bordersjust as NATO troops were stationed in West Germany to deter Soviet forces in East Germany in the years between the end of World War II and West Germanys accession to NATO.

Moving these forces into Ukraine in a short timeframe following an armistice or cease-fire would be extremely difficult both logistically and politically. Therefore, NATO nations should begin to set the theater now for those moves by declaring that NATOs air defenses surrounding Ukraine will begin to shoot down Russian missiles and one-way attack drones that are on a trajectory to hit NATO territory; sending small numbers of NATO military personnel into Ukraine to provide training to Ukrainians; and negotiating with Turkey on allowing NATO naval capabilities into the Black Sea to protect civilian shipping.

Step 4: Commit

A wet gap crossing is a massive operation. It is viewed as a corps-level effort in the U.S. Army and is assumed that the Air Force, Space Force, and cyber assets also will provide critical support. It is difficult, risky, and costly, but if done properly, it can lead to strategic breakthrough.

Precisely because it is so risky, the commander of the operation must assess the risks involved, mitigate as much risk as possible without jeopardizing the mission, and accept that it is impossible to mitigate every risk. This is a critical step because once a combat wet gap crossing has begun, a commander must fully commit to the plan and leverage all forces available to make it a success. Half-measures in this type of operation lead to failure.

If NATO is serious about bringing Ukraine in as a memberand it should bethen it must be clear-eyed about the risks. It must develop a concrete plan, not just a political laundry list. This plan must be in support of a broader strategy. And most importantly, it must commit itself to success. Anything less is likely to lead to failure.

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Ukraine Needs a 'Wet Gap Crossing' to NATO - Foreign Policy