Category Archives: NATO

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoan is frustrating the U.S. and its allies by opposing the bid by Sweden and Finland to join NATO.

The position is complicating the message of unity the Biden administration wants to send to Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.

The bids by Sweden and Finland to join the military alliance are historic and a big defeat for Russia, which does not want them added to the group. The fact that their decision to do so is the result of the Russian war is a point that has been highlighted by U.S. officials.

But the diplomatic victory over Moscow is clouded by Erdoans opposition over charges that the Nordic countries harbor Kurdish terrorist groups.

NATO members must unanimously agree to accept the members.

There are whispers that Ankara is looking for something such as U.S. fighter jets to give its blessing.

Erdoan will talk with Finnish officials on Saturday and has kept the door open to a shift, telling reporters that we will continue all these discussions for the sake of not interrupting diplomacy.

Turkey is widely seen as a necessary but problematic partner.

Erdoan for years has rankled Washington over his pursuit of Russian weapons systems, military adventures in Syria, domestic political oppression and violence against U.S. federal security and American protesters in the capital.

Yet the administration and lawmakers concede Turkey provides a key bulwark of security for NATO in the Black Sea and has provided arms to Ukraine that have proven decisive in the fight against Russian forces.

And while the U.S. is frustrated Erdoans government has resisted joining sanctions against Russia, they relent that Ankara is a unique venue to host any peace talks that may come between Kyiv and Moscow.

Turkey is an important NATO partner. We have very important military installations in Turkey, its in our interest to have a good relationship with Turkey, Sen. Ben Cardin (Md.), the No. 2 Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told The Hill.

Theyve been a good partner in regards to Ukraine. So I want to make sure that we act as a responsible partner, by making it clear that we dont want them to have a relationship with Russia, which could be contrary to our security needs within NATO.

The administration has been tight-lipped about what it could offer Turkey to get its acceptance for Finland and Sweden.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters aboard Air Force One on Thursday that the U.S. is prepared to be supportive in any way, but described the disagreement as one largely between Turkey, Finland and Sweden.

He and other officials have expressed confidence that the alliance will uniformly agree on allowing the Nordic countries to become members.

Sullivan also said there were no plans for President Biden andErdoanto speak but noted that Biden would be happy to do it if asked.

Biden hosted the leaders of Finland and Sweden at the White House on Thursday as a sign of robust U.S. support for their joining the alliance. During a Rose Garden event, Finnish Prime Minister Sauli Niinist directly appealed to Turkey.

As NATO allies, we will commit to Turkeys security just as Turkey will commit to our security, Niinist said. We take terrorism seriously. We condemn terrorism in all its forms and we are actively engaged in combating it. We are open to discussing all the concerns Turkey may have concerning our membership in an open and constructive manner.

Rose Gottemoeller, a former deputy secretary general of NATO, said she expects Finland and Swedens applications will ultimately be successful, but predicted it will be a very hard bargain with Turkey.

It is a serious matter because this was always at the top of the list of issues when I was deputy secretary general, Gottemoeller said. They were using this issue constantly as leverage.

Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho), the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, questioned whether Turkey could sustain opposition to Finland and Swedens membership.

If youre a member of a group, and 29 want to do it and you dont, thats a heavy lift, he said. He also described the U.S. and Turkish relationship as having pluses and minuses.

Not all lawmakers are so diplomatic. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, warned against giving in to Turkeys behavior.

In general, I dont think Turkey should be rewarded. Turkey hasnt agreed to put any European or American sanctions on Russia, I mean the list is long, I dont understand how we keep rewarding authoritarian figures, he said.

Menendez has warned that the administration should not entertain Turkish requests to buy more F-16 fighter jets.

Im not a supporter of sending F-16s to Turkey. Theyre still in violation of CAATSA sanctions, Mendendez said, referring to Turkeys ownership of the Russian S400 missile defense system that violates federal law.

The State Department is proposing to sell Turkey upgrades and munitions for its existing F-16s, a strong signal of closer cooperation between Washington and Ankara.

Lawmakers are muted over whether they will support the proposal.

I think its important for us to keep Turkey as a strong NATO ally, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), also a Foreign Relations Committee member, told The Hill when asked if she supported the F-16 upgrades.

Some Democrats are looking to provide strict oversight of any military equipment sales to Ankara, in particular responding to concerns from Greece that Turkey is carrying out provocative military flights over Greek islands.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis warned in a speech Tuesday to a joint session of Congress against weapons sales to Turkey, without naming Ankara specifically.

The last thing that NATO needs, at a time when our focus is on helping Ukraine defeat Russias aggression, is another source of instability on NATOs southeastern flank, Mitsotakis said.

And I ask you to take this into account when you make defense procurement decisions concerning the eastern Mediterranean.

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) told The Hill that Mitsotakis was completely right and that lawmakers may use the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act to address concerns over Turkeys actions in the eastern Mediterranean but did not get into specifics.

Theres just not an easy answer to it The [U.S. and Turkish military-to-military] relationship is still pretty strong, but its at the diplomatic and senior-elected level where things are really rocky right now,Kaine said.

Theyre being really problematic right now.

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US frustrated over problematic NATO ally Turkey - The Hill

Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, has disclosed that the UK has begun discussions with its international allies about sending modern weaponry to Moldova to protect it from Russia.

She said that she wants to see the country, which is to the south-west of Ukraine, equipped to Nato standard.

Moldova is not currently a Nato member and there are concerns that it could be a future target for Vladimir Putin after the Ukraine conflict.

In an interview with the Telegraph, Truss said: I would want to see Moldova equipped to Nato standard. This is a discussion were having with our allies.

Putin has been absolutely clear about his ambitions to create a greater Russia and just because his attempts to take Kyiv werent successful it doesnt mean hes abandoned those ambitions.

The UK, US, France and Germany have held talks about whether to sign a form of security guarantee for Ukraine to continue providing weaponry and support in the long term.

Truss added: What were working on at the moment is a joint commission with Ukraine and Poland on upgrading Ukrainian defences to Nato standard. So we will scope out what that looks like, what the Ukrainians need. The question then is how do you maintain that over time?

How do we ensure that Ukraine is permanently able to defend itself and how do we guarantee that happens? Thats what we are working on at the moment.

And that also applies to other vulnerable states such as Moldova. Because again, the threat is broader from Russia, we also need to make sure that they are equipped to Nato standards.

Last month Moldovas deputy prime minister warned that the country was facing a very dangerous new moment and said forces were seeking to stoke tensions after a series of explosions in the break-away region of Transnistria.

Nicu Popescu said his government had seen a dangerous deterioration of the situation after grenade attacks on the ministry of security in the region. The attacks represented a very dangerous new moment in the history of our region, he said, adding that Moldovas institutions had been put on high alert in response.

Fears are growing that Moldova and Transnistria could be drawn into the Ukraine conflict. The predominantly Russian-speaking region in eastern Moldova has been controlled by pro-Russia separatists since 1992 after a short war when Moscow intervened on the side of the rebels.

Speaking before the attacks, a senior Russian commander said gaining control over southern Ukraine would help Russia link up with Transnistria, which shares a 453km (280-mile) border with Ukraine.

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UK and allies discuss arming Moldova with Nato standard weapons - The Guardian

Cavoli President Joe Bidens nominee to lead U.S. European Command and become NATOs supreme allied commander in Europe would go on to graduate from Princeton University in 1987 with an A.B. in biology. His senior thesis, The Effect of Earthworms on the Vertical Distribution of Slime Molds in the Soil, didnt exactly foreshadow the career of a wartime military leader.

After graduating, he received his officer commission and joined the infantry, deploying to the first Gulf War and spending time in Italy and Germany. Along the way, he got a masters degree from Yale in Russian Studies, adding a fluency in that language to the Italian and French he had already picked up.

The Yale degree would normally result in a fork in an Army officers career. His new role as a foreign area officer focused on Russia, along with a stint on the Pentagons Joint Staff looking at Moscow, typically spells the end of operational deployments and four-star commands. But Cavoli has charted a career moving back and forth between front-line deployments to Afghanistan and leading infantry units to think tank and strategy jobs.

Hes had an unusual career progression compared to your average Army four-star, which I think is actually a good and encouraging thing, said Richard Hooker, former director for Europe and Russia for the National Security Council and dean of the NATO Defense College in Rome.

Since 2018, those two sides of his career path have been at work as Cavoli has sought to transform how and where U.S. and NATO forces train for war. If confirmed by the Senate to take the new job, hell be responsible for leading those troops in an increasingly uncertain showdown with the Kremlin, taking the helm of an expanding NATO that is expected to more than double its border with Russia once Finland joins the alliance.

A decorated combat vet and universally praised four-star Army general, Cavoli is poised to become NATOs top general just as the alliance tackles the biggest challenge of the post-Cold War era: How to confront and deter Vladimir Putin as he continues his unhinged campaign in Ukraine.

I dont think theres ever been a moment like this where a new commander has come in and had so much on his plate on the first day, said Leah Scheunemann, the deputy director of the Transatlantic Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council.

Cavoli wont come into the job cold. Having served as the head of the Armys Europe/Africa command since 2018, hes lived in Germany for the past four years spearheading a series of NATO exercises that have been the largest and most ambitious since the 1980s, bringing dozens of nations including non-NATO partners Finland and Sweden into the fold in unprecedented ways.

In getting the buy-in across the continent to hold complex, weekslong exercises that stretch across borders and involve ground, air and naval forces, Cavoli has forged the kinds of connections that will be critical in keeping the angsty 30-member NATO alliance rowing in the same direction.

Hell also take the helm during a reimagining in Washington and across Europe over how they plan to fund and equip their militaries.

For years, the prevailing policy view across NATO was to avoid provoking Putin, but many of those considerations were tossed aside the night of Feb. 24, when Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine.

Soon after, countries began rushing weapons to Ukrainian forces, and NATO members such as Poland, Germany, Romania and hopefuls Finland and Sweden pledged billions more in security funding.

As head of U.S. Army Europe, Cavoli has played an important role in that, and I think hell continue to press that work at European Command and in the dual role as NATOs supreme allied commander for Europe, Hooker said.

Some of the changes in how NATO operates predate Februarys invasion and Cavolis tenure at U.S. Army Europe. Around the time he was appointed to the job, plans were already being made for larger, more ambitious military exercises across the continent. The culmination of that effort was the Defender 2020 exercise, which sent 20,000 U.S.-based troops to Europe to drill alongside 17,000 European troops stretching from Finland to Romania in the largest NATO exercise since the end of the Cold War.

Those exercises, and new NATO deployments to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania on the Baltic Sea to backstop the alliances smallest members, are a work in progress. The Baltic countries in particular are pushing for a permanent NATO and specifically American presence within their borders, a request that Brussels continues to weigh.

Those issues along with the unveiling next month of NATOs first new strategic concept since 2011 will be top of mind at a NATO summit in Madrid scheduled for late June, which will see the heads of state of member nations, and likely Sweden and Finland. The meeting could also be Cavolis coming out ceremony as the most powerful military officer on the continent.

From his first days in office, Cavoli is going to be in the position of implementing this new strategic concept, which will include how the alliance intends to deal with China for the first time, Scheunemann said.

Hell also have to grapple with the war in Ukraine, calls from the Baltic nations for hard commitments for a larger alliance presence, integrating Finland and Sweden, military modernization, and working with the European Unions plans to increase its own defense spending.

With huge training events across the continent and a war in Ukraine that has pulled in the entire NATO alliance, Cavoli also sweats the small stuff.

Cavolis tenure at U.S. Army Europe has seen the reestablishment of the Armys V Corps in Germany, which coordinates maneuvers and logistics between U.S. and NATO, a new U.S. headquarters in Pozna, Poland, along with expanded rotational deployments to Romania and Poland. He has also thrown himself into more intricate issues such as launching studies of railroad gauges and transportation infrastructure in Eastern Europe, which often still use Warsaw Pact standards, in an effort to smooth the movement of NATO troops and materiel.

U.S. Army Europe has shared that information with the local governments and the European Union, and has worked to persuade EU nations to adopt a standard form for requesting the shipment of supplies across national borders to ease the bureaucracy of moving equipment quickly between allied nations.

Were proving solutions that weve implemented, were quick and methodical about that, Cavoli said in a February 2022 interview with the Association of the United States Army, an advocacy group.

All of this work on both major exercises and trying to align infrastructure across NATO contributes to not only his understanding of the theater, but also has ensured hes well known across the continent, Hooker said. That is really important at a time like this.

Before he can jump into the hot seat of leading changes in the U.S. presence on the continent and bringing allies along, first Cavoli will have to make it through the Senate. Current EUCOM chief, Air Force Gen. Tod Wolters, was slated to leave the post this month, but may extend if the Senate cant confirm Cavoli before leaving town for the summer.

The Senate Armed Services Committee is working to squeeze in a hearing to take up Cavolis nomination this month, said a committee staffer, who asked not to be named in order to discuss future plans for the panel.

Veteran SASC member Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) told POLITICO in a statement that the close coordination between the U.S. and Europe has never been more important than today as we confront Russias barbaric invasion of Ukraine, and as Putin looks to expand the reach of his malign influence throughout Europe. She added that Cavoli has had an exemplary career.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) listens during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the conclusion of military operations in Afghanistan and plans for future counterterrorism operations on Sept. 28, 2021 in Washington.|Sarahbeth Maney/The New York Times via AP, Pool

The crucible for Cavolis generation of officers has been the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and his two tours to Afghanistan in some ways tie his time as a multilingual strategist and frontline soldier together.

In early 2006, when the Pentagon was focused on the unfolding chaos in Iraq, the Taliban were increasing their attacks on small U.S. outposts across Afghanistan, particularly in the mountainous east.

Then-Lt. Col. Cavoli brought the 700 soldiers of his 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry Regiment into that Afghanistan. Their arrival in March was the start of what would prove to be a bloody, 16-month deployment to the Korengal and Pech valleys, places that have become synonymous with the searing American experience there. Valleys and villages taken at a high cost were abandoned, and plans for stability and an enduring Afghan government presence ended in frustration.

It crushes people. Theres a lot of human debris left behind from a deployment like that, Cavoli would later tell author Wesley Morgan for The Hardest Place, his book about fighting in the valleys. The stress from the deployment which was extended by four months at the last moment took such a toll that Cavoli would later need dental work to repair damage caused by constantly grinding his teeth.

He would spend several years after Afghanistan teaching and studying in Germany before heading back in 2011, where he deployed for a year as deputy commander of Regional Command-West, serving under an Italian general where Cavoli was able to brush up on his Italian in a command more focused on training Afghan troops than fighting.

With Afghanistan behind him, Cavoli returned to Washington as a colonel, where he headed back to the Pentagon to work as a fellow on the Armys Strategic Studies Group for then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno.

Dave Johnson, a retired Army colonel who studies changes in modern warfare at the RAND Corporation, was picked by Odierno to run the group, and brought Cavoli aboard. I told Odierno at the time, I still believe it: Chris was the best colonel Ive ever met. And Ive spent 50 years in and around the Army, Johnson said.

Johnson would later recommend Cavoli to work as Odiernos executive officer.

I just cant think of anybody as prepared from an intellectual perspective or a combat perspective, to take the Europe job at this moment, Johnson said. Hes worked with almost every ground force commander in Europe at some point, he knows the political and operational landscape.

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From worms to war: The unlikely beginnings of NATO's next top general - POLITICO

This wont happen unless Europeans rapidly commit themselves to a concrete action plan that requires each NATO member to fulfill strong and specific military obligations on an annual basis. No less important, governments must place their troops under the control of a unified command structure. If each country sends its fighters into the field under its own national commander, their separate forces would be overwhelmed by coordinated Russian assaults, especially in an era of lightning-fast weapons.

This raises a very real institution-building challenge for the continents political leaders. Only the European Union is in a realistic position to organize a broad-based military effort. Its parliament is directly elected by the citizens of all the states in the Union. After each election, the majority of delegates choose an executive commission currently led by Ursula von der Leyen to make key policy decisions. This body has the precious democratic legitimacy required to embark on such an unprecedented military initiative.

At present, however, the treaties defining the powers of the EU dont grant the Union any war-making authority whatsoever. Before the commission can step into the breach, another key institution the Council of Ministers must propose revisions that empower the commission to move forward with its rigorous demands upon the member states.

The council consists of the chief executives of each country. But fortunately, its current leader is Emmanuel Macron who staked his presidential campaign against Marine Le Pen on an emphatically continental vision of Frances future. Many commentators have downplayed Macrons achievement by emphasizing Le Pens success in generating popular support for her hard-right nationalist program. Yet the fact remains that Macron is the first French president who has won a second term in office in the last 20 years and he did so by a decisive 59-41 margin.

The French president is the continental leader with the strongest democratic mandate to expand the EU treaties to authorize collaboration with NATO to confront the Russian military threat. Indeed, Macron has already stated that [i]n the coming weeks, we need to bring to being a European proposal to forge a new security and stability order. We need to build it between Europeans, then share it with our allies in the NATO framework.

Here is where Joe Biden can play a crucial role. He should not only publicly encourage Macron and von der Leyen to begin the hard bargaining required to enact the dramatic revisions to EU law required before a European army can become a reality. Since the reorganization of NATO also requires Americas consent to treaty revisions, Biden should immediately announce his strong support for the necessary changes.

Normally, of course, it is virtually impossible to win the two-thirds Senate majority needed for treaty revisions. The Ukraine bloodbath, however, has dramatically transformed the political situation. With Macron and von der Leyen embarking on their own intensive efforts to reconstruct NATO, Biden will be in a strong position to gain the bipartisan support of a supermajority especially since the Europeans are now prepared, at long last, to pay their fair share of the overall defense effort. It will take a lot of hard work to develop a concrete action program for the new continental army and assure its effective implementation in each of the states of the European Union. If serious efforts to lay the legal foundations dont start immediately, Europe wont have a realistic chance of putting a fighting force on the ground by 2030.

Even if Democrats lose control of the Senate in 2022, this will be one of the rare issues where Capitol Hill will likely stand behind the president. In the meantime, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his team can offer concrete help to Macron and von der Leyen in their ambitious campaign to gain broad-based political support for the reconstruction of NATO on their side of the Atlantic.

Even with Americas help, their success is by no means assured. At best, it will take a year or two of wheeling-and-dealing before EU leaders can gain the legal authority to develop a concrete action program and assure its effective enforcement in each of the states of the European Union. Nevertheless, there will never be a better time to make this effort and if it succeeds, Putin and his successors will confront a decisive deterrent.

In giving their strong support to the European effort, however, Biden and the Senate should also insist that the new NATO remain faithful to its founding principles. In particular, when the treaty was first signed in 1949, NATO members attached a fundamental condition to their pledge of mutual military assistance. They made it clear that they would come to a countrys defense only if its government was making a good-faith effort to strengthen their free institutions. Otherwise, it could not rely on its NATO allies to come to its defense against attack.

Seventy-five years later, it is painfully apparent that some NATO countries are working to destroy freedom rather than strengthen it. Turkey is the most obvious example. Over the past decade, it has been transformed into an authoritarian state by Recep Tayyip Erdoan. Worse yet, Erdoan sent his army to help Syrias despotic regime fight NATOs troops battling against the very alliance he and his predecessors had pledged to support. Since Turkey is neither a reliable ally nor a defender of free institutions, Biden and the Senate should refuse to sign a treaty that continues to recognize it as a NATO member.

Hungary is a tougher case. Like Erdoan, Viktor Orbn has used his time in office to create an illiberal democracy, which decisively undermines NATOs founding commitment to freedom. Moreover, when he was running for reelection during the early days of the Ukraine war, he condemned Ukraines president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as an enemy of the Hungarian nation and campaigned on a platform that opposed any EU sanctions against Russia for its invasion. He then used his control of the mass media to deny his opponents a fair opportunity to challenge his celebration of Putins aggression. As a consequence, Orbns landslide victory at the polls only dramatizes his success in entrenching his illiberal principles into the nations constitution.

At the very least, Biden should insist that Hungary be suspended from NATO until it can credibly reestablish that it has dramatically changed course and is on the way to rebuilding its free institutions. There is every reason to believe that the leadership in Brussels and Paris would respond to this American initiative with enthusiasm. Indeed, von der Leyen is already leading the commission down a rarely invoked path that would strip Hungary of the billion-dollar EU subsidies its government receives which Orbn now uses as a slush fund to sustain his dictatorial ambitions.

The commission is also seriously considering similar steps against Poland in response to its continuing defiance of decisions by the European Court of Justice, which has declared that the current government is violating fundamental principles of constitutional democracy to which the European Union is committed. If von der Leyen gains the necessary support to suspend Polands voting privileges in parliament until it complies with the courts demands, Biden should support its suspension from the Alliance as well.

The challenges ahead are extraordinary. But the reconstruction of NATO not only represents the Wests best chance to prevent future Russian aggression. It also offers an opportunity for the United States and Europe to revitalize the great Enlightenment tradition of liberal democracy against the nationalist demagogues seeking to destroy it on both sides of the Atlantic.

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Opinion | How to Reinvigorate NATO and Deter Putin's Aggression - POLITICO

STORY: Finland must join the NATO military alliance "without delay", the country's president and prime minister confirmed on Thursday (May 12).

In a major policy shift for the country - triggered by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Moscow said the move was "definitely" a threat and that it was ready to respond.

Having long warned Finland of consequences should it choose to join NATO, the Kremlin added that the expansion of the military bloc would not make Europe or the world more stable.

But Finland's neighbor Sweden is also close to a decision on asking to join NATO after decades of following a neutral path.

The announcement represents a huge setback for Russia, which had partly attempted to justify its invasion of Ukraine as a means to protect itself from NATO's eastwards expansion.

The Finnish parliament will debate the announcement on Monday (May 16).

Foreign minister Pekka Haaviston told EU lawmakers the move would improve security in the Baltic Sea region.

"Russia's invasion of Ukraine has altered the European and Finnish security environment. However, Finland is not facing an immediate military threat."

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Russia wanted to avoid a direct a clash with NATO.

But that Moscow was prepared to make a "decisive response" to anyone that tried to hinder Russia's "special military operation" in Ukraine.

Finland shares an 810 mile border with Russia that would more than double the current frontier between the U.S.-led alliance and Russia.

And put NATO guards a few hours' drive from the northern outskirts of St Petersburg.

Finland has gradually stepped up its cooperation with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.

But it had resisted joining NATO in order to maintain friendly relations with its eastern neighbor - until Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February .

Ahead of Thursday's joint statement Finnish President Sauli Niinisto said its move to join NATO deomstrated that Russias actions had backed it into a corner.

"If that would be the case, if we join, my response would be that you caused this. Look at the mirror."

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Russia threatens to retaliate as Finland seeks NATO membership

Finland and Sweden are on the verge of seeking membership to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a historic shift for two traditionally non-aligned countries and a major expansion of the Western alliance as war wages in Europe.

On Thursday, Finlands President Sauli Niinist and Prime Minister Sanna Marin strongly backed Finlands NATO membership. NATO membership would strengthen Finlands security, they said in a joint statement. As a member of NATO, Finland would strengthen the entire defense alliance. Finland must apply for NATO membership without delay.

What happens in Helsinki is being closely watched in Stockholm. Swedens parliament issued a report Friday that said joining NATO would raise the threshold for military conflict. Swedens ruling party, the Social Democrats, are having internal debates about reversing their long-held stance opposing NATO membership, paving the way for Sweden to make its NATO aspirations known within the coming days. Finland moved first, but the two are closely coordinating, and will likely apply for NATO membership in tandem.

This is a dramatic turn for two countries that have defined their geopolitical identities around nonalignment Finland, for decades, and Sweden for two centuries. It will bring close partners into alliance, strengthening NATOs presence in Northern Europe and putting more pressure on Russias borders. After resisting NATO membership for so long, it is a signal from Finland and Sweden they are united alongside Europe, the United States, and its allies during a crisis moment for the continent.

This is pretty monumental, said Katherine Kjellstrm Elgin, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. Its a fundamental change to the European alliance structure.

Finland and Sweden already closely cooperate with NATO, but eschewed formal membership, a stance that worked both politically and strategically. But Russias full-scale invasion of Ukraine changed everything.

Popular opinion, and the way Finnish political decision makers see this, turned around very rapidly after Russia attacked Ukraine in February, said Janne Kuusela, Director General of Defense Policy at the Finland Ministry of Defense. It changed dramatically the security situation in Europe, and the way most Finns see how we best take care of our own defense and security, and how we contribute to the overall stability in northeastern Europe.

That swing in public opinion there is now majority support for joining NATO in both Finland and Sweden reflected a broader awakening that the status quo with Russia would not hold. Finland felt the shock most abruptly because of its geography (it shares an 800-mile border with Russia), and its history. Joonas Kntt, a member of parliament from Finlands Center party who serves on the defense committee, said the common memory of the Soviet Unions attack on Finland in 1939 led to a logical answer: Finns realized that it could happen to us.

Finlands resolve is, in some ways, pulling Sweden along with it, which experts said is a bit more politically divided on the issue, and is reckoning more deeply with its long-standing tradition of non-alignment. We will never have this sense of urgency, in the same way as Finland because of its history, its proximity to Russia, said Anna Wieslander, the Stockholm-based director for Northern Europe at the Atlantic Council.

But Sweden and Finlands close partnership means they are expected to move together. NATO and its members are expected to openly welcome them. There is also a sense of urgency. Finland and Sweden are not formally protected by NATOs mutual defense guarantees until they are actually in the pact.

Russia, of course, is not thrilled. Moscow has repeatedly warned against NATO membership once it became clear these two were on the path toward it. On Thursday, Russias foreign ministry said that Helsinski must be aware of the consequences, of its move, and Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov threatened a corresponding symmetrical response. Russias struggles in Ukraine, among other factors, make a military attack against Finland or Sweden unlikely, though experts and officials believe other types of hybrid warfare are possible, like disinformation campaigns or cyberattacks.

But Finland and Swedens prospective NATO membership is ultimately a defeat for Putin. The war in Ukraine is about more than NATO expansion, but if Putins sought to curtail the alliances influence in Europe, he has only managed to broaden and deepen it. Or as the Finnish President Niinist said Wednesday, when asked how Putin would respond to his countrys NATO decision: You caused this look at the mirror.

Sweden and Finland joined the European Union in the post-Cold War 1990s, but continued to embrace a policy of military nonalignment. That is, no official NATO membership.

Sweden has practiced a version of nonalignment since the 19th century. Finlands story is a bit more complicated. The then-Soviet Union invaded Finland in 1939, and while the Finns fended off a full-on takeover in the Winter War, the threat from their neighbor persisted. That forced Finland to adopt a stance of nonalignment during the Cold War, although with quite a lot of Soviet meddling and domestic political influence.

Finland has since maintained nonalignment out of pragmatism. It shared this 800-mile border with Russia, and the two governments maintained neighborly relationships, even as it invested very seriously in its defense, including maintaining a conscription army.

Especially in recent years, Finland and Sweden have become strong partners with NATO they are basically as close as a country can get to the alliance without formally being in it. They do military exercises together and share some intelligence; both Sweden and Finland supported NATOs mission in Afghanistan. And NATOs open door remained, well, open to both Sweden and Finland, but it was not something either had to pursue unless the security situation in Europe drastically shifted. Which is exactly what happened when Russia began to threatening Ukraine.

Last December, as Russia built up troops along Ukraines border, Moscow issued ultimatums that sought to remake the European security architecture demands like no NATO enlargement, and a Russian sphere of influence. That rattled Sweden, but it really shook Finland. Wieslander, of the Atlantic Council, said, for Finlands leaders, it was a reminder of the very limited space Finland had to operate during the Cold War, both internationally and domestically. Moscows demands created this feeling that Finlands road to be part of the West could not be jeopardized, and that the informal position that Finland could have in relation to NATO was not strong enough.

That kicked off the soul-searching in Helsinki; Russians Ukraine invasion delivered the shock. In Finland, support for NATO typically hovered in the 20 or so percent range. In January 2022, less than 30 percent of the Finnish public was in favor of NATO membership. After Russias invasion it rose to 53 percent, to an incredible 76 percent in May.

As extraordinary as the swings in public opinion were, Finlands already close ties with the West and with NATO helped make the possibility of membership more palatable. Its still much more an evolution rather than revolution, in a way, the attitude towards NATO, said Sinikukka Saari, a Leading Researcher on Russia and Foresight at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs.

Finland and Sweden, as EU members, joined the strong sanctions against Russia, and both sent military equipment to Ukraine. They were united with the West, except actually being part of NATO, and after Russias invasion, it exposed a vulnerability, especially for Finland.

In Sweden, experts said, the calculus is a bit more complicated. Support for joining NATO has jumped by double digits since January to about 57 percent, according to recent April polls. But the backing does not yet appear as dramatic as in Finland. Sweden holds tightly to a perception of itself as a neutral country, an identity it has preserved throughout major conflicts in Europe, including two World Wars and the Cold War. The decision not to join NATO for Sweden, more so than Finland, was rooted in the neutral, non-aligned identity, Elgin said.

The Social Democrats, who run Swedens minority government, have traditionally been opposed to NATO membership; a position they reiterated in November. In March, Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson on Tuesday rejected the oppositions calls to join NATO, saying it would destabilize Europe even more. She only proposed reviewing the security situation last month. The Green and Left parties are still opposed so far. Swedens right-leaning opposition parties have tended to be more supportive of NATO membership, and are backing a current bid. Adding to the tension are national elections in September. The question about NATO membership has been deeply polarized between the parties, Wieslander said, adding that that has slowed the debate, even if Sweden is likely to end up in the same place as Finland.

Finland and Swedens strong bilateral partnership almost guarantees neither would make a move if they thought the other would balk. I would stress that we are doing this together, Erkki Tuomioja, a Social Democrat in the Finnish Parliament, who previously served as a foreign affairs minister.

Finlands push for NATO membership was also a process. Kntt, who is on the defense committee, said when he ran for Parliament he stated Finland had no need to join the alliance. In December, he began privately reassessing his views. In March, he announced his change of position.

Tuomioja, meanwhile, said that he would support Finlands NATO path, but he still is somewhat skeptical. He said he still would have liked to consider other options, but in the public, and in parliament, NATO is seen as the strongest security guarantee.

Whether or not you think this is the best idea to join NATO, he said, its always better that Sweden and Finland do things together.

Theres another benefit of Finland and Sweden going in together: It reduces some of the risk of announcing youre going to be in NATO.

The risks likes largely in how Russia reacts. Moscow has already threatened Sweden and Finland over NATO membership. This week, the Kremlin warned it would take military-technical steps if Finland sought to join the alliance.

Putin has blamed the West for the war in Ukraine, and NATOs likely expansion along those 800 miles at Russias border certainly plays into that narrative. If Finland and Sweden actually also joined NATO, then that will just be a detail that somehow proves that the Russians were right, said Martin Hurt, a research fellow at the International Centre for Defense and Security and a former Estonian defense official. But the rest will still be made up of lies and disinformation.

Even so, Finland or Swedens NATO membership likely would not resonate for Putin the same way as, say, an ascension of a former Soviet republic. Finland may sting a bit more, but as an EU member and NATO partner, Moscow likely already sees them tied to the West. Russia will see Finlands NATO membership as some sort of defeat and betrayal, but it is or should be much easier to accept than ... for example the membership of the Baltic states in the alliance, Tuomas Forsberg, a professor of international relations and the Director of the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, wrote in an email.

It seems like if youre going to join a military alliance the Kremlin sees as an existential threat, you should do it while Russias military is bogged down in a protracted war in Ukraine. Still, there is no doubt that Finland and Sweden are at their most vulnerable right after they announce their NATO intention, but lack its formal protections. There is a general feeling that this kind of gray period should be kept as short as possible, Saari said.

NATO will likely make an effort to keep that window as short as possible, though the timeline is still a little bit fuzzy. Of recent ascensions, it took Montenegro 18 months, but theres a general expectation that Finland and Sweden will proceed even more rapidly.

Both meet the political criteria, as strong, established democracies, and the close cooperation with NATO means they already have a high level of interoperability military speak for their systems and tactics being in sync. In that sense, theres very little of a delta that they have to step up to achieve, said Steven Horrell, a nonresident senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis. Finland already spends close to the 2 percent NATO targets for its members, and Sweden already planned to increase its military spending over the next decade.

NATO members, even before Russias war, made it pretty clear that if Finland and Sweden wanted in, NATO would eagerly have them. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said in a statement Thursday that should Finland apply, they will be warmly welcomed.

Still, each NATO member does have to approve the bids, and while it might be tougher in some countries than others, all NATO members are expected to back their ascension. In the meantime, NATO and its members are offering some assurances during the application period. A White House spokesperson told Vox the US is confident that we could find ways to address any concerns either country may have about the period of time between a NATO membership application and their formal accession to the Alliance. The United Kingdom offered more formalized security guarantees this week.

Finland and Swedens ascension to NATO will also likely reshape the alliance, even in subtle ways. Inclusion of Finland and Sweden will transform how it does its military planning in the Nordic, Arctic, and Baltic regions. NATO will expand its boundary with Russia, accessing a new front from which to pressure Russia, but also one it is now obligated to protect.

NATO still faces some very real strategic challenges, with or without new members. But Finnish and Swedish membership is politically symbolic for the alliance. Putin talked before this third invasion of Ukraine about redrawing the global security architecture, Horrell said. And, well, thats one thing hes achieved, but I think not quite the way he wanted to.

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Finland and Sweden are on the verge of joining NATO - Vox.com

STOCKHOLM (AP) Finland and Sweden are nearing decisions on whether to ditch their long-standing policy of military nonalignment and join NATO in the wake of Russias invasion of Ukraine.

They would become the 31st and 32nd members of the trans-Atlantic alliance, which was founded by the U.S. and 11 other countries following World War II. Heres a timeline showing key developments in NATOs history.

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1949: The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is founded to deter Soviet expansion and a revival of European militarism. The 12 original members are the United States, Canada, Britain, Belgium, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Portugal.

1952: Greece and Turkey join in the alliances first expansion.

1955: West Germany joins NATO. In response, the Soviet Union and seven countries in Eastern Europe form the eight-nation Warsaw Pact.

1982: Spain becomes the 16th member of NATO.

1991: The Soviet Union collapses and the Warsaw Pact is dissolved.

1994: Finland and Sweden join NATOs Partnership for Peace program. The following year they join the European Union, effectively ceasing to be neutral, but remaining military nonaligned.

1999: Three former Warsaw Pact nations the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland join NATO.

2001: Article 5 in the NATO treaty, which stipulates that an attack on any NATO member is an attack on all, is triggered for the first time after the 9/11 attacks on the United States.

2002: The NATO-Russia Council is formed to help NATO members and Russia to work together on security issues.

2003: NATO takes command of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan (ISAF).

2004: The biggest NATO expansion to date as seven countries become members: Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The latter three are the only former Soviet republics to have joined the alliance.

2008: NATO countries welcome Ukraine and Georgias aspirations to join the alliance, angering Russia. In August, Russia wins a short war with Georgia over the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which Moscow recognizes as independent states.

2009: Croatia and Albania become NATO members.

2011: NATO enforces a no-fly zone over Libya. Sweden takes part with fighter jets on reconnaissance missions.

2014: NATO suspends most cooperation with Russia after its annexation of Crimea.

2015: NATO ends the ISAF mission in Afghanistan. The alliance remains in Afghanistan to train local security forces until the Taliban takeover in 2021.

2017: Montenegro joins NATO.

2020: North Macedonia becomes NATOs 30th member.

2022: Sweden and Finland explore the possibility of NATO membership after Russias invasion of Ukraine.

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Timeline of NATO expansion since 1949 - The Associated Press - en Espaol

Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council, attends a military parade on Victory Day, which marks the 77th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two, in Red Square in central Moscow, Russia May 9, 2022. Sputnik/Ekaterina Shtukina/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo

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LONDON, May 12 (Reuters) - One of President Vladimir Putin's closest allies warned the West on Thursday that the increasing military support given to Ukraine by the United States and its allies risked triggering a conflict between Russia and the NATO military alliance.

Former president Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy chairman of Russias security council, said such a conflict with NATO always carried the risk of turning into a full blown nuclear war.

Russia's Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine has killed thousands of people, laid waste to swathes of its former Soviet neighbour and raised fears of the gravest confrontation between Russia and the United States since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

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"NATO countries pumping weapons into Ukraine, training troops to use Western equipment, sending in mercenaries and the exercises of Alliance countries near our borders increase the likelihood of a direct and open conflict between NATO and Russia," Medvedev said in a Telegram post.

"Such a conflict always has the risk of turning into a full-fledged nuclear war," Medvedev said. "This will be a disastrous scenario for everyone."

Russia and the United States are by far the world's biggest nuclear powers: Russia has some 6,257 nuclear warheads while NATO's three nuclear powers - the United States, United Kingdom and France - have about 6,065 warheads combined, according to the Washington-based Arms Control Association.

Putin says the "special military operation" in Ukraine is necessary because the United States was using Ukraine to threaten Russia and Moscow had to defend against the persecution of Russian-speaking people.

Putin, who says Ukraine and Russia are essentially one people, casts the war as an inevitable confrontation with the United States, which he accuses of threatening Russia by meddling in its backyard through NATO eastward enlargement.

Ukraine says it is fighting an imperial-style land grab and that Putin's claims of genocide are nonsense. Kyiv says Putin's invasion has only strengthened the Ukrainian people's wish to turn westwards out of Russia's orbit.

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Reporting by Guy FaulconbridgeEditing by Mark Heinrich

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Russia warns West over risk of conflict with NATO - Reuters

HELSINKI, Finland After completing a few more steps, Finland will be ready to send its application to join the NATO military alliance, the country's foreign affairs minister told CNBC Tuesday.

The Nordic nation has been considering joining the alliance in the wake of Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. Finland's Prime Minister Sanna Marin has previously said the invasion "changed the security policy situation in such a way that there is no going back to the way things were."

Joining NATO would mark a sharp U-turn in Finland's decades-long policy of neutrality but could lead to a backlash from Russia, where President Vladimir Putin has been vocal about his opposition to NATO enlargement.

"When all our political parties are ready and the latest, the Social Democrats on Saturday then we are ready to move as [a] government forward and then this discussion, of course, on the NATO membership, will come to the Parliament, starting probably next Monday. But then we are, after that, ready to send an application," Pekka Haavisto, Finland's minister for foreign affairs, said.

Finland is currently led by a five-party coalition government. Finnish president, Sauli Niinisto, is due to announce his opinion on the country's membership of NATO Thursday, kicking off a sequence of events that should result in the formal application being sent through.

But Finland is not alone in reconsidering its security policy. Neighboring Sweden has also been reviewing its stance in the aftermath of Russia's onslaught in Ukraine.

"I've been really much in favor of us [Finland and Sweden] joining together and now it looks like we have a parallel process, which could end in a similar way," Haavisto told CNBC, adding that Sweden is likely to send its NATO application "around the same time" as Finland.

"We have very good cooperation on military issues with Sweden, actually, we can have a common surveillance of our airspace, on our maritime areas and so forth, and we are relying very much [on] each other, and of course, if it so happens in the future that one is in the ... defense alliance and the other one is not that might hamper also our good cooperation," he said about the reasoning behind applying at the same time.

Several NATO members, notably Germany and the United States, have said they are ready to provide security guarantees to Stockholm and Helsinki during the period of time between their applications and official membership.

Before both countries join the defense alliance, the 30 members already in NATO have to approve their applications. A process that is likely to take at least some months.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has spoken about a "minimum delay" for their applications.

In the meantime, Finland is hoping to receive some political commitments from the alliance at a summit in June, due to take place in Madrid, Spain.

"Madrid is very important for political commitments and, on the highest level, welcoming new member states like Finland and Sweden," Haavisto said.

"But even prior to that, the NATO Council certainly will discuss this matter and we are also expecting that single NATO member states will give their commitments and opinions immediately when Finland and Sweden will send an application," he added.

Continued here:
Finland is just days away from applying for NATO membership - CNBC

Nato is back. With the invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has single-handedly revived the fortunes of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, returning it to the top of the foreign policy agenda. Nordic states that once prided themselves on independence from the organisation are now eager to join. The German government has pledged an unprecedented increase in defence spending, which means increasing its contribution to Nato. US military strategists dream anew of opening a Nato franchise for the Pacific, while EU bureaucrats plan a new Nato for the internet. Former liberal holdouts and sceptics of the alliance have learned to love Nato in much the same way they learned to love the CIA and the FBI during the Trump years. The old sheriff of the cold war has regained its focus, and, to the surprise of many, has proved itself to be a remarkably spry and capable force in the fight against Russia.

Natos return to the spotlight has been accompanied by a renewed debate about its history. Every interested party has a different story to tell. For Moscow, Nato has long been a project to subjugate Russia and reduce its influence to a memory. For Washington, Nato began as a way of protecting western Europeans from themselves and from the Soviet Union, but in the 90s it became a forward operating vehicle for democracy, human rights and capital. For eastern Europeans, Nato is the sacred pledge to keep Russian tanks at bay. For most western European states, Nato has provided a bargain-price American nuclear umbrella that allowed them to fund social welfare rather than armies, when they were not using their Nato obligations to justify austerity. For the rest of the world, Nato was once an Atlantic-based, defensive alliance that quickly transformed into an ever-farther-afield, offensive one.

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A striking feature of these well-worn arguments over Nato is that they all assume a high degree of familiarity with the thing itself. For all that it is central to a certain conception of Europe or even the west few can say what, exactly, it is. Crammed into a four-letter acronym is something more than a simple military alliance. Nato is no longer particularly Northern, nor Atlantic, nor bound to a Treaty, while calling it an organisation almost makes it sound like a charitable enterprise. Part of the reason Natos shape can be difficult to discern is that the alliance has, at least in the west, won a long war of public relations. In the 50s, Nato sent travelling caravans mass exhibitions and outdoor movie theatres into the hinterlands of Europe to explain the benefits of the alliance to sceptical populations. Such a strenuous case for Nato no longer needs to be made, and opposition to it has vastly diminished since the 1980s. What was once presumed to be an artefact of the cold war order sits so comfortably at the heart of the wests military-political-economic system that it is frequently mistaken for a natural feature in the European landscape.

On paper, Nato is an alliance of 30 nation-states committed to free institutions and bound together by article 5 of its charter, which holds that albeit conditionally members will collectively defend any member that is attacked. Born in 1949, Nato sees itself as the younger sibling of other international institutions of mid-century vintage the UN and the GATT, which became the World Trade Organisation and takes pride in having kept the European peace for more than half a century. Militarily, if not economically, Nato has largely fulfilled the mission its first secretary general, Hastings Ismay, set out for it: To keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.

Though primarily a military alliance, Nato is also a culture, or as Natos third supreme allied commander, Alfred Gruenther, declared: Nato is a state of mind. Nato company towns dot the continent (Brunssum, Ramstein, Geilenkirchen, Oberammergau, Uedem, Aviano, witoszw), there are Nato schools for Nato employees children and Nato academies and centres where Nato military curriculums are taught (smart training for smart defence), the Nato Defense College in Rome, a Nato underground pipeline for jet fuel that runs through Germany, a Nato songbook, a Nato hymn, a Bing Crosby Nato ballad, a Nato phonetic alphabet (Alpha, Bravo ), Nato-funded grants and university chairs, an annual International Model Nato for university students, a Nato Herms scarf, a Nato golf club in Belgium for handicap 36 and below, and a Nato headquarters in Brussels, which houses the British-funded counter-propaganda unit, as well as the Nato museum, or what is known in Nato-speak as an arts heritage hub, which exhibits copies of Ancient Greek statuary and a large number of unremarkable wooden desks.

Natos budget on paper is a relatively modest 2.5bn, with contributions from all member states, but the $800bn US defence budget guarantees that Nato can spend much of its own funds on bureaucratic upkeep. Despite some nods to how it produces all decisions by consensus, Nato makes little attempt to hide the fact of American primacy in the alliance. In the official legal procedure for leaving Nato, the charter declares that a state must declare its intention not to Natos secretary general, but to the president of the United States.

In practice, Nato is above all a political arrangement that guarantees US primacy in determining answers to European questions. The political headquarters of Nato are located in a new modernist building in Brussels, but its most significant military command centre is located in Norfolk, Virginia. Every supreme allied commander since 1949 has been an American military officer. Nato itself has no forces of its own. It comprises about 4,000 bureaucratic personnel who coordinate its activities around the world. Nato military forces at any given time are made up of forces voluntarily seconded by member governments, with the US as the main contributor. Natos wars and engagements which have dragooned Luxembourgers and Turks into fighting in Korea, and Spaniards and Portuguese into fighting in Afghanistan have typically been authored by Washington. Even wars that have been primarily fought by Europeans such as the Nato intervention in Libya have relied overwhelmingly on American logistics, fuelling stations and hardware.

The crown jewels of Nato are its nuclear weapons. In theory, the three Nato nuclear powers Britain, France and the US coordinate the nuclear defence for the rest of the alliance. Nato maintains nuclear forces on the continent, but they are largely ceremonial. If Moscow lobbed a nuclear missile at Brussels, the initial response would come unilaterally from Washington since following actual Nato procedures involves laborious protocols. (The nuclear group in Nato would first have to confer and agree to respond, and then request Washingtons portion of the nuclear code in order to launch the missiles stationed on their territory.) Nuclear-capable aircraft in Belgium are flown and maintained by Belgians, as is the case in Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. But none of these weapons systems are on the same high alert that the American president is capable of activating without any other Nato members permission. Only France and Britain, which have their own fully independent nuclear forces, have the possibility of eliminating their enemies in a nuclear strike without consulting the White House.

Ever since its birth in 1949, the funeral toll for Nato has been sounded many times, especially by those who forget that crises are its lifeblood. The Alliance itself was very nearly still-born. At the end of the second world war, Franklin Roosevelt expected both western and Soviet troops to leave central Europe within two years. But western European statesmen wanted the US to provide a security guarantee while they rebuilt their economies.

There were many proposals for how this security pact could be configured. The American strategist George Kennan proposed a dumbbell system, in which the western Europe would have its own defence system, while Canada and the US had a separate one that could come to western Europes aid in the unlikely event of a Soviet invasion. The prominent liberal journalist Walter Lippmann argued that there was no point in the US stationing troops in Europe in a world in which nuclear weapons had rendered conventional forces redundant. But leading anti-communists such as Ernest Bevin and Dean Acheson rejected this vision. They knew that the Red Army, which had just vanquished the Nazis, was not only the strongest force on the continent, but also an alarmingly popular one in western Europe.

Instead, Bevin and his European counterparts formed what they called the Western Union, which extended the postwar Dunkirk treaty between France and the United Kingdom to include Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Belgium. When this organisation asked Washington to provide a binding security guarantee, American diplomats took control of the project, and steered it into what would become Nato, a much more expansive security pact that included 12 member states, with the US in the lead. At the time, the debate about enlargement was about whether or not to include states like Italy in the alliance. Kennan thought the idea of Nato extension into southern Europe weakly provocative toward the Soviet Union, and that it set the stage for limitless expansion. He believed Nato only made sense as a pact among what he saw as racially and culturally similar North Atlantic peoples, and bemoaned an alliance that would have the effect of freezing cold war battle lines across the middle of Europe.

From the start, Nato was unpopular with member publics. Harry Truman could not afford to risk mentioning his plans for the North Atlantic alliance to a war-weary American public in his first campaign for the presidency. French communists and nationalists opposed on nearly every other issue jointly protested Frances entry into Nato in 1949. There were enormous anti-Nato insurrections across Italy. The largest uprising in Icelands postwar history occurred when the island nation joined the alliance. An extensive repertory of Icelandic anti-Nato anthems and songs sprang up during the negotiations between Reykjavik and Washington. On the eve of Icelands Nato membership, the communist novelist and future Nobel laureate Halldr Laxness published The Atom Station, an Icelandic Remains of the Day, in which a young serving woman from the north witnesses the Reykjavik elite sell out the country to Nato officials behind closed doors.

The first postwar decade was tumultuous for Nato. With Europes economic recovery in full swing, the conviction that the continent needed an American security guarantee was weakened. Trumans Korean war showed how easily the US could become overextended. In response, western European leaders drew up plans for the European Defence Community, which would combine the fledgling armies of West Germany, France, Italy and the Benelux countries. But this plan for a European army fell apart almost as soon as it was floated. Britain saw the combined force as a threat to national sovereignty. The French government, meanwhile, was more worried about a resurgent Germany than a Soviet invasion. Paradoxically, then, this early drive for autonomy from Washington on the part of western European states ended up bringing them more tightly into the fold of Nato, which proved to be the only arrangement capable of plastering over their divisions.

Nato may have begun as a security stopgap, but it soon became a guarantor of western stability in ways beyond the imagination of its architects. For the US, massive defence budgets became a way of life, and the least controversial way to facilitate public spending in a postwar economy that still aimed at full employment. That the country was never fully reconciled to this permanent war posture is neatly captured in the ritual of nearly every postwar American president promising, and failing, to reduce US troop levels in Europe. Meanwhile, for western Europeans, American defence largesse allowed them to devote more of their surplus to their welfare states, in an effort to appease their more militant labour movements.

The political stability that Nato achieved in the 50s was never free from ruptures. In 1955, Washington ushered West Germany into the Alliance, to which the Soviets reacted with the creation of their own, anti-Nato security system, the Warsaw Pact. A year later, Nato wobbled badly when the Suez crisis exposed the divisions between members that wanted to cling to their colonial possessions and a Washington that was keen to win favour with Third World nationalists who might otherwise turn communist. (Belgium, France and the Netherlands had even initially wanted their colonies included in Nato, which was far too much for Washington.) Nato command had an ambivalent attitude toward the British empire. On the one hand, Nato helped accelerate imperial decline by, for instance, demanding Britain fulfil its obligations to station thousands of British troops on the Rhine, at the cost of more critical colonial nodes such as Singapore. But American strategists were also worried the British retreat from the resource-rich Middle East would leave behind a vacuum, which Nato tried to fill by spawning the Middle East Treaty Organisation (Meto), one of several failed attempts to replicate itself.

The 60s are remembered at Nato as a time of ongoing emergency. For years, Charles de Gaulles patience with the alliance had been on a short fuse. Nato is a fake, he declared in 1963. Thanks to Nato, Europe is placed under the dependence of the United States without appearing to be so. Three years later De Gaulle withdrew France and its nuclear weapons from Natos command. (This withdrawal was more theatrical than actual: Frances participation in Nato exercises and technology-sharing remained nearly unchanged and it was still a Nato member.)

De Gaulles decision was partly the result of his delusion about the status of France as a great power. But he also more imaginatively saw Russia as a natural part of Europe, one cordoned off by a cold war that he believed would one day be over. In De Gaulles view, Washingtons capitalism and Moscows communism were converging toward a remarkably similar technocratic society. He saw Nato as a deliberate American attempt to slow down history, in order to prolong the moment when Washington was the leading world power. But despite the uproar De Gaulle caused among cold war stalwarts, and the bevy of Nato obituaries that followed, the alliance was perhaps even strengthened by Frances semi-departure. It allowed Nato to more fully integrate West Germany into the alliance, and to sound the alarm for increased commitments from other member states.

In these decades, opposition to Nato was a rallying cry for the western European left, which viewed it not only as an institutionalised form of nuclear brinkmanship, but as a class alliance between American and European ruling establishments determined to shore up their defence as much against their domestic opposition whether by spying on French communists, or rooting out the members of the German Red Army Faction who bombed Nato pipelines as against the Soviets.

Nato was not particularly concerned about the domestic political arrangements of its member states, so long as they were implacably anti-communist. Portugal under Salazars dictatorship was welcomed into Nato in 1949, and in 1967, when fascist Greek colonels used Natos own counter-insurgency blueprints to overthrow a democratically elected government, the legal claim, led by the Scandinavian states, that it should exit the Alliance was never seriously entertained.

There have been more serious threats to Nato unity, however. Greece and Turkey violently clashed over Cyprus in 1974. More recently, in the wake of Natos 2011 intervention in Libya, militias backed by Turkey and Italy fought the French-backed Libyan army of General Haftar. Nato unity took another blow in 2018, when, after Turkey began besieging US and western European Kurdish allies in Syria, Emmanuel Macron declared the alliance brain dead. Nato also took a psychological hit during the presidency of Donald Trump, who liked to publicly question the alliances purpose and refused to mumble pieties about article 5 during a visit to Nato headquarters, albeit all while increasing US expenditure and troop levels in Europe.

But Natos most serious existential crisis came in the 1990s, when the raison detre of the organisation the Soviet Union collapsed. In this new environment, it was not clear even to Natos own functionaries what its future would be. All that remained was the prospect of janitorial twilight, with Nato helping to mop up and dismantle the Soviet Unions nuclear arsenal. Not only had the organising spectre of the organisation vanished, but a series of new institutions in Europe the European Union above all seemed to proffer a European future of greater coherence and autonomy from the US. Even before the Soviet Union fell, there were proposals for new political arrangements, including Franois Mitterrands short-lived idea of a European Confederation that would pointedly include the USSR and exclude the US. In 1989, Michael Gorbachev appropriated De Gaulles old dream of a Europe that stretched from the Atlantic to the Urals, which he called a common European home, in which a doctrine of restraint should take the place of the doctrine of deterrence.

Several prominent participants and observers in the 1990s believed that Nato, its mission accomplished, would close shop. Lets disband both Nato and the Warsaw Pact. Lets release your allies and ours, Eduard Shevardnadze, the Soviet foreign minister gamely proposed to the US secretary of state in 1989. Later that same year, the Czech leader Vclav Havel told George HW Bush that he expected American and Russian troops would soon be vacating central Europe. Prominent American strategists agreed. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was time for Europeans to take their security back in their own hands, with the US withdrawing its troops from the continent. The Soviet threat provides the glue that holds Nato together, John Mearsheimer, one of the USs leading international relations theorists, wrote in the Atlantic Monthly in 1990. Take away that offensive threat and the United States is likely to abandon the continent. To glance at the output of Nato bureaucracy from the 1990s is to witness a sea of panicked position papers outlining ways to prolong the life of an ailing patient.

But Natos 1990s crisis turned out to be its greatest hour. Not only did it not shut down during the decade, it expanded. It did not fade into the background as a vestigial cold war organ, but became more active. Nato must go out of area or it will go out of business, became the mantra of Nato apparatchiks across the decade. In just a few short years, Nato went from being a primarily defensive organisation to a brazenly offensive one from being a geopolitically conservative custodian of the status-quo to an agent of change in eastern Europe. How did this happen?

As the George HW Bush administration surveyed the ruins of the Soviet Union, they determined that the new challenge for Nato was not the nascent Russian Federation, but a unified Europe. We must seek to prevent the emergence of European-only security arrangements which would undermine Nato, read the draft of a leaked 1992 national security council memo. In its rhetoric, Bushs administration was cautious about Nato expansion. But in practice, it was cold war triumphalist: over the vociferous protests of Gorbachev, Bush incorporated a newly unified Germany into Nato. Soon after, Natos training of Ukrainian troops began.

When Bill Clinton became president in 1992, the real difference was that the rhetoric of expansion matched the practice. Clinton presided over the 1999 entry of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic into Nato, and treated Russia as the wrecked state it was.

There was some irony in Clintons doubling down on Nato. In many ways he had appeared to be the ideal figure to shutter the alliance. On the campaign trail in 1992, Clinton had made rumbles about downsizing Nato in favour of newer, sleeker rapid-deployment UN military units. Initially, Clinton was sceptical of Natos extension eastward. So let me get this straight, he reportedly said to his national security staff on being briefed of the expansion plan. All the Russians would get out of this really great deal were offering them is an assurance that were not going to our military stuff into their former military allies, who are now going to be our allies, unless we happen to wake up one morning and decide to change our minds?

But Nato expansion was ultimately signed off on by Clinton and avidly pursued by his administration for three primary reasons. The first was that it was pressed on the Pentagon by former states of the Warsaw Pact. For a country like Poland, Nato membership was the first step toward reorienting Warsaw back towards the wealthy west. Let the Russian generals get upset, the Polish leader Lech Wasa chimed to his US counterpart in 1993. They wont launch a nuclear war. The second had to do with Clintons own domestic calculus, and how support for Nato membership would win votes from large eastern European migr enclaves in the US rustbelt, not a minor consideration for an administration primarily concentrated on home affairs.

The final reason had to do with the crystallisation of the ideology of human rights in the 90s, when the US preponderance of power globally was so great as to make concerns about impinging on a foreign nations sovereignty beneath consideration. Many former Nato critics had come to embrace the organisation by the end of the cold war, seeing it as the only viable vehicle for their new programme of humanitarian intervention. By 1995, the secretary general of Nato was Javier Solana, who had authored the 1982 tract 50 Reasons to Say No to Nato, which had helped carry his socialist party to victory in Spain, and who was himself formerly on the US list of subversive agents.

The 1995 bombing of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and later Kosovo in 1999, were showcases of Natos newfound place in the post-cold war order. Not only did Clintons decision to bomb the former Yugoslavia circumvent the UN security council, and prove that the EU, and especially Germany, were incapable of solving security crises in their own neighbourhood. But it was also a show of force that arguably shook the Kremlin more than Nato expansion itself. The war was a preview of coming attractions: the reliance on technological, no-fault military operations that did not require US ground troops, and the expectation that Nato-led interventions could create instant US-aligned constituencies like the Kosovan Albanians, who continue to name their children after Clinton and Bush.

The Clinton administrations faith in Nato expansion and Nato warfare reflected its faith in capital and markets. Nato, in this view, came to act as something like a rating agency that would declare portions of eastern Europe as safe zones for foreign investment and ultimately EU membership. We will seek to update Nato so that there continues behind the enlargement of market democracies an essential collective security, Clintons national security adviser, Anthony Lake, declared in 1993. This cocktail of markets and democracy talk, along with geostrategic interests, proved very difficult for American politicians to resist: it appeared to be a perfect marriage of realism and idealism.

By the end of the decade, only a zealous rump of cold warriors from the American statesman Paul Nitze to the conservative historian Richard Pipes still held out against Nato expansion. Earlier sceptics of Nato expansion, such as Joe Biden, toured eastern Europe and returned to Washington converts of the expansionist cause. Likewise, Republican opponents of Clintons domestic policy, such as Newt Gingrich who himself had once borrowed $13,000 from his friends to take a sabbatical in Europe to write a novel about Nato (still uncompleted) were in full accord about expansion, which was duly enshrined in the Republican manifesto, the Contract for America. Radicalising Clintons own position, they only wanted him to move faster.

Ukraine became a special point of interest during the Clinton years, and was USAids third-largest recipient of funds during the 1990s, exceeded only by Egypt and Israel. Before Putins invasion it had received more than $3bn; since Russia went in the US has already given $14bn, and $33bn more has been promised. Nato training of Ukrainian troops sharply increased over time. Starting with Clintons military intervention in the Kosovo war in 1999, Ukraines troops could be counted in almost every US-led post-cold war operation, including in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Ukrainian armys robust resistance to the Russian onslaught is perhaps less surprising than it should be: large segments of it are Nato-trained and capable of making effective use of Nato-grade weaponry.

By the time George W Bush came to power in 2001, Nato was still basking in the glow of its war in the Balkans, where it still today polices a statelet of its own making in Kosovo. In the wake of the attacks of 9/11, when the Bush administration invoked article 5 for the first time, Nato added the global coordination of counter-terrorism to its portfolio, all but turning a blind eye to Russias domestic anti-terror campaign, as well as Beijings first major actions against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang province. But while Bush shared Clintons faith in the inevitable triumph of the American way, he wanted to shed some of the pretence of the Nato alliance. If Washington was the only power in Nato that mattered, and humanity had already entered into a unipolar world order, what was the point of waiting for American desires to be seconded by Belgians?

Bushs Iraq war was thus fought over the criticism of some Nato members, such as France and Germany, whose actual military forces Bush viewed as irrelevant. You were either with the US or against it in the Bush years, and quite evidently, the eastern Europeans were with the US, and Bush wanted them amply rewarded. Over the warnings of Germany and France, Bush thus saw no reason to heed Russian demands about not promising Georgia and Ukraine Nato membership, which he did in 2008. In this period, as eastern Europe and Washington grew closer, it was not lost on Warsaw, Budapest and Prague where there were nationalists who were much more comfortable with US-style nationalism than the post-nationalism vaunted by Brussels that Washington could also serve as a useful ally in their own disputes within the European Union.

Washingtons most steadfast allies in Nato today are Poland and the Baltics. If forced to choose between either the hegemony of Berlin or Brussels, or that of Washington, for eastern European leaders, Washington wins every time. Whereas Britain has specialised in hosting Russian capital, Germany in consuming Russian energy, and France has historically seen Russia as a potential strategic partner, Poland and the Baltics never cease to stress the threat to their hard-won sovereignty. Washington has come to share their view of Russia: it is no longer worth resetting relations with an unredeemable country. For many hawks in Washington, Russia needs to stay irredeemable if Nato is to continue pointing to the vast gulf that separates states under its wing from the barbarians at the gate. From this perspective, a strong, liberal, democratic Russia would perhaps have posed an even greater challenge to US hegemony in Europe than an autocratic, revanchist, but ultimately weak Russia.

If eastern European states are convinced that Nato safeguards their sovereignty, it would seem that the reverse applies to Europe more widely. Ever since the election of Donald Trump, when Angela Merkel announced that Europe may one day have to look after its own security, there has been an expectation that EU states would inch away from their US protectors, many of whom, at least in theory, would welcome the prospect of a stronger European partner. But in practice Nato often tugs Europeans away from their own self-declared interests. In 2010, the government of the Netherlands fell when the public rejected its lock-step obedience to Natos Afghanistan mission. Already under US pressure for forging closer energy ties with Russia, Germany may now need to placate Nato by sending heavy weaponry to Ukraine and cutting itself off from Russian energy altogether. This apparent split between European and US interests has continued to galvanise a handful of European thinkers. In 2018, Germanys grand man of the left, Hans-Magnus Enzenberger, described Nato as a tributary system with member and associate states sending periodic offerings of soldiers for Washingtons wars. His French counterpart, Rgis Debray, echoing De Gaulle, has called Nato nothing more than the military and political subordination of western Europe by the United States.

For years in Europe there has been mesmerisingly vague talk of a new initiative called the European Security and Defence Identity, which is somehow meant to emerge, like Athena, from the head of Nato. But Russias invasion of Ukraine has revealed how deceptive European steps toward autonomy are, and how deep-set the institutional lock of Nato is over the continent. The idea of Europes strategic autonomy goes too far if it fosters the illusion that we can guarantee security, stability and prosperity in Europe without Nato and without the US, the German foreign minister flatly declared already in 2020. If anything, Natos power and relevance is due to increase in the coming years, and the increase in European defence spending, which is still puny in comparison with Washingtons, only means that there will be more material under Nato purview. From the expanses of the Sahel to the banks of the Dnieper, there is ever less wriggle room under Washingtons supervision.

The trouble with the drive for European defence autonomy is not merely that like the rollout of the European Defence Community in 1952 it could backfire. But rather that, considering what the European Union is today, if it ever did succeed in taking a more militarised form, this would hardly be a rosy prospect. A competent EU army patrolling the Sahel for migrants, enforcing an elaborate repatriation system, and forcing regimes in Africa and Asia to continue being extraction points for its resources and receptacles of its trash, would only serve to clinch the status of Fortress Europe as a vanguard of xenophobic neoliberalism.

The English historian EP Thompson argued in 1978 that Natopolitanism was a form of extreme apathy, a pathology wrapped in an empty ideology that only knew what it was against. But Thompson was writing at a time when calls to abolish the alliance were not yet a weary incantation. In 1983, Natos placement of Pershing missiles in West Germany could still summon one of the largest protests in postwar German history. But if Natos institutionalisation of nuclear brinksmanship was once considered a lethal gambit by many citizens of Nato states, today Natos recent wars in Libya and Afghanistan have proceeded without domestic hindrance, despite their abject failure and having manifestly made the world more dangerous. Russias invasion of Ukraine has delivered Nato the grandest possible reprieve. Nobody doubts Natos effective support of Ukraines defence of its territory, though the war is not yet over. The tougher question is whether Nato is a cold war corset that has constrained the freedom of the west and imperilled populations around the world more than it has secured either. At a time when there has never been more need for an alternative world order, Nato seems to close the door on that possibility. Nato may be back. But it may be back only to hoist the old banner: There is no alternative.

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This article was amended on 5 and 6 May 2022. The Dunkirk treaty was between France and the United Kingdom, not France and Germany; and an allusion to Sweden and Finland wanting to join Nato should have referred to Nordic states, rather than Scandinavian states.

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How Putin's invasion returned Nato to the centre stage | Thomas Meaney - The Guardian