nato: View: NATO expansion won’t solve problems, will increase tension

With the decks cleared for the entry of Finland and Sweden into the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) — in its simply concluded summit in Madrid — the Western navy alliance may have 32 members. This virtually covers virtually all of Europe.

There have been solely 12 members when NATO was arrange in 1949 with the specific goal of militarily defending the US-led Western alliance in opposition to the risk from Communism and the Soviet Union.

In response, the Warsaw Treaty Organisation led by Moscow got here up on the opposite facet of the Iron Curtain in 1955.

Each alliances spearheaded the Chilly Conflict that consumed the world when it comes to its ferocity and longevity.

Thirty-one years after the defeat of the Soviet Union and Communism, the spectre of one other confrontation between the West and what’s left of the Soviet empire has risen once more. The query of NATO’s continued relevance after the demise of the Soviet Union was debated throughout the Western alliance.

NATO wanted a brand new goal, a brand new adversary, and a brand new mission. These have been tough to establish, particularly because the Warsaw Treaty Organisation had been dissolved. Makes an attempt have been made to reinvent NATO. Inside a number of years of the Soviet defeat, the USA launched into its Partnership for Peace proposal, primarily a framework for NATO’s eastward enlargement in the direction of Russia.

The proposal attracted lots of the erstwhile Jap bloc international locations who have been proud of the breakup of the Warsaw Pact. They have been fast to vary sides and joined the increasing Western grouping. The Russians have been so traumatized and shaken by their defeat and break-up that they didn’t have the flexibility to counter such expansionism.

The primary President of the brand new Russia, Boris Yeltsin, might solely make feeble gestures in protest. Nonetheless, each Yeltsin and the West wished to construct a brand new period of peace and coexistence in Europe, and it was a significant leap of religion of that point that Russia was invited and joined the Partnership for Peace programme. It has continued its affiliation with NATO since. For an organisation that had, largely, completed its mission in 1991, the enlargement of NATO subsequently in 5 phases, and imminently for the sixth time, speaks for itself. There have been sections inside Russia that weren’t snug with NATO’s continued existence and rising membership. On the identical time, there have been sections within the West which refused to just accept that the risk from Russia had been eradicated or decreased after the defeat of Communism within the Soviet Union.

The burdens of historical past, geography and home politics lay so closely on Europe, and the USA, that they might not, even because the unquestioned victors, make the political and psychological adjustment to cease viewing a nation that had been vanquished as a everlasting existential risk. Regardless of the speedy development of commerce and different interdependencies, mutual suspicions between them remained excessive.

Amid all this, the world was altering and shifting away from Europe. China was rising quick and inexorably, and it was the blind spot in Western strategic thought. The strategic shadowboxing in Ukraine, at the least since 2014, between the US and Russia that has now precipitated into all out use of navy power by Russia, has introduced the confrontation in Europe again to the worldwide centre stage.

This runs in opposition to the tide of historical past. It isn’t what a lot of the world needs to see, actually not India and people within the Indo-Pacific area who’re grappling with the much more critical strategic problem emanating from China.

The newest enlargement of NATO because it exists immediately won’t clear up issues which have defied options for many years. NATO enlargement will enhance, not lower stress. It’ll suck away sources right into a confrontation that isn’t a precedence for a lot of the world.

If it reignites ideological conflicts, that might be much more unlucky. India is, nonetheless, much more skilled immediately than through the Chilly Conflict or in 1991 to take care of the pulls and pressures of worldwide politics and to affect the selections of others.


The author is former deputy Nationwide Safety Adviser.