NATO 2.0 began after the Cold War, with a new focus on crisis management, particularly in the former Yugoslavia, as well as offensive military operations in Afghanistan, after the alliance activated Article 5 – its collective defense clause – for the first and only time.
By Daniel N. HOFFMAN
After the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, earlier this month, I spoke with former U.S. ambassador to NATO, Kurt Volker, who called the high-level meetings “a great success, because NATO is back to what it was supposed to do.” For Mr. Volker, that means NATO is rightly focused on deterring threats—from Russia—to Europe and North America. From its creation in 1949, after the most horrific war the world had ever seen, to the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO—in its early days—provided an extraordinary period of security, protection, and prosperity. It never had to fire a shot.
NATO 2.0 began after the Cold War, with a new focus on crisis management, particularly in the former Yugoslavia, as well as offensive military operations in Afghanistan, after the alliance activated Article 5 – its collective defense clause – for the first and only time. Russian leader Vladimir Putin, who famously argued that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century, pushed for NATO’s renewal and return to its core mission. NATO’s European members, in particular, should have seen the ominous signs when Mr. Putin invaded Georgia in 2008 and illegally annexed Crimea in 2014. They should have seen this in Moscow’s transformation of defector Alexander Litvinenko into a dirty human bomb with polonium-210 in central London in 2006, as well as in Russia’s use of the nerve agent Novichok against former intelligence officer Sergei Skripal in 2018.
Yet it was Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his fellow citizens who woke Europe from its post-Cold War slumber, courageously defending their country against the Kremlin’s barbaric invasion in February 2022. NATO welcomed Finland and Sweden as members and increased defense spending as a percentage of gross domestic product. NATO is now committed to building the powerful, interoperable defenses needed to restore the deterrent destroyed by Mr. Putin and the most devastating ground war on European soil since World War II.
NATO 3.0 is very similar to NATO 1.0, because the threat landscape on the European continent today resembles so much the period immediately after World War II, when the Red Army threatened to march on Western Europe. NATO’s purpose has always been to deter hostile expansion into the European continent and to guarantee the collective security of its members. Seventy-seven years later, NATO continues to be “bound by the shared values of democracy, individual liberty, human rights and the rule of law.” Ukraine is right on the attack line, defending the rest of Europe from the enemy at its gates. Ukraine has no formal opportunity to join NATO – under the open-door policy of Article 10, until Russia is defeated – but until then, Ukraine will be NATO’s most important and valuable partner.
Consider the recent announcement that several European countries, including Ukraine, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, and Britain, will build a joint ballistic missile defense capability for Europe, based on Ukraine’s experience in defending its cities against indiscriminate missile attacks from Russia.
Zelenskyy said the goal is to mass-produce a low-cost system to defend Europe against ballistic missiles that can be exported to other nations. The United States should continue to lead NATO, even as Europe takes on a greater burden of security in its own backyard. American bases in NATO member countries not only give us a direct presence as a warning defense, but also enable us to project power into our theaters of operations around the world—including the Middle East and Africa. The United States should be the preferred supplier of technology and weapons, while benefiting from lessons learned—especially from the drone warfare revolution taking place on the battlefields of Ukraine.
In a 1984 NATO proclamation, President Reagan called on Congress and the American people to express “our support for a relationship that has served us so well over the years and that will continue to be essential to our well-being in the future, to preserve peace through their collective strength and determination.” The rule of law, freedom, and democracy are force multipliers for business, as reflected in trillions of dollars of trade between the United States and Europe. So Mr. Volker is right to congratulate NATO on returning to its core mission: thwarting Vladimir Putin’s menacing war machine.