The Cold War ended in the early 1990s and the map of Europe was quickly and radically redrawn. Once the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, the Warsaw Pact countries and the Soviet republics began to secede from the USSR at a bewildering rate. In a few years, the two halves of Germany also came together.
The NATO map, and its psychological foundations, underwent an equally dramatic transformation. This was a period of great optimism, when many Western political leaders assumed that democracy and free markets would quickly take root throughout the ex-communist world, including Russia itself.
With Russia politically disoriented and in economic disarray, nothing prevented NATO from beginning to exercise its military muscle in this new cause – guaranteeing European peace – which it did through relatively successful intervention in post-rupture conflicts. of Yugoslavia in the mid-1990s.
Bathed in this new mentality and confidence, NATO saw how natural it was for the rest of Europe, that is, the countries of the former Warsaw Pact and the Soviet republics, to be under its umbrella.
These states had their own motives, driven more by realism than by romanticism. Many had been invaded or repressed by Moscow, and they wanted NATO’s insurance policy to make that happen again.
Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland, which had felt the full force of the Russian military machine for half a century, joined in 1999.
The Baltic states, which had been Soviet republics within the USSR, joined in 2004 along with most of the rest of Eastern Europe. Several Balkan countries boarded between 2009 and 2020.
Where the West saw NATO expansion as a flowering of democracy and stability, Russia saw an arrogant and presumptuous challenger marching into its sphere of influence, almost to the backyard fence.
The dominant Kremlin narrative is that the West promised Russia very soon that this would not happen, and that promise was broken. Moscow has since fueled a revengeful feeling of grievance and invasive threat.
3. Expansion reaches its limits
Not all European countries were immediately welcomed into NATO, nor did they necessarily want to join it.
Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, Austria, Ireland, Cyprus and Malta are formally neutral, although they cooperate with NATO.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shaken the neutral tradition: Sweden and Finland have applied to join NATO this year; and most other neutrals are cooperating with EU sanctions on Russia.
Other countries have sporadically knocked on NATO’s door. But from an alliance perspective, letting them come together would be too risky.
The alliance would be bound by Article 5 of the NATO Treaty to defend new members in the event of an attack. But these aspiring countries are politically unstable or subject to Russian interference, and the likelihood that Article 5 can be activated is too high.
Ukraine has been growing and shrinking in its aspirations for NATO, depending on how its pro-Russian government has been.
Since the 2014 Maidan protests overthrew a Moscow-friendly government in Kyiv, which led to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and sparked a civil war in the Donbas region, Ukraine has enshrined its ambitions to NATO in its constitution.
But the alliance also requires candidates to have a minimum of democracy and a minimum of corruption, and Ukraine found itself lacking in both respects. Now, the invasion of Russia has made the dream of NATO in Kyiv almost unattainable.
Moldova, Azerbaijan and Georgia could also have aspirations for NATO, depending on where they are in their oscillation between pro and anti-Russian regimes. But they all have instability fostered by the Kremlin within or within its borders, which would prevent its membership.
4. Is NATO still relevant?
As the expansionist phase of NATO reached its peak, and Russia seemed, in general, albeit truculently, to accept the new status quo, the alliance became less certain of its purpose.
The US, which is key to NATO effectiveness, was distracted first by the war on terror after the September 11, 2001 attacks, then by the rise of China.
NATO entered into conflicts far beyond its traditional scope, in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. The success was not clear.
Since the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014, NATO, led by Britain and the US, began to arm Ukraine in silence and to train its army. The rest of Europe, depending on Russian oil, coal, and gas, allowed regular business with Moscow to gradually resume.
Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump has specialized in getting horns with China. When he looked to Europe, he publicly questioned the value of NATO, praised Vladimir Putin, and criticized his allies for his trade policies and his alleged inadequate defense spending.
In 2019, French President Emmanuel Macron declared that NATO was “brain dead” and Trump began withdrawing U.S. troops from its stations in Europe.
This was the nadir. Perversely, Trump’s interruption had a galvanizing effect. Fearing that the American umbrella might fold, many countries actually tightened their military budgets.
When Joe Biden took over the White House, he rhetorically committed himself to NATO and Europe and stopped Trump’s withdrawal of troops. The transatlantic link worked again.
Maybe that was what fired Putin: he could no longer trust Trump to divide and destabilize the West, and he should do it himself.
But his invasion of Ukraine has had precisely the opposite effect. NATO has energy and a purpose, its founding mission rediscovered and invigorated.
The alliance is unified, Germany is finally pulling its weight and NATO is ready to arm its eastern borders to the teeth and get Ukraine back in hand.
5. The summit of Madrid
To try it out, look no further than the NATO summit. Normally, NATO leaders hold a summit only once every two or three years. The Madrid rally is the third since the Russian invasion on 24 February.
The previous two summits tried to organize an initial response to the crisis at the gates of NATO. But Madrid is the big one: there will be a lot of talk about assistance to Ukraine, but the main item on the agenda is a document called Strategic Concept.
This is NATO’s plan, which will guide its deployments and decision-making. The 2010 version was still wrapped up in the thought of what we might call the NATO Fukuyama phase: the idea that the end of the Cold War would lead to a relentless advance of liberal internationalism.
Complacency is gone. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Monday that the 2022 strategic concept represents “the biggest overhaul of our collective advocacy and deterrence since the Cold War.”
Not surprisingly, it is aimed at Russia, “the most significant and direct threat to our security,” Stoltenberg said. But Trump’s legacy is still alive: the document will address China for the first time, outlining “the challenges Beijing poses to our security, interests and values.”
It is at this point that Australia and the Albanian enter the scene. Like the US, Australia has been working in Europe for years to make London, Paris, Berlin and Brussels see China as more than a lucrative trading partner.
Little by little, and all of a sudden, Europe has accepted that China is not just a trade and investment opportunity: it is also a trade competitor and a systemic rival, to use Brussels slang.
They now accept that Beijing, like Moscow, is using its full set of tools (cyber attacks, misinformation, and economic coercion) to increase its influence and alter or reshape international order.
Australia, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Korea are the hardened front line in the struggle to rebuild the Indo-Pacific. Thus, NATO has invited them to the Madrid summit to contribute their experience and knowledge gained strongly to the discussions on China.
Australia is also re-equipping its offensive and defensive capabilities to cope with the evolving strategic landscape of our region. And that opens up opportunities to craft strategies and train together, and to buy each other’s equipment.
This has already generated first the problematic Franco-Australian association and now AUKUS. It gives NATO members every reason to feel comfortable with Canberra.
Rightly or wrongly, the struggle with Russia and China is being seen as a clash of values and political systems: democracy and openness versus autocracy and control.
Seen through this prism, there is an overlap between the direct interests of a given Western country and its broader interests. Even if a conflict is not in the immediate region of that country, the clash of values that embodies the conflict has an overflow from one region to another.
That is why Albanese is in Madrid and that is why it is important, because national interests are now aligned with broader values.
So Australia has a dog in the fight between Russia and Ukraine, and NATO has one in competition with China. Working together, they hope the bite of the West can become as sharp as their bark.