With a threatening war and the USA in doubt about the future: this is how NATO reaches its 75th anniversary

This Thursday, the 4th North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) celebrates 75 years of creation, an anniversary marked by the war between Russia and Ukraine, and the uncertainty generated by the position that would be taken donald trump in an eventual return to the presidency of the United States.

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Founded on April 4, 1949 by a dozen countries that sought to guarantee a joint response – both political and military – to a possible attack by the Soviet Union during the first years of the Cold War, NATO played a fundamental role in the objective that the West had to stop the spread of communism when World War II ended.

“NATO was born to protect political liberalism against communist interventionism. To protect freedom and human rights from Soviet totalitarianism“, he comments The trade the Peruvian historian and international analyst based in France Rodrigo Murillo.

Despite the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, NATO continued to strengthen to position itself as the world’s leading military alliance.

NATO was born as a political-military alliance designed to protect the West from the Soviet Union after the Second World War.

Over the years, the United States, France, United Kingdom, Italy, Canada, Norway, Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Portugal, Iceland and Luxembourg were joined by Albania, Germany, Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Czech Republic, Romania, Turkey and, this year, the accessions of Sweden and Finland were officially completed, bringing the total to 32 nations.

For a long time the alliance remained without threats, until in 1999 its members decided to bomb Serbia to protect Kosovo. Subsequently, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 led to the activation of Article 5, which responds to the principle of collective defense on which NATO was founded, to support the United States in its invasion of Afghanistan.

In 2003 and 2012, the alliance would once again act in the crises in Iraq and Syria, sending missiles and artillery.

After the attacks of September 11, 2001, NATO activated Article 5 to support the United States in the invasion of Afghanistan. (SETH MCALLISTER/)

However, it was only in 2014 that NATO would again perceive a real threat to its members. Russia’s annexation of Crimea has increased tensions between the organization and the Kremlin.

Vladimir Putin’s government was increasingly concerned about the expansion of Western forces with the accessions of countries close to its borders and NATO’s resistance to reaching an agreement on a growth limit did not help to calm the tension.

The invasion ordered by Putin of Ukraine in February 2022 ended up taking the relationship between Western governments and Moscow to a point of no return.

The truth is that the war has revitalized an alliance that in 2019, in the words of French President Emmanuel Macron, was “brain death”.

Although it has made efforts not to become directly involved in the conflict with troops, NATO has sent billions of dollars in military, technological and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. However, the greatest threat to the alliance may not be on the battlefield, but within itself.

In February 2022, Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine.

“NATO is under severe pressure, not just from external factors. In addition to the conflict in Eastern Europe and the rise of China, increasingly closer to becoming an undisputed world power, there are internal factors that greatly harm relations and the political-military viability of NATO. Today, many European countries and the United States face extremely dangerous political polarization. There are two paths in all countries that make up the alliance for the next elections. On the one hand, there is a continuous and liberal path personified by what Joe Biden, Emmanuel Macron or Olaf Scholz represent. But within these same countries there is another political proposal that could come to power and that has already won in countries like Poland or Hungary. These are candidates who oppose the values ​​for which the alliance was born at some point. We see more militarist proposals that seek to regain sovereignty in managing their borders”, says Murillo.

The clearest example of this internal threat to the alliance were the statements made by former president and current Republican candidate Donald Trump, who assured that if he returned to the White House in November this year he would let Putin do whatever he wanted with countries that do not contribute enough to NATO.

According to the bases of the alliance, each country should spend 2% of its GDP on defense, but until 2014 only the United States, the United Kingdom and Greece complied with this. By 2021, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Lithuania, Romania and France have also achieved this goal and the alliance expects that by the end of 2024 at least twenty states will meet the requirement.

Trump guaranteed that, if he returned to the presidency of the United States, he would not protect NATO member states that did not comply with the allocation of 2% of their GDP to Defense. (ANGELA WEISS/)

However, these promises did little to calm the voices seeking to disconnect from the alliance and, according to Murillo, prolonging the conflict in Ukraine would only worsen this situation.

“As the Ukrainian conflict prolongs and a Russian victory becomes more tangible, combined with the failure of the United States in projecting its military power – in reference to the freezing of the last aid fund for Ukraine by Congress -, France’s initial position and Europe, which is overwhelming against Russia, will have to be moderate. The Europeans themselves, in the absence of the United States, realize that they do not have the industrial or economic potential to confront Russia. In France, there is discussion every day about how Europe can regain its autonomy. If France distrusts the United States, we can say that this is replicated in other NATO members. Therefore, I estimate that we will see much more considered positions from the alliance as the conflict in Ukraine continues.”, comments the expert.

According to the analyst, this split between Europeans and Americans would not only respond to budgetary problems, but also to differences in the identification of the main threats.

“For Americans, especially the Republican Party, China’s seizure of power is extremely worrying. I would say it is as important or more important than the outcome of the conflict in Eastern Europe. But the Europeans do not consider this, for them the main rival is Russia. This additional point suggests that the alliance will suffer even greater tensions”, explains Murillo.

China aims to become the world’s leading naval force by 2049, when the centenary of the Chinese Communist Party in power will be celebrated.

Despite the complicated moment that the alliance is facing, however, the analyst guarantees that “It is far from being the most complicated in its history”.

“It is a complex moment at a political level because there are different interpretations of its immediate objectives, but it will be clarified within the framework of future elections in member countries. When the missile crisis occurred in 1962, the Soviet Union was ahead of the United States at the nuclear level and had much greater artillery production than several European countries combined. It was a much more powerful enemy, today Russia does not have that potential. The specter of war worries Europeans, especially because of its economic effects, but I believe that today NATO is not worried militarily“, he points out.

Although I recognize that this tranquility may not last long. “However, in the medium or long term, Chinese potential, especially naval plans for 2049, could place NATO at a time when it would not have the military capacity to overcome a rival.“, alert.

Source: Elcomercio