NATO in the era of Trump and Putin

On April 4, 2019, NATO celebrates its 70th birthday. However, its first supreme commander, Dwight Eisenhower, hoped that the alliance would not exceed the 1950s. If for the next 10 years” told a friend in February 1951, “all American troops stationed in Europe for the purpose of protecting nations there will not have returned to the US, then this project will have failed!”

Eisenhower insisted that the US “could not be a modern Rome, guarding its borders with its legions”. His philosophy was similar to that of Paul Hoffman, the American administrator of the Marshall Plan, saying:” Let Europe walk at its feet!”

Why, then, has Europe been so difficult to stand on its feet? And why has America chosen to keep Europe on its back all this time? With NATO now in retirement age, it is worth tracking alliance evolution during the Cold War, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

It all started as a treaty, not an alliance. This distinction, often ignored, is important. The Truman administration, hoped that the help of the Marshall Plan, would restore Western Europe's prosperity and confidence in the face of the communist threat, both from the Soviet Union and Western Communist parties, especially in Italy and France.

The signing of the North Atlantic Treaty was actually a revolution in US foreign policy. It reflected not only the alarming state of Soviet-American relations in 1948-1949 but also the changing of official American thinking. France's chapter and the attack on Pearl Harbor convinced American policymakers that in the era of the birth of air power, the United States was no longer safe after their traditional ocean barriers, and, more specifically, it had to play an active role in European affairs.

The 12 original signatories -- America, Canada and 10 Western European states -- agreed to treat an attack on one member as an attack on all: collective security progress, embedded in Article 5 of the Treaty. But each state was allowed to take such an action, if you consider it necessary to abide by this obligation: so it was not an automatic commitment to use force.

What helped to turn the Treaty into a military alliance was the Korean War. The invasion of South Korea in June 1950 became known as something Stalin should have authorized and supported. There was a fear that Western Europe could have its turn. At the time, the United States had only 2 military divisions in Europe.

After a major political debate during the winter of 1950-51, the United States decided to engage 4 war divisions in Western Europe, and to establish an appropriate command structure under a Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces of Europe who would always be an American.

In exchange for this unprecedented commitment to peace in Europe and the security of Western Europe, the Truman administration demanded that allies do something more. In particular, it called for the reforestation of West Germany, but this was an anathema for the French after the three terrible battles against the Germans in 80 years:1870, 1914, and 1939.

The debate over the issue dragged on for four years, and proved a crucial moment for transatlantic relations. One option was to apply for European protection, the integration logic of the 1950 Schuman Plan, which eventually paved the way for the creation of the Coal and Steel Community, and then the European Economic Community (EEC), which was established in 1958.

But the idea of a European Defence Community (EDC) was blocked in 1954 at the French National Assembly, by an alliance between the goalists and the Communists. Finally, the rearming of West Germany continued on condition that its armed forces were completely dedicated to NATO, at a time that eliminated all its atomic, biological and chemical weapons.

The Federal Republic was officially accepted into NATO in May 1955. The Soviets responded by forming the Warsaw Treaty Organization with their satellites. During the Cold NATO War, two internal crises suffered. The first was caused by French President Charles de Goul.

Aiming to rebuild the country's greatness after the humiliating defeat of 1940, he challenged the alliance's American-Britian domination, and when criticised, he gradually took France out of NATO military command. And then in March 1966, De Goul asked US President Lindon Johnson that by April 1967, all American and NATO troops should be pulled out of France.

NATO completed the withdrawal within the year, moving its headquarters from Versaya to Mons in Belgium. The alliance's new internal crisis focused more on the Federal Republic of Germany. By the late 1970s, NATO leaders were afraid of the deployment of new Soviet-rayed SS-20 missiles in Eastern Europe.

In response, NATO leaders agreed to deploy new US weapons to Western Europe. Only 4 of the alliance's 12 European members were willing to accept the missiles, mainly because of domestic protests. German opinion was particularly divided, and the pressures brought down the coalition government of Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, the main European architect of “double strategy policy”.

It took two strong conservative leaders, Trout Col, in Germany and Margaret Thecher in Britain, for the missiles to be deployed in 1983. Successful implementation of the dual strategy in the early 1980s helped preserve NATO unity.

What, though, about the top priority of the Russians? When the Warsaw Pact was destroyed, NATO spoke of transforming itself into more than a “political organisation”. Her statement in London in July 1990 told of the construction of the new <x2-partneries, with all nations in Europe”.

At that point, there was no public debate about NATO enlargement, beyond the agreement that the former East German would become part of NATO's area, once it was organised into the Federal Republic. During difficult negotiations about the German union, Gorbachev failed to insist on any mandatory commitments, under which he was able to impose NATO would not expand eastward.

After the Soviet collapse, this issue became urgent during Bill Clinton's US presidency. But the State Department and Pentagon priority was supporting the fragile reform process in Russia, and helping re-election Boris Jelcin in 1996.

Washington's balancing act was reflected in the Partnership for Peace status bid for aspiring members in 1994, and the establishment of a Joint Permanent Council between NATO and Russia in 1997. But the admission of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic on the 50th anniversary of NATO in April 1999 was perceived in Moscow as a challenge to Russia's status as a great power.

Even more hated for the Kremlin was the admission of seven other Eastern European states in 2004, including Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, which were strongly annexed in the USSR from 1940 to 1991.

Vladimir Putin, the successor of Jelcin since 2000, did not strike any loud protests, and Russia continued to participate in various partner activities with NATO, such as joint military exercises. In fact, Putin was trying to work closely with George Bush in “The fight against Terror”, following the September 11, 2001.

He hoped to rebuild Moscow's power status and secure a free hand near the Russian neighbourhood. From its 60th anniversary in 2009. NATO seems to have won the Cold War without finding a new role for itself. And in 2019, many commentators are asking whether the Cold War really ended, given Putin's growing confrontation with Russia following his invasion of Crime and parts of Ukraine (NATO partner); his continued efforts to destabilise Baltic states; and the widespread use of cyber attacks to undermine democratic processes.

Putin will test the alliance's up-to-date version of control, but also requires a double capacity for dialogue in order to benefit from the fact that Russian society, if not its policy, has changed radically from Gorbachev's Glasnosti. But the survival of Trump's era can be even more challenging.

The American president has repeatedly talked about leaving the alliance, and NATO's 70th birthday in Washington in the month of April has been deliberately reduced to an event of the member states' foreign ministers. Meanwhile, the November 2018 calls by Emmanuel Makron and Angela Merkel for a European army like “a complement for NATO” is without meaning.

They fail to handle both nuclear and German issues. The commitment of NATO leaders in 2014 to raise national protection spending to 2 percent of GDP within a decade has so far been achieved by only 7 of the 29 member states, with Germany being one of the main obstacles. Perhaps NATO's biggest challenge in its eighth decade is not the restraining of the Russians, but the keeping of Americans in the alliance's bay.

Taken with cuts from “Stateman” World.al