Sten
Rynning
Professor,
Director
Danish
Institute of Advanced Study (DIAS), University of Southern Denmark
Denmark
sry@sam.sdu.dk
After 75 years of respite, Europe may be returning to balance of power politics. The cause hereof is Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine but most notably the inadequacy of the Western response to it.
NATO, turning 75 in April 2024, was never primarily about the balance of power. NATO was designed by the United States—which responded to the prodding of British and other leaders—to solve Europe’s balance of power problem once and for all. The United States entered into a peacetime military commitment to overcome, not participate in balance of power politics.
Readers will be familiar with the Marshall aid of 1947 that offered Europeans much needed financial recovery aid in return for a commitment to unite. In many ways, the Marshall aid program was the starting shot of European integration. By thus tying Europeans to the mast of permanent and institutionalized cooperation, the United States sought to prevent the return of balance of power politics.
NATO has in this regard received less attention as a transformational initiative. After all, it was a political-military alliance to balance Soviet power. However, NATO was the security piece of the transformational design of US policy: bringing security to Europeans was meant to enable political transformation. Yes, NATO should keep ‘the Russians out,’ but the Alliance’s primary purpose was to encourage confidence and cooperation in a Europe protected by an American security umbrella.
NATO’s treaty therefore speaks of no evil. It speaks instead of community building, referring to the UN Charter and peace among its members. The treaty envisages this peace as durable, for as long as it is protected. Thus, Senator Vandenberg, who did so much to enable American entry into its first overseas peacetime alliance, and who negotiated the UN Charter’s collective security clause, was adamant: NATO was a facet of collective security, not a return to some European-style balance of power politics.
This history matters tremendously to the Atlantic Alliance that today struggles to fashion an adequate response to Russia’s war on Ukraine. As I lay out in my book, NATO: From Cold War to Ukraine, A History of the World’s Most Powerful Alliance (Yale UP, 2024), NATO is in fact struggling to maintain its core function as a peace community within which security competition between its members is unthinkable.
How did it get to this point? Three factors have conspired to drive NATO into its state of doubt. The first is geopolitical shortsightedness. NATO allies have never fully resolved the tension between their promise to make Europe free for all and then their tendency to reduce conflicts on Russia’s borders and neighboring regions to post-Soviet affairs. In 2008, NATO allies promised Ukraine and Georgia a future inside NATO but then drew back. The result has been to whet Russia’s appetite for geopolitical revision and enhance its ability to use the Eastern European space as a testing bed for its revisionist policy.
The second is defense fatigue. NATO’s treaty specifies in its Article 3 that defense first and foremost is a national responsibility, adding that collective will is important too. Since the retreat from the Afghan combat mission in 2011-2012, allies have mostly wanted to forget about this national responsibility. In effect, they went on a defense-free vacation. NATO allies did respond in modest ways to the Russian seizure of Crimea, but the build-up of trip wires and ‘enhanced forward presence’ was limited. Today we know that it failed to impress Russia, which in 2022 returned Europe to major war.
The final factor is respect for Russia as a major nuclear power inside Europe. Thirty years of belief in progress tempt the idea that Europe’s future stability must somehow include peace diplomacy with Russia—perhaps when the war in Ukraine freezes and when East-West diplomacy gains better scope. A Europe whole and free, is the underlying sense, must involve Russia.
These three factors combine into a cocktail of geopolitical laxism. Defense fatigue, political divisions, and Russia politics drive the idea that sooner or later, NATO allies must talk to Russia and strike a continental deal. The idea is still not dominant. But it is wedging itself into a reality where US leadership is waning and where European allies struggle to cohere and make an impact to the benefit for Ukraine. Negotiation with Russia will be dressed up as reasonable: a measure to deal with the cost of the war and to get on with other business.
However, no one should be in doubt that when negotiation with Russia takes precedence over self-sufficiency in terms of collective defense, NATO will have parted company with its legacy. This NATO, adapting to the balance of power and to Russia’s dominance of its near abroad, will no longer suffice to create peace in Europe. It is not yet NATO’s course, but it is something everyone vested in NATO’s peace should be concerned about and actively seek to counter.