NATO at 70: Modernising for the Future

This article was external pageoriginally publishedcall_made by the external pageNATO Defense College (NDC)call_made in March 2019. external pageImagecall_made courtesy of NATO/Flickr. external page(CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)call_made

When NATO’s founding fathers came together in 1949 to sign the Washington Treaty, they committed to keeping their people safe and defending the values of freedom, democracy, and the rule of law. Over the past seventy years, the world has changed and the security situation has evolved – and so has the Alliance. But its raison d’être, famously captured in the d’Artagnan principle, “all for one, one for all”, holds true to this very day.

With this unwavering commitment at its core, NATO has been able to navigate a changing security environment and tackle a range of security challenges over the decades. For seventy years, it has successfully kept our nations safe and free.

NATO’s success lies in its ability to adapt to evolving circumstances, to unite around our common purpose and shared interests, as well as to modernise and keep up with the dizzying pace of social and technological change.

An Adaptable Alliance

In the early years, NATO’s security environment was shaped by a single and clearly defined security threat – the Soviet Union. But over the decades, as the threats to our security changed, NATO adapted, not once, but repeatedly. We intervened in the Balkans to end brutal wars in the 1990s. After 9/11, we launched our biggest ever combat operation to fight terrorism in Afghanistan. In 2008, we deployed ships off the coast of Somalia to help counter piracy and secure critical sea-lanes.

Today, NATO is adapting once more. This time, not only in response to a single threat, but to many: from Russia’s aggressive actions, to conflict and instability in the Middle East and North Africa, and a range of “hybrid” threats blurring the lines between peace and war. To keep up with a rapidly changing and increasingly challenging security environment, the Alliance is taking steps to defend its own territory and populations across the Euro-Atlantic area, but also and at the same time, to support its neighbours in their efforts to manage crises.

To deal with a more assertive Russia, NATO has strengthened its presence in the eastern part of the Alliance – from the Baltic to the Black Sea. In the aftermath of Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea, NATO swiftly implemented the largest reinforcement of its collective defense since the end of the Cold War. We deployed 5,000 troops across Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. We tripled the size of the NATO Response Force to 40,000, including a high readiness force that can deploy within days. We also enhanced air policing in the Baltic and Black Sea regions and stepped up our military exercises.

Simultaneously, in response to violent instability in the Middle East and North Africa, and especially the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)/Da’esh, NATO enhanced its role in the fight against international terrorism and increased its defence capacity building support to partner countries in the region – notably in Jordan and Tunisia. At the Brussels Summit in July 2018, NATO leaders agreed to launch a mission in Iraq to help train the Iraqi forces and make sure ISIL never returns.

With cyber-attacks becoming more frequent and more disruptive, NATO has also upped its game in the cyber sphere. At the Warsaw Summit in 2016, cyberspace was officially recognized as a new “domain” of operations, alongside land, sea and air. In other words, NATO extended its resolve to deter aggression against its Allies from the physical world to the virtual one. This was yet another demonstration of an Alliance adapting to twenty-first century threats.

A United Alliance

Preserving peace and security is not a job that any one country can take on alone. Together, NATO Allies have successfully protected and defended one another for the past seven decades.

NATO is a family of 29 – soon to be 30 – Allies and a network of over 40 partners. Just like any family, there are disagreements among its members – as there always have been. The Suez Crisis in 1956 was one of the strongest disagreements between Allies. France’s withdrawal from NATO’s command structure in 1966 was another hurdle in NATO’s history. In the end, the Alliance had to move its Headquarters from Paris to Brussels (and the NATO Defense College to Rome). There were transatlantic rifts over energy deals with the Soviet Union in the 1980s, and over Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s. Allies had a fierce debate over the Iraq War in 2003, which led many observers to argue that the security environment would push Allies apart rather than closer together. These disagreements were real. They challenged the Alliance, but the transatlantic bond never weakened. Ultimately, unity prevailed.

As an alliance of democracies, unity does not mean uniformity. Governments change, and balancing different interests and priorities has never been easy. NATO membership has always come with obligations as well as benefits, and the tendency to prefer the latter to the former is true of countries as well as individuals. But the key is to work through differences and find a common way forward. NATO’s unique quality is that it has always managed to forge this common path.

History has shown that Allies overcome their disagreements when the time comes to take action. The same is true today. For when faced with a threat, Allies discuss together, decide together, act together and deliver results together. Just last July at the Brussels Summit, against the backdrop of growing differences between Europe and North America on issues such as trade, climate change and the Iran nuclear deal, Allies came together and took over one hundred decisions to further strengthen their security and defence ties.

They agreed to increase the readiness of their forces, to boost efforts in the fight against terrorism, and to strengthen responses against cyber and hybrid attacks. Acknowledging that these increased efforts to preserve peace and security do not come for free, Allies agreed to spend more and better on defence. They have been increasing the amount they spend on defence since 2014. The majority of Allies have plans in place to spend 2 percent of their Gross Domestic Product on defence by 2024. Last July, they agreed to redouble their efforts to share the burden more fairly.

In these efforts, the United States stands firm with Europe. It has strengthened its commitment to Europe with more troops, more equipment and more exercises. At the same time, the European Allies and Canada are spending more on their defence, with an extra USD41 billion in real terms over the past two years. By the end of 2020, this figure should increase to USD100 billion.

A Modern Alliance

In 2018, the NATO Headquarters moved into its new home – a modern and “green” building with state-of-the-art facilities. The new Headquarters in Brussels reflects our modern, twenty-first century Alliance: representative of the people it protects, equipped to respond to today’s threats and prepared to tackle future challenges.

Those who worked at NATO in the 1950s would hardly recognize this new workplace. The cigarette smoke in the corridors has evaporated, flat-screen computers have replaced noisy typewriters, and classified documents circulate by email instead of pneumatic tubes. Above all, NATO has become a much more diverse organisation, with more women both in management and in uniform, as well as many more languages spoken in the cafeteria. Importantly, the average age at NATO Headquarters has dropped substantially with the recruitment of a younger workforce.

NATO is modernising its military structures too. The Command Structure, the military backbone of the Alliance, is currently undergoing a major update to be better prepared to respond to any threat at any time. A cyberspace Operations Centre was established in Mons, Belgium, last August to coordinate NATO operations in cyberspace. Two other commands will soon be operational: one in Norfolk, Virginia, in the United States, to protect the transatlantic sea lines of communication; and one in Ulm, Germany, to support the rapid movement of troops and equipment into, across, and out of Europe. These commands will help our forces become more mobile, and help ensure NATO has the right forces in the right place at the right time, ready to respond at a moment’s notice to any threat.

Modern structures need modern tools. For NATO to keep up with the rapid pace of technological change and ensure it has the right tools and capabilities to carry out its mission, it must continuously innovate. If the Alliance wants to maintain a strategic military advantage over those who seek to threaten or weaken it, this is not a choice, it is a necessity.

Exercise Trident Juncture 18, which took place in Norway in October-November 2018 and was NATO’s biggest exercise since the Cold War, showcased our ability to innovate. For example, we tested one of the world’s smallest drones capable of seeing in the dark. Cutting-edge 3D printing facilities were used during the exercise to make spare parts that could be distributed immediately without having to wait for them to arrive from distant suppliers. These technologies are crucial to improving NATO’s response times and our ability to protect our troops and people.

Way Forward

At seventy, NATO is in good shape. We remain the world’s most powerful military Alliance and an anchor of stability in turbulent waters. We are in a period of great power competition and the very values that underpin our liberal world order – freedom, democracy, the rule of law – are under strain. It is NATO’s job to steer us through this new, more tense and uncertain environment.

As it enters a new decade of existence, there are voices questioning the purpose of NATO and the strength of the transatlantic bond. Over the years, Allies have always tackled the debate about the relevance of NATO head on. And we have never taken the transatlantic bond for granted. In the words of NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, “nowhere is it written that the transatlantic bond will always thrive. That doesn’t, however, mean that its breakdown is inevitable. We can maintain it, and all the mutual benefits we derive from it”.¹ We must continue to answer the tough questions to avoid complacency and ensure NATO’s continued relevance.

Looking ahead, NATO is focusing on the following set of objectives.

First, unity: Allies must continue to stick together. We face many complex and interrelated threats – none of which can be expected to vanish overnight. They come from near and far, and from multiple directions – by land, sea, air and cyberspace. A lone individual armed with a machine-gun can spread terror within seconds. A single cyber-attack has the potential to bring the world’s most powerful countries to their knees. There is no better way to stand-up to these threats than standing together. Now is not the time to go it alone. Our unity is the basis of deterrence and makes us attractive to partners. Together, we are the motor of global security governance, but divided, we lose power and influence.

Second, burden sharing: we have made good progress, but there is more work to do. Sharing the burden is about spending more on defence and reaching the 2 percent target, but it is also about avoiding fragmentation and ensuring that European defence initiatives reinforce and complement NATO’s efforts. Enhanced European defence cooperation is crucial for the security of Europe and can contribute to fairer burden sharing within NATO, but it should not be at the expense of such cooperation at NATO.

Third, innovation: we must continue to prepare for the unexpected. For this, NATO must accelerate its innovation agenda and be more ambitious in its efforts to modernize. We are only starting to get to grips with some of the biggest technological developments of the twenty-first century, and we still need to absorb the impact that artificial intelligence, big data, and cloud computing are having on our security. We must continue to work closely with industry, and all Allies must honour their commitment to acquire more modern and sophisticated equipment to enable their armed forces to perform better and faster. We have not lost our technological edge, but it is under threat and requires more focused high-level political attention.

Fourth, norms: the world order survives on norms. NATO traditionally has championed nonmilitary forms of security, including political dialogue, arms control and confidence-building measures. More recently, NATO has attached great importance to women, peace and security, protection of children in armed conflict and also civilians. And NATO is strongly committed to international laws to make cyber space more regulated and more secure. There is more we can do, together with our network of like-minded partners, to defend our norms and protect the rules-based international order from those who deliberately try to undermine it.

Fifth and last, we need to seek new opportunities. We may be facing some of the greatest security challenges in a generation, but we cannot simply accept that it is all doom and gloom. The breakdown of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty poses a significant security threat for us all. We are trying to save the Treaty and calling on Russia to come back to full and verifiable compliance. But we must also be prepared for a world without the Treaty and accept that this could pave the way for new discussions on strategic stability and the future of arms control. Such discussions would likely take time and require patience, but they are in all parties’ interests. We should also grasp the opportunities of closer relations with China, including on arms control. We have worked together to combat piracy off the coast of Somalia, and our militaries are in regular contact. Notwithstanding the challenges a rising China poses to the rules-based international order, we should be open to forging cooperation in areas of common interest, including, for instance, on new technologies. These technologies also offer opportunities. They can be disruptive and damaging, but they can also present important new ways to ensure our collective security.

The founders of the North Atlantic Alliance would never have predicted that the security environment would evolve as radically and as rapidly as it has. Nor would they ever have imagined that NATO would adapt as meaningfully and as swiftly as it has. Although there is no crystal ball to predict what lies ahead, we can look back and learn the lessons from history. The past seven decades have shown us what NATO is capable of. As we look to the future, we will remain a pillar of stability in an uncertain world: strong, modern, and united.

Note

1 Jens Stoltenberg, “Europe and North America need to stay united – now more than ever”, The Guardian, 19 June 2018.

About the Author

Rose Gottemoeller is the NATO Deputy Secretary General.

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