NATO at 75: Why the alliance was formed, where it stands today

On the anniversary, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov spoke to reporters about Russia’s ties with NATO, saying relations have now “slipped to the level of direct confrontation.”

What was the rationale behind the creation of NATO, who forms part of it and where does it stand today? We explain.

Why was NATO established?

NATO is a Western security alliance founded on April 4, 1949, with 12 founding members – Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the United States.

They signed the Washington Treaty, which gets its power from Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, “which reaffirms the inherent right of independent states to individual or collective defence.”

At the very heart of the alliance is the concept of “collective security” – an attack on any of the members is seen as an attack on all of them and demands collective action. This was deemed necessary in 1949 amid the Cold War rivalry between the then USSR and the US, over ideological and economic superiority.

Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, on collective security, was added “to counter the risk that the Soviet Union would seek to extend its control of Eastern Europe to other parts of the continent.” The USSR also aimed to shore up allies and in 1955, the Warsaw Pact was constituted as an alliance of socialist countries.

However, it doesn’t necessitate direct military intervention constituting all members. The scale of action is dependent on each member country “as it deems necessary”. The only time the article has been invoked so far was following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US. NATO forces were sent to Afghanistan and deployed for nearly 20 years.

Who are NATO’s members today?

Apart from the original 12, members include Greece and Turkey (1952); West Germany (1955; later as Germany); Spain (1982); the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland (1999); Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia (2004); Albania and Croatia (2009); Montenegro (2017); North Macedonia (2020); Finland (2023); and Sweden (2024).

There was a wave of new entrants in 1999, a few years after the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991. Concerns were raised then about the alliance possibly becoming obsolete, given its original purpose of establishment no longer existed.

US political science professor John S Duffield, who wrote on ‘NATO’s Functions after the Cold War’ (published in the Political Science Quarterly journal in the mid-1990s) argued there were three reasons why NATO survived.

First, he said “NATO still serves to secure its members against a number of actual or potential dangers emanating from outside their territory,” meaning even beyond Russia. Today, China has emerged as a power which NATO countries often compete with not just in economic terms, but also in the form of various ideological and strategic differences.

Second, he credits “NATO’s capacity for institutional adaptation”, and how it has played a role in “containing and controlling militarised conflicts in Central and Eastern Europe” by “actively promoting stability within the former Soviet bloc.”

Above all, he wrote, “NATO pessimists overlooked the valuable intra-alliance functions that the alliance has always performed and that remain relevant after the cold war. Most importantly, NATO has helped stabilize Western Europe, whose states had often been bitter rivals in the past.”

What challenges does NATO face today?

When NATO members gathered to celebrate 70 years of establishment in 2019, there were clear tensions between members. US President Donald Trump argued that countries needed to raise their military spending. In 2014, NATO members pledged to spend at least 2 per cent of their GDP on defence after Russia annexed Crimea.

However, only a few countries met the threshold. Trump criticised this, saying it was unfair to countries like the US, who doing the requisite spending. As of 2023, of the 30 countries member countries then, 11 spent more than the limit.

One major reason was the Russian invasion of Ukraine the year before. Countries such as Finland and Sweden, which were usually known to be neutral in their foreign policy decisions, seemed attracted to the idea of collective security in the face of an aggressive Russia.

While NATO has a liberal “open door” policy for membership, all members need to ratify the entry of a new applicant for it to become a member. Turkey held off against Sweden and Finland for long, as the two countries’ politicians had criticised Turkey in the past over human rights violations. Turkey also claimed the countries gave refuge to “terrorists”.

Disagreements between countries have led to intra-block tensions in the past, too. In 2019, French President Emmanuel Macron said there was “a lack of strategic coordination between European allies on the one hand and the United States and Turkey, on the other”, according to Reuters.

Although the Ukraine-Russia war seems to have given NATO a new focus area to converge at, funding the war has again become a source of disagreements among members, much to Ukraine’s displeasure. Just this year, Secretary-General Stoltenberg said a plan was being formulated so that 18 NATO would meet the 2 per cent limit by the end of 2024. He also suggested creating a five-year, $107 billion fund for Ukraine, but the suggestion drew mixed reactions from members.

Meanwhile, Trump is now a strong contender for the White House, with the US presidential elections due in November this year. As part of his campaign, he has said the US would not protect countries that do not meet the 2 per cent target, raising concerns about the alliance’s future under a possible Trump administration.