NATO: The End of the Permanent Alliance

Stanley Kober is a Research Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, Washington, D.C.

 

 

In his Farewell Address, President George Washington advised the American people to avoid the creation of permanent alliances. Unfortunately, flush with their triumph in the Cold War, the leaders of the United States and the other members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) chose to ignore his advice. Indeed, during her confirmation hearings in January 1997 for secretary of state, Madeleine Albright described NATO as “a permanent alliance”.

 

The 2008 Russia–Georgia conflict provides a test of these competing approaches, and illustrates why America’s first president was so worried about making alliances permanent and why we should have paid closer attention. Washington’s argument has been so neglected that it deserves to be quoted at length; indeed, the length with which he addressed this issue reflects the concern he felt about it.

 

[N]othing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence, frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of policy … The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations, has been the victim.¹

 

In other words, Washington was concerned that permanent alliances would lock the people into perceptions of permanent affection or hostility. After all, if people are permanently in opposing camps, they will assume a deep underlying cause is at work. Thus, in a crisis, the people would be likely to respond according to these predispositions, rather than according to the particulars of the case. Because of these sentiments, disputes that might normally be controlled could escalate into major confrontations.

 

We can see elements of this tendency emerging during the Russia–Georgia conflict. In the NATO countries, there was immediate support for Georgia, which was being considered for membership in the alliance. On 12 August 2008, the ambassadors who constitute the North Atlantic Council met the Georgian ambassador and “conveyed their solidarity and support to Tbilisi authorities”.² Both Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Vice-President Dick Cheney flew to Georgia to demonstrate US support. Even President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia has said he “was personally very surprised that the [American presidential] candidates were so passionate” about his country.³

 

For their part, the Russian people are overwhelmingly supportive of their government’s position. “The war in Georgia has provoked unprecedented levels of patrio[ti]sm in Russia,” Fred Weir, a long-time correspondent in Russia, reported. “ ‘Why do you [Westerners] always paint Russia black, even when we’re just trying to save our own citizens from genocide?,’ Sasha, a professor of political science asked me. ‘We’ve been facing a creeping invasion of our country by NATO for years, but thank God our leaders are finally taking action to stop it,’ said Andrei, an executive with a big Western-based multinational corporation.”⁴

 

The explanation that has been given for Russia’s action is that it is a legacy of the Soviet mindset, typical of leaders like Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. A new generation is destined to sweep that away in time. And to the extent that Russians support the policy, it is dismissed as a result of their limited access to unbiased sources, given the Russian government’s growing control of the press.

 

That comforting explanation, however, is undermined by an article written by a Russian intern at the Washington Post shortly after the conflict began. She is too young to be a product of the Soviet system, and she expressed her dismay with Western press coverage, which she considered biased. “Everything seemed too clear for the journalists writing about the conflict: Big, evil Russia tried to destroy small, democratic Georgia,” she wrote. “And the American media’s willingness to choose sides provoked Russian media outlets. Russian newspapers did not waste time reminding readers that the true evil was the United States and that Washington was ultimately responsible for the conflict in Ossetia and Georgia.” She concluded that the American media “have lost prestige among a generation of young Russians who believed that America is a country of true, uncorrupted, independent information.”⁵

 

Thus, we are witnessing a hardening of attitudes, just as George Washington foresaw. Americans may be less aware of this, because Russia is not the obsession it was with us during the Cold War. The disenchantment of Russians with the United States and NATO is more evident, and it could have ominous consequences. Russian co-operation could be helpful, possibly even indispensable, in dealing with threats confronting us—e.g., Iran and Afghanistan. By the same token, Russian opposition, possibly focused on the development of competing power structures, could lead to a new division of the world, much as Europe divided at the beginning of the last century. 

I. Alliances and Counter-Alliances 

If there was a “permanent alliance” at the beginning of the last century, it was the Triple Alliance of Austria–Hungary, Germany, and Italy. “For thirty years now the treaties of alliance have been regularly renewed, and there has never been any ground for the hopes of its ill-wishers and the fears of its well-wishers with regard to the durability of the Triple Alliance,” Prince Bernhard von Bülow, Germany’s chancellor from 1900 to 1909, wrote in his book, Imperial Germany. “The founders of the Triple Alliance intentionally created a guarantee of peace. They have not been disappointed in their hopes, for the steadfastness of the Triple Alliance has more than once in the course of the last thirty years warded off the rising danger of war.”⁶

 

Unfortunately, Imperial Germany was published in 1914. Bülow had clearly failed to foresee the dangerous effect the Triple Alliance had on Germany’s neighbours. In his memoirs, Britain’s foreign secretary at that time, Sir Edward Grey, expressed his frustration with those who did not understand that alliances provoke the formation of counter-alliances:

 

It seemed incredible that [the Germans] should not realize that, if Germany had alliances, other countries must have them too ... After the Triple Alliance was formed Russia was isolated, France was isolated, Britain was not only isolated, but in constant danger of war with France or Russia. German statesmen cannot seriously have thought that this situation could last. France and Russia found some comfort in an Alliance, and at last Britain found it in an Entente.⁷

 

Grey’s logic points up the danger that worried Washington when he warned about permanent alliances. Having disbanded the Warsaw Pact and accepted the inclusion of a united Germany in NATO, Russians watched NATO’s further expansion with dismay. The inability of Western leaders to understand Russian concerns was illustrated by Vice-President Dick Cheney’s speech in Italy following a visit to Georgia. “Whether it was Napoleonic France or Hitler’s Germany, threats to Russia have come from an expansionist—from expansionistic dictatorships,” he explained. “Russia has nothing to fear from democratic governments along its border.”⁸

 

But where did Napoleonic France come from? It emerged from the French Revolution, the “colour revolution” of its day that overthrew the monarchy. And Hitler came to power by competing in the electoral process in Weimar Germany—a democracy. Indeed, Hitler was proud that he had won, as he saw it, the mandate of the people by competing for their votes. “I became Chancellor in Germany under the rules of Parliamentary democracy,” he proclaimed in September 1938. “Mr. Churchill and these gentlemen are delegates of the English people and I am delegate of the German people—the only difference lies in the fact that only a fraction of the English votes were cast for Mr. Churchill, while I can say that I represent the whole German people.”⁹

 

Russians may be expected to remember this history, even if people in the West forget it. Democracy is not necessarily forever, and pushing a military alliance closer to Russia’s borders is bound to look threatening. “The U.S. must be more honest with us about why NATO is being expanded,” Grigory Yavlinsky, a Russian liberal, told a conference organised by the US Library of Congress in 1998. “When Russia becomes less stable, then you’ll understand. Mrs. Albright talks about NATO tanks as if they are really friendly things ... But if there’s one thing that Russians understand, it’s a tank aimed at our country.”¹⁰

 

In the mid-1990s, as NATO began to expand, the Russian government decided it would not sit by idly but would forge new relations with other countries. “We shall do everything to minimize the consequences of NATO expansion for Russia’s security,” President Boris Yeltsin stressed in 1997. “We shall continue to deepen integration within the Commonwealth of Independent States, especially with Belarus. We shall strengthen co-operation with neighboring countries, first of all with China.”¹¹ For their part, the Chinese indicated their receptiveness to these overtures. “We want to give the Americans a warning,” a specialist on Russia at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences told the Wall Street Journal. “Our relations with Russia can become closer and closer.”¹²

 

The relationship became institutionalised with the creation of the Shanghai Five, and later the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation. To be sure, Russia and China denied any suggestions that they were forming a defence alliance, but when the Triple Entente emerged in response to the Triple Alliance, it also denied that it was an alliance. But its members deepened their ties over time, and in 1914 they stood firm in the face of a common threat.

 

Alliances provoke the formation of counter-alliances. Great powers will not submit willingly to the rise of an opposing hegemon. Indeed, Americans should be especially mindful of Alexander Hamilton’s assessment of France’s aspirations at the end of the eighteenth century. “The rulers of the most powerful nation in the world,” he warned, “will forever aim at an undue empire over other nations.” Hamilton advised that it would be “a policy as short-sighted as mean to seek safety in a subservience to her views as the price of her clemency.”¹³

 

Even though France had been instrumental in helping the Americans gain their independence from Britain, Hamilton had no truck with sentimentality. Instead, he argued that overweening power was distorting France’s democratic revolution. “The spirit of moderation in a state of overbearing power is a phenomenon which has not yet appeared, and which no wise man will ever expect to see.”¹⁴

 

Hamilton’s advice resonates today. Since the end of the Cold War, countries that had been dominated by the Soviet Union, and some that had been part of it, sought protection under the American umbrella in NATO. But others saw a danger in this expansion of power, and they sought to preserve their independence and security by balancing against it. The balancing may not have achieved the stark division of the Cold War, but it is not all that dissimilar from the situation that characterised Europe at the beginning of the last century.

 

Will the lines harden? Russia’s war with Georgia is an indication of how fraught this situation might be. Georgia has proclaimed its desire to join NATO, and although it was denied a “Membership Action Plan” at the 2008 Bucharest summit, it was told that it ultimately would gain NATO entry. But two can play that game. Iran is an observer member of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation and has publicly declared its desire to be elevated to full membership. So far that has not occurred, but if it did, it would be a worrying sign of a world dividing once again. The expansion of two alliances, even if one does not call itself that, would recreate a situation that has put the world in peril before and would probably do so again. 

II. The Balkans 

Since the end of the Cold War, NATO has been looking for a new rationale. With the demise of the Soviet Union, the traditional reason for its existence—to contain Soviet power and prevent its expansion into western Europe—no longer sufficed. Moreover, although NATO was seen as a hedge against the emergence of a revanchist Russia, which is why it was attracting new applicants from the former Soviet bloc, the major NATO powers did not want to give the impression that they saw Russia as a threat.

 

Hence the emergence of a new justification: NATO would go out of area. Having brought stability to Europe, it would now expand its reach to bring that stability to other parts of the world.

 

The new justification received its first test in the Balkans when Yugoslavia disintegrated in the 1990s. Initially, the European powers thought they’d be able to handle this problem on their own. Over time, however, it became apparent they lacked the ability to project effective military power even to the edge of their own continent. American airpower had to be invoked under the NATO rubric.

 

Unfortunately, NATO did not obtain United Nations Security Council approval before it launched its bombing campaign against Serbia in 1999. To be sure, it would never have received such approval because of Russia’s veto (and probably China’s, as well). The justification given for the intervention was the curious doctrine that even though it was illegal, it was nevertheless legitimate, given the nature of the provocation.

 

Several consequences flowed from this action. First, it further pushed China and Russia into each other’s arms. What else can be expected if the major Western powers, who are the other members of the permanent five with veto powers, tell Beijing and Moscow they get to exercise their veto only when we let them? Can we seriously expect them to submit to such an indignity?

 

Second, it ignored the reason for the veto. The UN Charter was designed to prevent a recurrence not only of the Second World War, but also of the First. That conflict was preceded by bloody wars in the Balkans, which now live in the shadow of the Great War. The veto was designed to prevent a repetition of the summer of 1914, when Great Powers intervened in support of their smaller allies, thereby transforming a nasty but contained conflict into a global conflagration. The idea that the United Nations is not working when it does not authorise intervention implicitly assumes that escalation to global conflict is impossible. It is precisely what the leaders of Europe thought a century ago, and it was a terrible misjudgement. The confidence that such a scenario is impossible now is an eerie, and troubling, echo of the political climate in Europe at the beginning of the last century.

 

Finally, law works by precedent. That is why we talk of equal justice under law: what applies to one applies equally to all. Thus, if we say we can act when we think we have a legitimate reason, regardless of the law, others will invoke the same justification.

 

And thus we arrive at the conflict in Georgia. Russia invoked the Kosovo precedent, and NATO said the situation was different. And Moscow responds, who cares what you think? Did you care what we thought in 1999? You ignored us, so we’ll ignore you.

 

With the lines thus drawn, relations between Moscow and NATO turned frosty for several months after August 2008, but they have recently begun to thaw. The reason is that NATO is in difficulty in Afghanistan, and it needs Russia’s assistance. Despite Moscow’s irritation with NATO, it has offered assistance. Even so, it is uncertain NATO can succeed. 

III. Afghanistan 

In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. It quickly took over the country, but its occupation met a determined resistance, which was supported by the United States as part of the Cold War struggle between the two superpowers. After ten years of trying to impose its rule, Moscow decided enough was enough and withdrew its forces. The total collapse of Soviet power followed soon afterwards.

 

Given the chronology, the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan is frequently viewed as a decisive contribution to the Western triumph in the Cold War. According to Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, Moscow’s invasion “brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire”. When asked early in 1998 whether he had any regrets about “having given arms and advice to future terrorists”, he was indignant. “What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?”¹⁵

 

On 11 September 2001, terror came to the United States out of Afghanistan, in an attack that no Soviet leader would ever have dreamt of undertaking. Wounded and outraged, the United States retaliated by invading Afghanistan. Its NATO allies demonstrated their support by invoking Article 5 of the alliance’s charter, the famous clause that declares an attack against one to be an attack against all. And in a sign that the Cold War was buried, Russia also offered its assistance.

 

The initial US assault was extraordinarily successful. The Taliban and al-Qaeda failed to appreciate the difference between American and Soviet arms, and they were unable to give battle effectively. Nevertheless, many—including the top leaders—managed to flee, surviving to reconstitute their forces and fight another day.

 

In the last couple of years, NATO has been confronted by a growing insurgency in Afghanistan. Military commanders are pleading for reinforcements. Yet the war has become increasingly unpopular among America’s NATO allies, who are not accustomed to suffering casualties, and it is doubtful that they will be able to contribute much. Resentment about unfair burden-sharing has plagued NATO virtually from its inception, but this is the first time the burdens involve the willingness to risk casualties. The stakes for the alliance could not be higher. “For NATO, the struggle in Afghanistan is a defining issue,” Britain’s then–defence secretary, John Hutton, emphasised in January 2009. “NATO has to stand together and I don’t believe that all members are doing that sufficiently.”¹⁶

 

But troop levels are not the only problem. The Taliban have been attacking NATO supply lines, repeating a tactic that proved effective in the war against the Soviet Union. But whereas the Soviets had secure supply lines until they reached Afghanistan, NATO supply lines are increasingly being attacked in Pakistan, where NATO cannot provide protection.

 

The unreliability of the Pakistani supply line has prompted a search for alternative routes. Logistically, the most attractive alternative would be Iran, but that is impossible for political reasons. That leaves routes from the north, which entails co-operation from Russia, and very likely the use of Russian territory.

 

At the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest, Russia offered NATO the use of its territory for the transit of non-lethal goods. Subsequently, it offered some NATO members the use of its territory for the transit of military supplies. Yet it has also stressed that its co-operation should not be taken for granted. Following the 2008 conflict between Georgia and Russia, Russia’s ambassador to NATO, Dmitri Rogozin, warned that Russia could withdraw its offer to allow NATO to use its territory if the alliance continued to support Georgia.

 

It is ironic, but the worm has turned completely. Afghanistan was the scene of the Soviet Union’s greatest defeat, but it has come back to challenge the triumphant Western powers. Given the situation in Pakistan, NATO’s success or failure may depend on co-operation from Russia, which will give Moscow enormous leverage over the alliance. Troops in the field, facing constant combat, need reliable supply lines. In this situation, the Russian leadership has its hands around NATO’s throat, as it well recognises. “Ground transport corridors are needed and the Americans cannot do without Russia in this issue,” Lieutenant-General Leonid Sazhin has stressed. “The new U.S. administration has two options: withdraw the U.S. troops from Afghanistan and recognize its next defeat after Iraq or ask Russia to provide the ground transit of non-military and military supplies across its territory.”¹⁷ It is foolish to believe Moscow will not take advantage of this changed power relationship if the alliance insists on doing things it finds threatening. 

IV. The Challenge of Resources 

As if all these problems were not enough, NATO members now face the worst financial crisis since the alliance’s inception. Countries that were not meeting NATO’s target of spending 2 per cent of GDP on defence before are certainly not going to meet it in the future. The implications for NATO have been underlined by its operational commander, General John Craddock. “They’re expecting to be asked to do more,” he told a press briefing in Washington in January 2009, referring to US allies. “I think it’s going to be harder for them to do it because of decreasing defense budgets.”¹⁸

 

Precisely. NATO’s problem has been the enunciation of strategy and the assumption of commitments without any reference to capability. That is what is so unreal about the discussion of Georgian membership. Imagine that Georgia had been a member of NATO. What could the alliance have done to defend it against the Russian attack? Georgia borders Russia and is far away from the United States and the other NATO members, who have their hands full elsewhere.

 

Even as NATO faces an existential crisis in Afghanistan, there are calls for it to return to the traditional mission of defending its members. “Nobody will be asking for a wholesale strategic rethink that reduces Nato’s commitment to Afghanistan,” an anonymous senior NATO official told the Financial Times. “But some states may be looking to strike a new balance between Nato’s current focus on expeditionary operations and the need to defend Nato territory.”¹⁹

 

But how will a new balance be struck? There are only two ways: increasing resources and devoting them to the traditional mission, or redirecting resources from “out of area” missions to the traditional one.

 

Which will it be? Increasing resources seems near impossible in these times of financial stringency. But if resources are redirected, what happens to the “out of area” missions? What, specifically, happens to Afghanistan? “Many [NATO members] have defence budgets that are so low, and coalition governments that are so precarious, that they cannot provide the quantity or type of forces needed for this kind of fight,” US defence secretary Robert Gates has lamented.²⁰

 

That is the situation now. It will not improve if further missions are added. Indeed, it is apparent that NATO is already overburdened.

 

NATO: out of area or out of business. The confidence with which those words were uttered when the Cold War ended has come back to haunt the West. “Out of area” is expensive, and most members of the alliance are simply not willing to pay the price, either in troops or money. And just as companies that cannot meet their commitments go out of business, so NATO may have been set on course for that fate by those who, just a few years ago, proclaimed the alliance’s permanence.

 

 

Endnotes

 

 

1. Yale Law School, The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy, “Washington’s Farewell Address 1796” [http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washing.asp].

 

2. North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, “North Atlantic Council Discusses Situation in Georgia”, 12 August 2024 [http://www.nato.int/docu/update/2008/08-august/e0812a.html].

 

3. Mikheil Saakashvili, “An American Friend”, interview by Deborah Solomon, New York Times Magazine, 17 October 2008.

 

4. Fred Weir, “Russian Patriotism Unleashed by Georgian War”, Spiegel Online, 15 October 2024 [http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,584245,00.html].

 

5. Olga Ivanova, “A Free Press? Not This Time”, Washington Post, 14 August 2008.

 

6. Prince Bernhard von Bülow, Imperial Germany, trans. Marie A. Lewenz (New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company, 1914), pp. 66–7.

 

7. Viscount Grey of Fallodon, Twenty-Five Years, vol. 1 (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1925), p. 196.

 

8. United States Diplomatic Mission to Italy, “Remarks by Vice President Cheney at the Ambrosetti Forum, September 6, 2008” [http://italy.usembassy.gov/viewer/article.asp?article=/file2008_09/alia/a8090506.htm].

 

9. Adolf Hitler, My New Order, ed. Raoul de Roussy de Sales (New York: Reynal and Hitchcock, 1941), pp. 554–6.

 

10. See James H. Billington and Kathleen Parthé, “Colloquium on Russian National Identity: Final Report, 11–12 June 1998”, Washington, D.C., Library of Congress, 1999, p. 56.

 

11. See Stanley Kober, “Russia’s Search for Identity”, in NATO Enlargement: Illusions and Reality, ed. Ted Galen Carpenter and Barbara Conry (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 1998), p. 136.

 

12. Joseph Kahn and Claudia Rosett, “China and Russia Rekindle Their Romance”, Wall Street Journal, 24 April 1996.

 

13. Henry Cabot Lodge, ed., The Works of Alexander Hamilton, vol. 6 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s, 1904), pp. 234–6.

 

14. Ibid., p. 236.

 

15. “The CIA’s Intervention in Afghanistan”, interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Le Nouvel Observateur (Paris), 15–21 January 1998 [http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BRZ110A.html].

 

16. Mark Deen, “UK Urges European Allies to Send More Troops to Afghanistan”, Bloomberg.com, 15 January 2025 [http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601102&sid=a5CJhyJPhSrQ&refer=uk].

 

17. “Russia Not Permit US, NATO Military Transit to Afghanistan”, Itar-Tass (Moscow), 22 January 2009.

 

18. David Morgan, “Economic Crunch to Affect NATO Afghan Ops—Commander”, Reuters, 9 January 2009.

 

19. James Blitz, “Georgia Conflict Forces NATO Rethink”, Financial Times (London), 18 September 2008.

 

20. Robert Gates, “Dean Acheson Lecture”, US Institute of Peace, Washington, D.C., 15 October 2008.