Keep the Russians out,
Keep the Americans in, and
Keep the Germans down.
Lord Ismay, 1957
First Secretary General of NATO - 1952-1957
"Out of area or out of business"
US Senator Richard G. Lugar, ~1990?
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
| SHAPE | Supreme Headquarters Allied Power Europe |
| Joint Force Command HQ Brunssum | |
| Joint Force Command HQ Naples | |
| Joint Headquarters Lisbon | |
| LANDCENT | Allied Land Forces Central Europe |
| ARRC | Allied Rapid Reaction Corps |
| Spearhead Force | |
| Very High Readiness JTF | |
| NATO Response Force | |
| EUROCORPS | |
| Multinational Corps Northeast | |
| Rapid Deployable Italian Corps | |
| Rapid Deployable Turkish Corps | |
| Rapid Deployable German-Netherlands Corps | |
| Rapid Deployable Spanish Corps | |
| NATO Deployable Corps - Greece | |
| RF(A)S | Reaction Forces (Air) Staff - |
| NAEWF | NATO Airborne Early Warning Force |
| Immediate Reaction Forces (Maritime) | |
| ACE Mobile Force - AMF | |
| STRIKFORNATO | Naval Striking and Support Forces |
| STANAVFORLANT | Standing Naval Force Atlantic |
| STANAVFORMED | Standing Naval Forces Mediterranean |
| STANAVFORCHAN | Standing Naval Forces Channel |
| MARCOM | Maritime Command |
| COMSURFNATO | Commander Surface Forces |
| COMSUBNATO | Commander Submarines |
| COMMARAIR | Maritime Air Patrol Aircraft |
"We are going to have a situation where Russia is reconstituting its force, is located on the borders of NATO, is led by largely the same people as it is right now, is convinced that we're the adversary, and is very, very angry." Army Gen. Christopher Cavoli, supreme allied commander Europe and commander of U.S. European Command, said 18 July 2024 at the Aspen Security Forum. The looming threat is Russia, but Cavoli said NATO cannot ignore challenges on the horizon, and that includes China.
The general gave an explanation of the situation in Europe since he became NATO's combatant commander just after the Madrid Summit in 2022. At that summit, NATO leaders immediately implemented a strategy to deter Russia and to defend the alliance's territory. "This was an enormous sea change," Cavoli said. "That was the business we were in during the Cold War, but after the Cold War, it was no longer necessary, and we turned our attention to out-of-area operations."
Those operations in the Balkans, Kosovo and Afghanistan allowed NATO nations to field smaller forces who would deploy for specific times. "[The deployments] happened on a very predictable basis, which allowed for a cyclical force-generating process that allowed us to take many, many economies everyplace else, except for the unit that was deployed," he said. "All the nations and NATO happily took the peace dividend and built a force that was optimized for that sort of operation."
Russia launched its second invasion of its Ukrainian neighbor, and that force-generating process was instantly outdated. NATO had to focus — once again — on collective territorial defense. "We need standing forces, and at standing levels of readiness, geographically focused on specific areas," Cavoli said. "So, we wrote … operational plans to do this."
These plans are for northwest Europe, the center of Europe and in southeast Europe, and they are "classical plans that describe how to defend a certain piece of geography, with what forces and what methods," the general said. "This has led to a huge raft of advances that we're working on in NATO right now." Among the biggest is the need for many more NATO troops ready to fight when needed. This requires money and Cavoli is encouraged by alliance progress in meeting the 2% of gross domestic product that now 23 nations have met. Since Madrid, the nations also now "have a shopping list for military requirements," Cavoli said. "That shopping list had been put into place. It has been embraced by nations, who are spending the money to do something about it."
On the military side, the alliance has also changed command and control, the exercise program the force posture across Europe. "All of these things are really going to lead us to a healthier alliance that's focused on the core task of collective territorial defense," he said. Supporting Ukraine is vital for U.S. and European security, Cavoli said. But people need to consider what's next. "We can't be under any illusions: At the end of a conflict in Ukraine — however, it concludes — we are going to have a very big Russia problem," the general said.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO; French: Organisation du Traité de l'Atlantique Nord ("OTAN"); also called the North Atlantic Alliance, the Atlantic Alliance, or the Western Alliance) is a military alliance established by the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty on April 4, 1949. In accordance with that Treaty, the fundamental role of NATO is to safeguard the freedom and security of its member countries by political and military means. NATO is playing an increasingly important role in crisis management and peacekeeping.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg described as "historic" the summit from June 28 to 30 2022 in Madrid, which assembled the leaders of NATO’s 30 member countries and key partners as the alliance prepares the biggest defence operation seen since the Cold War. Russia - which had previously been considered a strategic partner - was established as NATO’s "main threat". The previous Strategic Concept 2010 called Russia a partner. Allies – principally but not only Germany – resisted calls over the years to call Russia an adversary. This has complicated defence planning at NATO, because how can you make military plans to defend yourself against a partner?
Other measures included significantly increasing the number of troops that it can deploy at a moment’s notice, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and formally offering fast-track membership to previously neutral Finland and Sweden, after addressing concerns by Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan. Ankara had initially refused to support the two Nordic countries' bids on the grounds that they were allegedly harbouring Kurdish armed groups that have been engaged in guerilla warfare against Turkey since 1984, and their bans on selling some arms to Turkey. Ankara said it will seek to extradite 33 "terror" suspects from Sweden and Finland in exchange for its support.
Other important topics up for discussion include China’s growing influence and NATO’s next Strategic Concept, a document that is updated approximately every 10 years to reflect the most pressing security challenges facing the military alliance and outline how NATO plans to address them. Four more eFP [ enhanced Forward Presence] forces (Romania, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria) will be deployed as well as upgrades of existing eFP to each brigade, with an assigned home division, divisional HQ, and enablers, and a vast increase in the US presence in Poland. Germany’s Zeitenwende promises to be the biggest change in German defence policy since the Cold War and even the Netherlands is going to hit 2 percent of GDP. This is an incredible change.
Anatol Lieven, senior research fellow on Russia and Europe at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, wrote in January 2022 : "Britain supports NATO essentially as part of the alliance with the United States, which allows Britain to posture as a great power on the world stage by riding on America’s shoulders. France does so for much the same reason, with the difference that while Britain’s interests in this are almost wholly to do with national self-image, France needs the U.S. alliance for a very concrete reason: the increasing necessity of U.S. military support to maintain France’s sphere of influence in Francophone Africa and fight Islamist insurgencies there. As far as the other West European members of NATO are concerned, the essential reason for their adherence to the alliance is fear — fear of Russia — but above all fear of each other and of themselves. Much of this is due to the Second World War and the ease with which a row of countries surrendered to Germany, while in Germany’s own case there is still a degree to which they fear themselves."
NATO never had any forces on its eastern edge because it didn’t feel the need to have troops close to Russia until Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and led NATO members to be concerned that they might keep going into NATO territory. So it is Russia that created this situation that brings NATO closer to their borders. "NATO never even had any forces on its eastern edge because we didn't feel the need to have troops close to Russia until Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and led NATO members to be concerned that they might keep going into NATO territory," Victoria Nuland, undersecretary of state for political affairs, said 11 January 2022.
Defense chiefs from NATO member states gave a green light to a new grand strategy on how to beat Russia in any potential all-out conflict, as Moscow said the move proved the US-led bloc wasn’t open to improving relations. On 21 October 2021, ministers met in Brussels to sign off the scheme, named the “Concept for Deterrence and Defense in the Euro-Atlantic Area.” According to NATO’s General Secretary, Jens Stoltenberg, it is part of efforts to “continue to strengthen our alliance with better and modernized plans.” The bloc’s officials insisted they don’t believe an attack is imminent, but that it is worthwhile being prepared in any case.
As part of the plan, NATO troops would fight against Russia’s forces in both the Baltic Region and across the Black Sea. The battle plans also focus on non-conventional warfare, including the use of nuclear weapons, cyber-attacks and even conflict in space.
However, Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov hit out at the adoption of the strategy, saying that it shows there is no prospect for turning around rock-bottom relations with the bloc. “There is no need for dialogue under these conditions,” he argued, saying that the adoption “of such a concept by NATO confirms it once again.” According to him, “this alliance was not created for peace, it was conceived, designed and created for confrontation.”
By the late 1990s not all North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members participated in all aspects of the commonly funded budgets. Although all 16 members participate fully in the civil budget, Spain and France did not participate in all aspects of the military budget or the NATO Security Investment Program (NSIP). Further, the NATO Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) program, funded through the military budget but with its own negotiated cost shares, did not include France, Spain, and Iceland, and the United Kingdom only partially participates in it. Finally, although Iceland iscounted as a participant in the NSIP, its cost share is zero.
Since the end of the Cold War, the NATO alliance has been evolving to meet the new security needs of the 21stCentury. In this era, the threats to Europe and America originate primarily from outside Europe, particularly from the Greater Middle East. There was initially strong support among members for NATO's operations in Afghanistan.
The July 2016 summit in Warsaw saw NATO agreeing to deploy multinational military forces to the Baltic states and eastern Poland, NATO moved from the reassurance of its allies to the deterrence of its adversaries. The agreement NATO signed in Warsaw with the European Union was a significant step in addressing the nonkinetic aspects of Moscow's hybrid war on the West. NATO is ill-equipped to counter threats stemming from the Kremlin's "ybrid warfare" - weaponization of globalization: its use of things like corruption, transnational organized crime, international finance, and disinformation to undermine the foundations of Western societies. Countering these hybrid tactics -- which form a significant part of Russia's threat to the West and are integrated with the Kremlin's military strategy -- required a coordinated effort not only by NATO, but from the nondefense arms of Western governments as well.
Moscow appeared to benefit from many of Trump's proposals. Germany on 22 July 2016 stressed its promise to protect its NATO allies after White House hopeful Donald Trump called the commitment into question. “The German government is fundamentally committed to Article Five of the NATO treaty. That is the central promise of solidarity within the alliance,” Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert told reporters. “Collective defense according to Article Five is and remains the main duty of NATO,” Seibert added, noting that the pledge had once again been renewed at the July 2016 NATO summit in Warsaw. In an interview published on 21 July 2016 in the New York Times, Trump raised questions about this vow. He warned that if elected he would only come to the aid of the Baltic states in the event they were invaded by Russia if he judged they had “fulfilled their obligations to us.”
With his comments about NATO, Trump seemed to have signalled his intent to abandon the traditional US role in Europe. Article 5 of NATO’s treaty sets out mutual assistance if a member country is attacked. However, Trump suggested in the New York Times interview that the US would not guarantee mutual defence of other NATO members, such as the Baltic states. Trump commonly cited the amount of money the US put into military spending within NATO and says that he will ask allies to contribute more.
Speaking wtih The Times of London and Germany's Bild newspaper, Trump had said on 15 January 2017 that NATO is obsolete "because it was designed many, many years ago." He also repeated his complaint, frequently voiced during the election campaign, that NATO "countries aren't paying what they're supposed to pay." German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Trump's comments prompted "surprise and anxiety" among NATO member countries.
Moscow welcomed U.S. President-elect Donald Trump calling NATO "obsolete," as key NATO ally Germany reacted with concern to his remarks. Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said on January 16 that "NATO is indeed a vestige [of the past] and we agree with that." Peskov also said that "considering that [NATO] is focused on confrontation and its entire structure is devoted to the ideals of confrontation, then, of course, this can hardly be called a modern structure meeting the ideas of stability, sustainable development, and security."
Trump's nominee to lead the Pentagon, James Mattis, said during his Senate confirmation hearing on January 12 that NATO was "the most successful military alliance probably in modern history, maybe ever" and said Russia posed a threat to it.
At the Warsaw Summit in 2016, the heads of state and government announced the need to assess NATO’s Command Structure in recognition of the changing security environment. The decision allowed NATO to remain robust , and able to undertake effective command and control of simultaneous challenges across the full spectrum of missions. Most recently, at the February 2018 Defence Ministerial Conference, the leaders agreed to bolster maritime security, logistics, military mobility, and cyber defence.
On 08 June 2018 NATO ministers unveiled a number of key new plans, including the establishment of two new commands based in Norfolk, Virginia and Ulm, Germany. The ministers made staffing levels of more than 1,200 personnel for new commands in Norfolk and Ulm covering the Atlantic Ocean, handling logistics during any conflict in mainland Europe. The ministers also unveiled a new plan to reinforce the alliance's presence in any European crisis with the deployment of 30 troop battalions, 30 aircraft squadrons and 30 warships within 30 days — the so-called "Four 30s."
NATO’s Command Structure (NCS) is the backbone of NATO. It is composed of permanent multinational headquarters at the strategic, operational and component levels of command, distributed geographically and commonly funded. It offers the opportunity to all Allies to participate in, and contribute to, the command and control of all Alliance operations, missions, and activities across all military domains.
NATO tasked its commanders to draw up plans for a deployment of battlegroups to the alliance's southeastern areas in response to Russia's military build-up around Ukraine, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on 16 February2022. “Ministers decided to develop options to further strengthen NATO's deterrence and defense, including to consider establishing new NATO battlegroups in central and eastern and southeastern Europe,” he said.
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