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NATO keeps the world safe

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In the age of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, the international system has become less predictable and less stable.

In unsettled times, it is important to maintain those international institutions and alliances that help to make relations between states more predictable and discourage aggression. And the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is just such an alliance.

Not only is NATO the most successful alliance in history, a former Canadian diplomat says that it plays a vital role in preserving international security and serves Canada’s national interests.

Established in 1949 to counter the rising tide of Soviet power in post-Second World War Europe, the western alliance stood against Communist aggression, contributed mightily to the fall of the Soviet empire, and helped to stabilize a post-Cold War Europe torn asunder by ethnic nationalism.

NATO has also adapted to the violent realities of the 21st century.

Article 5

When al-Qaida, with the support of the Taliban regime that ruled Afghanistan, attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, nearly 3,000 people lost their lives. The very next day, NATO responded by invoking Article 5 of its charter.

“It was significant,” Chris Alexander, former Canadian ambassador to Afghanistan, said of NATO’s application of its collective self-defence clause. “It was the first time it had ever been invoked in the history of NATO.

“It meant that allies were obliged to act together in the defence of one of their members, the United States. And it provided a foundation for what became the first combat mission on land by NATO in the history of the alliance, as well as the biggest international military operation authorized by the UN but under NATO command since the Second World War.”

In August 2003, at the age of 35, Alexander took up his post as ambassador in Kabul. And he later served as the Deputy Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary General for Afghanistan from 2005 to 2009.

Alexander said that Canada was a credible military power in Afghanistan, because Canadian forces were numerous, capable, “didn’t have as many caveats” as other NATO members, and possessed “better equipment and better training than even the Germans.”

In addition, Alexander said that Canada’s credibility was enhanced by its willingness to undertake the tough work of pacifying Kandahar province. “And we combined that military effort with serious political focus, diplomatic focus on Afghanistan,” he added.

Hard power, soft power connection

What is the connection between hard power and soft power as regards to NATO?

“NATO is a military alliance that aims to achieve political objectives, political goals,” Alexander replied. “The main goal is to keep its members safe, preserve the peace in Europe and in the North Atlantic area, which it has successfully done.”

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, most of NATO’s work “has been in integrating new members and reaching out to new partners, much of which was achieved in the Afghanistan mission,” Alexander said.

However, NATO now faces “new, harder challenges in Europe, because a very large country that is not a NATO member has been invaded and partially occupied by a permanent member of the UN Security Council and a nuclear weapons state, which is a major threat to European security and to international order as we have known it since 1945,” Alexander said of Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine and ongoing aggression in the region.

Canada is contributing to NATO’s Operation Reassurance in central and eastern Europe. But is Canada doing enough to deter Russian aggression? Alexander acknowledged that Canada is doing “quite a bit with a lead role in Latvia and a prominent training role in Ukraine and participation in larger scale NATO exercises that have been taking place throughout Europe.”

However, Alexander believes Canada could do more to “strengthen our sanctions regime, to focus it on members of Putin’s entourage, who are the architects of this policy of occupation [of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula].”

In addition, he asserts than Canada “can do more to ensure that Ukraine’s government, its institutions and its economy succeed” even as Ukrainians battle Russian-backed insurgents in eastern Ukraine. “Why, for instance, aren’t we liberalizing the visa regime?” Alexander said, noting that the European Union has already done so.

European blunder, Russian aggression

In his 2010 book, Decision Points, President George W. Bush writes that Georgia and Ukraine applied for Membership Action Plans, MAPs, at the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest. Admission to the alliance requires unanimity, and while Bush supported their applications, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and then French President Nicolas Sarkozy were “skeptical.” Bush reveals that the Germans and French were concerned about Russian aggression toward Georgia and Ukraine. “They worried NATO could get drawn into a war with Russia,” Bush writes.

After NATO failed to put the two former Soviet republics on the membership track, Russia attacked Georgia, sending tanks into the provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Did France and Germany’s collective rebuff of Ukraine and Georgia embolden Russia?

“Yeah,” replied Chris Alexander, adding that “it sent an ambiguous signal from an alliance that up to that point had been clear in its approach to expansion.”

Up until that time, NATO had accepted the accession of every democratic country that had been part of the Warsaw Pact that genuinely wanted to join the western alliance. “In 2008, for the first time, major NATO leaders, one of them a P5 member, were saying, ‘no’ to populations that had clearly expressed a desire to be on the path to accession,” Alexander said of Germany and France (one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council).

“I do think that was a mistake,” Alexander declared. “We should have locked those countries into a path of membership, which is what they wanted.” And he pointed out that Ukrainians still want to be part of NATO. “Unfortunately, an occupied country, a country that doesn’t control its own border, is going to have trouble meeting criteria for NATO accession.”

Trump and NATO

U.S. President Donald Trump has long expressed disdain for NATO. “Trump’s views on NATO are totally unsound. And his account of history of either NATO or the European Union sounds like nonsense most of the time,” the former diplomat replied bluntly.

“That said, he has been the vehicle for bringing one important issue to the forefront of public debate and alliance debate, where it had not been for a long time. And that is the question of burden sharing.”

Alexander points out that the United States spends close $700 billion a year on defence. By contrast, Alexander says Canada and its NATO allies together spend “paltry, almost negligible sums” on defence.

“I can fully understand how frustrated Americans are that this burden has become even heavier for them while most allies shirk their responsibilities. We went some distance towards reversing this trend when we were in active combat in Afghanistan,” Alexander said of Canadian defence spending. “When [the Afghan mission] ended, our relative decline as a defence partner resumed.

“But Europe took a huge step back” after the financial crisis of 2008, Alexander continued. And he asserts that Europe “has not stepped up to meet either the challenges of securing its own borders and deterring the likes of Putin in Europe, let alone stopping conflicts, genocide” in Mali, Syria and elsewhere.

“I think there has been a serious dereliction of duty on the part every NATO ally, a part from the United States, in the terms of defence spending. To the extent that the current American president wants to focus on that issue, I think it’s a legitimate debate.”

Will NATO survive?

These are unsettled times, according to Alexander. He describes Trump as “erratic” and Putin as “dangerous,” and China, Iran, Pakistan and other nations as “opportunistic” and “predatory.”

“We need a strong alliance to continue to keep us safe and ensure our global stability and prosperity that will benefit Canada in the decades to come,” Alexander said of NATO.

Will NATO survive Donald Trump’s presidency?

“Yes, absolutely,” replied Alexander, noting that support for the alliance remains strong in the U.S. Congress, within the American business community, and among the American public.

Follow Geoffrey P. Johnston on Twitter @GeoffyPJohnston. 

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