The National Interest: “This is why NATO is stumbling towards a crisis”

NATO is at a critical point - the Alliance could either pull itself together or collapse, writes Michael Cecire for The National Interest.

He says the problems of expansion, retrenchment and conditionality are only compounded by a damaging spiraling of expectations in some quarters of the Alliance.

NATO is a global security alliance that unites to enforce global security. Recently NATO has taken steps to increase its presence in the Baltics states to counter Russia’s power, but with its wider spectrum of threats, some say it isn’t enough.

NATO has neither the manpower nor resources to exhaustively fortify every region under potential threat, and any Alliance response to a large-scale contingency should be organized and launched not from the chaos of the front lines, but from regions benefiting from stable supply lines and strategic depth.”

Expansion is a fundamental feature of NATO’s DNA, and the longer it is put on effective hiatus, the more NATO is unmoored from its original purpose, says Cecire.

"The recent invitation of Montenegro into the alliance, while welcome in the abstract, only underscores Eastern European concerns that it is a matter of geography (and direct proximity to Russia, more specifically) that decides their strategic fates—and not liberalism, democratization, or good governance.

NATO’s relevance in the twenty-first century won’t be found by erecting walls against Putin’s Russia, but in continuing to protect and extend the borders of a liberal European space. And while hard power is a pillar of that mission, it was always only intended as an instrument, and not as an end in itself.

"Outside the wire, the likes of Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia should not sit by and wait for the Alliance to fix itself—or collapse.”

Read the full article here: www.nationalinterest.org