The Challenge to NATO - Global Security and the Atlantic Alliance

You would be hard pressed in 2022 to find a more relevant subject for a book than one about the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. But the trouble is The Challenge to NATO is both highly topical and already out of date as, inevitably, it was published before the momentous events of the last few months. Written in the wake of the Alliance’s 70th Anniversary in 2019, this series of essays by a number of academics, former NATO insiders and diplomats, is broadly divided into three parts which in turn examine the organisation’s past, its concerns and challenges at the time of the anniversary and its future relevance. The underlying premise, covered in several essays, is that thirty years after the end of the Cold War, NATO is at a crossroads – a notion not exactly discouraged by the arguably nefarious remarks made by the former inhabitant of the White House. The trouble is that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the on-going war, coupled with Finland and Sweden’s urgent application to join the Alliance, has moved the goalposts and, at the same time, inevitably answered many of the questions posed in this book. At least some of Vladmir Putin’s motives for annexing Georgia and Crimea seem to have been understood even if his ultimate ambition remains unclear. By the same token, should the future relevance of NATO be questioned at all if the old post-Cold War era has ended and Europe and indeed the whole world is now facing a fresh set of existential threats? Nevertheless, whatever the outcome of the war in Ukraine, many of the calls made in this book for NATO to alter its practices will remain entirely relevant once the dust has settled. The imperatives for the founders of the Organisation in 1949 are a long way from the asymmetrical threats of the present day for instance: the need to embrace the likes of cyber and hybrid warfare are far removed from the binary threats of the 1950s and 1960s. Inevitably, NATO’s eastern flank is given due prominence. There are a number of references made to the pivotal importance of the whole Black Sea region, Ukraine itself and also the vulnerable geographical position of the three Baltic States. Further afield, the matters of nation and state-building are considered part of NATO’s overall remit. This, one feels, is tricky territory, making the assumption that all nations and peoples are ultimately desirous of living in a liberal western-style democracy irrespective of diverse cultural, social and religious origins and traditions. There is a telling chapter in The Challenge to NATO entitled ‘Fractured Loyalties’ which considers the position of the sizeable ethnic minority groups, particularly in the Baltic States, who look to the East and to Russia rather than to the West. In truth, there is not much in this book from a narrowly ‘navalist’ angle. But NATO has been the bedrock of this country’s naval and wider defence strategy for the past 70 years and there is much to learn here about what underpins this commitment. Importantly, we are reminded time and again in The Challenge to NATO that the organisation should not be allowed to become complacent if it is to match up to the challenges such the ones it is facing at the present moment.