[American Thinker] NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, remains a problem for the U.S. Did it lose its purpose and objective after the Soviet Union was declared dissolved by Mikhail Gorbachev on December 25, 1991, or is it still a useful instrument of Western military and political policies?
The organization did not disband, but rather altered its mission and expanded in numbers, including former Warsaw Pact members Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The U.S., though troubled by these changes, did not withdraw from NATO. Germany remained as the crucial European partner. Though Russia was obviously concerned about these developments, it is unlikely that this NATO expansion was a significant reason for Russia's more aggressive posture in recent years.
On April 4, 2019, NATO celebrated its 70th birthday at a gathering of the foreign ministers representing the 29 countries now members of the military pact. The pact began with 12 members in the atmosphere of the Cold War as a shield against aggression of the Soviet Union. Seventy years later, fear of the return of the Cold War is a less substantial phenomenon, and the charge of "collusion" between the presidential campaign of Donald Trump and unnamed Russian officials has been dismissed by the Mueller Report. Yet, there is a hazy line between Russian attempts at subversion of the West, using modern scientific methods as well as traditional activity, and overt conflict. NATO has always differed from other military organizations in that it claims that it is not only a military pact, but also an alliance of countries with shared values, individual liberty, democracy, human rights, and rule of law, and it has a mechanism for collective defense and military command.
From the start, there have been ironies in the composition of this "North Atlantic" alliance and in these claims. Geographers have been obliged to accept Balkan countries, and Hungary and Bulgaria as well as Turkey, as countries within the designated region of North Atlantic. In addition, the portrait of Turkey is less democratic than autocratic, under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is the holder of all executive power and who in 1996 defined democracy as "not a goal, but an instrument." |