Sometimes you wonder if that was part of the plan.<\/p>\n
How Putin saved NATO<\/a><\/p>\n When Finland\u00a0cleared the last hurdle<\/a>\u00a0for NATO membership last week, major Western newspapers buried the story. Yet Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto justly celebrated \u2018these historic days<\/a>\u2019\u2014the end of 75 years of\u00a0neutrality<\/a>. As of this week, Finland is\u00a0formally in<\/a>, and Sweden, another eternal neutral, will\u00a0soon follow<\/a>, once Turkey stops\u00a0blocking its membership<\/a>.<\/p>\n Why would these two countries throng into an alliance that French President Emmanuel Macron diagnosed as being \u2018brain dead\u2019 only four years ago, and which former US President Donald Trump saw as \u2018obsolete<\/a>\u2019 in 2017? The wisdom of the 18th-century British wit Samuel Johnson offers a\u00a0broad answer<\/a>\u00a0here: \u2018When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.\u2019<\/p>\n But there is an even pithier answer to this question: Vladimir Putin. The man who would be king of Europe has given NATO a new brain and a new lease on life.<\/p>\n What an irony! One of Putin\u2019s many pretexts for subduing Ukraine was to stop NATO enlargement once and for all. Instead, by pushing two neutral Nordic countries into the alliance, he has achieved the opposite. NATO, now, has not been in better health for decades.<\/p>\n Yet Putin doesn\u2019t deserve all the credit. NATO was never as sclerotic as Macron and Trump presumed. It is the oldest alliance of free countries, and longevity bespeaks functionality. In past centuries, royals changed coalitions more often than their wigs. As Lord Palmerston famously said, \u2018We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies.\u2019<\/p>\n <\/p>\n NATO is unique in the annals of nation-states. When Napoleon was beaten for good, the coalition arrayed against him was history. NATO, by contrast, was never a temporary marriage of convenience that would fall apart after victory or defeat. Its forces are integrated under a\u00a0supreme commander<\/a>\u00a0and benefit from hardware compatibility, common communications and constant training. Such synergies make it costly to renationalise defence, and no member has ever defected.<\/p>\n And the alliance keeps growing. It started with\u00a012 states in 1949<\/a>. Greece, Turkey and West Germany joined in the 1950s, followed by Spain in the 1980s, three former Soviet satrapies in 1999, and seven more in 2004. Albania and Croatia were admitted in 2009; then Montenegro joined in 2017 and North Macedonia in 2020. Once Finland and Sweden are in, the original 12 will have expanded to 32. Growth does not imply obsolescence.<\/p>\n The most critical reason for longevity is the United States, which had to overcome its long aversion to what Thomas Jefferson, in his first inaugural address in 1801, called \u2018entangling alliances\u2019. In fact, the US didn\u2019t commit to Europe in the early years of World War I or World War II. The turn from self-isolation to permanent alliance with Europe had to await the Cold War, when those ex-isolationists provided Western Europe with that most precious gift: a security umbrella made in the USA,\u00a0including<\/a>\u00a0more than 350,000 US troops and thousands of tactical nuclear weapons at the peak that kept Stalin\u2019s heirs on their best behaviour.<\/p>\n Moreover, the US acted not only as a protector, but also as a pacifier. With their common security assured, age-old enemies like Britain, France and Germany could safely dispense with arms races and strategic rivalry in favour of trust and community.<\/p>\n This is why the European Defence Community (without the US)\u00a0died in the cradle<\/a>\u00a0in 1954, why NATO has reached the age of 74, and why a purely European strategic player remains a noble dream\u2014even if the EU plus Britain add up to the world\u2019s second-largest economy (after the US and ahead of China). The US is the not-so-secret ingredient. It spares the Europeans the necessity of mounting a divisive autonomous defence.<\/p>\n Putin\u2019s war of conquest against Ukraine proves the point. When US President Joe Biden committed in earnest after Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion last year, the hesitant Europeans could feel safe enough to engage. With Mr Big there to deter the Kremlin\u2019s nuclearised war machine, would-be mediators like France and Germany have curbed their classic reflexes. Germany abandoned the\u00a0Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline<\/a>\u00a0from Russia while providing a steady stream of equipment to Ukraine, even Leopard 2 tanks, but only after the US had gone first with its Abrams tanks.<\/p>\n Thus, the \u2018brain dead\u2019 alliance has bounced back\u2014nothing like an impending hanging to concentrate the mind. NATO, give or take Hungary or Turkey, has grasped the obvious. The war on its doorsteps is not just about Ukraine, but also about a precious European order that has delegitimised conquest. The stakes could not be higher. As in Stalin\u2019s days, Putin\u2019s lunge has reintroduced the spectre of Russian hegemony over Europe. Putin wants a certified sphere of influence, preferably a back-to-the-future restoration of the old Soviet empire.<\/p>\n If the Ukraine war turns into a blood-drenched stalemate, the voices of accommodation\u2014\u2018give Putin an offramp\u2019\u2014will grow louder on both sides of the Atlantic, on the left and on the right. Is Europe prepared for its strategic paradigm to shift towards the return of power politics?<\/p>\n Already, Russia\u2019s war of aggression has revealed the price of three decades of European disarmament. The alliance has shrunk not only its munitions stockpiles, but also its arms production lines. High-intensity protracted warfare seemed to have gone the way of the buggy. Yet, whichever way the war goes, it holds a sobering lesson for the West: pile up plenty of gear and ordnance, invest in mobility and train your troops.<\/p>\n \u2018A conqueror is always a lover of peace,\u2019\u00a0taught<\/a>\u00a0Clausewitz. They want to move in \u2018quite calmly\u2019. Hence, \u2018we must prepare for war\u2019 in order to avert it. As the West peers ahead, it should heed the age-old rule: deterrence is better than having to halt aggression. It is also a lot cheaper.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sometimes you wonder if that was part of the plan. How Putin saved NATO When Finland\u00a0cleared the last hurdle\u00a0for NATO membership last week, major Western newspapers buried the story. Yet Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto justly celebrated \u2018these historic days\u2019\u2014the end of 75 years of\u00a0neutrality. As of this week, Finland is\u00a0formally in, and Sweden, another eternal … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial-o-the-day"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=91734"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91735,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91734\/revisions\/91735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=91734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=91734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=91734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}