NATO's Anniversary Crisis: The Ukraine issue is currently dividing the alliance, but will strengthen it in the medium term

Leaky umbrella

Just a year ago, it was believed that the NATO summit, timed to coincide with its 75th anniversary, would be a powerful demonstration of the alliance's unity and invincibility. However, against the backdrop of a stalemate and sluggish Russian offensive in Ukraine, growing domestic political divisions in the US and Europe, endless debates about the burden of funding the bloc on both sides of the Atlantic, and a leadership crisis, the Washington summit was met with a strong wave of alarmism and disappointment even before it began.

The press more or less confidently predicted the alliance's demise. Experts and intellectuals spoke of a crisis and collapse, whether NATO admitted Ukraine or merely expressed an intention to do so (as shown by an open letter signed by 60 American professors and experts published by Politico), or if it did not admit Ukraine and lacked a clear strategy for victory in Ukraine. For example, Kurt Volker, US Special Representative for Ukraine from 2017 to 2019, criticised the US and Germany in a comment for the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). He argued that their reluctance to discuss and adopt such a strategy at the Washington summit, due to fears of escalation, only exacerbates and intensifies the uncertainty about the alliance’s future if Donald Trump returns to the White House. Partners and the international community are well aware that America provides Ukraine with enough weapons to survive but fears Russia’s defeat. This raises questions about the reliability of the entire North Atlantic bloc as an ally and diminishes trust in it even among its members. The lack of will, growing disagreements, and inability to develop a convincing strategy to respond to Putin's challenge to the old world order are clear signs that the alliance's time has passed, echo other commentators. 'Does NATO have a future?' and 'Leadership crisis overshadows NATO summit' read the headlines.

The current NATO crisis has its roots in its era of triumph. The alliance’s problems are largely created by the contradictory political course chosen in the 1990s: the simultaneous expansion of the organisation and its disarmament and reduction of military spending, writes University of California professor Daniel Treisman in a commentary for Foreign Policy. Since 1989, 16 countries have joined NATO, which, upon joining, immediately began to reduce their military expenditures. Ten years after joining, the median new NATO member had 75% fewer tanks than before joining, 55% fewer combat aircraft, and 59% fewer artillery pieces, and the number of military personnel had decreased by a third. The 'old' (joined before 1989) members also actively reduced military spending: if in the first 40 years of the alliance's existence they spent an average of 3.7% of GDP on defence, in subsequent years this figure fell to 1.9%, almost halving. The total number of armed forces personnel in the 16 oldest alliance countries decreased from 5.8 million in 1989 to 3.5 million in 2020, a 40% reduction.

As Treisman notes, NATO's large-scale eastward expansion was possible only because the Western public did not see it as necessary: with the virtually vanished threat from Moscow, no one in the US seriously believed that they might one day have to send troops to defend Estonia or Poland. When the threat from Russia arose, the alliance ignored it for a long time and did not adjust its strategy after Putin's speech in Munich in 2007, the invasion of Georgia in 2008, or even the annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbas in 2014.

NATO was turning into an increasingly wide but increasingly leaky umbrella, whose size was reassuring as long as it did not rain. The nuclear shield was considered a sufficient preventive guarantee, under which the alliance's combat readiness was of little importance. By starting a large-scale conventional war in Europe, Putin exposed the failure of this implicit doctrine.

Is the glass half empty or half full?

Only now is NATO returning to an awareness of its mission as it was originally conceived, according to experts at the Observer Research Foundation. This shift is happening quite slowly – politicians in democracies need to secure voter support. Paradoxically, only now is NATO’s expansion beginning to be filled with real substance. At the same time, the issue of increasing defence spending remains divisive in Europe: northwestern Europe is more supportive of increased spending, while southeastern Europe is not, as surveys show.

Putin has taken NATO by surprise. However, given the complexity of the task at hand, the alliance has managed to achieve quite a bit, believes former US Ambassador to Russia and renowned political scientist Michael McFaul. The number of NATO countries spending at least 2% of GDP on defence has grown from three in 2014 and seven in 2022 to 23 today (according to the Atlantic Council), and the readiness of NATO soldiers for war (including in Europe) has significantly increased (→ Re:Russia: Going Backwards). Major work is underway in Europe and the United States to significantly expand the alliance's military-industrial base, which will not only address the shortage of key weapons and ammunition for Ukraine but also make the alliance as a whole better prepared for future threats. All this, according to McFaul, suggests that recent years have been a period of NATO’s revival.

The final declaration of the Washington summit unequivocally states that countering the military threat from Russia is the organisation’s primary goal at this stage; it also mentions the threat from China. The new geopolitical realities are recognized. The slow-moving machine is gradually gaining speed. Of course, at such a stage, there is always room for debate: is the glass half empty or half full?

One of NATO's key challenges will be solving the task of defending its territory from potential invasion, write experts from the German Marshall Fund (GMF). Although the combined GDP of NATO’s 32 countries exceeds Russia's by 20 times, and its population by seven times, the task of collective defence of a large territory by a politically divided alliance seems more complex than several decades ago. One of the main problems is the understrength of allied armed forces, notes professor of strategic studies Benjamin Jensen in a commentary for the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). European armies are small and unable to sustain a prolonged conflict, NATO countries’ birth rates are falling, and societal attitudes toward military service complicate the recruitment of volunteers. One possible way to address personnel issues is to attract migrants to military service in exchange for citizenship, as the US and France already do. Another possibility involves rethinking the structure of combat formations and the drone revolution currently taking place in Ukraine. The broader use of drones to solve combat tasks could ultimately alleviate army staffing problems.

To effectively deter Russia, NATO also needs to start considering the southern and eastern flanks of the alliance as interconnected spaces, argues CSIS Laboratory for the Future expert Yasir Atalan.

To solve funding issues, NATO needs to unify the assessment and monitoring of expenses. The alliance’s combined military spending increased by 11% in 2024 (only 3% in 2023), and in Europe, this figure reached 19% (9% in 2023), notes the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). However, the criteria for determining defence expenditures often differ: for example, in Denmark, the difference between its official defence spending level and the figure reported to NATO grew from 7% in 2022 to 33% in 2024. This is due to the inclusion of expenses such as medical services for military personnel, as well as state pensions for military and defence sector government employees.

Addressing NATO’s challenges will require reforming its management system and increasing openness to innovation, write military experts Arnel David and Benjamin Jensen in a commentary for CSIS. Procurement, operational planning, and combat systems suffer from bureaucratic inertia and are inadequate in modern realities. The war in Ukraine, according to former Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, has caused ‘the most significant fundamental change in the character of war ever recorded in history’. Ukraine's ability to withstand Russia’s vastly superior military machine has been largely determined by innovative adaptability – Ukraine has managed to implement many new military technologies on the fly.

The suspension bridge and the Ukraine dilemma

In the final declaration, participants of the Washington summit called Kyiv's membership in the alliance ‘irreversible’, but the actual implementation of this 'irreversibility' is postponed to an indefinite moment when 'allies agree and conditions are met.' As experts from the German Marshall Fund (GMF) note, the current strategy to support Kyiv for as long as it takes no longer works, and consensus on Ukraine's accession to NATO during the war remains elusive. To compensate for the glaring uncertainty on this issue, the alliance has come up with a framework concept for relations with Ukraine as a 'bridge to membership' (→ Re:Russia: Paper Bridge). Its practical implementation so far includes the decision to create the NATO Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine (NSATU) mission, which aims to coordinate various aid packages and training programs for Ukraine. The NSATU mission will continue to function even if Donald Trump wins the US presidential election.

At the same time, the Washington summit approved a $40 billion aid package for Kyiv, which should be considered the maximum possible compromise under current circumstances. Initially, outgoing NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg proposed creating a $100 billion five-year fund, but these plans proved too ambitious for the allies. However, due to its limited scope, the compromise package sends an inverse signal to Moscow. It demonstrates the allies' indecisiveness in increasing spending and confirms the rationality of the Kremlin’s strategy of betting on a war of attrition.

The issue of supporting Ukraine in its confrontation with Moscow’s aggression and the extent of this support remains an unsolvable dilemma for the alliance. Expanding support and effectively integrating the country into the bloc's structures would bring the world to the brink of a third world war, some argue; non-inclusion and half-hearted support undermine trust in the alliance globally and erode it from within, say others. It is evident that at this stage, Ukraine’s defeat will unequivocally be perceived both internally and externally as the alliance’s defeat, with corresponding consequences

Ukraine’s accession to NATO would make Europe more stable and secure, according to a series of experiments conducted by the Atlantic Council in collaboration with the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Dozens of leading experts and officials from allied countries modelled the outcomes of various scenarios of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Experts concluded that in the end, in all scenarios, Ukraine's membership in NATO forced Moscow to adopt a more cautious policy, avoiding escalation and direct conflict. The Atlantic Council estimates that the modelling results align with Russia's actual policy, demonstrating a willingness to use force only in the absence of the risk of direct conflict with NATO.

However, modelling and arguments offer little when it comes to a pivotal political decision. The Ukrainian issue and the alliance's inability to reach a consensus remain key factors in NATO's current crisis. However, as Harvard University Professor of International Relations Stephen Walt, generally sceptical about NATO's prospects, acknowledges in a Foreign Policy commentary, the alliance's 75-year history has not been a smooth road. Throughout its history, NATO has gone through a series of crises involving sharp internal disagreements.

For example, during the Suez Crisis of 1956, the US opposed the invasion of Egypt by Britain, France, and Israel and pressured them to agree to a ceasefire and withdraw troops. This led to a deep crisis of trust among the countries, culminating in French President de Gaulle's decision in 1966 to withdraw from NATO's military organisation. The Vietnam War (1957-1975) was fought by the US alone, as Britain and France refused to participate in military actions, provoking a new wave of tension between the US and its European allies. The Kosovo War, which marked NATO's first use of military force without UN Security Council approval, and the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, which Germany and France openly opposed, also led to significant conflicts within the alliance.

But none of these crises undermined NATO. No alternative to the alliance exists at present. Even the arrival of Donald Trump will not change this state of affairs. A crisis is not necessarily a catastrophe; it is an opportunity to seek ways to resolve it.