Stalemate is no strategy: NATO faces the new reality

As the band marched past NATO foreign ministers celebrating the alliance’s 75th anniversary, there was confidence that NATO itself will march on as well, repurposed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Refinanced too, by a mixture of American cajoling of underspending European members and those countries’ own growing security fears. The alliance is facing the new reality, writes Political Editor Nick Powell.

It was a strange two days as NATO foreign ministers met both to indulge in the self-congratulation of anniversary celebrations and to meet their Ukrainian colleague to discuss a war that presents an existential challenge to NATO’s purpose and values. An alliance that spent its first few decades essentially maintaining a military stalemate with the Soviet Union that divided Europe in two must now avoid allowing a stalemate that divides Ukraine and hands Vladimir Putin an emboldening victory.

The chair of NATO’s military committee, Admiral Rob Bauer from the Netherlands, stressed its history as a defensive alliance. “We are the most successful alliance in history”, he said, “not because of any aggressive display of military strength, or territory we have brutally conquered”, implicitly contrasting NATO’s aims with Russia’s.

“We are the most successful Alliance in history because of the peace we have brought, the countries we have united -and the conflicts we have prevented from spiralling out of control”, the admiral explained. He was right of course. From an historical perspective, NATO’s greatest success was ensuring that the Cold War remained a frozen conflict, ultimately won in part through military spending that the Warsaw Pact could not match without impoverishing and alienating its peoples.

NATO didn’t just live with a line of partition that divided Germany, that division was part of its raison d’être. Stalemate through firepower lasted for 40 years. But now, as NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg put it, “the Ukrainians are not running out of courage, they are running out of ammunition”.

He nevertheless offered a positive message, that “all allies agree on the need to support Ukraine in this critical moment”. He claimed that there is unity of purpose. “Ukraine can rely on NATO support now -and for the long haul”, he proclaimed, promising that “the details will take shape in the weeks to come”.

Hopefully not too many weeks, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister, Dmytro Kuleba, must have thought, as he said he did not wish to spoil the birthday party of what he called “the mightiest and longest-living alliance in world history”. He reminded the Secretary General that he had travelled to NATO headquarters in Brussels “against the background of continued, unprecedented missile and drone attacks of Russia against Ukraine”.

Ballistic missiles that could be stopped by the Patriot defensive missile system, he said. Ukraine needed them and he asserted that the NATO allies had plenty of them. Ukraine’s challenge to NATO doesn’t stop with demands for Patriot missiles though. If NATO’s values are to prevail, its members must find the will and the means to enable Ukraine to turn the tide of war, not to maintain a costly stalemate; costly not just in blood and treasure but in credibility for the mightiest alliance that the world has ever seen.

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