- Question
- What is the future of NATO?
- Position‹2 of 3›
- NATO will continue its traditional role
- Argument
In the face of Russian aggression NATO remains relevant
The annexation of Crimea and an increasingly adventurous and aggressive Russian foreign policy makes NATO's mission more vital than ever.
The argument
Predictions of NATO's obsolescence rest on the idea that the threat it was built to counter has gone. Proponents of this position argue that the record of the last two decades shows otherwise. Under Vladimir Putin, Russia has increasingly embarked on an aggressive foreign policy designed to undermine Western interests: it invaded Georgia, annexed Crimea, funded and armed separatists in eastern Ukraine, and intervened militarily in Syria to prop up the regime of Bashar al-Assad. The pattern in that list matters more than any single episode. These were not isolated crises but a sequence of actions, spread across years and across several theatres, each involving the use or sponsorship of force to alter facts on the ground in territory Russia regards as within its sphere. Two of them changed borders by force in Europe itself, which is the specific contingency the alliance exists to make unthinkable. The direction of Russian military policy points the same way. The authoritarian nature of Putin's presidency has been accompanied by a sustained rebuilding of Russia's military capabilities, including an increase in its nuclear weapons stockpile. A state investing in those capabilities while demonstrating a willingness to use force is precisely the circumstance in which collective defence retains its point. Deterrence works by making aggression unprofitable in advance, which means its successes are invisible and its absence becomes apparent only once it has failed. NATO's collective-defence guarantee is what has kept its members off the list above, and the states that were attacked were those outside the alliance. On this argument NATO's traditional role — deterring a militarily capable and revisionist neighbour — is not a Cold War inheritance but a present requirement, and the alliance will continue to perform it.
Premises
Counter-arguments
Russia under Vladimir Putin is not the Soviet Union. The current military threat of Russia is overstated and far less adventurous than the Cold War era. Russia's own military doctrine states that the biggest threat to peace is the military build up amongst NATO member states and the expansion of NATO membership to its border. Russia's foreign policy is one of self-defence.
Rejecting the premises
[Rejecting P1] Russia's role is one of self-defence, not aggression.