An Organisation in the Shadow of Existential Debates: NATO

The ideological split on the European continent emerged after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. However, this ideological divide did not immediately take the form of competition or conflict. On the contrary, the Western democracies based on free market economies and the communist Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) fought together against the fascist regimes of Germany, Italy and Japan. With the end of the Second World War, the situation changed completely. The conflicting interests of the wartime allies did not allow the path they had travelled together to be prolonged. Soon the Soviets began to interfere in the politics of Eastern European countries and directly threaten Western flank countries such as Norway, Greece and Turkey. The first measure against the Soviet threat was the establishment of the Western Union in March 1948 by Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

Later, negotiations with the United States led to the establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) with the Washington Treaty signed on 04 April 1949. Established with twelve founding members, NATO went through ten phases of expansion over the years in accordance with Article 10 of the Treaty and became a 32-member organisation.

The preamble to the Washington Treaty defines the core values of the organisation as ‘democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law’. By ratifying the Treaty, member states commit to uphold these principles and to contribute to security and stability in the North Atlantic Area. Three articles stand out in the Washington Treaty.

The fourth article allows any member to consult with other member states if it considers that ‘its territorial integrity, political independence or security is threatened’. The fifth article is the common defence article. Accordingly, ‘The Parties recognise that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America is an attack against all of them...’

Article 10 allows for the expansion of the Alliance by admitting new members. It states that ‘the Parties may invite any other European State to accede to this Treaty if it is in a position to further the principles of this Treaty and contribute to the security of the North Atlantic region’.

NATO's Organisational Structure

Although NATO is generally known as a military organisation, it is also an organisation with a political dimension. Therefore, it should be seen more as a political-military organisation. In order to understand NATO's civil-military organisational structure, it is necessary to focus on four important elements. These are the North Atlantic Council, the Nuclear Planning Group, the Secretary General and the Military Committee. In this structure, the North Atlantic Council, the Nuclear Planning Group and the Secretary General are civilians and constitute the civilian structure of the organisation. On the other hand, the military committee and sub-commands constitute the military structure.

The North Atlantic Council (NAC), the main element of NATO's civilian structure, is the main decision-making body of the organisation. It can meet at the level of permanent representatives, defence ministers, foreign ministers and heads of state. The most important aspect for member states is that it takes decisions based on unanimity. In other words, all members have equal rights. The Nuclear Planning Group (NPG) is the highest body for reviewing, changing and adapting NATO's nuclear policy. It meets regularly every week and annually at the level of the Ministers of Defence.

Under these main bodies of the civilian structure, various sub-committees have been established to formulate, execute and monitor policies, plans and programmes. The Secretary-General is the top diplomat and head of the North Atlantic Council and other important bodies. He is appointed by the member states for four terms. His term of office may be extended if agreed by the member states. Under the Secretary-General is a headquarters staffed by international civilian personnel who support his activities. This headquarters consists of the Secretary-General's special headquarters and seven directorates organised according to their functions.

At the top of NATO's military structure is the Military Committee (MC). It is composed of the permanent military representatives of each member state. The EC makes military recommendations to the PAC and the NPG and issues strategic directives to the two strategic commands. It meets at the level of permanent military representatives and chiefs of staff. The activities of the CoE are supported by an international military headquarters. NATO's military structure comprises two strategic commands. Allied Operations Command is based in Mons, Belgium. Its commander is the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR). The Operations Command commands, commands and controls forces; provides intelligence support; plans and conducts communications and information support activities; plans, conducts and evaluates exercises.

Allied Conversion Command is based in Norfolk, USA. Major areas of responsibility include defence planning; policy, concepts, and doctrines; resources; education and training; experimentation; and research and development. NATO's two strategic commands operate by commanding various headquarters, units and organisations at the operational and tactical levels. In this structure, there are NATO Command Structure units, headquarters and institutions that are administratively and financially within NATO, and ‘NATO Force Structure’ units, headquarters and institutions that are within the national military organisation of the member states but are associated or allocated to NATO. The operational-level Joint Force headquarters in Brunsum, Naples and Norfolk, as well as Land, Naval and Air command headquarters, are located in the NATO Command Structure, while the rapid deployable high readiness corps headquarters in 10 allied countries are located in the NATO Force Structure.

NATO's Strategic Evolution

NATO's ability to transform itself by demonstrating the necessary intellectual, conceptual, structural and organisational flexibility lies behind its survival despite the radical changes in the international system since its establishment. Strategic concepts, published every ten years on average, are the main documents shaping this evolutionary transformation.

NATO's first concept was published in 1950. It stated that NATO's primary function was to deter aggression, and that NATO forces would respond only if this function failed and an attack was launched against them.

The invasion of South Korea by North Korean troops on 25 June 1950 had a significant impact on NATO and its strategic thinking. NATO's political and military leaders felt an urgent need to review the Alliance's military power and military structure. On 26 September 1950, the CSTC approved the establishment of a military force structure under a central command. This structural change, with the participation of Greece and Turkey, was included in the Second Strategic Concept published in 1952. The main theme of the concept was the containment of the USSR. As a consequence, a ‘forward strategy’ was adopted and implemented with the aim of stopping the Soviet threat as far east of Europe as possible, as close as possible to the Iron Curtain.

NATO's Third Strategic Concept was published in 1957. In view of the advances made by both sides in missile and nuclear capabilities, this concept for the first time raised the option of ‘massive retaliation’. While some member states were in favour of massive retaliation as it would reduce force requirements and thus defence expenditure, others were against it. For this reason, there was also flexibility to use conventional weapons against small-scale attacks. Over time, as the USSR's nuclear potential increased, NATO's competitive advantage in nuclear deterrence diminished. The balance reached in nuclear firepower came to be known as ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’.

The strategy of mass retaliation was largely based on the defence of European territory with US nuclear weapons in the event of a Soviet nuclear attack. The USSR's development of intercontinental ballistic missile capability raised the question of how much risk the US would take for Europe. As the Cold War reached its peak with the Berlin Crisis and then the Cuban Crisis, non-nuclear options and the need for a more flexible strategy came to the fore. The withdrawal of France from NATO's integrated military structure in 1966 accelerated the process and the new concept was published in 1968. The new strategy was based on ‘escalation’ and a ‘flexible response’.

Accordingly, NATO's response to attacks against it would be designed to be flexible enough to allow the aggressor to conclude that his attack, whatever its form, would involve an unacceptable degree of risk. The Harmel Report, published in 1967, at a time when NATO was in the process of preparing its new strategy, based NATO's strategic security objectives for the next 20 years on a dual political and military approach. It argued that sufficient military power should be retained while working to ease tensions in East-West relations and to find solutions to the major political problems dividing Europe. The Harmel Report advanced the concepts of deterrence and de-escalation and, in this context, laid the first stones of the road towards 1991, when NATO would adopt a more co-operative approach to security challenges.

The dissolution of the USSR in 1991 opened the door to a very different era for NATO. In this period, a significant number of countries that once espoused a rival ideology and were defined as adversaries became NATO partners and some became NATO members. NATO's Fifth Strategic Concept, published in November 1991, differed significantly from previous strategic documents. While retaining the principle of collective defence, it sought to enhance the security of Europe as a whole through partnerships and cooperation with former adversaries.

Ethnic conflicts during the break-up of the former Yugoslavia posed a significant threat to peace and stability in Europe in the 1990s. In 1999, in the fiftieth anniversary year of its establishment, NATO published its Sixth Strategic Concept in response to the problems that could arise from the ground instability following the end of the Cold War. The new concept identified new risks that had emerged since the end of the Cold War, including terrorism, ethnic conflict, human rights violations, political instability, economic fragility and the proliferation of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and their delivery vehicles, and outlined a broad security policy framework that recognised the importance of political, economic, social and environmental factors in addition to the defence dimension.

Alliance leaders envisaged that NATO's force structure would acquire the capabilities to carry out crisis response tasks while continuing to fulfil common defence missions, and stressed the need to maintain a military structure capable of meeting conventional and nuclear threats. In the 1990s, the Joint Joint Task Force Concept and the High Readiness Troop Headquarters to command NATO Rapid Deployable Corps were established to meet new risks and threats in both collective defence and peace support and other crisis response missions. The NATO Response Force Concept was launched in 2002 to enable NATO to rapidly respond to and contain crises.

The 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States of America led to significant changes in the threat perception in the North Atlantic region. For the first time in its history, NATO implemented Article Five and assumed command of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) authorised by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). The Alliance was thus undertaking a de facto military operation to contain threats to its security beyond its geographical borders. During this period, NATO took measures to transform its military structure and capabilities to counter new risks and threats. For example, Allied Command Transformation was established in 2003 as one of NATO's two strategic commands. In this context, NATO's Seventh Strategic Concept, ‘Active Engagement, Modern Defence’, which takes a broader view of threats to NATO's security in terms of both geographical area and diversity, was published at the Lisbon Summit in November 2010. The concept identified the three main tasks of ensuring the security of the Alliance as ‘Common Defence, Crisis Management and Cooperative Security’.

Russia's aggression in Ukraine, first partial in 2014 and then full-scale in 2022, has disrupted the ongoing de-escalation in Europe. Russia's aggressive actions, which fundamentally undermined the long-term security structure established in Europe since the CSCE, Iran's power struggle through its proxies, China's emergence as a significant military power, and the ongoing threat of global terrorism required the Alliance to update its strategic outlook.

NATO's Eighth Strategic Concept, adopted by the Alliance countries at the Madrid Summit on 29 June 2022, adopted three core tasks: ‘deterrence and defence, crisis prevention and management, and cooperative security’. The new Concept characterised the security environment as characterised by ‘strategic competition, widespread instability and recurrent shocks’, the threats as global and interconnected, and the Russian Federation as ‘the most significant and direct threat to the security of the Alliance countries and to peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic region’. The Concept also identified China's increasingly assertive policies as posing a significant challenge to Alliance security and interests, and emphasised that the deepening strategic partnership between Russia and China was to the detriment of the rules-based international order and Alliance security.

The military threat posed by Russia since 2014 has led to significant changes in NATO's military readiness and force structure. In this context, at the Madrid Summit in June 2022, the Alliance leaders agreed on a new force model that expands the scope of operational NATO forces. Accordingly, the NATO force structure is envisaged to be based on a three-tier structure according to readiness levels. The first tier will consist of approximately 100,000 lightly equipped troops at the 0-10 day readiness level; the second tier will consist of approximately 200,000 troops with more diverse capabilities at the 10-30 day readiness level; and the third tier will consist of at least 500,000 troops at the 30-180 day readiness level. In addition to this three-tier structure, the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF) is being replaced by the Allied Reaction Force (ARF). Unlike the VJTF, the ARF is planned to cover not only joint but also cyber and space operation areas. In the force structure, the number of corps headquarters with high readiness for rapid deployment is envisaged to be 11 (7).

Future of NATO

Russia's aggression against Ukraine has, on the one hand, led to the further enlargement of NATO with the accession of Sweden and Finland, and on the other hand, as mentioned above, to changes in its strategy and military organisation. The Alliance countries have increased their military expenditures and started to restructure the readiness, deployment and mission status of their troops. On the other hand, Donald Trump's re-election as US President in January 2025 has revitalised the debate on the future of NATO. As a result of Trump's ‘America First’ and ‘isolationism’ policies during his first presidential term, which started in 2017, the necessity of the North Atlantic Alliance started to be discussed (8).

In fact, French President Macron stated that NATO was brain dead. Although Trump's rhetoric caused unrest within the Alliance at the time, the US continued to fulfil its obligations under the North Atlantic Alliance. In fact, Trump's first National Security Strategy, published in December 2017, stated that ‘NATO provides the United States with a major advantage over its adversaries and that the United States is committed to Article Five of the Washington Treaty’ (9). As a result, the NATO Alliance survived Trump's first term without any major damage and entered a period of recovery as a result of Biden's ‘internationalist - rule based international system’ approach that emphasised alliance policy.

Trump started his second presidential term with more power as a result of his majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. The most important characteristic of Trump's first term policies was that they were inconsistent and transactional. This allowed him to make sharp reversals from his strong claims. As a matter of fact, he refrained from fully implementing his rhetoric on NATO, which caused uneasiness in the Alliance. However, in the first two months of his second presidency, Trump started to implement one by one the policies that shook both the US and the international public opinion. In addition to US domestic policies such as the deportation of undocumented immigrants, the dismissal of senior public officials, mass layoffs carried out by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under the leadership of Elon Musk; foreign policy practices such as the annexation of Greenland and Canada, decisions to raise customs tariffs for many goods, and the cessation of military aid and intelligence support to Ukraine have caused astonishment in the US and abroad. In particular, Trump's humiliating attitude towards Ukrainian President Zelensky and his subsequent decisions together with Vice President Vance at the White House on 28 February 2025 caused great concern in the North Atlantic geography. Trump's attitude towards Zelensky, coupled with his allegations against Canada and Greenland, further increased the uneasiness among the other members of the Alliance. In the face of this situation, countries led by France, Germany and the United Kingdom have accelerated their efforts to increase European defence capabilities. In addition, the European Union and the UK are trying to increase Ukraine's resilience against Russia by increasing military and economic aid to Ukraine.

It is clear that the US attitude will be decisive in the future of NATO. If Trump continues the more daring, interest-oriented approach he pursued in his first two months, it can be predicted that this will cause great damage to the North Atlantic Alliance. This is because, in scenarios based on the balance of power, such as the US coming to an agreement with Russia and breaking the Russia-China bloc or dividing the world into spheres of influence between the US, Russia and China, the US excluding other members of the Alliance will increase the divergence between Europe/Canada and the US. On the other hand, there are many bureaucrats and members of Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, who see NATO as an indispensable element of a rules-based international system and a North Atlantic security community committed to values such as ‘democracy, individual freedom and the rule of law’. Despite this, it will be difficult for Trump to fundamentally change US policy towards NATO. Therefore, it can be argued that the future of NATO will be determined by the struggle between interest-oriented-isolationist and value-oriented-internationalist approaches in US foreign policy.

Bibliography

1. ‘Strategic Concepts’, 18.07.2022, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_56626.htm, accessed 22.03.2025.

2. North Atlantic Treaty

3. NATO's 1991 Strategic Concept

4. NATO's 1999 Strategic Concept

5. NATO's 2010 Strategic Concept

6. NATO's Strategic Concept 2022

7. John R. Deni, ‘The new NATO Force Model: ready for launch?, 04 May 2024, https://www.ndc.nato.int/news/news.php?icode=1937, accessed 20.05.2024.

8. Adem Çakır (2020), ‘Rise of Isolationism in The USA Foreign Policy and Implications For NATO’, International Journal of Political Studies, 6, no. 3, pp. 15-28.

9. National Security Strategy of the USA (2017), pp. 47-48, https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/NSS-Final-12-18-2017-0905.pdf.