Auntie Comes to Visit

NATO is 60 years old. Like an old aunt, she’s outlasted many of us, military alliances included. Her secret to longevity: She’s more functional than fancy.

NATO is like life insurance and sewer systems: not exactly hot topics of conversation but important nonetheless. We wouldn’t notice how important until they disappeared from everyday life. NATO really should have been relegated to the dustbin of history the day the Soviet Union committed suicide, or in 1994, at the latest, when the last Russian soldier crossed the border from Poland into the Ukraine. Alliances are supposed to die after they achieve victory. According to the iron rule of international politics, when the enemy disappears, so does the alliance.

But Auntie NATO celebrated her 60th birthday on April 4th – a historic first. The Grand Alliance against Napoleon had already begun to fall apart while the last waltz was still being played at the Congress of Vienna. The Entente against Germany was dead three years after the Treaty of Versailles, when London resumed its political counterbalancing act with France. The anti-Hitler alliance passed almost seamlessly into the Cold War.

What did this alliance have that the others didn’t? It has always had more functions than it had enemies, and that’s what makes it historically unique. The first NATO General Secretary, Lord Ismay, named three right at the beginning: keep the Americans in, the Russians out and the Germans down. Anchoring European security with the North Atlantic remains its first interest. Keep the Russians out? Yes, of course. Russia, whether under the white Czars or the red, was just too big and too unpredictable for Europe. And keeping the Germans down? That has to be reformulated to read “keeping nationalism out of European defense policy.”

Europe’s longest peace would be unthinkable were it not for the commonality of security policy since 1945. “Security with” replaced “security against.” For the first time in history, France, England and Germany, the heirs of Louis XIV and Wilhelm II, all found themselves in the same lifeboat. Since then, a powerful tradition of cooperation has come about: supreme command, communications ties, maneuvers, armaments – everything has been done cooperatively. One doesn’t toss such assets away lightly.

The alliance as community also explains its successful business model. Instead of looking for debt protection after the Russians withdrew, NATO went on to expand its market share: originally comprised of 12 nations, it now has 26 members, and if it had had its way, would also now include Georgia, Moldavia and the Ukraine. The fact that 43 years after de Gaulle, France will now rejoin NATO isn’t a sign of infirmity; it’s proof of its functionality. Auntie NATO may not be sexy, but she’s useful.

That was proven in the 1990s, when the European Union couldn’t even clean up the problems in their Balkan front yard. It’s being proven again in Afghanistan by the 22,000 non-U.S. troops active there.

Just try imagining life if NATO ceased to exist. Suddenly the word would be “Ami went home.” The Germans would again have their own Wehrmacht High Command, the British would take refuge in a double covenant with America, and Moscow would threaten its East European neighbors even more. So I say, “Happy Birthday, NATO!”