NATO, the U.S., and Cold War 2.0

After the Russian Invasion of Ukraine: A New Defense Posture in Europe

In the wake of the Russia invasion of Ukraine, NATO’s collective defense posture would now be premised on a deterrence by denial strategic orientation rather than deterrence by punishment. The Strategic Concept would also prioritize China’s rise and territorial ambitions and contend with transnational challenges like COVID-19 and future pandemics, climate change, terrorism, and migration. The alliance would invest in resilience measures and crisis management to secure alliance members from shocks and hybrid war threats to rule of law and civil society. NATO enhanced its force model and approved increases in common funding streams for its civil budget (civilian headquarters), military budget (integrated command operations and structures), and the NATO Security Investment Program (infrastructure; communications, capabilities; logistics …).

However, disagreements remain on how best to tackle and prioritize twenty-first century challenges and threats. NATO remains an alliance of sovereign states with members hold different and sometimes competing concerns. For example, Poland, the Baltics, and Romania are worried about Russian aggression, the Balkans are concerned with crisis management and resilience in the face of rule of law and civil society challenges and hybrid threats, Turkey is more anxious about terrorism and stability in the Black Sea, and the U.S. seeking to rebalance to the Indo-Pacific to contain China’s rise. And while most NATO states like to emphasize their democratic values and institutions, they did not agree to develop a proposed Center for Democratic Resilience that would have better positioned the alliance to combat malign actors seeking to undermine members’ political systems.

NATO’s goals and objectives have changed since the inception of the alliance in the Washington Treaty in 1949. For more than 70 years, NATO has remained a collective security alliance with core tasks that include collective defense, crisis management, and cooperative security. But NATO no longer highlights so-called out of area of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Also, NATO now focuses on building resilience among its members so they can withstand kinetic attacks and hybrid war operations, namely cyberattacks, disinformation operations, and malign influence.

China is making significant financial investments in telecommunications, aerospace, and aero defense, cyber, and advancing infrastructure and investment initiatives with its Belt and Road initiative. Also, China’s territorial ambitions in the South China Sea reflect its hegemonic intentions in the Asia-Pacific region. The 2022 Strategic Concept (NATO, 2022) states that China “strives to subvert the rules-based international order, including in the space, cyber and maritime domains.”

Geopolitical competition reflects a Cold War 2.0 international framework of tensions and rivalries playing out along security, economic, and technologies lines. However, emerging and disruptive technologies are evolving at a rapid pace, namely artificial intelligence, autonomous machines, augmented realities, and quantum computing. Advanced technologies allow malign actors to practice active measures and gray-zone operations to undermine NATO members with disinformation, cyberattacks, assassinations, and proxies.

How the alliance responds to the rise of China will determine whether it can maintain alliance unity and cohesion on the security implications of the shift in the structure of the international system toward great power competition. NATO’s 2021 Brussels communique asserted that China is a challenger given its increasing presence in the Arctic Ocean region, Horn of Africa, Central and Eastern Europe with the 16+1 initiative, and with its promotion of initiatives like China Made in 2025 and Belt and Road. Those questioning NATO’s legitimacy and relevance today maintain that the transatlantic alliance was not created to balance against China on these and other related issues. NATO is also maximizing its relationship with the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, which includes the U.S., Australia, India, and Japan, and invite partnerships to increase its leverage. Ian Bremmer (2021, p. 128) describes this as the “technopolar moment” in which international politics is being shaped by advanced technologies, having “growing leverage to shape how Washington and Beijing behave.”

2022 Strategic Concept

The 2022 Strategic Concept (NATO, 2022) is straightforward and simple. It maintains that “The Euro-Atlantic area is not a peace.” If there is a silver lining, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has given NATO renewed purpose. NATO is, by no means, “brain dead” as Emmanuel Macron once described. While the price is being paid by Ukraine, the Russian invasion boosted NATO credibility and revived a transatlantic alliance that was on life support. However, the problems and challenges posed by China’s rise, COVID-19, and climate change remain.

There was a desperate need for NATO to update its 2010 Strategic Concept. Even though Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 and Putin pushed back against NATO at the 2007 Munich Security Conference, that document valued NATO’s partnership with Russia. It (NATO, 2010) stated, “NATO-Russia cooperation is of strategic importance as it contributes to creating a common space of peace, stability and security.” And, perhaps more importantly, very little was mentioned about China or hybrid war operations in the 2010 document. The expectation was that NATO would continue to work toward building a predictable and stable partnership with Russia based on shared norms and agreements.

Even before Russia’s February 24th invasion of Ukraine, there was already a pressing need to develop a dramatically different response to Russia. No NATO member state should have been surprised at the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In 2014, Russia engaged in a pattern of destabilizing and destructive behavior that undermined previous efforts to instill strategic stability and predictability in Europe. Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and intervention in Donbas in 2014 and history of devastating cyberattacks should have resulted in a sobering assessment of NATO’s relationship with Russia. Today, the Euro-Atlantic area is now more unstable and unpredictable.

While Russian oil production and distribution could continue unabated, Russian natural gas could be harmed. In June 2022, the E.U. moved to drastically reduce energy imports from Russia, which could cut deep into the Russian economy. Russia could increase natural gas exports to China, but that would require constructing and expanding transportation infrastructure and building a vast network of pipelines to the Chinese heartland. The costs would be in the tens of billions of dollars. In addition, revenues would not be as profitable as the European market since China would not pay the same premium prices as European customers. In addition, the U.S. has increased its natural gas exports to Europe and the U.S. is pressuring Saudi Arabia to boost energy production to lower prices. And ramping up renewable energy would be the most devastating weapon by the West against Russia as it would lower the price of Russian oil in energy markets.

Moreover, the Russian invasion has upset global food and energy markets, resulting in skyrocketing bread, oil, and natural gas prices. Moreover, Russia’s naval blockade of Ukrainian ports in the Black Sea strangled Ukraine’s wheat exports contributing to rising inflation and instability around the world.

Most important, the Russian invasion of Ukraine raised bells concerning the potential of Chinese aggression against Taiwan. An irredentist and ambitious China threatens the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has overshadowed the U.S. effort to build multilateral security arrangements in Asia via the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue and the Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) agreement as well as efforts to build an Indo-Pacific economic framework (IPEF).