How solid is the NATO alliance?
On Feb. 26, French President Emmanuel Macron started a firestorm on the international diplomatic front by suggesting that NATO member countries could contribute combat forces to the war in Ukraine on an “official basis.”
The French leader said that “we will do everything needed so Russia cannot win the war” after a meeting in Paris of over 20 European heads of state and government and other western officials.
Macron acknowledged that to date there is “no consensus” on such a plan but he also emphasized that “nothing was excluded.”
In response to Macron’s comments, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany issued immediate official denials of support for such a military escalation of the conflict with Russia. French political opposition parties also sharply criticized Macron’s proposal while the Kremlin invoked the threat of nuclear retaliation if NATO troops deploy onto the Ukrainian battlefield. Where Macron did find support was from the governments of Lithuania and Estonia, both of whom are NATO allies that border Russia.
The reasoning behind Macron’s suggested escalation of the war is the fact that, in recent weeks, Ukraine has suffered some serious battlefield reversals and the industrial capacity of the West is unable to keep up with the munitions expenditure by Ukraine.
At present, Russian artillery enjoys a 10-to-one advantage in shells fired on a daily basis. It is also true that the armed forces of Ukraine are woefully short of manpower.
Even with aggressive conscription techniques being used by Ukraine’s Security Forces, the attritional nature of the war to date remains firmly in Russia’s favour. European allies can look to purchase weapons and munitions for Ukraine from Asian producers such as South Korea, but only the commitment of foreign combat soldiers will tip the balance.
Which brings us to the very core definition of what it means to be a member of the NATO alliance. Article 5 of the NATO charter states that, provided a NATO ally is the victim of an armed attack, each and every other member of the alliance will consider the act of violence an armed attack against all members and will take the actions necessary to assist the ally attacked.
Now keep in mind that this North Atlantic Treaty was signed in 1949, and the original 12 members, including Canada, sought a collective military alliance to resist potential Soviet Union aggression in Europe and/or North America. No provision was made for attacks on colonial territories held by these member states.
Which is why NATO did not go to war against Argentina when it invaded the British colony of the Falkland Islands in 1982. But I digress.
Now entering its 75th year, NATO has grown to the current total of 31 member countries, with Sweden and Finland only joining the club after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
To date, no NATO country has suffered an armed attack against it and, thankfully, Article 5 of the charter has not been put to the test. However, the alliance did flex its muscle in 1999 when it bombed Serbia into submission during a 78-day aerial bombardment.
NATO also led the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan and it was a Nato commanded alliance that bombed the bejeezus out of Libya in 2010. Throw in some NATO training missions in warravaged post-u.s. invasion Iraq and it turns out that the world’s most sophisticated and powerful military alliance has yet to achieve a clear-cut win.
For the record, Canada has been front and centre in all these NATO-LED, albeit dubious, missions far outside the stated mandate of mutual defence. What Macron is suggesting is the opposite.
Should a member state choose to form a bilateral alliance with Ukraine and then commit their own soldiers to that conflict, that will not trigger Article 5. So long as Russia does not escalate the war onto the NATO ally’s territory, in this case France, other NATO members are under no obligation to join the fray.