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WASHINGTON DC: Seventy-two years after its founding at the start of the Cold War, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has experienced a drastic re-awakening, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threatened to drag member states into direct confrontation with Moscow Is.

For eight years, NATO largely avoided engaging in Ukraine. It rebuked Russia for its annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its support of pro-Russian separatists in the Donbass and Luhansk, while doing little to ease the position of its Eastern European allies.

Now that Russia’s intentions in Ukraine are clear, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has launched a gradual program of meetings with world leaders to drive home the message of the military alliance’s unanimous support for Kyiv.

As Russian warplanes, rockets and artillery ravaged Ukrainian cities, forcing more than 2 million people from their homes, Stoltenberg condemned what Russian President Vladimir Putin described as aggression against a sovereign European state. of and promised a joint response.

“President Putin’s war on Ukraine has broken the peace in Europe,” Stoltenberg said during a visit to a military base in Latvia on NATO’s eastern border. “It has shaken the international order and it continues to take a devastating toll on the Ukrainian people.”

Moscow says its “special military operation” is aimed at protecting Russia and protecting Russian-speaking people in Ukraine’s eastern Donbass region.

Since the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1991 heralded the end of the Cold War, NATO members have frequently quarreled over the exact role – even the necessity – of the alliance, which was primarily focused on post-war Europe. It was created to stop Soviet expansion.

Now, Russia’s war in Ukraine, a potential member of NATO and the European Union, has breathed new life into the alliance and the values ​​that unite its members, giving it a renewed sense of purpose and resolve.

Victoria Coates, who was former President Donald Trump’s deputy national security adviser, believes the outcome of the war in Ukraine may well determine NATO’s long-term future and relevance.

“NATO’s future usefulness will be determined by the events of the next six months,” she told Arab News. “The coalition was severely stressed by the US surrender of Afghanistan to the Taliban without consulting NATO partners in that mission, and is being tested again by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

“If NATO can coordinate to provide security to civilians and impose multilateral economic sanctions in response to this crisis, it could be a model for other allied security networks around the world, led by the US, and Sweden and Finland. Like new members should be welcomed.

“But if NATO cannot provide a serious response to Putin, the future of the alliance will be in grave doubt.”

Some analysts believe that Putin may have underestimated NATO, perhaps hoping that it would be burdened by disagreements and past mistakes. In fact, the exact opposite has happened: it has mobilized its members for a common cause and launched the largest mobilization of NATO troops since the Kosovo intervention in 1999.

During a visit to Europe just a week before the start of the Russian offensive, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned Putin that building military forces along Ukraine’s border would only strengthen the NATO alliance.

“Mr. Putin says he does not want a strong NATO at its western end,” Austin said at the coalition’s headquarters. “That is exactly what he is getting at.”

Whether by design or the result of a miscalculation, Putin decided to fall under the guise of NATO and launched the largest military operation on the European continent since World War II.

In the early days of the invasion it was unclear how strongly the key members of NATO would react to the threat to their Eastern European allies. Stoltenberg himself emphasized on several occasions that NATO was not seeking a direct confrontation with Russia, while France and Germany were not initially on the same emotional wavelength as the Baltic states, Poland and Romania.

However, as the days went by, any hope of Putin’s quiet acknowledgment from Europeans was quickly dashed when the nation declared solidarity with Ukraine, imposed sanctions on Russia, and the country’s defenders. pledged to send military equipment and financial aid to ,

Even Finland, which shares Europe’s second-longest border with Russia after Ukraine, and has a history of poor relations with Moscow, is carefully re-evaluating its neutrality. Its prime minister, Sanna Marin, has promised an intense debate on whether joining NATO is in the country’s national security interest. Voting data shows that in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, most Finns would support being part of the coalition.

“The war in Ukraine has reinvigorated NATO,” Luke Coffey, a senior fellow at the American conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, told Arab News.

“After two decades of out-of-area operations in places like Afghanistan and Libya, the coalition is likely to return to basics and focus primarily on regional defense in the North Atlantic region.

“There is a growing realization that NATO does not have to do everything everywhere, but it should be able to defend Europe from Russian aggression. We must not forget that all this happened at a time when NATO is drafting its next strategic concept, a document that will help guide the alliance’s strategic vision for years to come.

Indeed, until recently the future of NATO was in doubt as successive US administrations – most notably the Trump White House – pressured Western Europe to increase their financial contributions to the coalition.

NATO members are obliged to spend at least two percent of their respective GDPs on defence. In fact, this obligation is often met only by members of Eastern Europe and the Baltic, while members with larger economies tend to drag their feet.

However, as a result of the invasion of Ukraine, NATO membership and resources may now expand rapidly – ​​the exact opposite of what the Kremlin may have wanted.

“In 2016, French President Emmanuel Macron labeled the coalition ‘brain dead’ and made clear his preference for greater EU capacity, in which France would naturally lead,” said Professor David Desroches of the University of National Defense in Washington. Told. Arab News.

“Putin has single-handedly revived and focused the coalition. He has incited the Germans to reverse generations-long hatred for defense spending, and in Finland and Sweden he has destroyed domestic opposition to joining NATO. ,

Putin has long viewed the expansion of NATO in Eastern Europe as a direct threat to Russian security and its sphere of influence. At the same time, NATO has been extremely careful not to provoke a major war on the European continent, insisting repeatedly that it is a defensive alliance.

Although Ukraine is not a member of NATO, there was widespread agreement among military analysts that the country lacked a unified approach by member states on past Russian military activity, including the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and covert movements of weapons and fighters. The weaknesses in the alliance were exposed by the Donbass and Luhansk.

NATO members were divided on how serious a threat Russia really was. These differences were finally pacified when the invasion began.

“Putin has taken a coalition that was struggling to find a willingness to respond to Russian military overflights of NATO territory and made it into an active military coalition focused on deterring Russian aggression,” Desroches said.

Germany, Europe’s economic superpower, was criticized by Trump for not spending enough on defense while hosting more than 30,000 US troops on his soil. Now the country has expanded its military budget and is sending weapons to support the Ukrainian government.

The Nord Stream II gas pipeline deal between Berlin and Moscow, which would have increased Russia’s energy dominance in Europe, was another bone of contention among NATO allies.

“The Germans have surprised long-time analysts by halting the Nord Stream pipeline and a surprisingly universal agreement with the very harsh sanctions regime on Russia,” Desroches said.

“So Putin has been exposed as perhaps the worst strategist of the last 120 years. He has taken a complacent and self-absorbed West and, purely through his aggression, has forged a military alliance that he has best known.” claimed to be afraid.