NATO: ESSENTIAL OR OBSOLETE?
NATO: ESSENTIAL OR OBSOLETE?

Author(s): Richard Sakwa
Subject(s): Politics / Political Sciences, Politics, Security and defense, Military policy, Geopolitics, Peace and Conflict Studies
Published by: Институт за међународну политику и привреду
Keywords: NATO; European Union; cold peace; monism; conjugation; Greater Eurasia Partnership
Summary/Abstract: During his presidential campaign in 2016 Donald J. Trump argued that NATO was ‘obsolete’. Once elected president, Trump retreated and accepted that the alliance is here to stay, but as became clear at the Brussels Summit in July 2018, he adopted a much more transactional view of the alliance. This paper will put recent debates on the future of NATO in the context of the Second Cold War. What is the purpose of maintaining a security alliance in an era when the circumstances that prompted its creation have changed so dramatically? Does the Atlantic power system come into contradiction with the aspirations of the end of the Cold War creating a ‘common European home’ and a ‘Europe whole and free’? More disturbingly, does the very continued existence of NATO create security dilemmas that justify its existence? The nature and purpose of the Atlantic Alliance will be examined, reviewing its development since 1989 and the consequences of its actions. The persistence of an anachronistic institutional and ideational security order in Europe contributes to the emergence of an anti-hegemonic alignment at the global level, where Russia, China and other partners are gradually creating an alternative global architecture intended not so much to challenge the historical West as to create a non-hierarchical and pluralist post-western alternative order.

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