The NATO Strategic Concept, adopted at the end of June 2022 in Madrid, made the doctrine of deterrence the core of the Alliance’s functioning. Crisis response and collective security work remain important areas of NATO’s engagement, but deterrence has once again become its political and military priority. The search for a convincing mission for NATO in the decades after the end of the Cold War has come full circle. The proven concept of deterrence that was practiced against the USSR was revived. The context is obvious: Russia’s aggressive behaviour, culminating in aggression against Ukraine, left no choice to the West. Russia had to be openly recognized as the main source of threat to the Alliance.
How the new edition of the deterrence strategy will translate into the Alliance’s political and military attitude, and especially into operational concepts, the shape of the military potential and its deployment, remains an issue that still requires clarification. And by no means entirely obvious, especially if we take into account the recent statements of, for example, President Erdogan in Belgrade or Orban’s “dissident” (concerning the West’s policy towards Russia) views. Although, of course, the main decisions will probably (as in the past) be made between Washington, London, Berlin and Paris. May Poland’s voice be heard and effective in this process. The current ruling elite in Poland seems to be doing everything possible to close communication channels with Berlin, but also with other important European capitals. Talking about security issues with Berlin or Paris via Washington may by no means render Poland’s influence on NATO policy effective.
Because stopping Russia, like stopping communism, which I wrote about a week ago, must be adequately reflected in the doctrines, strategies and military concepts of the West.
The doctrine of deterrence took shape in its original form at the dawn of the North Atlantic Alliance. Already the first NATO strategy, prepared in 1949, was based on the deterrent role of nuclear weapons. In NATO’s 1954 strategy (DC-48), even a pre-emptive nuclear strike with airplanes was planned.
The doctrine of deterrence built its credibility on the fact that the political and military reality during the Cold War years did not generate evidence that would undermine its effectiveness. The communist bloc did not dare to test its credibility. So it was an effective doctrine. Admittedly, some have compared its operation to a joke about a man throwing balls of paper through the window of a train running across the Masovian plain to scare the elephants away. The paper ball salvos must have been effective since the elephants were not attacking the train. But it is too fancy a comparison considering that it was a global nuclear war which was at stake in deterrence.
The fact remains that nothing (both from today’s perspective, and from the then perspective) makes it possible to judge whether the doctrine of deterrence was the only possible policy. Because apparently neither Stalin nor Mao were afraid of a nuclear war. They felt no fear of it. There was no nuclear war then, nor in the years of nuclear overkill, which of course does not prove the effectiveness of the deterrence doctrine.
The doctrine of deterrence caused divisions within the alliance. The Americans did not want to be drawn into the war against their will. So they deprived their allies of the ability to act independently. The allies, in turn, such as France or the United Kingdom, did not want to rely solely on the United States.
In 1957, NATO officially adopted (based on the recommendations of the so-called Report of Three of December 1956) the concept of massive retaliation. It provided for the possibility of unilateral use of nuclear weapons in the face of a more serious attack against allied territory. It gave the Alliance the power to choose the means and place of a strike. It was supposed to mobilize the allies to expand their conventional potentials.
But when it came into force, the USSR was already capable of delivering nuclear weapons to targets on US territory (with ballistic missiles).
In 1960, France tested a nuclear device and soon developed its own deterrence doctrine. It decided that the allied umbrella was not credible enough, so a national deterrent instrument was indispensable. And it had to be credible enough to deter the enemy with the effects of retaliation. It did not have to guarantee victory in a nuclear war, which was considered an oxymoron even at that time. It was enough to make the enemy aware of the scale of the destruction by targeting nuclear missiles at fifty largest cities. And such a minimalist deterrent became an absolute deterrent, ensuring that states would be discouraged from starting a conventional war against France. In 2006, the French doctrine of deterrence was extended to the purposes of the war on terrorism. President Macron declared that France was ready to Europeanise the French “force de frappe”. Without it, it is difficult to imagine a coherent defense doctrine of the European Union and building a European army.
In 1967, NATO shifted to a flexible response strategy. Behind it was the MAD factor, that is, mutually guaranteed destruction. The Americans calculated that their potential guaranteed the destruction of about 1/3 of the population and 2/3 of the industrial potential of the USSR. They also recognized that Soviet potential was making possible to inflict damage to US territory of equally catastrophic dimension. Flexible response assumed the necessity to maintain a credible military potential that would allow for the escalation of the conflict in order to defeat the enemy and inflict heavy losses on it. It provided for the possibility of deliberate escalation with the inclusion of tactical nuclear weapons, and even the use of strategic nuclear weapons.
The Harmel Report, which prepared the political framework for this strategy, also recommended that efforts to maintain a credible potential should be accompanied by the pursuit of “détente”, dialogue and building trust in relations with the East.
The seventies brought the stabilization of the nuclear parity of the USSR and the USA. The doctrine of mutually assured destruction made the use of weapons unlikely. Flexible response, on the other hand, left allies dependent on US nuclear decisions. As Kissinger wrote, the doctrine of deterrence acquired a psychological dimension. It assumed that the leaders of great powers had the will to use nuclear weapons, and at the same time had the necessary level of rationality in their calculations, which would result from the awareness of the consequences of their decisions. Response was already made very flexible under Jimmy Carter. The American strategy (document PD-59) focused on the C3I complex, i.e. primarily on command, control, communication and reconnaissance. And it assumed the possibility of a long-term nuclear conflict.
The collapse of communism and the USSR freed NATO from nuclear dilemmas. The Alliance’s declaration, adopted in July 1990 at the NATO summit in London, heralded a profound transformation of the Alliance. It proclaimed the disappearance of the single all-encompassing source of threat. It indicated the need to modify the concept of defense at advanced frontiers and to respond flexibly.
At the same time, it introduced the third path to the political strategy of the Harmel report: using NATO as a stabilization factor on the European continent.
The disintegration of the USSR left NATO without a concrete threat. To scare off, as it seemed naively then, there was no one anymore.
The revised NATO strategy adopted in April 1999 at the NATO summit in Washington opened a new chapter in the history of the Alliance. Noting the lack of a classically defined opponent, it directed the Alliance to missions outside of Article 5 of the Washington Treaty. Senator Lugar captured this new doctrine in the adage: “out of area or out of business.” As early as 1992, NATO expressed its readiness to support the UN in enforcing the application of sanctions in connection with the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. NATO’s involvement was initially of a police nature, but conceptually it was already the use of the Alliance for collective security purposes. The concept’s first combat application was the 1999 operation against Yugoslavia to restore peace in Kosovo. As it was frequently described then, this was the first open war for human rights. NATO forced Yugoslavia to stop „pacifying” Kosovo. But it began its offensive operations without the formal authorization of the UN Security Council. The Russians remembered it very well, and it was no accident that Putin recalled it in his talks with Western leaders in February 2022, when he was getting ready to launch aggression against Ukraine.
According to the Washington strategy, nuclear weapons in the Alliance’s arsenal were to serve primarily political purposes. They were no longer aimed at the territory of a particular country.
The war on terror after the attacks of September 11, 2001 was another rubicon crossed by the Alliance. For the first time in history, Article 5 of the Washington Treaty was evoked. NATO was engaged in operations outside the treaty area. The globalization of the Alliance’s mission has begun to lead to the perception of NATO as the world’s “policeman”. NATO was supposed to deter world terrorists, and do it globally. This is how the concept of using NATO as a “global toolbox” was born. And the Alliance became a mechanism for supporting Americans in Afghanistan (in combat mission) and Iraq (in training mission). It was seen as the almost universal and literal Malleus Maleficarum of a democratic camp to fight evil in a globalized world.
The priority of NATO’s involvement in crisis response and global stabilization was reflected in the NATO Strategic Concept adopted in Lisbon in November 2010.
Russia’s aggressive actions, in particular the annexation of Crimea and support for separatism in Donbas in 2014, returned NATO to its old, proven track (the 2016 Warsaw summit was a breakthrough). After the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008, a large number of Alliance capitals were still fed with illusions that it was a one-time transgression. In addition, Russia has abandoned the “no-first use” principle of nuclear weapons. And Putin literally began to use the so-called madman’s strategy, that is, to imply that the use of nuclear weapons in some hectic surge could come to his mind. This exposed NATO planners to new challenges.
From 2014, NATO knew well whom to deter. The Russian threat has become a fact, although for a moment it was felt only regionally. But after Russia’s aggression against Ukraine in 2022, it was already an existential threat to its neighbours.
Moreover, NATO has proved to be an ineffective instrument in deterring other global villains, such as Iran which was developing nuclear program or the DPRK which was stockpiling nuclear weapons. NATO’s globalization has been a major concern in Beijing since NATO’s engagement in the Afghan operation. Louder and louder, and especially after the US and its allies had left Afghanistan, the Chinese made voices that they did not want NATO to be present in Asia in any form whatsoever. And some NATO members would also prefer not to involve NATO in global missions. To curb the Chinese threat, the Americans began to build new platforms, for example AUKUS established in 2021 with the participation of Australia and the United Kingdom, the first effects of which irritated an important European ally of the Americans, France.
President Macron even announced NATO’s brain death in 2020. The impulse was undoubtedly the voluntary behaviour of Turkey, especially in Syria and Libya. The fact remains that the Alliance’s cohesion started to falter. NATO was once again faced with the need to redefine its mission. And it started a deep reflection on it. But the realities of the Russian aggression in 2022 made this reflection urgent and practical. While supporting Ukraine, the Alliance did not allow it to become simultaneously involved in an open armed conflict with Russia. For the frontline states, especially Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, the credibility of NATO’s guarantees has acquired an existential character.
Of course, the US approach will be of key importance. During the Russian aggression against Ukraine, President Biden made unequivocal declarations of America’s absolute commitment to the defense of its allies. And all NATO’s deterrent power has once again been based on America’s potential.
From the very beginning, the directions of NATO development were determined by the American attitude. Several Allied capitals were secretly developing the concept of building up bilateral relations with the US in the security sphere in the event that the collective framework began to crumble. But the collective framework can only degenerate if the Americans allow it politically and strategically, as Europe loses its vital importance to American interests. And then, even a bilateral link will not help much. Putin’s policy has shifted Europe back to the center of American attention (after the ‘Pivot to Asia’ period). But for how long?
Each institution has its own decision making mechanisms. In NATO, the primacy of the United States is obvious. It is impossible to imagine a situation where any important decision within the Alliance could be imposed on the Americans in any way. Even if the remaining twenty-nine came to the American ambassador and said, “Sorry, you are the only one against, so please: don’t block the consensus,” America would not change its mind. But most of all, such a procession will never take place. It can take place in relation to other countries, historically it happen not once, also towards Poland.
In 1998, I was the Polish representative in the so-called The High Level Task Force (HLTF) operating at NATO and dealing with the development of a common position of the Alliance countries on disarmament negotiations, then related to the so-called adaptation of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE). The work was intense. I had to visit Brussels every two weeks. On the eve of formal meetings of the group, we met for dinners, usually in the Visegrad Group format. What was significant, when we wanted to invite representatives of the USA, France, Germany and Great Britain to dinner, they were not available on those particular evenings. On others, maybe so. It turned out that by the power of tradition, the four of them met only among themselves. It also turned out that in this format, the so-called Quad met regularly not only in Brussels. Until the Quad was unable to come up with a common position, we could lobby for our own without inhibitions. Because even then, with regard to the modernization of the CFE Treaty, the proposal lying on the table, developed in Berlin, was not very attractive to us. The proposal was strong on logical grounds, because it replaced the group limits on armaments of the original CFE Treaty by the so-called national and territorial limits. The problem was that the so-called territorial limit for Poland stipulated that our native armaments could be increased by the deployment of foreign troops, but only up to the level of two heavy brigades. The French quickly supported the German project, the British resisted the longest. In Washington, the positions of the State Department and the Pentagon were labouriously being ironed out. Eventually, however, the Americans gave up. They explained that these two brigades stemmed from the promise made to Russia in the NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997 not to exceed this level. “Then give us these two heavy brigades in writing, put them in contingency plans, then we’ll talk,” I replied. But it took them quite a long time to give us these plans, a nice couple of years (and still only on paper although today in the real domain one would need even more). Ambassador Craig Dunkerley, who represented the United States in the HLTF, worked hard to mold us. Admittedly, I was quite resistant. But in the process I had to quit and move on to other (quite exotic) tasks. Nevertheless, I experienced then that dealing with the Quad can be tiring and painful (more painful than bantering alone with Americans), even if it is friendly and cordial.
However, NATO finally adopted the German concept (and did the decision makers in our Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of National Defense have a different option?). And the Russians liked it very much. The adaptation of the Treaty was quickly agreed, towards the 1999 OSCE summit in Istanbul. But the document never came into force. Russia did not want to move its troops out of Moldova and Georgia for anything in the world, and insisted on including Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia into the Treaty. I think some Schadenfreude must have appeared in my mind when I learned about the failure of such a modernization of the Treaty. Because it was a bad concept.
And over time, Russia suspended the application of the original Treaty altogether. Then Russia began to destroy the entire European security order.
