“An armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all,” states Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, noting that in such a case each member “will assist the Party(ies). thus attacked by immediately taking, individually and in concert with the other Parties, the measures it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.
This promise of collective defense is what makes NATO a force for peace. Any adversary determined to attack a member country must take into account the possibility – indeed the high probability – that it will encounter a military response drawing on the full collective capacity of all allies, and not the one it attacked. .
For Americans, the lesson of two bloody world wars – wars in which GIs had to cross an ocean to fight on the beaches and fields of Europe – was that their ultimate security depended on the security of Europe. . It would therefore be better to prevent wars in Europe by committing from the start to defending its allies.
The same was true for NATO’s European members, who continued to live in the shadow of the Soviet Union and then Russia – by far the strongest and most aggressive military power on the continent – after two devastating wars. For them, true security lay in the United States’ commitment to defend them.
But this dependence had two consequences: first, it led some European countries to abandon any serious thought about military security – especially after the Cold War – as NATO ultimately made war unlikely. But Russia’s brutal aggression against Ukraine has awakened all of Europe to the need to take defense seriously. Hence the increase in military investments celebrated by Stoltenberg.
Second, this European dependence has often fueled doubts about America’s commitment to the continent’s security. After all, there is something quite unnatural about the United States being willing to go to war far and wide to defend another country – especially when doing so could trigger a nuclear holocaust in response.
Politico
