The North Atlantic Treaty Organization: Dubious Political Will to Defend Baltic Allies

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization: Dubious Political Will to Defend Baltic Allies

August 30, 2018

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The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) remains the most powerful military alliance in the world—and arguably in history. However, the greatest danger to it comes from within. Questionable allied political will and cohesion threatens the survival of NATO as a credible political and defense organization. 

Political will remains an understudied, underdefined and ambiguous concept, especially in connection with conflict studies. NATO’s political will is the extent of support among key decisionmakers for particular solutions to particular problems—necessary to overcome costs and risks—and for commitment to sustain efforts over time. Thus, NATO’s political will to defend Baltic allies is the support among alliance leaders to employ force against a Russian threat and sustain the costs and risks of those actions over time. Based on this definition, this paper will examine several necessary and sufficient conditions for political will. Political will requires: support from a sufficient group of decisionmakers; a common understanding of the threat; a commonly-perceived, potentially-effective solution; and commitment to sustain those actions.

This paper argues that NATO’s political will to defend Baltic allies against Russian aggression appears dubious. First, NATO probably lacks sufficient key leaders supporting the use of force to defend Baltic allies, based on declining champions, increasing potential veto players and variable domestic influences. Second, NATO’s common understanding of the Russian threat to the Baltics is questionable because of diverging alliance threats and missions, differing perceptions of Russian actions and domestic factors influencing allies. Third, allies’ commonly-perceived, potentially-effective solution has demonstrated both positive and negative signs, such as: declining capabilities, unwillingness to solve preventable problems and positive alliance adaptation and learning. Some implications of this analysis are that NATO’s political will is extremely vulnerable and that Russia is actively attacking allied will. Addressing vulnerabilities, protecting political will and strengthening it for the future foundation of NATO should become a critical alliance function. If NATO matters to each ally, so should allied political will.

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