Would NATO Really Go To War With Russia?

Would NATO Really Go To War With Russia?

By Noah Rothman
June 10, 2015
Commentary Magazine


It’s a question they have been asking in the Kremlin for generations, although apprehensions are perhaps more pronounced today than they were even during much of the Cold War: Would NATO members really commit to a third great war in Europe? That question grew more pressing when Russia invaded and carved off portions of Georgia in 2008. It became paramount when Moscow repeated that feat in Ukraine. Some began asking it aloud in the West last July when a civilian airliner packed with the citizens of NATO-allied nations was shot out of the sky over Ukraine by pro-Russian militants using Russian hardware. But while it is presumed by many in the West that the Atlantic Treaty’s mutual defense trigger mechanism is sacred and automatic, some are beginning to wonder whether NATO would truly mobilize for another total war in the event that an allied nation invoked Section 5.

In the summer of 2012, the presidential election in the United States was just ramping up when the increasingly deteriorating security environment in the Middle East threatened to derail Barack Obama’s reelection campaign. Mere weeks before the president would set his infamous “red line” for action in Syria amid increasing reports that Bashar al-Assad was regularly using chemical weapons on rebel-dominated population centers, the Syria Civil War threatened to explode over that nation’s borders. On June 22, Syrian armed forces intercepted and shot down a Turkish F-4 reconnaissance jet. Four days later, Ankara turned to the NATO alliance for support following what Turkish politicians had begun calling an “act of war.”

Turkey invoked NATO’s Article 4 on June 26, a largely symbolic provision that requires Atlantic Alliance member states engage in consultations following a threat to any one member’s security and independence. There was speculation that Ankara might also invoke Article 5, as was its privilege, but it never did. NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen insisted that the issue simply didn’t come up, but it would have sparked a crisis within the alliance that might have resulted in its dissolution if it had. The invocation of this provision requires the consent of all 28 member states, only the United States has ever appealed to that provision, and that extraordinary move followed the equally extraordinary September 11 attacks. The West would not have gone to war in Syria in defense of Turkish sovereignty in 2012, and Ankara knew it.

Fast-forward three years, and NATO again faces a crisis of legitimacy. This time, the aggressor state is the alliance’s old adversary, Russia. If one of the NATO member states on the alliance’s periphery in the Baltics were to encounter a crisis similar to that confronted by Turkey in 2012, would NATO respond with force? In considering this, the results of a new Pew Research Center survey of adults in primarily Western NATO member states are instructive.

That poll found that Western NATO members including the U.S., Canada, Spain, Germany, the U.K, France, and Italy remain supportive of the effort to provide Ukraine with economic assistance as it struggles to repel a veritable Russian invasion. As for the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO, a project began in the last decade but has since stalled, and only North American NATO-allied countries remain broadly supportive of that prospect. Finally, it seems clear that the citizens of NATO member states are deeply suspicious of the notion that Ukraine should be provided lethal aid. Only 46 percent of Americans support sending arms to Kiev, but those totals are far lower in Europe. Just 19 percent of Germans, for example, support arming the Ukrainians.

The exception to this consensus was the nation of Poland; the only state Pew surveyed that was a former member of the Warsaw Pact or a Soviet Republic and which perceives itself to be genuinely threatened by Moscow. In January, the Polish government began circulating pamphlets to citizens instructing them on how to both survive and resist a Russian invasion. “Poland should be armed to be able to defend itself as long as possible,” said Jimmy Carter’s former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski in a March interview. “There is no reason to wait; we have to act.” Disturbing dispatches indicate that Poles are organizing into rough-and-ready militias under the assumption that Russian armed aggression is imminent and Western assistance is not.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Polish views on the question of NATO’s utility and commitment to collective defense differ from those of the citizens residing in its more insulated Western member states. Only 49 percent of Poles surveyed say they believe NATO would come to the defense of a fellow NATO member if it were attacked by Russia. Still, there is general agreement that NATO’s mutual defense provisions are iron-clad. “When asked whether the United States would come to a NATO ally’s aid, majorities or pluralities in every country said the U.S. would defend the nation against Russian aggression,” Pew revealed.

But would NATO go to war with Moscow if the Kremlin engaged in Ukraine-style provocations in eastern portions of, say, Estonia? Would London, Washington, Paris, and Berlin mobilize for conflict with a nuclear power in defense of Latvian sovereignty? Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves has already called a September, 2014 operation in which Russian forces using smoke grenades and radio jamming technology abducted an Estonian border guard at gunpoint during an invasion. Russia has made no secret about their involvement in that operation and the border guard in question remains in Russian custody, but the West’s reaction to that violation of sovereignty has been unnervingly muted.

Russia’s testing of NATO’s defensive parameters has only grown bolder in the wake of the invasion and annexation of the Crimean Peninsula. If Vladimir Putin’s aim is to shatter the NATO alliance and resurrect the Soviet sphere of influence in Europe, it is perhaps logical if a bit risky to provoke the Atlantic Alliance into living up to its commitments. If Ankara had invoked Article 5 in 2012, it would have demonstrated that the alliance was a paper tiger and its mutual defense provisions were not worth the paper upon which they were written. That revelation would have effectively neutered the alliance and possibly paved the way for its dissolution. Putin would no doubt find that development a welcome prospect. And all it might take is a little push.


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