Is Libya the end of NATO?

From the moment the Soviet Union collapsed, NATO’s future was in question. While it had been the most successful multinational alliance in history, partnerships of that sort seldom survive once their enemies are gone. As the Berlin Wall came down and Stalin’s empire shattered, NATO’s clock was ticking.

Amazingly, though, the Alliance persisted, largely by transforming itself. It staved off a challenge from a proposed European Union Defense Force, which might have supplanted it; provided an institutional framework for continued U.S. involvement in European security; and then, helped stabilize the former Soviet bloc by adding new members from the old Warsaw Pact. For a while, this seemed to be enough. But, as it became clear that its members were unlikely to face direct attacks but were likely to be threatened by instability outside their borders, many began to wonder whether NATO was still valuable.

As new challenges arose around the world, NATO’s role and worth became increasingly unclear. Now, with internal divisions stymieing progress in NATO’s intervention in Libya, the Alliance’s future is all the more uncertain. Indeed, as the crisis in Libya turns to a stalemate, a question looms: Are we witnessing NATO’s swan song?

The first of the challenges to NATO’s role in the world came as the former Yugoslavia fragmented and devolved into a series of civil wars. While the United States willingly played the dominant role in NATO when it faced the Warsaw Pact, the Clinton administration hoped that the European states would stabilize the Balkans with American support, thus allowing the United States to concentrate on the Persian Gulf and Northeast Asia. Unfortunately, this did not pan out: NATO airstrikes did help end the civil wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, and Alliance peacekeepers helped keep the calm. But, in both instances, the United States was compelled to become much more deeply involved than it wanted, largely because the other NATO states could not or would not do it on their own. In both the military and political realms, NATO remained, for all intents and purposes, the United States plus junior partners.

The Balkans campaigns also demonstrated how unwieldy NATO was. Most operations and strikes had to be approved by every nation involved. A few times, national contingents were denied permission to undertake an operation, leaving force commanders to scramble for substitutes or redesign their operations. Luckily, this did not prove disastrous, but it was a sign of deep problems.