Vladimir Socor
Outgoing North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is reexamining NATO’s role in Russia’s war on Ukraine as part of two valedictory statements in a recent interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (Faz.net, September 14) and a speech hosted by the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Brussels (NATO, September 19). He queried: Could NATO have done more to prevent Russia from invading Ukraine for the second time in 2022? And could NATO do more than it has thus far done to bring this war to an end favorable to Ukraine? Stoltenberg poses these questions with due political and diplomatic caution, yet at a level of candor that had not been available to the Secretary General during his decade-long service in that post. Admittedly, this pair of questions stop far short of covering the full picture of NATO’s policies toward Ukraine in recent years—and decades. Genuine introspection could help trace and explain the long track record of Western strategic failure in Ukraine.
It must, however, be borne in mind that criticism, grumbling, and perhaps exhortation should not be addressed to NATO “as NATO” (collectively and institutionally). NATO is an inter-governmental organization, not a supranational one. Member states hold full sovereign authority over their national security and defense policies as well as the corresponding budgets. The Alliance makes policy decisions by unanimous consent, which often translates to the lowest common denominator. The Secretary General is, essentially, a civil servant whose public statements are bound to express the Alliance’s political consensus on specific policy issues. The Alliance’s military and civilian staffs execute policies made by national political leaders in conclave.
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