2014 is a year when NATO – and NATO members – have a lot to celebrate. Not just the 65th anniversary of the Alliance. Nor just the 15th, 10th and fifth anniversaries of members who joined since the end of the Cold War. But also cause to remember why those events were so momentous in those countries. In this edition of NATO Review, we look at some of the human stories of how we got here and what it has meant for both the elites and ordinary people.

CFR BACKGROUNDER

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)

Author: Jonathan Masters, Deputy Editor
Updated: April 2, 2014

• Introduction
• A Post-Cold War Pivot
• Beyond Collective Defense
• NATO Operations
• Sharing the Burden
• Afghanistan and ISAF
• Relations With Russia
• A Revived Alliance?

NATO Must Avoid New Cold War Borders

By Judy Dempsey (Thursday, April 10, 2014)

Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its amassing of thousands of troops on its border with Ukraine have given NATO a new sense of purpose.

The U.S.-led alliance’s Eastern members, led by Poland and the Baltic states, have asked the organization to beef up their defenses. For the first time since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Eastern Europeans can’t take their safety and security for granted.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has been quick to oblige. He has already called on the 28-member alliance to bolster the air defenses of the Baltic states and improve Romania’s defenses, too.

NATO’s decision to focus more on its Eastern borders is intended to show Russia how determined the alliance is to defend its members. But the price could be high for non-NATO countries on the organization’s borders, because NATO cannot agree on what to do with its Eastern neighbors.

Rasmussen himself has clear ideas about what should be done. Writing in the German newspaper Die Welt, he said that NATO was open to Ukraine. “The right of sovereign states to determine their own way forward is one of the foundations of modern Europe,” the former Danish prime minister wrote… MORE