NATO’s Decades-Long Fight for Freedom
BOOK REVIEW: NATO: From Cold War to Ukraine, A History of the World’s Most Powerful Alliance
By Sten Rynning / Yale University Press
Reviewed by: Jean-Thomas Nicole
The Reviewer — Jean-Thomas Nicole is a Policy Advisor with Public Safety Canada. The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official policies or positions of Public Safety Canada or the Canadian government.
REVIEW — While Russia’s brutal and unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine continues with no end in sight, NATO and its allies continue to provide Ukraine with unprecedented levels of support, helping to uphold its fundamental right to self-defense.
On April 19, 2024, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg chaired a virtual meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council at the level of defense ministers to address Ukraine’s urgent need for air defenses and other military aid. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy briefed allies on the situation on the battlefield and Ukraine’s urgent needs.
One day later, the U.S. House of Representatives approved $95 billion in foreign aid for Ukraine, Israel and other U.S. allies in a rare Saturday session, with Democrats and Republicans joining together after months of political turmoil over renewed American support for repelling Russia’s invasion. With overwhelming support, the $61 billion in aid for Ukraine delivered a strong showing as American lawmakers race to deliver a fresh round of U.S. support to the war-torn ally.
Expressing his gratefulness for a “life-saving decision” in his daily address, President Zelenskyy thanked “all American hearts who, like us in Ukraine, feel that Russian evil definitely should not prevail.” Further, he added: “America has shown its leadership from the very first days of this war. And this kind of American leadership is crucial for the maintenance of an international order in the world based on rules and predictability of life for all nations”.
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Similarly to President Zelenskyy’s own life and to Ukraine’s contemporary, European-leaning, history, NATO’s story, according to Sten Rynning, is the exercise of power guided by free thinking, inspired by its classic Latin motto which translates to “A mind unfettered in deliberation.”. That is what NATO: From Cold War to Ukraine, a History of the World’s Most Powerful Alliance is about. It is about how NATO today must recalibrate its vision to encompass a new struggle for global order.
The author, Mr. Sten Rynning, is a professor of war studies with a passion for transatlantic security and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) affairs. In his work, he principally assesses how power is directed and shaped by ideas and how these ideas are rooted in historical experience. He thus writes about how strong political ideas and vision make NATO endure and how these same ideas can both build lasting political order or stir trouble on the world stage.
In 2011 Rynning founded the University of Southern Denmark’s Center for War Studies and headed its Danish Institute for Advanced Study until 2019.
He served as well on the official Norwegian Afghanistan Commission (2015-2016) and has in addition advised the commission of inquiry into the Denmark’s war participation in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq (2017-2019) as well as Ambassador Peter Taksøe-Jensen’s official review of Danish Foreign Policy (2015-2016).
He has also been a scholar in residence at the NATO Defense College and at American University. In 2021, he was knighted by the Queen of Denmark into the Order of Dannebrog, a Danish order of chivalry instituted in 1671 by the King of Denmark Christian V (1670-1699).
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Originally, NATO: From Cold War to Ukraine, a History of the World’s Most Powerful Alliance was intended to trace the full historical trajectory of NATO and to be published in time for the alliance’s seventy-fifth anniversary on April 4, 2024. Over time, however, given the historical richness and political complexity of the main topic, its ambition grew; it became an inquiry into NATO’s soul. Accordingly, if we follow the author’s premise, to study power is to interpret the idea that motivates it. To study NATO is to study the idea of the West and the will of political leaders to mold it into political order. This book is therefore largely a political history: it refers to military strategy, but its emphasis is on politico-strategic debate within NATO.
Consequently, it is based primarily on NATO archives, public statements by NATO officials, decision-makers, and on conversations, both on and off the record with many of them, both specifically for this book and more generally over the course of more than twenty years of research in that field.
Professor Rynning therefore develops a novel interpretation of NATO’s historical pattern and what it means today. The book argues, rather convincingly, that, as NATO confronts Russia’s major war effort and faces the challenge of rekindling the alliance’s purpose without overreaching, it must correct its trajectory: it cannot resume the pattern of boom (in aspiration) and bust (in trust and relationships). As other nations are seen to be on the rise—not just China, but many countries in the Global South—NATO leadership faces hard choices.
This book suggests three lessons:
- NATO must temper its aspirations with geopolitics. NATO’s aspiration can have a global dimension, but its core must be Euro-Atlantic.
- NATO must foster European leadership. The allies should build a real European pillar of defense and defense policy influence within NATO. European defense cannot take place outside NATO. A European pillar will require both increased European defense spending and a political redistribution of influence.
- NATO must think ahead. Heads of state and government should be involved less often in NATO but should become better at setting a political-military direction for the organization and at recruiting the brightest and best to it.
NATO: From Cold War to Ukraine, A History of the World’s Most Powerful Alliance earns a solid 3 out of 4 trench coats
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