Project Syndicate.
PRINCETON – Next week, NATO’s 28 members will meet in Chicago for their
annual summit. Sixty-two years after the North Atlantic Treaty was
signed, binding the United States, Canada, and ten European states to
consider an attack on one an attack on all, NATO is transforming itself
into a twenty-first-century global security organization. The result
will be a safer world.
In 1949, the world was rapidly dividing into two
principle political-military blocs, East and West, alongside a large
“non-aligned movement.” NATO faced off against the Warsaw Pact, created
by the Soviet Union and its allies in 1955. Within both blocs, smaller
powers clustered around the superpower. No flexibility existed within
either bloc for smaller groups of members to deploy alliance assets.
Today, NATO is becoming, in the words of its secretary-general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen,
“a hub of a network of security partnerships and a center for
consultation on global security issues.” It is a “globally connected
institution,” with more than 40 individual country partners and growing
ties to other international organizations.
