The Foreign Service Journal, April 2019

16 APRIL 2019 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Marking NATO’s 70th N ATO was founded when the North Atlantic Treaty was signed in Washington, D.C., on April 4, 1949, by the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Den- mark, Portugal, Belgium, Iceland and Luxembourg. Approaching the April anniversary of its founding, many experts, former poli- cymakers and academics have been look- ing back at NATO history, considering its state today and hypothesizing about what comes next for the alliance. Former U.S. Ambassadors to NATO Nicholas Burns and Douglas Lute sound the alarm in their February report from the Harvard Kennedy School’s Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relation- ship, “NATO at Seventy: An Alliance in Crisis.” The authors say that “NATO remains the single most important contributor to security, stability and peace in Europe and North America.” They list 10 major challenges the alliance faces in 2019, including internal challenges such as reviving American leadership of the alliance, restoring European defense strength, upholding democratic values and streamlining decision making; and external challenges that include contain- ing Putin’s Russia, ending the Afghan War and refocusing NATO partnerships. They emphasize that the single great- est challenge for NATO today is “the absence of strong, principled American presidential leadership.” During a March 13 House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, “NATO at 70: An Indispensable Alliance,” members of Congress and witnesses all spoke in sup- port of a strong NATO. “We are seeing a rise in authoritarian- ism, continued threats from international terrorism and extremism, and aggres- sive attempts by Putin to invade Rus- sia’s neighbors and attack democratic elections throughout the world,” HFAC Chair Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) stated. “It’s by working with our NATO allies standing side-by-side that we can successfully face these challenges head on.” Douglas Lute also testified at the House hearing: “NATO needs to pay more atten- tion to China’s increasing influence in Europe. ...In the coming decades, NATO’s importance will only grow because of the U.S. competition with China.” Lute stated: “I want to point out a false narrative that ignores the values and erodes the cohesion of NATO. This false narrative claims that NATO is an anachronism, outdated and obsolete; that our allies are ripping us off, tak- ing advantage of our generosity. This is simply not true. “The truth is,” he continued, “that the U.S. created NATO and has maintained the alliance for 70 years because NATO is in America’s vital national security interest. America benefits economi- cally, politically and militarily from the alliance. NATO and our other treaty allies are the single greatest geostrategic advantage over any peer competitor. Rus- sia and China have nothing to compare. In short, NATO is indispensable.” The Center for European Policy Analysis announced plans for an April 3 ministerial forum, “NATO at 70,” at its Washington, D.C., headquarters. Attend- ees will include the foreign ministers of Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Lithuania, Romania and Latvia, in addition to Sena- tor Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. The window for defining America’s pivotal role will not stay open forever. Whether we seize themoment of opportunity before us will depend in largemeasure onwhether this chamber and this committee can help recapture a sense of shared vision and shared purpose; whether we can recover a sense of diplomatic agility out of themuscle-bound national security bureaucracy we have become in recent years; and whether we can come to terms with the realities of a new international landscape, and shape it skillfully with our considerable enduring strengths. —Ambassador WilliamBurns, in an opening statement at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, “Assessing the Role of the United States in theWorld,” Feb. 27. Contemporary Quote ISTOCKPHOTO.COM/BET_NOIRE