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06Feb19

History of NATO enlargement

A protocol on Macedonia's accession to NATO was signed on February 6, 2019. Officially, the Balkan republic will become a NATO member after the document is ratified by the Macedonian parliament and all the alliance's 29 member states. The TASS Factbox editorial board has prepared a material on the military alliance and the stages of its enlargement.

NATO's establishment

The doctrine of "containing the USSR" announced by US President Harry Truman in March 1947 was one of the pre-requisites for establishing NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization). NATO was founded by the North Atlantic Treaty signed on April 4, 1949 in Washington by the foreign ministers of 12 countries (Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the United States) "to promote stability and well-being in the North Atlantic area."

The document consists of 14 articles defining the nature and the tasks of the military alliance. Article 5 is a cornerstone in the North Atlantic Treaty, pursuant to which an armed attack against one or more of the signatory states is considered "an attack against them all."

Article 10 stipulates that "the Parties may, by unanimous agreement, invite any other European State in a position to further the principles of this Treaty and to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area to accede to this Treaty."

NATO's enlargement in 1950s-1980s

The first new members, Greece and Turkey, joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1952. West Germany became a NATO member in 1955 (after Germany's unification in 1990, the military alliance embraced the territory of the former GDR). In 1982, Spain acceded to NATO. As a result, the number of the alliance's member states grew to 16.

NATO's policy of expanding eastward

In the early 1990s, due to the end of the Cold War and after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the military alliance started to create various mechanisms of consultations with the former member states of the Warsaw Treaty (1955-1991). Thus, the North Atlantic Cooperation Council was established in 1991 (in 1997, it was superseded by the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council).

In 1994, NATO adopted the Partnership for Peace (PfP) program aimed at developing comprehensive interaction between the alliance and non-NATO states. Currently, the program embraces 21 partner states, including Russia (the relations have undergone a chill since 2014), the former Soviet republics, Finland and Sweden.

In 1995, the military alliance published a study, which claimed that "there is a unique opportunity" in the new conditions for NATO's enlargement "to build an improved security architecture in the whole of the Euro-Atlantic area."

NATO's strategic concept adopted at its Lisbon summit in November 2010 reaffirms the alliance's open door policy for new members but indicates that candidate countries should have no problems that would weaken common security.

Since the late 1990s, 13 countries from the former socialist camp have joined NATO: Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic in 1999, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia in 2004, Albania and Croatia in 2009 and Montenegro in 2017. Therefore, today NATO comprises 29 member states.

The alliance has expanded seven times over its entire history.

Procedure of accession to NATO

A candidate country acceding to NATO must settle territorial disputes with neighboring countries and restructure its arms forces in compliance with the alliance's standards.

The process is concluded when a protocol on the accession of a new country is signed and subsequently ratified by the national parliaments of the NATO member states and the acceding country. After that, the acceding country becomes a NATO full-fledged member.

Currently, three countries intend to join the alliance: Bosnia and Herzegovina (it has the status of a candidate country and has been included in the Membership Action Plan since 2010), Georgia and Ukraine (the alliance has numerously stated they can join NATO when they meet all the necessary requirements).

Russia's position on NATO's expansion

Russia has numerously spoken against NATO's expansion eastward, believing that this process has led to the growth of tension in Europe. In the estimate of Russia's top brass, the admission of new members to NATO cuts the period of its troops' strategic deployment and leaves less time for Russia to place its forces on high alert.

As Russian President Vladimir Putin said during his Q&A session in 2014, "when the military alliance's infrastructure moves closer to our borders, this causes our certain fears and questions." Russia must "take some steps in response and no one can deny us this," he said.

Russia's permanent mission at NATO published on May 12, 2015 an analysis of the country's relations with the military alliance titled: "Russia-NATO: Myths and Facts." The analysis notes that NATO expanded eastward contrary to oral pledges, which Western leaders, in particular, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher had given to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 during the talks on Germany's unification. In this regard, the analysis also mentions the talks between Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze and US Secretary of State James Baker (in December 2016, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said he had transferred the documents concerning these talks to representatives of NATO member states).

In January 2019, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov expressed concerns over the developments in the Balkans. According to Russia's top diplomat, "the rules that are advanced in the Balkans as a whole are quite dangerous and reflect the obsession to drive all the Balkan states into NATO as quickly as possible."

With regard to Macedonia's accession to NATO, Russia's foreign minister said: "What is clearly seen is the continuation of the process imposed from outside towards the artificial re-carving of the state name for the purpose of Skopje's accelerated admission into NATO.".

[Source: Itar Tass, Moscow, 06Feb19]
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