The following conversation has been edited for clarity.
Rick Landgraf: With me today is Seth Johnston. Seth is a US Army officer and the author of How NATO Adapts, Strategy and Organization in the Atlantic Alliance since 1950. This book was the most requested title at NATO Headquarters Library when it was published in 2017 and also placed on the must-read list at the NATO Headquarters Library in Brussels.
Seth is a veteran of NATO operations in Europe and Afghanistan, where he commanded a NATO task force. He has also held faculty appointments at a variety of universities including Georgetown, West Point, Harvard, and Heidelberg University in Germany. Seth is an active duty US Army officer, so all of the opinions and statements are his own and do not reflect the official position of the US Army, Department of Defense, or US government. Seth, welcome to the show.
Seth Johnston: Thanks a lot, Rick. It's great to be with you.
RL: Seth, I first want to ask you about NATO and what is NATO? Specifically, what distinguishes NATO from other international institutions?
SJ: Well, thanks a lot, Rick. And I'm so glad that you're offering this podcast. NATO is definitely in the news a lot. It's the 75th anniversary of the alliance. There's going to be this summit of the 32 heads of state and government in Washington D.C. this summer. But because the alliance has been around for so many decades, there's a lot of history there.
The origins of how the United States got involved, how the European allies got involved, deserves a little bit of refreshing, so I'm glad we're doing this. What is NATO is actually a more complex question than you might think, because when people talk about NATO, they often talk about different aspects of this very important security institution. NATO really, I think, is five things. NATO is a treaty alliance—based on the North Atlantic Treaty or the Washington Treaty signed in 1949—but secondly, NATO has also become, since its very early days, an international organization. It's got a sprawling international bureaucracy in Europe and North America. It has a variety of specialized technical agencies, and it has a unique multinational peacetime military structure that is very unusual for international organizations.
Third, NATO is an instrument of international military cooperation. That's true of that peacetime military structure. But it's also true of the fact that NATO is often, and has been in the last 30 years or so, the institution through which a lot of coalition military activity has occurred. For example, the coalition’s operations in Afghanistan for so many years were done in a NATO context, even though some of the contributing countries or participating countries in those operations weren't actually members of the alliance.
So NATO is an alliance. It's an international organization. It's an instrument for international military cooperation. Also, people often talk about NATO as a Western alliance or an alliance that epitomizes or underpins a system of values. That attitude can be seen in the way that the allies describe the purpose of the alliance itself in the treaty. The treaty says that the allies are coming together to safeguard the freedom, common heritage, and civilization of their people, founded on, and then they enumerate the values that are most important. They say that this civilization is founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty, and the rule of law.
And finally, the fifth definition is that NATO can be seen as a transatlantic bargain. The US commits to remaining involved in European security affairs after the two terrible wars of the 20th century. And in return, the European allies agree to organize themselves and participate in the collective defense of the alliance against external threats. But also, the Europeans organize themselves to preserve internal stability and to mitigate the latent tensions among the alliance members themselves. So that's a lot. No wonder everyone talks about how important NATO is.
Not only has it been around for a long time, but it's also at least these five things: a treaty-based alliance that's been around for 75 years, an international organization, an instrument of international military cooperation, a community of values, and an important pillar of the transatlantic bargain that has persisted since the end of World War II.
RL: I want to ask you about your book a little bit, and for NATO nerds like myself and you, I noticed that your book, the subtitle of your book, Strategy and Organization in the Atlantic Alliance Since 1950, is a year later than when NATO was created in 1949. What happened in NATO during that year from ‘49 to ‘50 and how did it evolve as an alliance and into an organization?
SJ: That's a great question, Rick. Believe it or not, no one has ever asked me that question. Even though we've been talking a lot about anniversaries and people know that the Washington Treaty (the NATO Treaty) has been around since 1949, no one has ever remarked on the fact that the book starts in 1950. I love this question. And you're absolutely right that there is a reason why I chose 1950, and that is because all of those five definitions of what NATO is were not really present during the very first year of the alliance in 1949. After 1949, there was just the treaty. But in 1950, that's when the North Atlantic Treaty got its organization. That's when the “O” in NATO got put in. And what happened is a remarkable story. There was a view—think back to 1949—that in the post-World War II era, in the nuclear weapons era (by that time, the Cold War was on, but both the United States and the Soviet Union had nuclear weapons) the aftermath of the most destructive conflict of all time, in the post-World War II era, in the nuclear era, a war between nuclear arms superpowers was unthinkable. But in 1950, a conventional war broke out between Soviet-backed clients in North Korea and the United States and United Nations-backed forces in South Korea. And it didn't take very long at all for Europeans to look around and especially to look at a divided Europe and a divided Germany and say that, well, if if war if a conventional war in the post-World War II and nuclear era is possible in a divided Korea, it's possible in a divided Europe and in particular Germany.
Therefore, if the North Atlantic Treaty allies are serious about collective defense, then they can't wait for the war to actually break out. They need to undertake some of the organization to prepare for that defense, even in peacetime. So that's why very rapidly after 1950, the O got put in NATO. The international organization of the Alliance was established.
RL: A lot has been made about NATO's founding rationale to quote Lord Ismay, NATO's first Secretary General. NATO's purpose was “to keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down.” Can you break down this rationale for us? What does this mean?
SJ: Yeah, this is another really good one, Rick. And you're right that, NATO nerds, people like you and me, see this as, as a little bit of a cliché. First Secretary General Lord Ismay described NATO's founding rationale “to keep the Americans in, the Russian out, and the German down.” In fact, I've looked long and hard for this, I do not think that that statement has ever been really reliably sourced to Lord Ismay. But even though there is no record of it that anybody can find, at least that I know of, this phrase keeps getting used because in many ways it is just the best description of the three main purposes that NATO was established to fulfill. But also, in many ways, these purposes remain relevant today. “Keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.”
But let's explain that a little bit, because this is, you know, to name these names and countries is a little bit crude. By keeping the Russians out: this is quite salient today with the return of war to Europe. The biggest war in Europe since World War II is happening now in Ukraine and Russia's aggression there is certainly top of mind for allies today and gives some renewed obviousness to the idea that part of the purpose of NATO should be to defend the allies against Russian aggression. But really what that's about, this idea that NATO's purpose is to keep the Russians out, is that the purpose of NATO, just like any alliance, is to defend the allies against external threats. That's the definition of collective defense: Allies come together to defend one another against external threats. And that was not always just Russia.
In fact, the famous Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which is the article that contains the mutual defense clause, that an attack on one ally is an attack on all allies, has been invoked only one time, and that was after 9/11. When allies invoked the treaty and upheld their treaty responsibilities to defend the United States, which had been attacked from an external source, in this case, a terrorist group, not a country. That is what really part of NATO's founding rationale is about. Keeping the Russians out: that is really about that one purpose of the alliance: defending against external threats.
When it comes to keeping the Americans in, that's about the transatlantic bargain that the United States would commit to remaining involved in European security affairs in exchange for
sharing the burden of collective defense with the European allies and the commitment from the Europeans that they would organize themselves for internal stability. Keep in mind that joining an international military alliance like the US did, like all the allies did in 1949, this was really a revolutionary foreign policy move for the United States.
For the first 150 years of the United States, the defining theme or attitude towards international alliances was George Washington's advice that the United States ought to avoid entangling alliances, in particular in Europe. And so to overturn 150 years of tradition on George Washington's advice and to become involved in a military and political alliance in Europe, that was a big change. Part of the way that we can understand that is because the United States had learned after having been drawn into World War I in Europe and then having effectively gone home, decided not to join the League of Nations and other international institutions. It was then drawn back into Europe and to other theaters in World War II. So the lesson after 1945 was that there was an argument for the United States staying involved in European security affairs. But of course, that means a commitment.
For the first time in its history, the United States, after World War II, maintained a large standing army and defense infrastructure. These things were new in the American experience, as Dwight Eisenhower said in his own farewell address towards the end of the 1950s. So keeping the Russians out is about defending against external threats. Keeping the Americans in is about that important part of the transatlantic bargain that served both interests. Europeans enjoyed the benefit of US power, leadership, and involvement in European security affairs, while the United States gained a commitment from those European allies to preserve stability in Europe and to contribute to the collective defense.
And that's where also the third part of Lord Ismay's comment about keeping the Germans down is important as well. Really what keeping the Germans down means is that part of NATO's founding rationale is to mitigate latent hostility or the potential for conflict among European countries themselves. Think about this. In the 70 years prior to the 1940 campaign of World War II, Germany invaded France three times. And in the 75 years of NATO, there has been no great-power European war among those historically hostile Western European states. So that's a track record of great success. So keep the Americans in is part of the transatlantic bargain. Keep the Russians out, that's defending against external threats to the alliance. And keeping the Germans down, that's mitigating latent conflict and hostility among the allies themselves.
RL: You mentioned Article 5 has only been invoked once after the terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001, which triggered a response in Afghanistan. You've served on multinational duty in Afghanistan. You're an active US Army officer. You've served in pure US units. From your time on the ground in Afghanistan and elsewhere in multinational duty and NATO duty, what are the biggest challenges and advantages that you've seen from working within the NATO framework?
SJ: Service in Afghanistan with NATO, particularly command, has easily been the highlight of my military career. I think many, many military officers would say that there's nothing quite like command. Certainly there's no experience like combat. So to be able to command in combat is a special responsibility. And in my case, to have commanded in combat a multinational task force with troops from nine NATO and partner countries, this was a very meaningful, challenging, but rewarding professional experience. And I'm really grateful to all of my teammates who served in those organizations. In fact, How NATO Adapts, the book is actually dedicated to my NATO unit for my first deployment in Afghanistan, where a few American soldiers, myself included, were embedded in a Romanian-led NATO Task Force in the southern part of the country.
So this was a very special and rewarding personal and professional experience for me, a difficult one to be sure. But one that I think really inspired me intellectually to ask more questions about the alliance and to see so many countries working together for a common purpose in a place so far away and under such difficult conditions inspired me to ask questions. It also really impressed me with what NATO allies and NATO as an institution were able to do.
RL: You speak a lot in your book about how NATO has adapted over the course of its history. How do you see how NATO has adapted to both external shocks and internal challenges in the past? And how do those challenges and overcoming those challenges resemble today's issues within the alliance in terms of burden sharing, NATO's role in the Ukraine War, and also threat perceptions across the alliance?
SJ: NATO has a very successful track record of adaptation. There's probably no better illustration of that record than NATO’s involvement in Afghanistan, the fact that it was even there. Like we said, NATO's founding rationale in 1949 was talked about in terms of keeping the Russians out, among other things. And NATO itself is, of course, named in such a way that it's geographically limited to the transatlantic area. So who would have thought in 1949 that a North Atlantic alliance brought about in the Cold War, with concerns about defending against Soviet or Russian aggression, would end up undertaking its biggest international military operation in Central Asia in partnership with not just the original 12 members of the alliance, but with over 40 countries, many of which were alliance members and many of which were not even from that part of the world.
So the fact that NATO was able to adapt its organization, its strategy in such a remarkable way over time is certainly an illustration of the adaptable character of NATO. But at the same time, I think it's also important to note that even though NATO has a good track record of adapting its organizational strategy, the treaty itself, what it stands for, what its fundamental purposes and obligations are, have not changed. The Treaty of 1949 remains a very short—only 14, 15 paragraphs—a very short, elegant document that remains as relevant today as it did to allies in 1949. Allies commit to working together to defend against external threats, to share the burdens, and to preserve stability and good relations among themselves.
RL: Seth, it's been a pleasure speaking with you today. Thank you.
SJ: Thanks a lot, Rick.