Collectivised security – sounds great? Huddled around a fire, left alone in the cold wilderness, cavemen congregate to look after each other, spears pointed outward, poised to potential threats. I mean, what has changed in all these centuries? It’s still a bunch of men huddled around a table rather than fire. It’s a team effort to keep everyone safe from threats.
But just as with all team efforts, there comes a particular forfeit or trade-off in the cases of privacy and autonomy.
I won’t examine privacy in this case; after all, NATO has voluntary intelligence sharing: give the intelligence you want or keep it under your hat; it’s your choice. And this is generally a good idea, especially for those realist governments keen to keep their illuminating intelligence under a bushel – it keeps them happy and mostly cooperative. And if you ask any NATO expert, they’ll tell you one of NATO’s profanities is ‘mandatory’.
So – that’s mandatory off the table, but what about ‘requirement’ or ‘target’? How concrete are those expectations on member states?
Take, for example, the GDP contributions. In 2006, NATO ministers agreed to pledge a minimum of 2% of GDP to defence spending and joint funding for the alliance. In practice, it’s not so great. Until 2023, the maximum number of allies meeting that expenditure target was 9. Only 30%. 2023 brought a “bumper” year for NATO, and 2024 was practically incomprehensible, with 23 of 32 members spending the required 2% of GDP on defence. So, a minimum requirement works for NATO, but does it work for the state?
While NATO may have had bumper years from 2020-23, Italy did not. Italy rightly or wrongly intervened to protect its citizens (after all they are the voters supporting the Italian government’s plans for re-election) from the skyrocketing energy prices following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. According to the OECD its expenditure was high and unsustainable. So, when Meloni ascended to power in 2022, I can only imagine her face when she looked inside the public purse and found nothing (well, in reality, I’m sure she was expecting it).
Yet, my point is that the last thing she wanted to pay for was a 2% GDP defence bill when that 41 billion could have been used elsewhere. In 2022, she spent just $33.5 bn, an 8% decrease from 2021, a far cry from the 2% that NATO requested – Italy now spends less than 1.5% of GDP, and this is only set to fall. And grumbles can be heard in Brussels and Rome about this decision. A tight-budgeted Italy is now perched in a precarious place, forced to choose between disgruntled allies always paying for the round and a government asking for new presents with every budget.
Now, every good anti-interventionist NATO op-ed will bring up the country, starting with the letter ‘K’ and ending with ‘O’. But my argument for this irrelevance falls to how NATO functions: unanimous action. Even though some members were reticent to participate in the Kosovo air strikes, the unanimous workings of NATO meant that the action passed the North Atlantic Council. It’s a keynote feature of NATO that a member may ‘pass with reservations’, thus meaning they are not obstructing the actions of other members. In this case, it appears that NATO facilitates a collective’s autonomy; perhaps, if each nation had attempted to pass this in the UN, they would have been met with higher barriers.
“You’re on your own”. Yet, in NATO’s case, a member is never alone. They have support from their friends.
So, if Kosovo is not a case for NATO teetering on interventionism by its member states, then what is? Ukraine. It’s funny how when faced with their opposition near enough on the battlefield, some shy away from the fight while others barrel towards it: red-faced, brazenly bold with spangled banner in hand. One of those not keen to assist their Slavic friends is Slovakia. So, while the Slovakians aren’t exactly openly ‘pro-Russia’, they’re not exactly ‘anti-Russia’ as so many NATO members are. When asked to assist in fortifying the Eastern front, the Slovakians were nowhere to be seen. In fact, they were very verbal about their refusal to provide Ukraine with military resources.
But NATO is unanimous – so slapping Slovakia for exercising their rights seems a little too authoritarian, so much of Slovakia’s posturing was greeted with a stone-cold ‘no comment’. In December, Slovakia conceded to NATO’s will. Fear not, Ukraine got sweet revenge on Slovakia and Hungary when, in August 2024, they refused to export oil to the pair – naturally, Slovakia and Hungary cried to the EU. However, as a more political organisation, the EU snubbed the pair without much fuss.
I think it’s fair to say that NATO likes to impose its will upon the minority just as it does the majority. However, given that NATO’s direction is given by the nations rather than a supernational body, is this a major problem? Or is it just that one person arguing for pizza takeaway when the group wants Chinese? Is majoritarianism with such a small minority a problem? Or is the size of the minority, not the issue but the implications of not being the devil’s advocate? I have no doubt these questions of true sovereignty and freedom will be burnt onto our foreheads by the end of the decade.
