The 2024 Washington Summit neatly laid bare NATO’s problem: it has forgotten its purpose and lost sight of its central mission. NATO’s 1978 Washington Summit was held in a similarly fraught geopolitical era in which the Soviet threat loomed larger than ever. The 1978 communiqué reiterated the two aims of the alliance—to maintain security and pursue détente. Détente as a concept was not as emotionally charged as it is today. Rationality reigned. Even so, this was not a nod to “appeasement” or weakness—even in 1978, the alliance reiterated the significance of maintaining “vigilance” and keeping “defences at the level rendered necessary.” […]
NATO’s 2024 Washington Summit was performative and miles away from the summits of decades ago. External threats are listed, like a shopping list, from China to Russia to Iran. Missing is the alliance’s plan to compete and secure itself. Nor is there an articulation of what the “rules-based international order” actually is and how it is a “vital” interest.
If NATO had not already signaled its unseriousness, the deeper fostering of Asia at the 2024 Summit surely did. If NATO’s strategic aim today is to “modernise NATO for a new era of collective defence,” then by the basic definition of the Washington Treaty, this does not include states like Australia or New Zealand. Both are well south of the Tropic of Cancer—the limits of NATO’s geographical zoning for collective defense. Läs artikel