Rowman & Littlefield Publishers NATO and Article 5: The Transatlantic Alliance and the Twenty-First-Century Challenges of Collective Defense

For much of the last 25 years, NATO has focused on crisis management in places such as Kosovo and Afghanistan, resulting in major changes to alliance strategy, resourcing, force structure, and training. Re-embracing collective defense -which lies at the heart of the Treaty of Washington's Article 5 commitment- is no easy feat, and not something NATO can do through rhetoric and official pronouncements. Nonetheless, this shift is vitally necessary if the alliance is to remain the bulwark of Western defense and security. Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea and its invasion of Ukraine have fundamentally upended the security environment in Europe, thrusting NATO into the spotlight as the primary collective defense tool most European states rely upon to ensure their security. Collective defense is one of the alliance's three core missions, along with crisis management and cooperative security. It is defined in Article 5, the most well-known and arguably most important part of NATO's founding treaty, which states: "The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all." Although all three missions are vital to the interests of NATO's many member states, collective defense has become first among equals once again. However, three very significant hurdles stand in the way of the alliance and its member states as they attempt to re-embrace collective defense. These loosely correspond to an ends-waysmeans construct. First is the alliance's strategy toward Russia. Is Russia an adversary, a partner, neither, or both? How should strategy and policies change to place the alliance and its members on more solid ground when it comes to managing Russia? Second are the ongoing disputes over resourcing and burden-sharing. In recent years, it has become commonplace for American leaders to publicly berate European allies in an effort to garner more contributions to the common defense. How might the alliance better measure and more equitably share security burdens? Third is the alliance's readiness to fulfill its objectives. Many allies have announced or are implementing increases in defense spending. However, governments of European NATO member states are strongly incentivized by domestic politics to favor acquisition of military hardware or spending on personnel salaries and benefits, usually at the expense of readiness. The result is that NATO military forces risk quickly becoming hollow in a way that is often underappreciated, which will prevent the alliance from fulfilling the collective defense promise inherent in Article 5. The book examines all such questions to assess NATO's return to collective defense and offer a roadmap for overcoming those challenges in both the short and long-term. Review In NATO and Article 5, John Deni provides a vital overview of the nature of alliance commitments and evolving security challenges. His focus on NATO is built around key interviews with practitioners and Deni's background as one of America's finest scholars of NATO and the transatlantic security relationship makes this book an essential part of any study of one of the most important questions confronting both American foreign and defense policy, European security, and global security more generally. At a time when an American president has raised questions about the nature of such "security guarantees" and burden-sharing in meeting them, this book is an absolute must read for students, practitioners and scholars a like. John Deni offers essential reading in one of the finest books produced to date on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.--Sean Kay, Robson Professor of Politics and Government, Ohio Wesleyan UniversityIn the somehow contentious debates between two perspectives on the Alliance's future, Deni offers a useful and detailed overview of what the challenges would be for NATO in returning to collective defense and Article 5