The unanimous decision of the North Atlantic Alliance to accept Sweden and Finland into its family is the best possible proof of the solidity and vitality of the alliance born in 1949. However, the Russian aggression against Ukraine and the debate that preceded the admission of the two Scandinavian countries confirmed the existence of different "souls" within NATO and the existence of several, conditionally speaking, sub-alliances and soloists of Turkey.
It should be emphasized here that pluralism within multinational organizations - such as NATO is by antonomasia, bearing in mind the different degrees of democracy, freedom and protection of rights in its members - is not necessarily a bad thing, on the contrary, it is a sign of strength. It is physiological that heterogeneous alliances become larger and stronger with expansion, but also less homogeneous and unique.
Within NATO, there have always been currents and different positions between the allies, sometimes nuanced and sometimes in clear opposition. The leadership and dominant role of the USA in the Alliance always ensured the minimum necessary unity and a catalytic role in the rivalries between the allies themselves, such as Greece and Turkey.
A careful analysis of the positions of NATO members leads to the conclusion that we have at least seven different interest groups within the most powerful defense alliance on the planet. The United States of America, and the pendant Canada, represent the North American component of the Alliance.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, whose first political idol is not Winston Churchill but Pericles, is trying hard to prove that the English are to Americans what the ancient Greeks were to the ancient Romans. Also, despite the fact that they left the EU within the European wing of NATO, the British have a specific weight, especially among the Scandinavian and Eastern European countries, as well as the Netherlands.
With the entry of Sweden and Finland and the return of Moscow to the role of NATO's main enemy, the Scandinavian bloc gained even more importance. Also, the admission of Stockholm and Helsinki to NATO and the entry of Denmark into the EU security and foreign policy system leveled the paradoxical situation in the north of the Old Continent: Iceland and Norway are members of NATO but not the EU, Sweden and Finland are members of the EU but were not in the Alliance, while Denmark is was the only Scandinavian country in both the EU and NATO, but was outside the EU's common foreign and security policy of its own accord.
Poland leads NATO's eastern wing between the three seas (Baltic, Adriatic and Black Seas), or Trimarium. It includes all three Baltic republics, plus Slovakia and the Czech Republic, as well as Romania, while Croatia is on its way to becoming part of that club.
Hungary has distanced itself from its Visegrad allies, which is due to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin, his attitude towards the invasion of Ukraine, but also his ambitions to regain at least some of the territory that Budapest lost in the Trianon Agreement. However, it is not excluded that Orban does not make another turn in his politics and return to the embrace of the Visegrad brotherhood.
Germany, France and Italy represent the European hard core, into which Spain is increasingly entering, forming a kind of "European quad" that aims to be as autonomous as possible in relation to Washington. In their constellation are Portugal, Luxembourg, Belgium as well as Slovenia, especially since the arrival of Robert Golob as prime minister.
Turkey is a member of NATO sui generis. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has extracted the maximum benefit in the past two decades from the geostrategic position of his country, turning Turkey into a classic autocentric power that sits on multiple chairs. In other words, everything that various leaders and ideologues of pernicious policies in Belgrade imagined Yugoslavia or later Serbia to be, Turkey is.
The Balkan members of NATO are, for one reason or another, more or less frankly, increasingly pro-American. Greece has to rely on Washington in its constant attention to Turkey. Albanians are America's most loyal allies, for Macedonians and Montenegrins membership in NATO is the only reliable guarantee that their countries will remain within their current borders.
The last NATO summit in Madrid brought nuance to all the aforementioned "souls" of the Alliance. There is no doubt that the most significant result of the Madrid gathering was the identification of Russia as a new-old enemy, but there were also evident differences in the conduct of policy towards Moscow and the vision of future relations.
The Scandinavian and Eastern European bloc wants to defeat Russia. For them, the minimum goal is for Russia to come out of the war, which it started on its own, as a kind of European pariah, humiliated and defeated, condemned to marginalization and ostracism. There are also those who wish for the fall of Vladimir Putin, the collapse of the regime and the consequent disintegration of the Russian Federation into several states that could not pose a threat to the northern and eastern parts of the continent.
The European four (Germany, France, Italy and Spain) want to end hostilities as soon as possible and to start building at least minimal relations and cooperation with Moscow. In Paris, Berlin, Rome and Madrid, they see further than their finger and understand that the total defeat of Russia or its disintegration would lead to an even more uncertain and turbulent future.
Great Britain is the most Russophobic country in Western Europe and Russian aggression against Ukraine has made noble that sentiment rooted in the middle of the 19th century on the Island when a fake testament of Peter the Great was distributed with the aim of preparing public opinion for the Crimean War. Boris Johnson's internal problems, from the scandal to the issue of Northern Ireland and Scotland, which is once again preparing for a referendum on independence, contribute to London's hard stance.
Turkey, according to its custom, plays a double game. Erdogan would not like NATO or Russia to win. Ankara does not want to see the entire northern coast of the Black Sea in Russian hands, but it is not in its interest to have the Ukrainian army go to the borders before February 24. Erdogan would be most suited to a frozen conflict in which he could continue his double game of friends and partners of Kiev and Moscow.
The United States of America is looking beyond the conflict with Russia, which is very clearly recognized in the final document of the Madrid summit. Moscow is defined as a threat to the Alliance, but the mention of China is much more important, even 14 times and it could not be said in a friendly tone. At the insistence of Washington, the leaders of the Pacific allies, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, were also in Madrid, with a direct message to Beijing, which continues to provide support and provide a hinterland for Russia.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall and 20 years since the signing of the NATO-Russia agreement at the Italian military base Pratica di Mare, which was supposed to be the cornerstone of the new security structure on the Old Continent, the wheel of history has turned back.
NATO has returned to its original meaning of acting as a defense alliance rather than a planetary policeman. The former anti-Soviet profile of the North Atlantic Alliance has been renamed anti-Russian with one important difference that makes Europe and the world a much more insecure place than during the Cold War: the USSR was essentially a conservative power that tried to maintain the established status quo, while Putin's Russia is a revisionist, revanchist power. which wants to conquer the territories it considers to have been unjustly taken from it. The problem is that no one, except for Putin and his close circle, knows how far those revisionist aspirations go, which is why Sweden, and especially Finland, hastened to stand under the NATO umbrella or, if you will, "armor".
Bonus video:
