How NATO's Article 5 works
https://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/03/economist-explains-6
NATO is the world’s most important military alliance. It developed as a bulwark against Soviet aggression in the early postwar period but has remained together, and remarkably active, in the decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Its recent interventions have been wars of choice; NATO led the intervention in Afghanistan and helped defeat Slobodan Milosevic’s regime in Yugoslavia. Yet one of NATO's founding principles was that of collective self-defence, embodied in the crucial fifth clause of the 1949 Washington Treaty. It says that “an armed attack on one or more [members] shall be considered an attack on all” and that members will assist the victim(s) of such an attack “forthwith”. Article 5 seemed something of an anachronism after the Soviet collapse. Now, as Russia boosts its defence spending, carries out dummy nuclear attacks on neighbours, and calls snap military exercises on the border with the Baltic states, it is relevant once again. But what does Article 5 actually require of NATO allies, and would they follow through in a pinch?
Article 5 says that the response may include armed force, but it does not mandate it. All that NATO actually promises is to take “such action as it deems necessary” to restore and maintain security. That could be anything from nuclear war to a stiff diplomatic protest. Three tricky considerations would determine the precise nature of any NATO response to foreign aggression. The first is geography: in places where an aggressor can quickly complete and consolidate an invasion, NATO's options are very limited. The Baltics, for instance, occupy a thin flat strip of land which is all but indefensible. A Russian surprise attack could reach the coast within hours, and reversing a successful Russian invasion would be hard, even futile. Yet that was also true of West Berlin. The Baltics argue that an attack on them would mean an all-out East-West confrontation thanks to Article 5. If Russia believes that, deterrence is working. But Article 5 does not specify such a response.
A second and related problem is dealing with escalation. Many in NATO would be happy to reinforce the Baltic states in a crisis, and even to use lethal force against “little green men”. But if Russia responded to NATO preparations by announcing a no-fly zone, backed by its formidable air defences and bristling arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons, the stakes would quickly become dangerously high. The decision to act, or not, would be made not at NATO HQ in Brussels, but in Washington, DC. And, many eastern NATO members worry, it is hard to imagine an American president risking nuclear war to defend a tiny country half a world away.
Yet in practice the biggest challenge to NATO is in defining what is and is not an attack. Russia practises “hybrid war”—a mixture of propaganda, corruption, subversion, espionage, the exploitation of economic and energy dependency, diplomacy and the use of irregular military forces (those “
little green men” who popped up in Crimea last year). In the Baltics, hybrid war could involve attempts to incite ethnic, linguistic and regional tensions, or the use of some staged emergency—such as a problem with Russia’s railway traffic across Lithuania to Kaliningrad. What might count locally as an intolerable assault on the Baltic states’ sovereignty may not be seen in Brussels as an “armed attack” for Article 5 purposes. Much NATO effort is now going into ensuring that it can respond in a practical way, militarily and politically, to appeals for help. All the strength of the world's mightiest military alliance will not amount to much if its members cannot agree when an aggressor has actually stepped over the line.
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