Persistence and Adaptation in NATO in the 21st Century

May 2024

Introduction

The history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is one of long periods of persistence sporadically interrupted by significant adaptation. Since its formation in 1949, the Alliance has been shaken and transformed by internal and external shocks alike, of which France’s 1966 withdrawal from its military command structure, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the September 11 attacks are but a few examples.

One such turning point can be witnessed today. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, NATO and its member states have initiated one of the largest defence transformations since the end of the Second World War, marked by higher defence spending, a strengthened force posture in Eastern Europe, revised defence plans, and a degree of unity unparalleled in the 21st century.[1] Nonetheless, for many experts and Eastern Europeans, these efforts were long overdue and should have taken place already in response to Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia or its 2014 annexation of Crimea.[2] 

To explore why significant adaptation takes place now and has occurred after the September 11 attacks, but not in 2008 or 2014, historical institutionalism offers a particularly promising theoretical lens. Although historical institutionalists have often concerned themselves with issues of trade, economics, and public policy,[3] its utility for the study of international relations is well-proven[4] – not least because, as Keohane emphasised, “alliances are institutions.”[5] 

After introducing historical institutionalism and the characteristics making it exceptionally useful for the analysis of alliances, I argue that asymmetric power distribution, NATO’s decision-making structures, and path dependency can explain why some geopolitical events were constituted as critical junctures followed by significant change, while others did not have a decisive impact on NATO and its functions. Lastly, I reflect briefly on the utility of historical institutionalism for such analyses. 

Historical Institutionalism and Alliances 

In the ‘80s and ‘90s, three “new institutionalisms” emerged, with which analysts aimed to explain the role and significance of institutions in the formation of political and social outcomes.[6] While rational choice institutionalism highlights how utility- and efficiency-maximisation through rational and instrumental behaviour shapes the design and output of institutions,[7] sociological institutionalists place a heavy emphasis on culture, arguing that the making and shaping of institutions is influenced by cultural practices rather than efficiency considerations.[8] 

Historical institutionalism (HI), on the other hand, focuses on the endogenous and evolutionary nature of institutional change, rooted in historical legacies.[9] HI defines institutions broadly as organisations and the patterns and principles within and around them – “formal or informal procedures, routines, norms and conventions.”[10] Five characteristics and assumptions make HI a valuable tool for the analysis of persistence and change in alliances: pragmatism in the actor-institution relation, inertia in rules and norms, path dependency in decision-making, asymmetry in power, and complexity in explanation. Following, these are briefly outlined. 

Firstly, historical institutionalists consider the relationship between the behaviour of individuals and institutions broadly, pragmatically picking and merging the “calculus approach” and “cultural approach.”[11]  The calculus approach assumes that actors have clear preferences that they pursue through utility-maximising behaviour, and institutions shape the behaviour of actors by influencing their expectations about the behaviour of other actors through the exchange of information and enforcement of agreements.[12] The cultural approach assumes actors to be less strategic and instead constrained by the interpretation of events through their worldview, e.g., ideologies, routines, and culture.[13] From this angle, by providing a web of “symbols, scripts and routines,”[14] institutions shape how actors interpret the world and themselves. 

Secondly, HI explains the persistence of rules and norms in and of institutions by considering these regularised patterns of behaviour largely outside the realm of individual decision-making, i.e., institutions possess some degree of inertia and are “resistant to redesign ultimately because they structure the very choices about reform that the individual is likely to make.”[15] Thirdly, from an HI perspective, the development, change, and decision-making of institutions are characterised by path dependence, where past decisions at critical junctures heavily constrain the spectrum of present and future choices.[16] This constraint on choices can lead to unintended consequences and makes institutions less efficient.[17] 

Fourthly, HI emphasises the important role of asymmetries in power distribution in the development and operation of institutions, which provide some actors with a much larger influence on decision-making and the shaping of outcomes.[18] Lastly, HI does not claim exclusive responsibility of institutional factors for political and social outcomes but allows for a more complex interpretation of the world, in which further factors, such as socioeconomic issues, ideas, or beliefs, can also play an important role.[19] 

By emphasising the importance of power and history for explaining the dynamics and constraints of institutions, by incorporating factors external to the institution, and by being open to different ways of explaining individual behaviour, HI provides a versatile instrument well-suited to analyse a complex, decades-old alliance of 31 states, which will be further demonstrated in the following section. 

A Tale of Two Critical Junctures, and Two That Weren't 

In this section, I first briefly recount four geopolitical events of the 21st century and NATO’s response to them. Then, I apply the tenets of historical institutionalism to offer explanations on why only two of them have led to significant adaptation in the Alliance. The scope of this essay does not allow for each argument to be analysed in detail. Therefore, the latter section should be considered as a demonstration of HI’s potential for analysing alliances and as a point of departure for further in-depth research. 

NATO in the 21st Century 

After the Cold War, having outlived its Warsaw Pact raison d’être, NATO’s new mission was to facilitate a “Europe whole and free” through integration efforts and the promotion of liberal democracy in the former Soviet zone of influence.[20] The September 11 terrorist attacks disrupted this period of relative calm and led to the rapid emergence of a new task for NATO: out-of-area counterinsurgency operations. In 2003, NATO took over command of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, which was succeeded by the NATO-led Resolute Support Mission until the Taliban takeover in 2021.[21] The September 11 attacks constituted a critical juncture for NATO, changing not only its geographical scope, core tasks, and functions but leading also to a reconceptualisation of how and against whom war is fought: the armed forces of its member states, remnants of Cold War-era conventional warfare doctrine, were transformed into small, highly specialised, light formations capable of fighting an insurgent force abroad.[22] 

The 2008 Russian invasion of Georgia, which had been promised future NATO membership just a few months earlier, did not lead to significant institutional changes in the Alliance. Besides expressing “continued support for the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Georgia,”[23]NATO’s response has been described as “muted”[24] and as “greenlighting”[25] the 2014 annexation of Crimea by leaving Russian aggression unsanctioned. After Crimea, NATO condemned the annexation, its member states committed to (but did not fulfil) a 2% GDP defence spending goal, small troop detachments were deployed to the Baltics, and non-lethal assistance was granted to Ukraine.[26] These measures have largely been described as insufficient and disproportionate to the level of threat and aggression, especially by Eastern European member states who warned that other countries might follow.[27] 

As already laid out in the introduction, NATO’s response to the 2022 Russian invasion was vastly different in quality and quantity, leading to an unprecedented transformation in the Alliance and among its ever more united member states – the second critical juncture of the 21st century.[28] 

History Matters: Persistence and Change in NATO 

The fundamental differences in Allied responses described in the previous section raise the question of why some geopolitical events are constituted as critical junctures followed by significant change, while others do not disrupt institutional persistence and only have a limited impact on NATO and its functions. Following, using the four characteristics and assumptions elaborated earlier, I will demonstrate HI’s utility for answering this question. 

Firstly, asymmetries in power among NATO members can explain why some had a greater influence than others on the designation of what should and should not be considered a critical juncture. Eastern European states have reacted strongly to both the 2008 and 2014 aggression,[29] but their concern was not shared to the same degree by their more powerful allies Germany, France, and the U.S., manifested in their capacity to determine what is, and what is not, an existential threat to the Alliance.[30]The September 11 attacks and the 2022 invasion, on the other hand, were either directly targeting powerful members or more directly affecting their interests, leading them to declare it an existential threat requiring an appropriate response.[31] 

Secondly, HI’s pragmatic approach to the behaviour of actors and the integration of complex external factors allow us to explain the designation of critical junctures as a fusion of calculus and cultural logic: it is based on clear preferences, guided by utility-maximisation, but bound and constrained by ideologies, routines, and culture.[32] In 2001 and 2022, it can be assumed that the response was driven largely by a calculus logic of the powerful actors, leading to rapid utility-maximising (i.e., security-maximising) behaviour out of concerns over stability in the region. In contrast, after the 2008 invasion and 2014 annexation, economic concerns of powerful NATO members (e.g., German trade ties with Russia) took precedence over security preferences.[33] Additionally, the response was shaped by cultural and ideological factors among powerful states, who interpreted Russia’s intentions, the importance of the region, and the prospects of “change through trade” vastly different from their Eastern European allies.[34] 

Thirdly, HI assumes a certain degree of inertia in institutions that arises because many aspects of the institutional design are outside the realm of individual decision-making. Only actors with comparably less power perceived the 2008 invasion and 2014 annexation as necessitating a fundamental re-evaluation of NATO's institutional norms, but their demands for reform were thwarted by institutional hurdles such as the unanimity rule. For the powerful actors, the existing rules and norms at that time were considered sufficient to address the aggressions without the need for significant institutional change. In 2001 and 2022, on the other hand, the shock and magnitude of the events created a situation where existing institutional norms and rules were perceived, also by the powerful, as inadequate to address the new and evolving security challenges. Only the urgency and severity of the threat, combined with the political will of powerful states, allowed to overcome institutional inertia, prompting a reassessment of NATO’s existing institutional framework. This is supported by Johnston in his work on adaptation in NATO between 1950 and 2012, where he argues that institutional change occurred when external crises (e.g., Cuban Missile Crisis) challenged the very stability of the Alliance and its norms, reduced structural constraints, and allowed to overcome the lack of individual agency.[35] 

Lastly, HI’s emphasis on the constraints of path dependency on decision-making can help to explain why past decisions rendered the prospects for change in 2008 and 2014 dim. At the critical juncture of September 11, NATO and its member states decided that state threats were largely a thing of the past, and out-of-area operations and peacekeeping in fragile environments would be the core task of modern military power, thus also of NATO. By transforming the definition of security threats and the purpose and design of armed forces accordingly, the Alliance chose a transformative path that required immense effort and costs and was accompanied by a new view of the world: security is achieved by confronting non-state threats elsewhere, not through defence against other states. The Russian aggression of 2008 and 2014 challenged this worldview but sunk cost considerations and institutional inertia made it increasingly difficult to deviate from the path chosen in 2001 while being engaged in Afghanistan.[36] Thus, we can entertain the counterfactual that if NATO had not adapted so drastically after the September 11 attacks but would have remained focused on traditional state threats, the Russian aggression of 2008 and 2014 would have matched its core task much better, drastic responses would have required less effort, and resources would not have been tied up in overseas deployments. None of this would have ensured an appropriate response, but it would have made it more likely. 

Conclusion 

Historical institutionalism is no panacea. Ceding such a prominent role to past decisions can lead to a deterministic worldview, in which actors could not have acted differently – a view we should actively reject. Moreover, by relying on the availability of rich historical data, historical institutionalists are burdened with analytical challenges that can make its application an arduous undertaking, especially if, like in the case of NATO, most data is classified. 

Nonetheless, by taking a closer look at power asymmetries among member states and the drivers of individual behaviour as well as by exploring how institutional and historical constraints limit the prospects and scope of change, this brief analysis of NATO’s critical junctures in the 21st century has demonstrated the utility of historical institutionalism for explaining the dynamics of persistence and adaptation in alliances. These insights can serve as a point of departure for future research with an extended scale and scope, which can build on and refine these propositions in a more in-depth analysis. 

[1] NATO (2023a); Brookes (2023).
[2] Volker (2014); Rumer (2016), Gressel (2019).
[3] Steinmo et al. (1992, p. 10).
[4] Fioretos (2011); Rixen & Viola (2016); Mayer (2023, p. 41).
[5] Keohane (1989, p. 15, emphasis in original); see also Mayer (2023, pp. 44-46).
[6] March & Olsen (1984); Hall & Taylor (1996, p. 937).
[7] Steinmo et al. (1992, p. 7); Hall & Taylor (1996, pp. 942-946).
[8] Hall & Taylor (1996, pp. 946-950).
[9] Mayer (2023, p. 37).
[10] Hall & Taylor (1996, p. 938); see also Steinmo et al. (1992, pp. 2f.).
[11] Hall & Taylor (1996, pp. 938, 950).
[12] Hall & Taylor (1996, p. 939).
[13] Steinmo et al. (1992, p. 8); Hall & Taylor (1996, p. 939).
[14] Hall & Taylor (1996, p. 939).
[15] Hall & Taylor (1996, p. 939).
[16] Hall & Taylor (1996, pp. 938, 941, 942, 954); Peters et al. (2005); Mahoney & Schensul (2006); Capoccia & Kelemen (2007).
[17] March & Olsen (1984); Hall & Taylor (1996, p. 938).
[18] Hall & Taylor (1996, pp. 938, 941, 954).
[19] Hall & Taylor (1996, p. 942).
[20] Johnston (2023, p. 122).
[21] Bothe (2023, p. 328).
[22] Cordesman (2005).
[23] NATO (2009).
[24] Dickinson (2021).
[25] Dickinson (2021).
[26] NATO (2023a; 2023b).
[27] Seputyte & Eglitis (2014); Volker (2014); Rumer (2016); Gressel (2019).
[28] NATO (2023a); Brookes (2023).
[29] See, for example, Seputyte & Eglitis (2014).
[30] See, for example, Karnitschnig (2022).
[31] Duclos (2022).
[32] Steinmo et al. (1992, p. 8); Hall & Taylor (1996, p. 939).
[33] Karnitschnig (2022).
[34] Kundnani (2015).
[35] Johnston (2017a; 2017b, pp. 7f.).
[36] See Hellmann & Wolf (1993, p. 20f.); McCalla (1996); Wallander (2000).

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Picture credit: Holger.Ellgaard, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons