The 31 members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) met from Tuesday July 11 to Wednesday July 12, in Vilnius (Lithuania), for the annual summit of the Atlantic Alliance. While Turkey eventually backed Sweden’s membership, Ukraine’s fate within the organization focused much of the discussion. But contrary to the wishes of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine will still have to wait before joining the Alliance and be content with new security guarantees.
Within the member states, the prospect of seeing Ukraine quickly join NATO is hardly unanimous. With, in the front line, the United States and Germany, firmly opposed to the country’s immediate membership for fear of dragging the Alliance into a conflict with Russia. If Ukraine enters NATO “while the war is going on, then we would all be at war with Russia,” US President Joe Biden said on Sunday. A reference to article 5 of the treaty, which provides for mutual assistance of member states in the event of aggression.
The North Atlantic Treaty of 1949 insisted on the establishment of a collective defense in order to counter the hegemonic ambitions of the Soviet Union in Europe. This was even the primary objective of the treaty. All the signatory countries agreed that the establishment of “a pact aimed at countering the risk that the Soviet Union would extend its control over Eastern Europe to other parts of the continent” was “at the heart of the treaty”.
As such, Article 5 is its cornerstone. It clarifies that an “armed attack against one or more [parties] occurring in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack directed against all parties”. Accordingly, if an attack occurs, each Member State “shall assist the party or parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in agreement with the other parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of force armed forces, to restore and ensure security in the North Atlantic region”.
Clearly, Article 5 commits all member countries of the Alliance to provide assistance, whether military, humanitarian or otherwise, in the event of aggression.
The choice to enact Article 5 “is not automatic” but “returns to the attacked country”, specifies to Le Monde Amélie Zima, researcher specializing in European security at the Institute for Strategic Research of the Military School (Irsem) and author of What Do I Know? on the Atlantic Alliance (PUF, 2021). The attacked country can indeed choose to act alone, to set up an ad hoc coalition, or even to act within the European Union by resorting to “article 42.7 of the Treaty of Lisbon, which is similar to the Article 5 of NATO,” adds Amélie Zima.
Even if it is not specified in the treaty, before issuing a formal request for assistance, a thorough and comprehensive reflection must be carried out on the circumstances of the aggression. The choice for an attacked country to resort to Article 5 is indeed very strictly framed, because invoking it would involve 31 countries in a conflict, including three major nuclear powers (United States, France and United Kingdom). “An investigation and dialogue with other nations must be conducted beforehand to study the origin and nature of the attack,” explains Amélie Zima. And to emphasize: “The question of attribution [of the attack] is extremely important. »
To illustrate her remarks, the researcher cites as an example the case of a missile that fell in November 2022 in a village in Poland, which has been a member of NATO since 1999. Suspected of having been fired from Russian soil, the he explosive device caused the death of two people and prompted an emergency meeting of several leaders of the Alliance countries.
This crisis meeting raised fears of NATO entering the war in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. It is “important that all the facts are established,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg quickly tempered. A caution that proved him right. “After investigation, it was finally proven that it was debris from a Ukrainian missile, which explains why Poland decided not to invoke Article 5,” adds Amélie Zima.
Once Article 5 is invoked by a member country and NATO decides to intervene under it, the countries of the Alliance choose the nature of their support. Each ally determines what it deems necessary to contribute. And this is not necessarily military: a country can collaborate in intelligence, logistics, support medical aid, etc. “The Baltic States, for example, do not have fighter jets. If article 5 is decreed, they will therefore not be able to help from this military point of view”, cites Amélie Zima as an example.
In view of the accession of Ukraine, still in conflict with Russia, the use of Article 5 would automatically mean going to war for the 31 NATO countries. And this, whatever the nature of the assistance provided, believes the specialist of the Alliance: “Even if they provide logistical or medical assistance, the member states of the Alliance would be at war against Russia, any type assistance would make them belligerents. »
This collective defense clause has only been used once since 1949, after the September 11, 2001 attacks by Al-Qaeda on American soil. A few hours after these events, the allies met in emergency and invoked the principle of Article 5, which was formally activated three weeks later. “The Council was briefed on the results of the investigation into the 9/11 attacks” and “determined that the attacks were considered to fall under Article 5,” NATO explains on its website.
Two counterterrorism operations have been conducted under Article 5: the first, dubbed “Eagle Assist”, from October 2001 to May 2002, was to help patrol US airspace; the second, launched in October 2001, “Active Endeavour”, saw the Alliance deploy ships to the Mediterranean to detect possible terrorist activity. It ended in 2016.