Is Vladimir Putin Nato's salvation?

The most powerful impression I took from chairing the opening session of Chatham House’s Security and Defence Conference this week is that Russia’s President has injected a new sense of purpose into Nato. You might bleakly call Vladimir Putin "Nato’s salvation;" he has rescued the alliance from its drift and loss of confidence—and even possibly from its lack of money.

An incursion across the sovereign boundary of Ukraine; a potential subversive recruitment of Russian-speaking people in the European Union’s eastern most members; all this dressed up in sour accusations, distortions of perceived motive and justifications for action redolent of the Cold War. Just as Nato members including the US had come to believe, drawing on the spectacle of Iraq and Afghanistan, that they might often have discretion about whether to enter a conflict, and that many conflicts were more trouble than they were worth, here comes one that may not be a conflict of choice at all. The Cold War may be back, and even its nuclear menace too.

Lots of threats, not much money—that was the familiar portrait of the predicament of the West that emerged in the discussions. Democracies spend less on defence in general than autocratic regimes or ones rich in oil (often the same thing), where the resources often flow straight out of the ground into new arms supplies, along a path studded with demands for kickbacks, bypassing the national budget entirely. The financial crisis in the west, and the setbacks in Afghanistan (where Nato led the International Security Assistance Force) and in Iraq, where the US led the invasion, have knocked big holes in defence spending.

Nato in any case has been looking strained, more than 65 years after its creation (in April 1949). In 2012, the US paid 72 per cent of its total budget, and 6 of its 28 members paid 90 per cent. The US has long griped at the easy ride it feels EU members are getting on this score—all the guaranteed protection and none of the cost. Meanwhile, it wants to “rebalance” its spending towards Asia and the threat of China’s rise, where even if the most alarming prophesies are unlikely to come good, the potential for conflict is real. Nor has it been clear what Nato should try to do, if anything, about the swarms of jihadists obliterating state boundaries in the Middle East; very likely, the consequences pose a threat to individual Nato members (including Britain), but it is unclear what course of action would help. Even if members were willing to act, that is, which collectively, they are not.

But now? In seizing Crimea—giving as one of the “justifications,” to the extent any were given, Germany’s “annexation” of East Germany during re-unification—Putin has fashioned Russia into a problem on which it is easy to focus. The threat has a name, a leader, and has generated live, bloody fighting on Europe’s eastern border. It poses a threat to Europe itself, and it is one where European leaders clearly must play a role. And though often discussed separately from the eurozone crisis, it clearly isn’t; Greece and others which may tumble out of the currency bloc are well aware of their alternative friends in the east. Russia in turn is actively courting Russian-speaking populations in the Baltics with passports, and consolidating its gas deals with Bulgaria and Germany.

Putin’s loathing of Nato (even more than of the EU) runs through his rhetoric; his argument that Russia “had” to move into Ukraine to protect Russian-speaking people from the encirclement and aggression of Nato and the EU is a staple not just of his speeches but of Russian television. That may in itself offer the grounds for a deal that “gives him an exit ramp,” in the words of western diplomats. That is, if Nato made clear that there was no possibility of Ukraine joining the alliance for the foreseeable future—and that is in any case the reality—he might feel he had secured the main prize.

In the meantime, though, European leaders are having discussion about defence which is more purposeful than for years. Leaders have a reason to argue to their voters that defence spending should not be cut further, and they may get a better hearing than for some time; the Putin threat is clear enough to puncture the war weariness and caution that was the understandable reaction to the past 14 years.

At the 2004 Nato summit in Istanbul, I and many others watched Tony Blair and George W Bush commandeer the proceedings to announce triumph in Iraq; holding their own press conference that was so much more packed with adrenaline, grand speeches and apparent sense of purpose than anything the main Nato session could muster, they made it seem as if they had little time for the alliance. If that went on, Nato would have had its day, I concluded.

Afghanistan partly retrieved the alliance’s focus. The attempts to salvage some achievements and secure stability may be only partial but they could not have been done by a single country. All the same, Nato was clearly strained by the experience and by lack of willingness to pay for it. Europe’s troubles, within and beyond its borders, are hardly welcome; they shatter the sense that Europe has reached a stable peace, its battles and crises a thing of the past. But they will reinject a sense of focus into Nato—and even possibly, inject more European money. Nato is no longer an alliance in search of a cause.