Day 67 – Q 2. What is NATO? Discuss the role of NATO’s involvement (or the lack of it) in shaping the events in present day Europe. (10 Marks)

2. What is NATO? Discuss the role of NATO’s involvement (or the lack of it) in shaping the events in present day Europe. (10 Marks)

नाटो क्या है? वर्तमान यूरोप में घटनाओं को आकार देने में नाटो की भागीदारी (या इसकी कमी) की भूमिका पर चर्चा करें।

Approach 

Students are expected to write about the NATO in the introduction and then simply highlight how NATO’s role is shaping the European continent in current situation try to give example. 

Introduction 

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created in 1949 by the United States, Canada, and several Western European nations to provide collective security against the Soviet Union. It was the first peacetime military alliance the United States entered into outside of the Western Hemisphere.

Body

Role of NATO’s involvement in shaping the Europe:

• The United States viewed an economically strong, rearmed, and integrated Europe as vital to the prevention of communist expansion across the continent. 
• Article 5 of the treaty proclaims that an armed attack against one or more of them (NATO members) shall be considered an attack against them all this gives the security and confidence to the European countries. 
• Military cooperation, and the security it brings the development in parallel with economic and political progress.
• The threat of a Russian invasion of Ukraine has placed heightened importance on the United States’ and NATO’s defences across eastern Europe, which for decades have acted as a buffer between Russia and the West. 
• US pressure on NATO in 2008 to recognise Ukraine’s membership aspirations and its encouragement for a change of government in Ukraine in 2014, provoked the Russian annexation of Crimea and today war with Ukraine. 
• US NATO pressure may eventually led to the present crisis for example for Germany, the Nord Stream 2 (NS2) Russia-Germany gas pipeline was the cheapest recently called off.

Conclusion

Geopolitics, however, is a long game, and the larger context of the U.S.-China rivalry could, at some point in the not too distant future, reopen the question of how Russia fits into the European security order.