In the years after World War II, twelve countries in North America and Europe got together to form an alliance. This alliance, known as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, would build up the collective military and security strength of every country involved - so an attack on one country would mean an attack on them all. How does a security alliance between dozens of countries with different governments, interests, and military power, even work? What role does NATO play in international war and peace today?
Helping us answer those questions are Marla Keenan, an adjunct senior fellow at the Stimson Center, focusing on international security, including human rights in armed conflict, and the protection of civilians, and Rachel Rizzo, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center whose research focuses on European security, NATO, and the transatlantic relationship.
The war room in Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
A council meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:00] Every time in a movie that I see groups put aside differences to just all commit to the same goal. It is truly heartwarming for me. Like it does something chemical in my brain.
Nick Capodice: [00:00:14] Like like what kind of scene?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:15] Like in Lord of the Rings. Why...don't you do it!
Nick Capodice: [00:00:21] I'm sorry. Everyone out there. I don't like Lord of the Rings. And maybe this is going to end my career. It's Civics one one. But I just don't like those movies.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:28] All of the good and decent creatures of the world banding together to fight a singular evil, including trees. It would mean the destruction. Yeah. Of life.
Nick Capodice: [00:00:39] You like that part when everybody comes together from all these different places to battle this big, evil force and then go back to their own lands to probably fight each other in another 50 years. Well, including ghosts. Including ghosts that come out of a cave.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:53] Yeah, I like it all. Because guess what? The epic gathering of armies from across lands is not just a fantasy. In fact, the United States is one of 30 countries that have all sworn to stand together in the face of an attack and an intergovernmental security alliance stretching from North America to Europe.
Nick Capodice: [00:01:18] You're listening to Civics 101. I'm Nick Capodice.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:21] I'm Hannah McCarthy. And today we are going to talk about one of the most powerful defensive alliances in the world.
Archival Audio: [00:01:28] The North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Nick Capodice: [00:01:32] More powerful than ghosts in a cave.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:34] I'm not even convinced you've seen the.
Nick Capodice: [00:01:37] Kings in the hole in the cave. And they come and he's like, Please, Joe. Okay, fine. And they just kill everyone. You bow to no one.
Archival Audio: [00:01:47] We are moving into an era in which that physical forces cast a pall over our world. It kept the peace of Europe and the Atlantic through 12 dangerous years like these have always kept NATO's forces prepared for a possible attack. And tonight, the threat from Russian President Vladimir Putin may be the most tenuous moment for NATO's in decades.
Archival Audio: [00:02:09] An armed attack against one or more of the allies in Europe or in North America shall be considered an attack against them all.
Marla Keenan: [00:02:20] Yes. So NATO is a security alliance. It's the Transatlantic Security Alliance that's composed of 30 member countries, including the United States. My name is Marla Keenan. I'm an adjunct senior fellow at the Stimson Center, and I've been working with an on NATO issues since 2007. So my primary focus is on the protection of civilians and armed conflict.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:45] We're going to go back to a time when the United States was really entering the world stage in a different way as a different kind of power. And that would be the end of World War Two. 52 countries came together to create the United Nations to maintain peace and prevent another world war.
Archival Audio: [00:03:04] The untold destruction that has been wrought. Nor can we forget how close our whole civilization has come to utter ruin.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:17] The countries that joined the United Nations agreed to several key things.
Archival Audio: [00:03:22] This member of the United Nations is under solemn obligation to maintain international peace and security. Each is bound to settle international disputes by peaceful means, to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territory or independence of any country, and to support the United Nations in any action it takes to preserve the peace.
Marla Keenan: [00:03:48] Any country in the world can respond to a threat upon its people or its land. It's called the inherent right to self defense. But if there are other things happening, for example, it's quite helpful to have the United Nations who can get together and make a collective decision about what needs to happen and what type of operations there need to be. So for example, the UN will often mandate a peacekeeping mission in a country that's either requested or isn't capable of providing security for its own population.
Nick Capodice: [00:04:24] Basically, the U.N. says that you shouldn't use force unless it's to defend yourself. And if you need help doing that, the U.N. gives other countries the ability to help. So what I want to know is if we have the UN, why also have NATO's how are they different?
Marla Keenan: [00:04:41] NATO is a security organization, so it is focused specifically on securing the citizens and the space of Europe. Right. So a kind of different approach to global order versus like very protection, free and very security focused on a specific area of land and people.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:00] Even though 52 countries originally signed on to the UN Charter, there were still disputes. And in the years after World War Two there was one country in particular that was making everyone else kind of nervous.
Archival Audio: [00:05:14] Russia had swallowed up eight European countries without firing another shot other than those of the execution squads.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:22] Now, the United Nations is primarily a peacekeeping organization, as we've said. But as the Soviet Union continued to spread its power, some nations decided, you know what, maybe we need to escalate this a little bit. And the United States, which had an extremely powerful military and the advantage of being separated by the ocean, was well positioned to take the lead. President Truman had also made it U.S. policy to prevent the spread of Soviet power and a little thing called the Truman Doctrine.
Nick Capodice: [00:05:54] Right. This is the U.S. basically calling out the Soviet Union and saying if anyone else feels threatened by the Soviet Union, we, the United States are going to help.
Archival Audio: [00:06:04] I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:06:18] And in Europe especially, this threat of expansion was sometimes right at the border. So eventually the United States and 11 other countries got together and said, we're going to form an alliance that will help make us all better prepared to defend against an attack. The 12 countries were for anyone who's interested Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Marla Keenan: [00:06:45] NATO provided sort of that first bulwark protection against the Soviet Union and any security operations that they might run. So, for example, it gave us the ability to to have not the US be the front line, but for the European allies to be strengthened by the US's support and also for the European allies to help support the United States.
Rachel Rizzo: [00:07:10] The Washington treaty was signed in Washington, D.C. in 1949, and it's basically the founding document that the entire NATO alliance is built. Upon. So my name is Rachel Rizzo, and I am a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Europe Center, where I focus on the US European security relationship, NATO Germany and trans schism more broadly.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:35] Quick note here, you'll hear the word ally throughout this episode. When we say ally, we mean a country that is part of NATO. At the signing of the treaty in 1949, President Truman emphasized the geographical importance of NATO.
Archival Audio: [00:07:51] In this treaty, we seek to establish freedom from aggression and from the use of force in the North Atlantic community. This is the area which has been at the heart of the last two world conflicts.
Nick Capodice: [00:08:03] It's one thing to say we are all in alliance, but what does the treaty actually say?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:08:10] Okay, the treaty has 14 articles that lay out how the alliance will work.
Rachel Rizzo: [00:08:15] And they cover a whole array of topics. So, for example, Article two discusses how NATO's members will contribute toward the development of peaceful and friendly international relations by strengthening their free institutions, by promoting conditions of stability and well being, trying to eliminate conflict in their international economic policies and encouraging economic collaboration. Article three talks about how members will actually achieve the objectives of the Washington treaty and says that the members will maintain and develop their individual and collective capacity to resist armed attack. So basically, as we understand it today, spend enough on defense to maintain a credible military and contribute to the mutual defense of all alliance members, which now are 30. So and then it talks a little bit about how countries can both join and leave the alliance. So while the treaty isn't long, it is pretty comprehensive.
Nick Capodice: [00:09:17] So allies have to agree to spend a certain amount of money on their own military.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:21] Yeah, because it's not really fair to be part of an alliance if you're not actually contributing to that alliance. Right. Otherwise, you're just kind of a hanger on, like, you know, those stories of various species who live together because they get something from one another like that smaller fish that hangs out with sharks and like cleans their teeth. So it's like one of those examples of those wonderful symbiotic relationships of nature.
Nick Capodice: [00:09:46] Yeah. Like the CNN Army and the clownfish.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:48] Yeah, exactly. Basically, what I'm saying is that being a part of this alliance means that a country is contributing in some way to the goal of that alliance by building up its own security. And lately, there's been an increased focus on the amount of money allies are actually contributing.
Rachel Rizzo: [00:10:06] Part of Article three, you know, it says that the members will maintain and develop their collective capacity to resist armed attack, which means maintaining a credible military. This is why in the last few years, but actually for decades, we've talked about defense spending, how much European allies are spending on defense. So if you remember during the Trump administration, there was a lot of focus on how European members of the NATO alliance weren't meeting their defense spending goals. And those goals are to spend 2% of their GDP on defense by the year 2024. And for years, allies have been measuring their their movement towards that goal. And in the last few years, there has been an increased number of allies who are now credibly going towards 2%.
Nick Capodice: [00:11:07] Why is how much money a NATO's ally spends on defense such a big deal now when NATO's been around for decades?
Rachel Rizzo: [00:11:15] It wasn't because of the the harsh rhetoric of the past president. It was actually spurred by the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:11:28] In 2014, Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed the peninsula of Crimea.
Archival Audio: [00:11:34] The moment Russian troops smashed their way into Ukraine's Crimea air base backed by armored vehicles, gunfire and stun grenades. Special Forces supported by pro-Russian militia.
Rachel Rizzo: [00:11:47] Which is really when we saw multiple allies start turning around, years of defense spending decreases and actually start paying attention to how they were spending and what they were spending it on.
Nick Capodice: [00:11:58] Can I just clarify something? Yeah. Does NATO have its own military? Like, are there NATO, tanks and NATO planes lying around?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:12:06] No, no, no. So Rachel says that this is a common misconception.
Rachel Rizzo: [00:12:09] NATO doesn't have troops under its own command. I think that's really important to remember. There's not a head, you know, NATO, General, that. Has a whole army at their disposal, right? This is because it's a collective alliance. Everyone contributes basically their military, their assets as they see fit. And NATO also doesn't really own that much military equipment itself. It owns some airborne warning and control systems, aircraft and patrol aircraft. But it's not like there are a bunch of NATO's planes sitting in Brussels ready to be deployed.
Nick Capodice: [00:12:50] Okay. So you've got 30 different countries with different sized militaries, different governments, different interests, but they're all in agreement about this one thing. They are in agreement about defending the collective group from an attack. So if there is no central military, how do they do that?
Rachel Rizzo: [00:13:10] I think the most important thing is this idea of consensus and the fact that the reason that NATO is strong is because it's decisions are made. With every single ally at the table. It forces compromise. It forces conversations. Allies who might come to the table with different ideas or security concerns have to find common denominator with their fellow NATO allies, and NATO isn't led by any one country. I think that there's this misconception that just because the United States is militarily, economically the most powerful ally in NATO, that it somehow has a greater say in NATO's decision making than other countries. And while it does hold great sway, its role isn't any more important, at least in my mind, than the 29 other members because of the importance of consensus building.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:14:20] This is Marla Keenan again.
Marla Keenan: [00:14:22] Yeah. So it's less about NATO doing for the specific country as it is the the collective contribution that NATO allies make to the alliance then creates more security for all of the allies. Right. So, you know, it's difficult to think about it in terms of like, well, the US contributes X, Y and Z, and that means that they deserve A, B and C. It doesn't really work that way. It's contributions to the alliance and not to specific countries.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:14:56] NATO headquarters themselves are in Brussels, Belgium, and each ally of NATO has an ambassador, a representative and supporting staff. More than 4000 people work at NATO headquarters and there are NATO outposts around the world.
Marla Keenan: [00:15:12] There's also an international staff that is sort of the if you think of it as sort of the secretariat of all of the allies. So there is a secretary general. The current secretary general is a gentleman from Norway named Jens Stoltenberg, and he basically serves a four year term and he's the chief administrator and the international envoy for NATO, but he's representing NATO, the large umbrella and not his country. So his country, Norway, will also have a permanent mission that does the work on behalf of the country.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:15:50] NATO has something called the North Atlantic Council, which includes the Secretary General and the permanent representatives of each country. The North Atlantic Council is the decision making body of NATO.
Nick Capodice: [00:16:03] So let's say that one country is under threat. How do we get from a country that needs help to an actual response from NATO's allies?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:16:11] That gets us into how the North Atlantic Council works and the two biggest parts of the Washington treaty that we haven't talked about yet. Articles four and five. These two articles lay out how NATO responds to a threat, and we'll get into that right after this break.
Nick Capodice: [00:16:27] But first, if there are any listeners out there who just can't get enough civics, you should know that we have a fun biweekly newsletter. It's called Extra Credit. It's free, it's full of fun stuff. And you can sign up at our website Civics on one podcast dot org.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:16:43] So, Nick, I want to talk about a movie you love. There's this scene in Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Stanley Kubrick's satirical film about the Cold War, where there are a bunch of politicians gathered in a giant underground room known as the War Room that has a huge round table.
Archival Audio: [00:17:02] Gentlemen, you can fight in here. This is the war room.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:17:04] Now, NATO's headquarters might not be in an underground bunker, but the place where allies meet looks a lot like the war room of Dr. Strangelove. I want you to picture a giant round table so big that each person has a microphone at their seat so that everyone at the table can hear them.
Nick Capodice: [00:17:22] Like a massive, extremely tense Thanksgiving dinner.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:17:26] Yeah, exactly. Because the way that NATO actually works on a logistical level depends on every single ally having a seat at the table, literally and figuratively. We've talked about how NATO was formed. Now let's get into how it looks in action. We'll start with Article four of the Washington Treaty.
Rachel Rizzo: [00:17:46] Article four is based on consultations.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:17:48] This is Rachel Rizzo.
Rachel Rizzo: [00:17:49] It says that NATO's members can consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the parties are threatened. These aren't invoked very often. In fact, every decision that NATO makes has to be made at the level of the North Atlantic Council, which is the highest decision making body within the alliance. If one ally decides to say no, then the decision isn't made.
Nick Capodice: [00:18:20] Frankly, I'm curious about how often that consensus has been reached, but I'm also wondering what happens if everyone can't agree or if a situation needs to be addressed quickly and it's taking too long for everyone to get on the same page.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:18:34] Okay, let's start there. Marla says that if all 30 allies don't reach a consensus or they can't reach a consensus quickly enough, some of the allies can still work together. One example she talks about was in Libya in 2011 when civil war broke out and the Libyan government began attacking civilians.
Archival Audio: [00:18:56] Gaddafi remains defiant. He gathered supporters, including women and children, around his compound and other key targets, essentially forming a human shield.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:19:07] The U.N. called for a cease fire and gave foreign governments permission to enforce that cease fire in order to protect civilians.
Marla Keenan: [00:19:16] And so that kind of gave the international blessing for there to be an operation there. The interesting part was that NATO could not come to an agreement quick enough to deploy. And so what happened is a few of the allies, including the US, decided to do sort of a smaller coalition of the willing until NATO's could then get to its decision making mechanism where it then did engage in that conflict. So there are different ways to kind of work around. But in the end, if NATO's is going to commit itself, it has to be all 30 countries. Now, that doesn't mean that all 30 countries have to be in the actual operations. It just means that that decision has to be made together.
Nick Capodice: [00:20:00] How often does that happen?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:20:02] Article four has been invoked seven times in NATO's history.
Rachel Rizzo: [00:20:05] So the last time we saw an article for consultation was actually last month in light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, when the Baltic states decided to call for Article four consultations at the North Atlantic Council.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:20:21] We're taping this episode in April 2022, in the second month of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Archival Audio: [00:20:26] Vladimir Putin finishing this speech, essentially declaring war on Ukraine. We heard the sound of explosion.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:20:35] As Rachel said earlier, NATO considers Russia a big threat and Russia similarly considers NATO a big threat.
Marla Keenan: [00:20:42] So I'm going to read Article four for you. The parties will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the parties is threatened. So here, when they're talking about parties, they're talking about allies. And so some of the Baltic states got together and said, hey, we think we need to talk about this because this is obviously very close. Poland, for example, is an ally. And when we're talking about attacks happening in Lviv, that is literally right over the border from Poland. So it was incredibly important that they got together and they pulled this meeting together very quickly. And it kind of started the discussion about the crisis in Ukraine. People talk, especially in the last month or so, about enhanced forward presence. And basically after Russia invaded Crimea illegally in 2014, NATO's allies realized that they really needed to step up deterrence in the eastern part of the alliance. So Poland, Latvia. Estonia and Lithuania all are home to multinational battalions that are on a rotational, persistent, rotational basis that are meant as a tripwire deterrence measure to help protect the NATO's eastern flank. And in light of Russia's invasion of Ukraine over the last month, they are increasing not only their presence in these four multinational battalions, but also allied presence in places like Romania and Bulgaria and Slovakia to to reassure allies that are in the southeast region of the alliance.
Nick Capodice: [00:22:20] But Ukraine is not an ally of NATO, and that's something that's come up a lot lately in the news. Ukraine has wanted to become an ally of NATO, but Russia doesn't really want that to happen.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:22:30] Yeah, so we've said that an ally is a country that is part of NATO, right? There are also partners that aren't part of the NATO alliance, but share interests or in the case of Ukraine, really want to be part of the alliance.
Nick Capodice: [00:22:47] All right. But what is the specific difference between a partner and an ally?
Rachel Rizzo: [00:22:51] The big difference here is that NATO allies are bound together by the Washington treaty. They are obligated by treaty to defend one another. A partner isn't a partner doesn't have that same security. But there are significant partners that the the alliance has around the world.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:23:15] So partners of NATO can be individual countries or even other multi-country alliances.
Rachel Rizzo: [00:23:22] There's the Mediterranean dialog that has partners around the Mediterranean. There's the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative. There's also the Enhanced Opportunity Partnership Program that has six members of it, including Sweden and Finland and Ukraine.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:23:39] And countries like Sweden and Finland have shown interest in joining NATO. In fact, by the time you hear this episode, the makeup of NATO may be different.
Nick Capodice: [00:23:46] And Rachel also mentioned Ukraine, which makes me think about the fact that Russia has been engaging in the kind of warfare that spurred the creation of NATO in the first place spreading into nearby European territory by force.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:23:59] But because Ukraine is not an ally, to partner NATO as an alliance is not obliged to directly defend Ukraine. As of right now, NATO has been focused on keeping the invasion contained in Ukraine.
Nick Capodice: [00:24:13] But NATO countries can still provide assistance to Ukraine without having to wait for NATO's consensus.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:24:18] Yes, the US, for example, has been sending military support directly into the country. Like Marshall said, a country that is part of NATO can still act independently of NATO so long as it is abiding by the charter set out by the United Nations.
Nick Capodice: [00:24:34] All right. So Article four is about all the NATO allies getting together around the big table to try to agree on how to respond to a security threat. So what happens when everyone agrees that one ally has been attacked and the whole alliance should act?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:24:50] This is Article five. Think of it like in The Lord of the Rings. Yeah, I'm going there again, Nick. When Pippin lights the when Pippin lights the fire beacons and Gondor and all those men on those mountaintops across middle earth rushed to light their fire beacons until the fires reached Rohan.
Nick Capodice: [00:25:10] Couldn't Gandalf have just let them all with his staff? Anyway, I'm not going to get there.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:25:14] You just.
Nick Capodice: [00:25:14] That's in the same vein as if the eagle could have carried the ring to Mount Doom.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:25:17] We've been over the eagle thing.
Nick Capodice: [00:25:20] What's Article five?
Rachel Rizzo: [00:25:22] This is the big one. This is why countries seek to join it. States that the parties, meaning the allies, agreed that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America is considered an attack against them all, and that if any sort of attack like this occurs, each ally will assist the party attacked individually and in concert with the other parties. Such actions that are deemed necessary. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean that allies are going to go to war for other allies. It doesn't explicitly state that it says that they will take actions that are deemed necessary. But by and large, this is understood as meaning they will defend an ally that is attacked. Now, the only time that Article five has ever been invoked in the alliance's 73 year history was on September 12, 2001. After the September 11th attacks.
Archival Audio: [00:26:27] The United States NATO allies stand ready to provide the assistance that may be required as a consequence of these acts of barbarism.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:26:37] In 2001, there were 19 members of NATO.
Rachel Rizzo: [00:26:40] So as I mentioned before, all of these decisions are made at consensus. Every ally has to agree. The day after the United States was attacked, you had all allies, all agree that this was an attack that was eligible under Article five.
Nick Capodice: [00:26:56] So once all the NATO's allies agreed that, yes, this was an attack on one of us and therefore an attack on all of us, what happened next?
Rachel Rizzo: [00:27:05] There were eight official actions that were taken by NATO in response to the 911 attacks. I think it's probably too in-depth to go into, but one of them was Operation Eagle Assist, which is where patrol aircrafts flew over the skies of the United States from October of 2001 to around May of 2002. And then there was Operation Active Endeavor, which was a naval operation in the Mediterranean, basically designed to prevent movement of terrorists or weapons of mass destruction. But again, each of the countries makes their own decision. NATO does not influence what a country decides to do. They can have those collective discussions which can help them form. It's like if they no one country is really focused on providing medical aid, maybe that's not the best thing for all 30 countries to be doing because these other countries are already covering it.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:27:56] Marla, for example, works for an organization that focuses on NATO's approach to civilian protection.
Marla Keenan: [00:28:02] When we started working there in Afghanistan in 2007, what we were seeing at the time was that there were a lot of civilians that were being harmed, either accidentally or incidentally, by the by the US and the NATO's mission. Right. So we went to them and we said, hey, this is really not going to play well for you in a counterinsurgency operation. So you kind of need to get a hand on what's going on. And from there, the discussions just kind of unfolded. You know, for them, I think in that mission, protection of civilians was very much about not harming civilians with your own operations.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:28:40] Marla said that NATO's policy for civilian protection is one example of how NATO's has evolved over time.
Marla Keenan: [00:28:47] I think now that we're focusing on Ukraine, I've been really fascinated to hear how many people, especially President Zelenskyy, has made some really incredible comments about how important the people are with regard to the property, right? So like the people of a country are what make up a country and therefore protecting those people is even more important in his I heard a quote from him the other day that said, If my people aren't here, then what good does it do if we have all of our land?
Nick Capodice: [00:29:16] I'm curious about how else NATO's has evolved since its founding.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:29:20] When we think about the leadership of NATO's, there's no one person in charge. The North Atlantic Council is the governing body that oversees it all. But again, there isn't any one type of government or one leader who is setting the policy agenda.
Rachel Rizzo: [00:29:34] Obviously, threat perceptions are different among all allies, so national interests differ. But when it comes to the defense of. A Euro-Atlantic area. It is every ally for every ally. But as as time goes on the not it's not just threat perceptions of European countries that start to differ. It's actual internal political systems that have started to differ. So we're seeing allies, for example, Turkey or Hungary, take actions and create systems within government and society that may not fall in the definition of the democratic values that NATO seeks to defend. Right. So in that sense, it gets a little bit tricky because, yes, it's a defensive military alliance. But then the question becomes, what are we defending? Are we defending every ally from an armed attack? Yes. But are we also defending attacks on democratic values? And how does that and how is that even defined? So if it's not something that all allies can agree on, what happens? Does the mutual defense clause become meaningless? Is it rendered less effective? And so I think NATO's going forward is starting to think a lot about how to still work effectively together with the reality that systems and societies are continually changing and evolving.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:31:15] And as far as what that means for us?
Marla Keenan: [00:31:17] I also think that Americans need to understand that national security depends on strength and partnerships of other countries as well. We may be the strongest military in the world, but we cannot go any of this alone.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:31:35] When we say that alliances against forces of destruction are real and that's probably a good thing, we also have to acknowledge that they are an absolute necessity, meaning that relationships and consensus and compromise are also a necessity.
