Nato members are marking the 75th anniversary of the trans-Atlantic alliance at a summit in Washington D.C. at which Ukraine, Russia and the existential future of the organisation are expected to loom large.
The anniversary is undoubtedly a significant diplomatic milestone, Stephen M. Walt, professor of international relations at Harvard University, wrote for Foreign Policy, but look beyond the "love fest" and it's clear "the Western military alliance is finally approaching a precipice".
Since Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Nato has scrambled to present a united front against Russian aggression.
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Its member states have plied Kyiv with weapons and punished Russia with the mostsevere economic sanctionsever imposed on a major economy. But they have wavered on Ukraine's bid to join the alliance and remain divided overfurther financial and military supportfor thebattered country.
Nato member states agreed last week to commit an additional $42 billion (£33.8 billion) to military aid for Ukraine in 2025, but in another sign that patience with the conflict may be running low, outgoing Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg's original request for a multi-year aid plan was rejected. Stoltenberg had to be content with a "provision to re-evaluate allied contributions at future Nato summits", Reuters reported.
Nato's military power
A mutual assistance clause sits at the heart of the security alliance, which was formed in 1949 with the aim of countering the risk of a Soviet attack on allied territory. Article 5 of Nato's Washington Treaty says that an attack on one ally is considered an attack on all member states – which presents an obstacle for Ukraine's membership while it remains at war with Russia.
A Nato pledge asks members to spend 2% of gross domestic product on defence. Though less than a third of members meet this target,Stoltenberghas said it is "increasingly considered a floor, not a ceiling".
Nato's biggest player, the US, spendsalmost as muchon defenceasthe next 10 spenders in the world combined. Its total in2023was about $916 billion, according toStatista– nearly 40% of the total military spending worldwide that year. The UK sits in sixth place, with spending of$79.4 billion (£62 billion).
The US boasts a powerful arsenal and a huge amount of manpower. According to Statista figures, it has1.31million active troops, beaten only by India and China. As of last March, Nato had about3.39million active military personnel, again according toStatista,compared to 1.32 million for Russia.
Nato's resources have been bolstered by the accession of two new member states since the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine: Finland, which joined in April 2023, and Sweden, which was admitted in March after a two-year struggle to overcome vetos from Hungary and Turkey.
Sweden in particular has "a large defence industry and an advanced military" and since the Russian invasion of Ukraine its government "has more than doubled defence spending and is on course to spend a little over 2% of GDP on the military this year", said the United States Institute for Peace think-tank. However, the biggest contribution the two new members bring to the table is "geostrategic", their location shoring up the alliance's exposed northeastern flank and shielding the Baltic states, regarded as most vulnerable to future Russian aggression.
Russia's military power
Despite Russian forces' well-publicised struggles, their overall military capability is considerable. The country went from the fifth largest defence spender in the world in 2021 to the third in 2022 (behind the US and China), with a jump of more than £20 billion.
It has1.32million active military personnel, according to Statista, but only about4,814military aircraft compared with Nato's combined22,308, and781military ships compared to Nato's2,258. And although Russia does outnumber Nato for tanks (14,777 to 11,390), in terms of armoured vehicles overall its stock of 161,382 is dwarfed by Nato's 849,801.
The two forces are evenly matched in terms of known nuclear capability, with the Nato nuclear powers – the US, the UK and France – able to field 5,759 nuclear warheads to Russia's 5,889.
Many experts believe the country's military effectiveness was dented by the disbanding of the Wagner Group afterits abortive mutinylast year.In the aftermath, the UK Ministry of Defence intelligence update reported that it could take Russia "up to 10 years to restore its military capabilities to their former strength".
But "signs of Russian vulnerability offer no grounds for Western complacency", according to a research paper published by policy institute Chatham House. The bloody conflict in Ukraine "has shown it can absorb losses and maintain tactical-operational credibility despite strategic failures".
How likely is a war between Nato and Russia?
Despite his bellicose rhetoric, there is little serious appetite for escalating the hostilities from Putin, who knows a Russia-Nato conflict would be "political and military suicide", saidThe Guardian's foreign affairs commentator, Simon Tisdall, last summer.
The lukewarm response to Ukraine's quest to join Nato makes it clear where members stand on the prospect of direct conflict with Russia, too, said The Telegraph. Nato "would effectively be at war with Russia from the moment of Ukrainian accession", which has now been put off to some as-yet-vague point "after the war".
There is also the question of how Nato's untested "mutual assistance" agreement would play out in the event of an attack by Russia on a member state. The partnership is "heavily dependent on the United States acting as first responder", Walt wrote for Foreign Policy, and "there are powerful structural forces gradually pulling Europe and the United States apart".
"The most obvious source of strain is the shifting distribution of world power" since Nato's founding in 1949 in response to what seemed like a very real threat of Soviet world domination. Now, "the idea that the Russian army is going to launch a blitzkrieg into Poland and drive to the English Channel is laughable". That's good news, in one sense, but it also means that Europe "no longer occupies pride of place among US strategic interests", and member states are all too conscious that no one represents this weakening of the trans-Atlantic alliance better than Donald Trump, whose re-election in November appears an increasingly serious prospect.
Last month, "allies decided that Nato would assume a greater role in co-ordinating arms supplies to Ukraine, taking over from the United States", said Reuters, in what was widely seen as an attempt to "safeguard the process" in the event of a second term for "Nato-sceptic" Trump.
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