Tim Sayle is an assistant professor of history at the University of Toronto, the director of its International Relations Program, and the author of Enduring Alliance: A History of NATO and the Postwar Global Order. To Sayle, the war in Ukraine has effectively brought NATO back to its original purpose—even if the original enemy has a new form: to deter and protect against incursion from Moscow. The assault on Ukraine has also renewed the alliance’s goal of preventing Russia from using its military to coerce other countries to follow its dictates. And with the additions of Finland and Sweden, NATO now appears to be the only option for European countries looking to protect themselves. But with member states increasingly focused on security concerns around China and the Asia-Pacific, Sayle says, it’s an open question what role NATO will play in defense issues beyond the borders of Europe.

Timothy Sayle: I see a lot of continuity in NATO’s post–Cold War history. It was founded in 1949 as a way for the United States and its Western allies to counter the threat of Soviet encroachment into Europe. When the Cold War ended, policy-makers in NATO countries talked about the need to maintain the alliance on account of uncertainties about what post-Communist Russia would do. At the same time, Eastern European countries’ concerns about their relationship with Russia led them to look to NATO for security. Those questions across the West and into Eastern Europe explain the continuity and expansion of the alliance.

It’s had a difficult time in the post–Cold War era, in the sense that it’s been hard for its leadership to make the case outwardly for why it remains important and needs to grow. That reason has always been to hedge against Russia, which is why the invasion of Ukraine has led directly to NATO getting a major boost in public and political support, along with defense spending, across member countries.

So even though NATO has experimented with other uses or functions, it’s always really been about Russia. The purpose of countering Russia is the most important function keeping the alliance alive and vital—and the key to understanding its entire 70-year history—even through times when it wasn’t talking publicly about Russia.

Bluhm: Globally, China appears a much stronger challenger to the global order than Russia. Many countries in the Asia-Pacific region are moving closer to Washington for military protection against an aggressive posture from Beijing. In a strategic blueprint published last year, NATO leaders spoke extensively about the threats posed by China, though they didn’t make any specific commitments to action. But NATO and Japan confirmed in early May that NATO’s planning to open a coordination office in Japan next year. How do you NATO’s role developing in the Asia-Pacific—and in confronting China in particular?

The U.S. is doing the most to encourage NATO allies to think about that role in the Pacific and in relation to China. Part of that is an awareness-building exercise, so the diplomats of NATO states can understand the American position in Asia and exchange views on the issue, even if NATO as such isn’t going to take any particular action there.

At the same time, NATO and China are both in the Arctic, where they’re in closer contact than you might assume. There’s worry in NATO countries, several of which are Arctic nations, that China sees itself increasingly as an Arctic power. So in the Arctic region, it’s not a question of NATO going to Asia but of China coming to NATO borders.

Bluhm: Do you think NATO might take any action in the Asia-Pacific?

Sayle: The organization has always been a forum for allies to talk about global problems. But I wouldn’t expect NATO to start taking significant positions, let alone to do military planning, in Asia. It’s very tough to get an alliance this large based in the West to see complex problems over in Asia in the same way.

The Americans would meanwhile prefer to develop their own diplomatic arrangements and alliances for managing their interests in Asia. They don’t necessarily consider NATO to be the best way at that.

But fundamentally, NATO does play a role in U.S. calculations about the Asia-Pacific and China. Which is another example of continuity in NATO. In the late 1960s and early ‘70s, when U.S. President Richard Nixon was preparing his opening to China, he said that NATO, by ensuring Europe was peaceful and stable, allowed the United States to do what wanted to in relation to China.

So the two things are inseparable: Peace and stability in Europe, maintained through NATO, are extremely important for what happens elsewhere in the world. The limit would be NATO becoming an alliance that takes on global responsibilities for itself. That isn’t likely.

“A British ambassador to NATO during the Cold War said that every time the organization gets into trouble, the Russians come along and save it. He was referring to the Soviet-led invasions of Hungary in 1956 and of Czechoslovakia in 1968, but the same thing’s happened here. Russia’s actions in Ukraine—first when it annexed Crimea and backed pro-Russian separatists fighting the Ukrainian military in the Donbas region, and then in 2022 when it invaded full-scale—have saved NATO. They’ve gotten all member states to appreciate the most pressing, common danger they all face: war in Europe. All NATO countries now see the alliance back in its original form, as a means of keeping peace in Europe.”

“In the minds of NATO’s European members, it’s first and foremost an alliance that protects them from Russian blackmail. Nobody thought that after invading Ukraine, the Russians were going to launch an invasion of Europe. But everybody worried about what the Russians had previously done to Finland and other countries, when they rolled weapons up to their borders and said, We’d really like your policy to be this. Many think that NATO was founded in the Cold War because a hot war was imminent, but it was really founded to defend against this kind of blackmail.”

“The biggest impact of Finland and Sweden joining NATO is that it takes away other possibilities for a European security architecture. As long as those two countries were outside NATO, they could be champions and symbols of a different way to achieve security for Europe. Since the end of the Cold War, many have asked, Are there alternatives to NATO? Could the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe be strengthened? What role does neutrality have in shaping European security possibilities? The Finnish and Swedish applications mean that NATO is the only security game in town. In the global discussion about the idea of a new Cold War, this is a significant point. Two states that had avoided formal alliances during the original Cold War have now put their flags with NATO in this new iteration.”