To the Bastion: NATO’s Return to Europe Leaves Its Troubled Southern Flank Open for Competition

Abstract

Within a span of a few months, the involvement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region changed drastically. The turbulent withdrawal of NATO forces from Afghanistan in August 2021 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, shifted the alliance’s priorities away from NATO’s southern flank. The region to NATO’s south has always been a source for intra-alliance tensions and after a series of lackluster interventions, NATO has scaled back involvement. Those misadventures coupled with a Russian aggressive war on its borders have caused NATO to devote fewer and fewer resources to the south. Furthermore, with the recent admission of Finland to the alliance, their security concerns will only magnify the pull of the alliance’s strategic interests back to Europe. The awaited membership of Sweden will increase this effect while further exasperating conflicts among the differing national interests of the allies. Increased troop deployments to NATO’s eastern members in response to the Ukrainian War and the addition of the 800-mile Finnish border with Russia have caused the alliance’s limited resources to go north and east leaving a vacuum in the south for other powers to fill. Since 2021, the US-led alliance has had to shift from the counter-insurgency wars of Iraq and Afghanistan to great power competition with Russia and China in the east and south. This situation will push NATO to limit out-of-area operations and use other non-military means to extend influence in the south.