THE PATH FROM “NATO 1.0” TO “NATO 3.0”. THE UKRAINIAN CONTEXT

At this year’s Munich Security Conference, US Deputy Secretary of Defense for Policy [1] Elbridge Colby delivered a so called keynote speech. He pointed out that the US administration is striving to create “NATO 3.0”,  which will entail  Europe’s “more equal” responsibility for its own  defense.

The speech sparked considerable debate among experts on the following topics: what does version “3.0” represent, when and what was the previous “2.0”,  why and how do they differ from “1.0,” i.e., the original format of the Alliance?

Let’s try to understand the rhetoric of high-ranking officials, behind which important transformational processes are hidden. We should also understand what is actually happening in the international organization whose membership we are seeking.

Let’s start with history. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was formed in 1949 for one reason: the inability of the UN to ensure peace on the planet. The post-war world at that time was unstable: the threat of revanchism in Germany remained serious; the USSR began to erect an “iron curtain” [2] with the West; In February 1948, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia carried out a coup d’état with Moscow’s support; in the spring of that year, Soviet troops blocked railways and roads to the western sectors of Berlin, which were under the control of the USA, Great Britain, and France. The USSR, in its traditional manner, sought to dictate terms and vetoed UN Security Council resolutions. Incidentally, Putin’s rhetoric that the root causes of the war should be eliminated [3] should not only refer to the “threat” of NATO’s eastward expansion, but also to the origins of the problem, i.e., why, when, and by whom such threats were created.

The complex security situation forced a number of countries in the late 1940s to seek options for building a new European security architecture. The beginning of the formation of a new defense alliance on the continent was marked by a meeting on March 4, 1948, in Brussels between representatives of Belgium, Great Britain, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and France. It was there that the Anglo-French proposal to develop a mutual assistance treaty was first discussed. On March 17, 1948, the Brussels Treaty was signed to jointly counter possible aggression from Germany and the USSR.

At the very first meetings of the heads of the defense ministries of the allied states, it was recognized that the available military resources were insufficient for defense, and it was concluded that assistance from the United States was necessary. At that time, the idea arose to expand the Western defense alliance to include the United States and Canada, thereby creating a common defense system in the Euro-Atlantic region.

In April 1948, Ministers of Foreign Affairs  of France and Great Britain submitted relevant proposals to the White House, and on June 11, 1948, the US Senate passed a resolution allowing the government to conclude peacetime alliance treaties with other states outside the American continent. The idea of creating a common defense system moved into the practical realm.

NATO was established on April 4, 1949, in Washington as a military-political alliance uniting the states of North America and Europe. Its goals are to ensure collective security and protect shared values. The fundamental principle is the indivisibility of the security of Europe and North America, the commonality of views of member states on values and interests, and commitment to the preservation of democratic principles. The concept of the newly formed international organization was outlined in the early 1950s by its first Secretary General, Lord Hastings Ismay: “Keep the Russians out, the Americans in, the Germans down” [4].

During the Organization’s existence, the number of its members has increased from the initial 12 to 32 countries. None of them sought to attack the USSR, but rather to ensure their own security by saving their own resources, hiding under the “umbrella” of NATO.

But it is important to note that almost 80 years ago, Europe was primarily responsible for its own security. It was the Anglo-French proposal that became the basis for the creation of NATO in its current form. The project, which eventually brought together more than three dozen countries, was launched by a military-political alliance between Belgium, Great Britain, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and France. The basis for this decision was the awareness of the real threat posed by the USSR, the truly aggressive and defiant behavior on the European continent of the “victorious power” in World War II. This is about the origins and root causes of the problem, as brazenly distorted by Putin’s regime.

After many decades, almost nothing has changed. The logic of the Cold War has been revived, the issue of European security has become topical again, and the initiative of France and Great Britain from April 1948 has returned to its roots.

At the center of today’s discussion is the question: how should the rules and priorities be “rewritten,” how should the European security architecture be “rebuilt,” and most importantly, what should the new security model look like?

The United States was one of the first to understand that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, like many other international institutions, needs a radical reboot. The alliance is important, but the issue of unity is now presented as a restoration of manageability, which changes the very form of relations with an emphasis on the sovereignty of states and their control over their own policies (migration, borders, etc.). Unity is seen as a worldview need for the reorganization of the security architecture.

This understanding finally took shape, it seems, not after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which, according to Elbridge Colby’s conclusion, led to the transition to “NATO 2.0.” The “tipping point” was the start of Russia’s large-scale war against Ukraine.

On October 20, 2023, Joe Biden delivered a historic speech that was immediately dubbed the “Fulton speech” [5]. He equated Putin’s “Russian empire” with Hamas terrorists, defining them as global challenges to the survival of civilization. This Churchillian-style speech symbolically put an end to the existing security system and opened a new era for the creation of a new one. The bipolar system began to be replaced by a multipolar one, and “NATO 1.0” was being prepared for replacement with version “2.0”.

Washington finally recognized (for the first time) that the old security formats did not meet modern challenges, that NATO and the West had “missed” the new threats posed by the imperial ambitions of Russia, China, and their satellites, continuing to enjoy, so to speak, the fruits of a peaceful, quiet life. The security environment required a reboot of the system. In the renewed Alliance, other institutions capable of adequately responding to new civilizational threats were to play a key role.

In particular, there was talk of creating mini-alliances similar to the AUKUS military bloc formed in 2021 [6] to deter potential Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific region. There was also a vision of the need to project mini-alliances onto Europe, to create alliances between countries that share a common vision of security and existing threats, and to form a so-called “New Europe Bloc”.  It was predicted that similar alliances would also be formed in Asia, Africa, and South America. In the context of Ukrainian security interests, the creation of an Eastern European union with the participation of Great Britain was predicted. A new world of multi-blocism was emerging.

The “NATO 3.0” version appeared in American offices relatively recently. Its outlines, sketched out in the Pentagon and voiced by Elbridge Colby, provide an understanding of the modification of the previous model of the Alliance. The essence of the innovation is simple, it has clear historical origins and is caused by the unlearned lessons of the past. As already mentioned, the Anglo-French initiative of 1948 to conclude a mutual assistance treaty was prompted by an awareness of the real threats facing Europe. The same is true today, only with a certain scaling up of the security project.

The renewed NATO will most likely become a network structure – a series of military-security mini-alliances in Europe, states united by the principle of awareness of common threats and understanding of the need to counter them jointly. Obviously, one of the main principles of unification will be territorial proximity and shared borders, which traditionally combine logistics, economies, and resources. In a network structure, the question of coordinating security policies will arise, and this is where the United States of America sees its place, as it traditionally seeks to influence and manage processes without spending significant funds on them.

At the Munich Security Conference,  President of Finland Alexander Stubb spoke about the distribution of “new roles” mentioned above: Washington’s priorities are now, first, the Western Hemisphere; second, the Indo-Pacific region; and third, Europe. US Secretaries of State Marco Rubio and Elbridge Colby also sent unambiguous messages that Europe should restore the values of Western civilization and ensure “more equal” responsibility for its defense.

It is alarming that Donald Trump’s administration has recently been seeking to return NATO to its “factory settings” and reduce NATO’s activities “outside the US area of responsibility” (primarily Iraq and Kosovo). The USA continues to play the role of “system administrator”,  pressuring allies not to invite Ukraine and Alliance partners in the Indo-Pacific region (Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and South Korea) to the main official meetings of the July NATO summit in Ankara (obviously so as not to irritate Russia and China) [7]. “The USA is still committed to European security, but not every mission can be a top priority,” Elbridge Colby told Alliance Defense Ministers. The transatlantic rift continues to grow. A report by the US Institute for the Study of War states that Russia remains committed to its original military goals, which include the collapse of NATO.

But there is a certain positive aspect to these new realities. Europe is receiving powerful “pushes” to change its “attitude” and is taking tentative, though not yet decisive, steps forward. It is finally waking up from its sweet and safe slumber, realizing what is happening. Work is in full swing in the offices of major European capitals. The discourse is centered on building new structures, institutionalizing spending, strengthening military production, and increasing capital investment in the security sector.

The Alliance’s new network structure, in the form of interconnected military-security mini-alliances in Europe, is an unconventional and seemingly effective solution to the problem. The absence of a single center and vertical management structure “blurs the target” for any aggressor and significantly complicates its plans to destroy the system from within.

Against this background, Ukraine faces an important prospect, while at the same time a new “window of opportunity” is opening up for it to position itself in the new world. War is not only about terrible losses, bloodshed, and destruction; it is also an opportunity to transform our country into an important and key player in the new security structures.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine, military experts, manufacturers, volunteers, non-governmental organizations, and others are currently writing a textbook for “NATO 3.0” about a new type of global conflict and technologies for confronting a more powerful adversary that possesses superior economic and human resources and nuclear weapons. We have something to offer our Western partners. And this is not only military technology tested in the wars of the 21st century, not only the widespread use of all types of drones, electronic warfare, smart navigation and communication systems, and much more. A separate section in textbooks will cover non-standard military strategy and tactics for conducting combat operations against an enemy superior in all spheres of combat, as well as in areas that are not clearly defined on the map by lines, territories, spatial boundaries, time, or other dimensions. This refers to a blurred, hybridized arena of confrontation where traditional means of warfare are irrelevant.

Ukraine is already capable of providing the West with a new vision of defense strategy in a hybrid war that is still unclear and unexplored by its partners. Without our state as a key player in the regional security system and an outpost on the eastern security and defense flank of a reformatted Europe, it is impossible to build a new secure world that will rise from the ruins of the alliances and institutions that existed before February 24, 2022.

Currently, we are faced with the urgent task of not only studying the formats and current standards of “NATO 1.0” that we have to implement. We need to engage in a mature dialogue with key partners on the joint development of new rules, flexible procedures, and, if necessary, certain standards that will be effective in the conditions of modern warfare.

We must finally understand which version of NATO we want to participate in. We need to take more initiative and participate directly in the formation of a new networked European security alliance, as Ukraine has objectively become a key player and leader in the field of security in Eastern Europe.

Yuriy Romaniuk,
expert on political and security issues,
candidate of pedagogical sciences

Volodymyr Palyvoda,
expert in international relations

Photo ua.news

Notes:

[1] In 2025, US President Donald Trump allowed the use of the name Department of War as a parallel to the Department of Defense, but only in ceremonial and informal contexts. The change is related to the Ministry’s former name until 1947. Only an act of Congress can officially change the name of the Ministry.
[2] The Iron Curtain is a political cliché introduced into active use by Winston Churchill on March 5, 1946, in his Fulton speech, which became one of the hallmarks of the Cold War. It meant an informational, political, and border barrier that isolated the USSR and other Warsaw Pact countries from Western countries.
[3] According to Putin, the “root causes” of the war in Ukraine are a series of events and threats which he uses to justify the aggression. The main points of his rhetoric include:

• The Kremlin leader claims that the West has broken its promises not to expand the Alliance eastward and that Ukraine’s accession to NATO would pose a direct military threat to Russia.
• He calls the 2014 Revolution of Dignity a coup provoked by the West, which led to the rise of “neo-Nazis” to power and the outbreak of civil war;
• Putin declares the need to stop the “genocide” of the Russian-speaking population of the Donbas, allegedly carried out by the “Kyiv regime” for eight years.
• He claims, without evidence, that Ukraine was preparing to develop its own nuclear weapons.
• The Russian President names the main goals of the so-called “special military operation” as “demilitarization and denazification”,  which Moscow needs in order to eliminate Ukraine’s military potential and “cleanse” it of nationalist ideology.
• The Russian leader also positions the war against Ukraine as a struggle for “his values and his people” against Western influence.

The international community and Ukraine reject these statements as groundless propaganda aimed at concealing Russia’s imperial ambitions and denying Ukrainian statehood.
[4] Some sources offer a more vivid translation that better conveys the meaning of this phrase: “Russians out the door, Americans into the house, Germans under the bench.”
[5] An analogy is drawn with Winston Churchill’s famous speech on March 5, 1946, delivered at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, USA.
[6] AUKUS (an abbreviation of Australia, United Kingdom, United States) is a trilateral defense pact formed by Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The announcement of the creation of this pact was published on September 15, 2021. Its main goal is to exchange technologies, in particular the construction of nuclear submarines for Australia, as well as cooperation in the fields of AI, quantum technologies, and cybersecurity.
[7] Ukraine and other countries are being offered to limit their participation to “parallel events” on the periphery of the summit. This decision is causing concern among some European allies who consider the partnership with Kyiv to be critical for deterring Russia.