At a time when the UK is at war by proxy – providing intelligence, weapons and training to Ukraine – and relying on Article Five of the NATO treaty for our own security, this is a most timely book. The author, Sten Renning, is a Danish professor who has been a student of NATO for many years and has the contacts and insight to write an utterly credible – and worrying – account of the alliance, its problems, its successes and its future. It covers the development of NATO from its formation in 1949 with twelve members to its thirty-one in 2024 with Sweden poised to join, and traces its origins to the Anglo-American discussions which nearly stumbled on FDR’s need to avoid antagonising the domestic isolationist elements, but which led to the Atlantic Charter of August 1941.

The book is far more than just a history of an alliance, for it describes in detail the difficulties of balancing collective defence with national aspirations, the problems of French withdrawal from and subsequent re-joining of the military, but not the political, command structure of the alliance, and European concerns as to Chancellor Brandt of West Germany’s Ostpolitik. American reservations about UK entry into the Common Market (later the European Union) is well described, as is the difficulties some oil-dependent European members had when the US asked for the use of European air bases in support of Israel in the ‘October War’ in 1973, and serious disagreement among members in reaction to the military coup in Turkey in 1980. The author shows how the results of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks created a balance for the USSR and the USA, but left Europe at a disadvantage, being vastly outnumbered conventionally.

Throughout, the book traces the unending struggle between the Atlanticists, who considered it essential to have the US at the centre of the alliance, and those in Europe who feared that American interests globally might lead to a weakening of US commitment to NATO. These latter concerns have of course been emphasised by some remarks made by the man who may well be the next president of the US, although made too late for consideration by the author. The strains inherent on German unification (initially opposed by Britain) and the fall of the USSR are dealt with in perceptive detail. The end of the Cold War in 1991 was a critical time for NATO – was it needed at all? The author describes the varying trains of thought and political discussions which decided that it was, with some concessions to those who wished to expand NATO’s remit to limited global concerns. Involvement in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan is covered as is the only occasion when Article Five (an attack on one is an attack on all) has been invoked in reply to the attack on the World Trade Centre in New York in 2001.

In his final chapter Rynning considers the effects that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have had on NATO thinking, and he rightly suggests that the expansion of NATO in the 1990s has raised reasonable security concerns in Russia, and makes the valid point that the armed forces of many of the post Cold War members are small and ineffective. NATO, having failed to deter Russia from going to war, has been able to promulgate a united response in regard to Russia, but not yet to China. This book must be essential reading for politicians, soldiers and all those concerned about the parlous state of Western defences, and is particularly so when we may be faced with a prospect of NATO without the USA, or at least with US support for Ukraine being withdrawn. As the 4th Century De Re Militari so rightly says: ‘Igitur quī dēsīderat pācem, præparet bellum’

NATO: From Cold War to Ukraine, a History of the World’s Most Powerful Alliance by Sten Rynning is published by Yale University Press. Gordon Corrigan is a historian and the author of The Second World War: A Military History.