Can NATO countries bypass Turkey?

Great Debates
1

My understanding is Turkey is being an obstacle over NATO membership for Finland and Sweden. And that Turkey - along with every other country in NATO - has a veto right over new members.

Assuming the other NATO countries (which want to admit Finland and Sweden) aren’t able to reach an agreement with Turkey, I’m wondering if they can’t bypass Turkey.

Let’s say the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Norway, and the other NATO countries sign a collective defensive alliance with Finland and Sweden which essentially offers the same guarantees that the NATO treaty offers, except for the promise of Turkish military assistance. Would this work?

My impression is that this would have the same effect for Finland and Sweden that NATO membership would have. If Russia is thinking about invading Finland and Sweden, it’s not Turkey’s military that will deter them.

Is there something I’m missing?

2

Legally this may be possible, but it would be a mess. NATO already has the civilian and military infrastructure in place for coordinating decision-making, logistics and military operations. Presumably the new defensive alliance would not have access to these bodies.

3

You propose they dissolve NATO and form the “No Turkeys Club”? :smile:

I believe the nuclear option is to declare Turkey in “material breach” of the treaty under the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Laws of Treaties and suspend or expel them.

4

But I believe each country still maintains its own command system. There are no purely NATO forces. The troops that would be fighting under a NATO command would be Americans, Britons, Germans, Italians, etc. So the troops of these countries have been trained to fight together with troops from the other countries in the alliance and their C3 systems have been designed to work together. I’m not an expert but I feel a lot of this would carry over to any other alliance between these countries.

5

No, I would not dissolve NATO and I wouldn’t abandon Turkey.

I will admit, however, that part of this plan would be showing Turkey that it would be possible for other countries to operate a defensive alliance without Turkish participation. I feel demonstrating this might make Turkey more reasonable in their negotiations.

6

Britain has already announced it will do this:

7

NATO has a few purposes these days, its original purpose was primarily to link Western Europe with a promise of an immediate American military response to a Soviet (Russian) incursion, and while not to denigrate the other members of the alliance, that is still the lion’s share of the NATO deterrent. Part of that is because having an external superpower as a protector is one thing that all of these countries essentially agree on that they want. Without the United States in the alliance, it is likely it would fracture apart significantly (and I doubt Turkey would be in it, for example–most of the EU would, though.)

In that regard, a bilateral security arrangement between the United States & Sweden and the United States & Finland, does indeed satisfy much of what is desired in terms of countering current Russian aggressions. In fact this isn’t materially unheard of–the United States has bilateral security agreements with two significant non-NATO allies–Japan and South Korea.

We have a 1960 Mutual Defense treaty with Japan–an attack on Japan is an attack on the United States, functionally.

We similarly have a 1953 Mutual Defense treaty with South Korea.

Part of these treaties, much like NATO, is we do regular exercises with the relative military forces of these countries (more limited with Japan as they have a “Self Defense Force”, and constitutionally reject any form of non-defensive war); among other things to keep these military associations tight.

We also have a “Collective Security Agreement” called ANZUS, which is technically between the United States and Australia, and Australia and New Zealand, but it is not a mutual defense treaty. It is highly likely if Australia was ever attacked, the United States would defend it, and we have a lot of close military relationships and activities, but it isn’t technically a mutual defense pact as it is not binding on either party. (The treaty used to be a three way pact, but the U.S. severed its specific portion of the pact with NZ in 1984.)

The U.S. could certainly do this with Sweden/Finland, and likely arrange for military standardization and etc between the three countries to provide similar to NATO benefits.

It would not have all of the benefits of NATO, but the core mutual defense agreement with the United States would be there.

8

NATO does have a fleet of AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control Systems) E-3 aircraft that fly in NATO markings with multi-national crews.

9

The consequences of an attack on a NATO country are well established and absolutely unambiguous - especially to Russia, since NATO arose for that specific purpose. The consequences are not sanctions, they are war.

Attempting to achieve the same result through separate treaties just lacks the same absolute clarity and unity and purpose. Russia attacks with conventional means, and - well, I can envision a lot of handwringing about what is the proportionate response, etc. And separate treaties allow for the possibility of Russia attempting to undermine opposition by negotiating separately with different countries - and playing to the kind of divisions that we’re seeing right now between Turkey and others. We need to resolve those squabbles among ourselves now, not create a more complicated situation for Russia to exploit in the future.