NATO Development by the Early 2020s

Abstract

We can face the fact of huge military strengthening of NATO in the situation of the two confrontations. The first one is between the Euro-Atlantic community and Russian Federation, the second one is between the USA, the growing number of their partners and China. The article tries to explore the growing of NATO`s power, focusing on the case of its troops` groups, first of all multilateral. The methodical basis of the article is the theory of armed forces building. It perceives the armed forces as permanently evolving essence. The theory combines induction and deduction methods, can successfully answer the questions, which are difficult for some “big theories”, also in the situation when the predicting the world order is rather problematic. The author shows the evolution of multilateralism (from non-advanced to advanced) in the sphere of creation of common military groups by member states on the example of NATO. The change in the degree of European continental member countries "military machines" integration in NATO is presented as well as the perception of the tendency by the USA. In its activity the Alliance turns around 150 degrees. The new old key tasks are the deterrence of Russia and also containment of China. It means that the real challenges which are the risks of instability now are purely secondary tasks. The article covers the process of NATO Response Force (as the key element of power) strengthening, also the creation of Forward Presence Force in Eastern Europe. The scientific paper stresses that the decisions of Madrid summit (2022) are aimed at not only growing of NATO`s military potential, but also the ultimate integration of all types of military groups into a single whole. In this regard the factor of Russian special military operation in Ukraine has become the occasion, but not the reason of carefully planned and consistently implemented process of the return to the Alliance the role of the enormous collective power bearer for the Euro-Atlantic community.