dissolved. However, the alliance has endured and undergone considerable transformation. It assumed “out-of-area” responsibilities by intervening in the Balkans, providing stabilization forces in Bosnia (IFOR/SFOR), and intervening and providing stabilization forces there (KFOR) in Kosovo. It also offered assistance to the United States during the 2001 campaign in Afghanistan and contributed to peacekeeping afterwards.
The new 1999 Strategic Concept, which outlines NATO’s broad goals and means, has made conflict prevention and crisis management the fundamental security tasks of the alliance. Another NATO task since 1990 has been to stabilize post-communist central and eastern Europe. Through the Partnership for Peace program (PfP), which allows NATO to cooperate with nonmembers; the Membership Action Plan (MAP), which assisted applicants preparing for the 2002 round of enlargement; and greater cooperation with Russia in the new institutional setting of the NATO-Russia Council, the alliance has contributed to the post-communist transition. The landmark in this process was the 1999 enlargement that brought Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic into the alliance. Three years later, at a summit in Prague, NATO invited an additional seven members to join in 2004.
The future of NATO is unclear. Critics argue that NATO has outlived its usefulness as a defense organization and has become merely a political forum with residual military structures. They point to the fact that in the fifty-plus years of NATO’s history, the core Article 5 has been invoked only once, in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the United States; yet U.S. military operations against Islamic terrorists have not been conducted as NATO operations. A contributing factor in the progressive downgrading of NATO’s military value has been the widening capability gap between the United States and its European allies. In addition, the allies have found it difficult at times to reach consensus on the area of operations, with the Americans arguing for a global role, while the Europeans take a more traditional regional view. Fissures within NATO surfaced publicly during the 2003 war with Iraq, with France and Germany openly opposing the U.S. position. The American decision to rely on the “coalition of the willing” raised questions about the long-term viability of the alliance.
The proponents of NATO argue that it is too early to proclaim its end as the premier Euro-Atlantic security organization. They point out that NATO has responded to change by undertaking fundamental reforms, seeking to adjust its structures and its military capabilities. At the Prague summit on November 21 and 22, 2002, the alliance established the NATO Response Force (NRF) of twenty thousand for deployment into crisis areas, becoming fully operational in 2006. The nations at the summit set goals for reorganizing their armed forces in order to increase their mobility and allow sustained operations outside their territory. The next important step in reforming NATO was taken at the defense ministers’ meeting in Brussels on June 12 and 13, 2003: NATO approved a new military command structure to reflect its new missions and its transition to smaller forces. The new command structure envisions the creation of a new Allied Command Operations, based at SHAPE in Mons. SACLANT will cease to exist, replaced by the Allied Command Transformation to oversee the restructuring of NATO’s military. The number of commands will be reduced from twenty to eleven, and their responsibilities redefined.
These structural changes, combined with the development of “niche capabilities” by the member-states, suggest that, given political consensus, NATO may yet reinvent itself with a new division of tasks and specializations in place. The long-term viability of the alliance will also be affected by whether the emerging defense capabilities of the European Union complement or duplicate NATO’s. Most important, the future of NATO will be determined by the future state of transatlantic relations. See also: COLD WAR; WARSAW TREATY ORGANIZATION
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Goldgeier, James M. (1999). Not Whether But When: The U.S. Decision to Enlarge NATO. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Kaplan, Lawrence S. (1999). The Long Entanglement: NATO’s First Fifty Years. Westport, CT: Praeger. Kay, Sean. (1998). NATO and the Future of European Security. Lanham, MD: Rowman amp; Littlefield. Michta, Andrew A., ed. (1999). America’s New Allies: Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic in NATO. Seattle: University of Washington Press. NATO Handbook. (2001). Brussels: NATO Office of Information and Press. North Atlantic Organization. Available from «http:// www.nato.int». Osgood, Robert E. (1962). NATO: The Entangling Alliance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Szayna, Thomas S. (2001). NATO Enlargement, 2000- 2015: Determinants and Implications for Defense Planning and Shaping. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corp.
“Northern Convoys” is the widely used name of one of the shortest and most dangerous routes of transportation of lend-lease cargoes to the USSR by its allies in the anti-Hitler coalition from 1941 to 1945. Running from Scottish and Icelandic ports to Murmansk and Arkhangelsk, they extended for 2,000 miles (3,219 kilometers) and took ten to twelve days to cross. Until the end of 1942, Northern Convoys that went to the USSR had “PO” index; those returning from the USSR, “OP”; the subsequent Northern Convoys carried indices “JW” and “RA.” The defense of cargo transports was carried out by the Allied, mainly British, Navy. In 1941 the route was passed by seven convoys to the USSR (from trial “P” or “Derwish” in August 1941 up to PO-6), and four convoys to Great Britain.
During the spring of 1942, in order to cut the Allies’ northern sea route, the Nazi German headquarters sent large fleets and aircraft forces to occupied Norway. As a result, in July 1942, almost the entire convoy PO-17 was defeated (twenty-three of thirty-six transports were sunk). Thirteen of forty cargo ships were lost in September 1942 in PO-18. In total, from 1941 to 1945, forty-one Northern Convoys, which consisted of 839 transports, were sent to the northern Soviet ports, of which 741 arrived safely. Sixty-one were lost, and thirty-seven returned to their own ports. Thirty-six Northern Convoys of 738 transports were sent from Soviet ports; of these, 699 reached their ports of destination, thirty were lost, and eight turned back. In addition, thirteen transports were lost during single passages and on berths in ports. While covering Northern Convoy 22, Allied fighting ships, including two cruisers and seven destroyers, were sunk.
In total, four million tons of cargo were delivered to the Soviet northern ports of the USSR, including 4,909 aircraft, 7,764 tanks, and 1,357 guns. Northern Convoys have added one more heroic page to a history of World War II and fighting cooperation of the USSR with the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition. See also: NORTHERN FLEET; WORLD WAR II
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ruegg, Bob, and Hague, Arnold. (1992). Convoys to Russia: Allied Convoys and Naval Surface Operations in Arctic Waters, 1941-1945. Kendal, UK: World Ship Society. Woodman, R. (1994). The Arctic Convoys, 1941-1945. London: John Murray.
The Northern Fleet is the largest of the four Russian naval fleets. It differs from the Baltic and Black Sea Fleets in that it (like the Pacific Fleet) has operated nuclear-powered vessels for more than forty years. In fact, two-thirds of Russia’s nuclear-powered vessels are assigned to the Northern Fleet at the Kola Peninsula. The others are based at Pacific Fleet bases near Vladivostok. The Northern Fleet is organized into departments with separate spheres of responsibility. Other duties are divided among government committees and ministries. While the navy is responsible for the nuclear submarines and the three shipyards that service and maintain them, the State Committee for the Defense Industry (Goskomoboronprom) maintains the other shipyards. The Ministry for Atomic Energy (Minatom) is responsible for the nuclear fuel used in naval reactors, and the Ministry of Transport is in charge of shipments of new and spent nuclear fuel by railroad.
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Before the Soviet collapse in 1991, nuclear submarines from the Northern and Pacific Fleets regularly patrolled the east and west coasts of the United States, the South China Sea, and outside the Persian Gulf. During the early twenty-first century, however, Russian nuclear submarines are rarely seen in these waters. The number of nuclear-powered submarines in operation in the Northern Fleet decreased from 120 during the late 1980s to less than forty in 2001. The Northern Fleet has six naval bases and shipyards on the Kola Peninsula to serve its nuclear vessels: Severomorsk, Gadzhievo, Gremikha, Vidyaevo, Sayda Bay, and Zapadnaya Litsa. Its main base and
