- NDC Research Paper 7: The Alliance Five Years after Crimea: Implementing the Wales Summit Pledges, edited by Marc Ozawa
Marc Ozawa
The year 2014 was a tipping point in NATO’s approach to the Eastern Flank. Having
observed a culmination of destabilizing events in Ukraine that included the Maidan protests
and ousting of Viktor Yanukovych, a Russian sponsored civil war in the Donbass, and the
illegal annexation of Crimea, not to mention the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight
MH17 over eastern Ukraine, the Allies came together in the Welsh cities of Newport and
Cardiff to discuss how the Alliance should respond. Shortly after NATO’s Wales Summit
on 4-5 September 2014, observers described the event as a “watershed moment”. Looking
back on the past five years, this description still holds up.
All together the Allies pledged to shore up deterrence and defense measures, military
posturing, defense spending and develop programmes to counter new security threats such
as hybrid warfare. The Communiqué comprises over one hundred paragraphs that deal
with approximately forty topics. At Wales, the Allies recommitted to combatting threats in
all of NATO’s theaters of operation; however, given the magnitude of what had transpired
in Ukraine, it is not surprising that the Wales Summit Declaration begins with a rebuke of
Russia’s actions and assurances for Allies on the Eastern Flank.
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NATO Defense College