NATO's stability in the age of micro-alliances and internal turbulence

Is NATO no longer enough?

NATO remains the most important military alliance of the West. At the same time, its members are increasingly building smaller security networks of their own. Greece is deepening its cooperation with Israel and Cyprus, and India has been courted as a partner in that format. Turkey, while remaining a NATO member, has signed a mutual defence agreement with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan whose mechanism echoes the logic of Article 5.

What is emerging, then, is not so much new alliances instead of NATO as alliances alongside NATO. And that may prove one of the most important challenges to the Alliance’s future.

Smaller groups, faster decisions

The phenomenon has a name: minilateralism. States increasingly favour small groups in which common interests are easier to agree on, and declarations turn into action more quickly. There is no need to wait until thirty-two states reach a common position. A handful of them can act sooner, particularly when bound by a specific threat or a regional interest.

There is a logic to this. For Greece, the eastern Mediterranean is a matter of the first importance. For Turkey, the Black Sea, the Caucasus and the Middle East weigh just as heavily. Poland views Russia with deep apprehension, as an enduring enemy, and counts on NATO’s eastern flank as its support in the event of an attack. Spain and Portugal have other priorities. It is hardly reasonable to expect every member of the Alliance always to view the world from the same perspective.

A micro-alliance allows that diversity to be put to use. States can cooperate where their interests genuinely overlap, rather than waiting for a full consensus of the whole of NATO.

Greece builds its own network

Greece is a good example. For several years Athens has been developing cooperation with Israel and Cyprus. Joint exercises, military cooperation and increasingly intensive political contacts form a regional security network whose significance extends beyond classic bilateral relations. India, which is steadily expanding its strategic contacts with European states and its engagement in maritime security, has been courted as a possible partner in this format. The result is an architecture that can no longer be described by a simple division between „NATO” and „non-NATO” states.

Greece’s ties with France add a further layer. The strategic partnership signed by Paris and Athens in 2021 and renewed and broadened during Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Athens in April 2026 contains a clause of mutual assistance in the event of an armed attack. It is backed by hardware: Greece has bought Rafale fighter jets and Belharra-class frigates from France. Both countries are NATO members, yet the clause is widely read as a guarantee against Greece’s difficult relationship with Turkey, another NATO member. The arrangement is, in effect, a bilateral commitment that sits beside the Alliance’s own guarantee and is aimed at a possible dispute within it.

This is an important shift. Alliances are ceasing to resemble closed clubs. They increasingly resemble networks, whose individual nodes may be linked to others regardless of formal membership.

The Turkish case

Turkey’s case is more interesting still. Ankara remains one of NATO’s most important members while developing its own security relationships with states outside the Western alliance system.

The agreement with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, signed in Mecca in August 2026, is particularly striking because it goes beyond ordinary military cooperation. It contains a mutual defence mechanism, building on the Saudi-Pakistani defence agreement of September 2025. That raises a question which until recently seemed purely theoretical: what happens when a state belongs simultaneously to two structures founded on a similar principle of defensive solidarity?

Imagine a crisis in which the interests of those two security communities diverge. Which commitment would take precedence? Could Ankara find itself having to choose between solidarity with NATO and its obligations to regional partners?

This does not mean, of course, that such a conflict is inevitable. It does show that the map of security commitments is becoming steadily more complicated.

Strength or fragmentation?

Micro-alliances can strengthen NATO. They give states the ability to act faster, increase the interoperability of armed forces, make joint exercises easier and allow the development of capabilities that could not be created within a single thirty-two-nation mechanism. A good example is Poland’s cooperation around the Baltic Sea with the Nordic countries, above all Sweden, Denmark and Finland: from a strategic partnership with Stockholm and Poland’s choice of Swedish submarines to joint projects to secure the Baltic. The cooperation is increasingly practical: Polish soldiers trained alongside Danish forces on Bornholm during the Baltic Shield exercise in May 2026, and Sweden has announced that from December it will send a Patriot air-defence battery and some 100 personnel to Poland, to protect the Rzeszów logistics hub and take over the mission from the Dutch. Poland is not a member of the Nordic defence format itself, yet it works alongside it, and that cooperation reinforces NATO’s northern and eastern flanks.

There is, however, another side to the process. The more such networks emerge, the more NATO states may begin to live in different geopolitical worlds, with different partners, different priorities and, most importantly, different ideas about where the threat comes from.

That may well be the greatest problem. NATO will not fall apart, or lose its operational capability, simply because its members conclude additional agreements. The risk arises when those agreements begin to shape divergent visions of security.

NATO as a 'network of networks'

Perhaps, then, the future of NATO will not lie in preserving a uniform, tightly knit bloc. Perhaps the Alliance will become the most important node of a far larger network.

Such a model need not be a weakness. On the contrary, it could make NATO more flexible. Individual states would be able to form smaller coalitions where needed, while NATO remained the common foundation of security.

There is one condition: these smaller networks must ultimately reinforce the common architecture, rather than build rival worlds with aims and values at odds with those that shaped NATO and made it the strongest military and political alliance in history.

When the pillars themselves go their own way

The trouble is that micro-alliances are only part of the picture. Alongside them, we are seeing unconventional behaviour by NATO members themselves, beginning with the pillars of the Alliance.

The United States under Donald Trump pursues an ambivalent policy towards Russia. Its latest illustration came in October 2026, when Trump announced, after a call with Vladimir Putin, that Russia would supply the American and global markets with hundreds of thousands of tonnes of diesel immediately, with further volumes, running into millions of tonnes, to follow. Washington temporarily eased sanctions on Russian fuel exports to make this possible. Analysts doubt that Russia can deliver such volumes, given Ukrainian strikes on its refineries, and that the deal will do much to lower prices. But the symbolism of the world’s leading NATO power turning to Moscow for fuel, while Russia’s war against Ukraine continues, is difficult to ignore. Ukrainian and European officials have said as much.

The same pattern can be seen in smaller members. Slovakia under Robert Fico has restored military-diplomatic contacts with Russia. After Fico’s visit to Moscow in May 2026, the two countries resumed the exchange of military attachés for the first time since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Fico has also reportedly said that he does not want Slovakia drawn into a military conflict „because of some Article 5”.

These are very different cases, and they differ in weight. Yet they point in the same direction: a growing number of members treat the Alliance as one commitment among several, to be balanced against their own bargains with Moscow or with other partners.

What is NATO for?

This returns us to the question of stability. To what extent do micro-alliances and the independent foreign policies of NATO members affect the Alliance’s cohesion? A network of overlapping commitments can be a source of flexibility. It becomes a source of weakness when its members no longer agree on who the adversary is.

The question, ultimately, is this: what are NATO’s goals, and what values still guide it? Does it still defend the values of a free and democratic West? The strength of an alliance is not determined solely by the number of its soldiers, aircraft and ships. It also depends on whether its members still share an answer to the question: who, or what, are we defending one another against?

Sadly, the final test of NATO’s integrity will not be set by summit communiqués or defence budgets. It will be the reaction of its members when Article 5 is invoked.