The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was founded 65 years ago, in 1949, to defend Western Europe from possible Soviet aggression. It met this responsibility until the early 1990s when the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War ended. After the Cold War, despite some calls for its dissolution, the NATO alliance was maintained by its members and used to provide continued security during the transition to the new, post-communist governments in Eastern Europe.

Maintaining NATO in the 1990s was a wise decision. The alliance helped to restore peace in the Balkans when Yugoslavia broke apart in civil war. Just as importantly, NATO helped many other east bloc states to make the transition to democracy by offering them stabilizing partnerships with NATO.

These “Partnerships-for-Peace,” as they were called, allowed NATO members and militaries to encourage the separation of national military establishments from domestic civilian politics. The partnerships also helped broker peaceful solutions to disagreements between neighboring states — squabbles that were sometimes related to uncertain borders and the presence of ethnic minorities of one state that ended up in a neighbor.

The partnership concept was often helpful in generating new understandings, and ultimately led to formal NATO membership for many of these new governments. Through these developments the alliance’s membership has grown from 16 countries at the end of the Cold War to its 28 members of today.

Subsequent to this successful 1990s effort to help maintain post-Cold War stability in Europe, NATO agreed in 2003 to provide security for another new government in far off Afghanistan. The new Afghan government had been created by a United Nations (UN) resolution and was intended to stop the return of the Taliban government that had hosted Al Qaeda when it carried out the devastating 9/11 attack against the United States.

NATO’s Afghan effort against the Taliban’s return to power has been costly and bloody, and after a decade, it is being brought to an end. NATO has protected the new government of Afghanistan which has in turn had some success in establishing a record of elections and public support, as well as developing a new army of its own. A Taliban insurgency, however, still continues and threatens to regain power. Nonetheless, in the view of NATO’s war-weary governments at home, it is time to see what the new Afghan government can achieve on its own.

With the looming conclusion of NATO’s role in the Afghan war, questions have emerged about what the future holds for the alliance, and whether it even has a future. Right on cue, a major part of the answer to such questions was provided by Russian troops invading Ukraine. While this invasion was ostensibly to protect a large ethnic Russian community there, it may also have been to remind Ukrainians of Russia’s continued interest and influence in regional affairs. It has also been widely suggested that it was to provide Russia better control of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula where an important Russian naval base is located.

NATO is consequently being asked to continue its traditional role of providing security in Europe, again by protecting members from Kremlin expansionism. No one is suggesting that NATO should militarily protect Ukraine, because it never became a member of the alliance. However, NATO is being asked by Ukraine’s neighbors who did join, to consider that the invasion affects their security interests. Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, all have spoken of this concern at NATO, and most have their own ethnic Russian communities, and contain or lie close to former Soviet bases or enclaves, like that at Kalinin.

What makes this fear of Russia especially compelling is the earlier case of Georgia, another former Soviet Republic. It lies across the Black Sea from Ukraine, just to the south of the recent Sochi Winter Olympic games. Georgia shares a border with Russia, and also contains a significant ethnic Russian minority. In 2008, Georgia was invaded by Russia to repossess and control border lands around this Russian minority. So a pattern of Russian aggressive behavior, common enough in Tsarist and Soviet times, has emerged again in the post-Soviet era.

On behalf of these states that lie on Russia’s rim lands, and with the support of all of its members, NATO has inserted itself into this tense situation. NATO met directly with Russia, making clear the Alliance’s interest and concern in the defense of all of its members. It called on Russia not to send more troops into Eastern Ukraine, and cancelled several defense-related cooperative measures with Russia, such as the plan to escort chemical weapons from Syria, as a sign of its concern. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO’s Secretary General, issued a statement on behalf of the Alliance that, “Russia must stop its military activities and its threats.”

NATO clearly has important future responsibilities as it begins to leave Afghanistan. After the Ukraine invasion, Estonia’s president summed up the views of many by saying, “Thanks be to God, we are NATO members.” So, again, many learn the apparently indispensable importance of the insurance offered by NATO. Its continuing role in Europe will not likely go away in the near future, whatever may be the final outcome of events in today’s Ukraine.