This study establishes that the political, economic and military-technological changes that transform the international system also alter the way in which a state views its and others' responsibilities and burdens for responding to international crises. It assesses the distribution of the costs of raising and supporting arms of service, the risks of deploying them overseas and using them in combat or peace operations, and the extent to which members have a responsibility for maintaining international order in the context of three instances of multinational military intervention: the Multinational Force deployment in Lebanon in 1982-83; the first Persian Gulf War in 1990-91; and the UN and NATO intervention in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is the world’s largest, most powerful military alliance. The Alliance has navigated and survived the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the post-9/11 era. Since the release of the 2010 Strategic Concept, NATO’s strategic environment has again undergone significant change. The need to adapt is clear. An opportunity to assess the Alliance’s achievements and future goals has now emerged with the Secretary General’s drive to create a new Strategic Concept for the next decade—an initiative dubbed NATO 2030. A necessary step for formulating a new strategic outlook will thus be understanding the future that faces NATO. To remain relevant and adjust to new circumstances, the Alliance must identify its main challenges and opportunities in the next ten years and beyond. This book contributes to critical conversations on NATO’s future vitality by examining the Alliance’s most salient issues and by offering recommendations to ensure its effectiveness moving forward. Written by a diverse, multigenerational group of policymakers and academics from across Europe and the United States, this book provides new insights about NATO’s changing threat landscape, its shifting internal dynamics, and the evolution of warfare. The volume’s authors tackle a wide range of issues, including the challenges of Russia and China, democratic backsliding, burden sharing, the extension of warfare to space and cyberspace, partnerships, and public opinion. With rigorous assessments of NATO’s challenges and opportunities, each chapter provides concrete recommendations for the Alliance to chart a path for the future. As such, this book is an indispensable resource for NATO’s strategic planners and security and defense experts more broadly.

For much of the last 25 years, NATO has focused on crisis managementin places such as Kosovo and Afghanistan,resulting in major changes to alliance strategy, resourcing,force structure, and training. Re-embracing collective defense —which lies at the heart of the Treaty of Washington’s Article 5 commitment— is no easy feat, and not something NATO can do through rhetoric and official pronouncements. Nonetheless,this shift is vitally necessary if the alliance is to remain the bulwark of Western defense and security. Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and its invasion of Ukraine have fundamentally upended the security environment in Europe, thrusting NATO into the spotlight as the primary collective defense tool most European states rely upon to ensure their security. Collective defense is one of the alliance’s threecore missions, along with crisis management and cooperative security. It is defined in Article 5, the most well-known and arguably most important part of NATO’s founding treaty, which states: “The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.” Although all three missions are vital to the interests of NATO’s many member states, collective defense has become first among equals once again. However,three very significant hurdles stand in the way of the alliance and its member states as they attempt to re-embrace collective defense. These loosely correspond to an ends-waysmeans construct. First is the alliance's strategy toward Russia. Is Russia an adversary,a partner,neither,or both? How should strategy and policies change to place the alliance and its members on more solid ground when it comes to managing Russia? Second are the ongoing disputes over resourcing and burden-sharing. In recent years, it has become commonplace for American leaders to publicly berate European allies in an effort to garner more contributions to the common defense. How might the alliance better measure and more equitably share security burdens? Third is the alliance’s readiness to fulfill its objectives. Many allies have announced or are implementing increases in defense spending. However, governments of European NATO member states are strongly incentivized by domestic politics to favor acquisition of military hardware or spending on personnel salaries and benefits,usually at the expense of readiness. The result is that NATO military forces risk quickly becoming hollow in a way that is often underappreciated, which will prevent the alliance from fulfilling the collective defense promise inherent in Article 5. The book examines all such questions to assess NATO’s return to collective defense and offer a roadmap for overcoming those challenges in both the short and long-term.

The Challenge to NATO is a concise review of NATO, its relationship with the United States, and its implications for global security.

A head of title: Council on Foreign Relations, International Institutions and Global Governance Program.

The emergence of the European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) in the last two-thirds of the 1990s and continuing into the new century, has been a complex process intertwining politics, economics, national cultures, and numerous institutions. This book provides an essential background for understanding how security issues as between NATO and the European Union are being posed for the early part of the 21st century, including the new circumstances following the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. This study should be of interest to those interested in the evolution of U.S.-European relations, especially in, but not limited to, the security field; the development of institutional relationships; and key choices that lie ahead in regard to these critical arrangements.

NATO is facing a unique crisis questioning its existence and future. This book provides a detailed in-depth economic and critical analysis of the issues. It considers whether NATO has a future and what it might look like 70 years ahead. NATO is undergoing a process of dramatic change, reorganising its functions, funding and strategic responsibilities to address growing regional and global threats. This book not only explores the contentiousness of economic and financial burden-sharing and the associated political and diplomatic stresses involved in the pursuit of common strategic objectives, but contributes to a further debate concerning the expanded scope and roles of the Alliance in the 21st century. This book combines NATO’s political controversies, complexities and conflicts with a treatment of the underlying theoretical economic frameworks. This book is essential reading for students in military staff colleges, university International Relations and Strategic Affairs Departments, but also to those working in government defence establishments, independent think tanks and political and economic institutions, generally.