The post–Cold War order established by the United States is at a crossroads: no longer is the liberal order and U.S. hegemonic power a given. The Challenge to NATO is a concise review of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), its relationship with the United States, and its implications for global security. Despite seeing its seventieth anniversary in 2019, NATO faces both external and internal threats to its continued survival. This volume examines the organization’s past, its current regional operations, and future threats facing the Atlantic Alliance, with contributions by well-known academics, former central figures within NATO, and diplomats directly involved in NATO operations. In this volume, Michael O. Slobodchikoff, G. Doug Davis, and Brandon Stewart bring together differing perspectives and orientations to provide a complete understanding of the future of the Atlantic Alliance.

This book reproduces a working document elaborated in the summer of 1999, within the framework of the Atlantic Treaty Association (ATA) by its Secretary General, Mr. Alfred Cahen, on the occasion of NATO's 50th anniversary commemorations. It provides a comprehensive insight into the changes that came about at the heart of the Alliance after the fall of the Soviet Union, and the principal questions and political problems being examined today on both sides of the Atlantic. NATO's enlargement, the deepening of a new European and Mediterranean dialogue on security and defence issues, arms control, new allied missions and the political, strategic and legal instruments created for its use, as well as its evolution, are themes also dealt with in this book. It will provide those who are interested in these questions and the public in general with an exhaustive yet succinct vision of the problems which, at the outset of the 21st century, are facing European security and defence in the Atlantic framework. This publication is dedicated to Alfred Cahen who died on 19 April 2000. The text of his report is given in its original version but it has been restored to its political context by means of an introduction by Eric Remacle and Pascaline Winand (Institut d'Etudes Européennes, Université Libre de Bruxelles).