As the NATO Alliance enters its seventh decade, it finds itself involved in an array of military missions ranging from Afghanistan to Kosovo to Sudan. It also stands at the center of a host of regional and global partnerships. Yet, NATO has still to articulate a grand strategic vision designed to determine how, when, and where its capabilities should be used, the values underpinning its new missions, and its relationship to other international actors such as the European Union and the United Nations.
The drafting of a new strategic concept, begun during NATO’s 60th anniversary summit, presents an opportunity to shape a new transatlantic vision that is anchored in the liberal democratic principles so crucial to NATO’s successes during its Cold War years. Furthermore, that vision should be focused on equipping the Alliance to anticipate and address the increasingly global and less predictable threats of the post-9/11 world.
This volume brings together scholars and policy experts from both sides of the Atlantic to examine the key issues that NATO must address in formulating a new strategic vision. With thoughtful and reasoned analysis, it offers both an assessment of NATO’s recent evolution and an analysis of where the Alliance must go if it is to remain relevant in the twenty-first century.
Table of Contents
Foreword
Lawrence Freedman
Introduction: Missions in Search of a Vision
Gülnur Aybet and Rebecca R. Moore
1. NATO at Sixty—and Beyond
Jamie Shea
2. The NATO Strategic Concept Revisited: Grand Strategy and Emerging Issues
Gülnur Aybet
3. NATO's Secretaries-General:
Organizational Leadership in Shaping Alliance Strategy
Ryan C. Hendrickson
4. Implementing NATO's Comprehensive Approach to Complex Operations
Friis Arne Petersen, Hans Binnendijk, Charles Barry, and Peter Lehmann Nielsen
5. NATO-Russia Relations: Will the Future Resemble the Past?
Martin A. Smith
6. Missile Defenses and the European Security Dilemma
Sean Kay
7. The "New" Members and Future Enlargement: The Impact of NATO-Russia Relations
Roger E. Kanet
8. NATO Enlargement and the Western Balkans
Gabriele Cascone
9. The Future of the Alliance: Is Demography Destiny?
Jeffrey Simon
10. Partnership Goes Global: The Role of Nonmember, Non-European States in the Evolution of NATO
Rebecca R. Moore
Conclusion: Looking Forward
Gülnur Aybet and Rebecca R. Moore
Contributors
Index
Reviews
"No recent volume is a better guide to the historical legacies that created the current institutional structure of NATO, the policy dilemmas of the Balkans a decade ago and of Afghanistan today, the complex and ambiguous diplomatic relations between NATO and Russia, and the various schemes for enhancing cooperation within the organization."—Foreign Affairs
"[Offers] both a timely review and counsel on the key issues currently facing the alliance. Whether the reader is actively involved in the shaping of NATO's future or merely interested, this edited volume gives good insight into the history of NATO since the Cold War and adds much to the debate over how the next SC could shape a 'common transatlantic vision.'"—International Affairs
"Analysts are lining up to predict and dissect the future of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. NATO in Search of a Vision offers a diverse set of hypotheses, allowing the reader to reach his or her own conclusion about what lies ahead for the world’s most powerful military alliance."—Ivo H. Daalder, ambassador, U.S. mission to NATO
"NATO's celebration of its first sixty years has spawned a number of books seeking to explain its past and to project its future. There is no better volume to serve these purposes than NATO in Search of a Vision. As the Alliance constructs its new strategic concept in 2010, it should look to this book for guidance in weighing the role of globalization, managing internal divisons in an enlarged organization, and coping with external challenges."—Lawrence Kaplan, emeritus director, Lyman L. Lemnitzer Center for NATO and European Union Studies
"This book offers a comprehensive analysis of NATO’s need for a coherent, convincing vision; dealing with conceptual, organizational, operational, geographical, and demographical challenges and opportunities past and present, it is a must read for scholars as well as practitioners."—Magnus Petersson, senior research fellow, Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies, and head of the NATO in a Changing World research programme
"NATO is busier than ever, but many see an Alliance adrift. A new consensus is needed on the challenges to transatlantic security and NATO's role in meeting them. In NATO in Search of a Vision, Gülnur Aybet and Rebecca Moore have brought together many thoughtful analysts to address this question, and they frame the issues clearly and succinctly."—Daniel Hamilton, director, Center for Transatlantic Relations, Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies
"This important and timely volume is a welcome addition to the debate over NATO's future."—James Goldgeier, The George Washington University and Council on Foreign Relations
Contributors
Gülnur Aybet Charles Barry Hans Binnendijk Gabriele Cascone Ryan C. Hendrickson Roger E. Kanet Sean Kay Rebecca R. Moore Peter Lehmann Nielsen Friis Arne Petersen Jamie Shea Jeffrey Simon Martin A. Smith
About the Author
Gülnur Aybet is a lecturer in international relations at the University of Kent at Canterbury and a senior associate member of St. Antony’s College, Oxford. She is the author of The Dynamics of European Security Cooperation 1945-1991 and A European Security Architecture after the Cold War: Questions of Legitimacy.
Rebecca R. Moore is a professor of political science at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota. She held a NATO-EAPC Fellowship from 2001 to 2003 and is the author of NATO’s New Mission: Projecting Stability in a Post-Cold War World.
