NATO's evolving purposes and the next Strategic Concept |
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Authors: | DAVID S. YOST |
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Affiliation: | 1. Professor at the US Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California.;2. The views expressed are the author's alone and do not represent those of the Department of the Navy or any US government agency. An earlier version of this article appeared as a chapter in Bram Boxhoorn and David den Dunnen, eds, NATO's new Strategic Concept: moving beyond the status quo? (The Hague: Netherlands Atlantic Association, 2009). Thanks are owed to those who commented on earlier drafts of this article, including Patrick M. Condray, Rod Fabrycky, Jesse Kelso, George McCaffrey, James Clay Moltz, Kestutis Paulauskas, Joseph Pilat, Alberto Rosso, Michael Rühle, Diego Ruiz Palmer, Colin Stockman, and Roberto Zadra. |
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Abstract: | Is there a conflict between the Alliance's original and enduring purpose of collective defence and its post‐Cold War crisis management functions? This is an ill‐framed debate, because the home base must be secure in order to support expeditionary power projection. The allies have, moreover, moved away from a static, reactive, and territorial concept of collective defence towards a more ‘proactive’ and ‘anticipatory’ approach. Some experts have even referred to a ‘deterritorialization’ of collective defence. Other issues also illustrate the changing dimensions of collective defence—missile defence, cyber warfare, space operations, the risk of state‐sponsored terrorism involving weapons of mass destruction, political–military dynamics in the Middle East and the Asia–Pacific region, and the risk of a non‐Article 5 operation becoming a collective defence contingency. Despite disagreements on how to pursue shared goals, the allies may yet demonstrate that they have the vision and political will to meet the new challenges. The question of the Alliance's ‘level of ambition’ in capabilities is inseparable from that of its agreed purposes and burden‐sharing to achieve them. |
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