Nato And The Crisis In The International Order

The main objectives of this book are to analyse the risks and dangers NATO faces in the current strategic environment and to discuss how the alliance can readjust to those challenges. How can NATO adapt to the dangerous combination of a revisionist Russia, a reluctant United States, and a Europe in crisis? NATO’s relevance and ability to survive have been challenged many times before, and it has not only survived but also has proven highly adaptable to change. This has been good for Western cohesion and for the consolidation of the liberal-democratic, rules-based world order. The main argument of this book is that NATO can overcome this latest set of challenges as well and retain its central role as a cornerstone of the European and transatlantic security order. NATO is different from other alliances because its members share not only interests but values as well, codified in the preamble of the North Atlantic Treaty as allied support for democracy, individual liberty, and the rule of law. The greatest enemy of the alliance is the forces that challenge the common norms and values of NATO’s member states, and – in a larger perspective – the liberal-democratic, rules-based world order, and Western civilisation itself. The book makes an original contribution to the existing literature on NATO and transatlantic relations and discusses the latest developments within NATO since the Trump administration took office. The book will be of much interest to students of NATO, geopolitics, security studies, and International Relations in general.

Distinguished scholars assess the emerging international order, examining leading theories, the major powers, and potential problems.

The past several years have seen strong disagreements between the U.S. government and many of its European allies, largely due to the deployment of NATO forces in Afghanistan and the commitment of national forces to the occupation of Iraq. News accounts of these challenges focus on isolated incidents and points of contention. The End of the West? addresses some basic questions: Are we witnessing a deepening transatlantic rift, with wide-ranging consequences for the future of world order? Or are today's foreign-policy disagreements the equivalent of dinner-table squabbles? What harm, if any, have recent events done to the enduring relationships between the U.S. government and its European counterparts? The contributors to this volume, whose backgrounds range from political science and history to economics, law, and sociology, examine the "deep structure" of an order that was first imposed by the Allies in 1945 and has been a central feature of world politics ever since. Creatively and insightfully blending theory and evidence, the chapters in The End of the West? examine core structural features of the transatlantic world to determine whether current disagreements are minor and transient or catastrophic and permanent.

This book analyzes both NATO’s and the EU’s military crisis management operations and provides an explanation for the fact that it is sometimes NATO, sometimes the EU, and sometimes both international organizations that intervene militarily in a conflict. In detailed case studies on Libya, Chad/Central African Republic, and the Horn of Africa, Claudia Fahron-Hussey shows that the capabilities and preferences of the organizations matter most and the organizations’ bureaucratic actors influence the decision-making process of the member states.

Born from necessity, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has always seemed on the verge of collapse. Even now, some seventy years after its inception, some consider its foundation uncertain and its structure weak. At this moment of incipient strategic crisis, Timothy A. Sayle offers a sweeping history of the most critical alliance in the post-World War II era. In Enduring Alliance, Sayle recounts how the western European powers, along with the United States and Canada, developed a treaty to prevent encroachments by the Soviet Union and to serve as a first defense in any future military conflict. As the growing and unruly hodgepodge of countries, councils, commands, and committees inflated NATO during the Cold War, Sayle shows that the work of executive leaders, high-level diplomats, and institutional functionaries within NATO kept the alliance alive and strong in the face of changing administrations, various crises, and the flux of geopolitical maneuverings. Resilience and flexibility have been the true hallmarks of NATO. As Enduring Alliance deftly shows, the history of NATO is organized around the balance of power, preponderant military forces, and plans for nuclear war. But it is also the history riven by generational change, the introduction of new approaches to conceiving international affairs, and the difficulty of diplomacy for democracies. As NATO celebrates its seventieth anniversary, the alliance once again faces challenges to its very existence even as it maintains its place firmly at the center of western hemisphere and global affairs.

Lessons in failure: institutional memory of strategic errors -- Tête à tête: the informal development of institutional memory -- Dilemmas in design: constraints on sharing knowledge of errors -- See no evil: reflections on errors in Afghanistan, Libya and Ukraine -- Hear no evil: the informal processes of sharing knowledge of errors -- Speak no evil: the sources that spur knowledge sharing of errors -- A reactive culture: why the informal development of memory persists -- Conclusion: toward total recall in crisis management

One of The New York Times’ “6 Books to Read for Context on Ukraine” “A short and insightful primer” to the crisis in Ukraine and its implications for both the Crimean Peninsula and Russia’s relations with the West (New York Review of Books) The current conflict in Ukraine has spawned the most serious crisis between Russia and the West since the end of the Cold War. It has undermined European security, raised questions about NATO's future, and put an end to one of the most ambitious projects of U.S. foreign policy—building a partnership with Russia. It also threatens to undermine U.S. diplomatic efforts on issues ranging from terrorism to nuclear proliferation. And in the absence of direct negotiations, each side is betting that political and economic pressure will force the other to blink first. Caught in this dangerous game of chicken, the West cannot afford to lose sight of the importance of stable relations with Russia. This book puts the conflict in historical perspective by examining the evolution of the crisis and assessing its implications both for the Crimean Peninsula and for Russia’s relations with the West more generally. Experts in the international relations of post-Soviet states, political scientists Rajan Menon and Eugene Rumer clearly show what is at stake in Ukraine, explaining the key economic, political, and security challenges and prospects for overcoming them. They also discuss historical precedents, sketch likely outcomes, and propose policies for safeguarding U.S.-Russia relations in the future. In doing so, they provide a comprehensive and accessible study of a conflict whose consequences will be felt for many years to come.

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