Theorising Nato

Scholarship on NATO is often preoccupied with key episodes in the development of the organisation and so, for the most part, has remained inattentive to theory. This book addresses that gap in the literature. It provides a comprehensive analysis of NATO through a range of theoretical perspectives that includes realism, liberalism and constructivism, and lesser-known approaches centred on learning, public goods, securitisation and risk. Focusing on NATO’s post-Cold War development, it considers the conceptualisation, purpose and future of the Alliance. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of international organisation, international relations, security and European Politics.

Exploring NATO’s post-Cold War determination to support democracy abroad, this book addresses the alliance’s adaptation to the new illiberal backlashes in Eastern Europe, the Western Balkans and Afghanistan after the alleged ‘return of history’. The book engages the question of what has driven NATO to pursue democratisation in face of the significant region-specific challenges and what can explain policy expansion or retrenchment over time. Explaining NATO’s adaptation from the perspective of power dynamics that push for international change and historical experience that informs grand strategy allows wider inferences not only about democratisation as a foreign policy strategy but also about the nature of the transatlantic alliance and its relations with a mostly illiberal environment. Larsen offers a theoretical conception of NATO as a patchwork of one hegemonic and several great power interests that converge or diverge in the formulation of common policy, as opposed to NATO as a community of universal values. This volume will appeal to researchers of transatlantic relations, NATO’s functional and geographical expansion, hegemony and great power politics, democracy promotion, lessons of the past, (Neoclassical) Realism, alliance theory, and the crisis of the liberal world order.

This book states that burden-sharing is one of the most persisting sources for tension and disagreement within NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation). It also belongs to one of the most studied issues within NATO with distinguishable traditions and schools of thought. However, this pertinent question has been rarely discussed extensively by academics. The key idea of the book is to make burden-sharing more understandable as a historical, contemporary and future phenomenon. The authors take a comprehensive look at what is actually meant with burden-sharing and how it has evolved as a concept and a real-life phenomenon through the 70 years of NATO’s existence.

This timely Research Handbook provides novel insights into the institutional complexities of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Through a defined focus on the post-Cold War evolution of NATO, it provides various theoretical perspectives on the Alliance and assesses wider research efforts within NATO studies.

For almost fifteen years, both the EU and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have claimed to partake in a relationship that is purported to be a ‘Strategic Partnership’, albeit one that is troubled by lasting political blockages. The constraints that affect the formal relationship between the two organizations are well-covered terrain in the academic literature – including by most of the contributors to this volume; however, the popular argument that the EU and NATO simply do not cooperate in any substantive way warrants deeper investigation, both theoretically and thematically. Thus, EU-NATO relations might not at first seem like an under-researched area, but much of the existing literature on the issue re-engages oversimplified and formulaic statements about the nature, quality, and practice of interactions between the EU and NATO. This volume aims to develop the EU-NATO research agenda by pursuing three key objectives: (1) reduce the lacuna of theoretically informed analyses of the relationship, (2) add empirically and analytically rigorous case studies to the relevant body of literature, and (3) point to possible developments and solutions in the 'Strategic Partnership'. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue in European Security.

This book examines NATO's engagement with gender issues through its military structures. Drawing on newly declassified NATO documents, this volume provides the first comprehensive account of NATO’s long-established engagement with gender issues. These documents bring to the fore the stories of the NATO women and ‘gendermen’ who have organised within NATO across the decades to advocate on gender issues and highlights the continued challenges to pursuing transformative agendas within resistant institutions. The book argues that NATO is an institution of international hegemonic masculinity, with gender norms and values learned by member and partner states through socialisation and the engagement of a masculinist protection logic. It therefore provides an important context for NATO’s recent implementation of the Women, Peace and Security agenda encapsulated in UN Security Council Resolution 1325 and the seven follow-up resolutions. The volume interrogates how Women, Peace and Security has mapped on to NATO’s pre-existing concerns as a global security actor, providing impetus for further critical knowledge building of NATO which centres on gender. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of NATO, Critical Military Studies, Gender Studies, Critical Security Studies and IR in general.

The Routledge Handbook of East European Politics is an authoritative overview that will help a wide readership develop an understanding of the region in all its political, economic, and social complexity. Including Central Europe, the Baltic republics, South Eastern Europe, and the Western Balkans, as well as all the countries of the former Soviet Union, it is unrivalled in breadth and depth, affording a comprehensive overview of Eastern European politics provided by leading experts in the fields of comparative politics, international relations, and public administration. Through a series of cutting-edge articles, it seeks to explain and understand patterns of Eastern European politics today. The Routledge Handbook of East European Politics will be a key reference point both for advanced-level students developing knowledge about the subject, researchers producing new material in the area, and those interested and working in the fields of East European Politics, Russian Politics, EU Politics, and more broadly in European Politics, Comparative Politics, Democratization Studies, and International Relations.

War has returned to Europe, and NATO stands at the forefront of the response to Russia's aggression in Ukraine. But how does NATO function? How do NATO member states perceive and act through the Atlantic Alliance? And ultimately how do states shape NATO's cohesion and relevance in the face of threats? The Nations of NATO explores national policies within the Atlantic Alliance. It examines the foreign policies of 16 allies, focusing on issues such as their strategic cultures, relationship with the United States, contributions to NATO operations, levels of defence spending, domestic challenges, and decision-making processes. The recent crisis in Ukraine has without doubt reinvigorated NATO as a military alliance, but over the last decade it has also been affected by a number of challenges, both endogenous and exogenous. Whether the Alliance is threatened from the outside (Russia, terrorism, China) or is being undermined from within (intra-Alliance politics, diverging threat perceptions) has become an increasingly debated issue. The degree to which the Alliance can adapt to evolving threats has also been at stake. At the heart of these debates are NATO allies' policies, preferences, threat perceptions, and level of commitment to the shared enterprise. By analysing the drivers, constraints, and specificities of relevant national policies, the volume offers an overview of NATO's contemporary functions and challenges, and constitutes an important source of data for future research and comparative analysis.