Transforming Nato

Recipient of "Outstanding Academic Book" Award--CHOICE, 1999 The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, perhaps more than any other Cold War institution, embodied the West's determination to deter potential Soviet aggression in Europe. But nearly a decade after the collapse of the Soviet empire, the Atlantic Alliance is engaged in cooperative security endeavors with former adversaries throughout Europe, including peacekeeping operations in Bosnia. In this ambitious study, David Yost analyzes the major changes in the alliance and its new roles. While the Allies remain committed to collective defense, they have increasingly endowed NATO with new roles as an instrument of collective security. NATO Transformed provides a comprehensive survey and analysis of the current debate on the alliance's enlargement and its new cooperative security institutions--including the Partnership for Peace and the special consultative forums with Russia and Ukraine--and the demands of crisis management and peacekeeping operations beyond NATO territory. Drawing on international political theory and the history of other alliances, Yost identifies crucial challenges for the cohesion and effectiveness of "the new NATO."

The first comprehensive history of NATO in the 1960s, based on the systematic use of multinational archival evidence. This new book is the result of a gathering of leading Cold War historians from both sides of the Atlantic, including Jeremi Suri, Erin Mahan, and Leopoldo Nuti. It shows in great detail how the transformation of NATO since 1991 has opened up new perspectives on the alliance’s evolution during the Cold War. Viewed in retrospect, the 1960s were instrumental to the strengthening of NATO's political clout, which proved to be decisive in winning the Cold War – even more so than NATO's defense and deterrence capabilities. In addition, it shows that NATO increasingly served as a hub for state, institutional, transnational, and individual actors in that decade. Contributions to the book highlight the importance of NATO's ability to generate "soft power", the scope and limits of alliance consultation, the important role of common transatlantic values, and the growing influence of small allies. NATO's survival in the crucial 1960s provides valuable lessons for the current bargaining on the purpose and cohesion of the alliance. This book will be of much interest to students of international history, Cold War studies and strategic studies.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is the world’s largest, most powerful military alliance. The Alliance has navigated and survived the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the post-9/11 era. Since the release of the 2010 Strategic Concept, NATO’s strategic environment has again undergone significant change. The need to adapt is clear. An opportunity to assess the Alliance’s achievements and future goals has now emerged with the Secretary General’s drive to create a new Strategic Concept for the next decade—an initiative dubbed NATO 2030. A necessary step for formulating a new strategic outlook will thus be understanding the future that faces NATO. To remain relevant and adjust to new circumstances, the Alliance must identify its main challenges and opportunities in the next ten years and beyond. This book contributes to critical conversations on NATO’s future vitality by examining the Alliance’s most salient issues and by offering recommendations to ensure its effectiveness moving forward. Written by a diverse, multigenerational group of policymakers and academics from across Europe and the United States, this book provides new insights about NATO’s changing threat landscape, its shifting internal dynamics, and the evolution of warfare. The volume’s authors tackle a wide range of issues, including the challenges of Russia and China, democratic backsliding, burden sharing, the extension of warfare to space and cyberspace, partnerships, and public opinion. With rigorous assessments of NATO’s challenges and opportunities, each chapter provides concrete recommendations for the Alliance to chart a path for the future. As such, this book is an indispensable resource for NATO’s strategic planners and security and defense experts more broadly.

This timely volume assesses NATO's current accomplishments, continuing challenges, and potential pitfalls. Leading international scholars and policymakers explore three key themes influencing NATO's future: transatlantic relations, the debate over enlargement, and the organization's new functions. Weighing the fate of an alliance poised for renewal or decline, the contributors offer informed analysis and discussion of an organization that has changed profoundly over the past five years and continues to evolve in the face of an uncertain global environment.

Transforming NATO: New Allies, Missions, and Capabilities, by Ivan Dinev Ivanov, examines the three dimensions of NATO’s transformation since the end of the Cold War: the addition of a dozen new allies; the undertaking of new missions such as peacekeeping, crisis response, and stabilization; and the development of new capabilities to implement these missions. The book explains these processes through two mutually reinforcing frameworks: club goods theory and the concept of complementarities. NATO can be viewed as a diverse, heterogeneous club of nations providing collective defense to its members, who, in turn, combine their military resources in a way that enables them to optimize the Alliance’s capabilities needed for overseas operations. Transforming NATO makes a number of theoretical contributions. First, it offers new insights into understanding how heterogeneous clubs operate. Second, it introduces a novel concept, that of complementarities. Finally, it re-evaluates the relevance of club goods theory as a framework for studying contemporary international security. These conceptual foundations apply to areas well beyond NATO. They provide useful insights into understanding the operation of transatlantic relations, alliance politics, anda broader set of international coalitions and partnerships.

The first comprehensive history of NATO in the 1960s, based on the systematic use of multinational archival evidence. This new book is the result of a gathering of leading Cold War historians from both sides of the Atlantic, including Jeremi Suri, Erin Mahan, and Leopoldo Nuti. It shows in great detail how the transformation of NATO since 1991 has opened up new perspectives on the alliance’s evolution during the Cold War. Viewed in retrospect, the 1960s were instrumental to the strengthening of NATO's political clout, which proved to be decisive in winning the Cold War – even more so than NATO's defense and deterrence capabilities. In addition, it shows that NATO increasingly served as a hub for state, institutional, transnational, and individual actors in that decade. Contributions to the book highlight the importance of NATO's ability to generate "soft power", the scope and limits of alliance consultation, the important role of common transatlantic values, and the growing influence of small allies. NATO's survival in the crucial 1960s provides valuable lessons for the current bargaining on the purpose and cohesion of the alliance. This book will be of much interest to students of international history, Cold War studies and strategic studies.

This collection reflects on the significance of the 9/11 terrorist attacks for the transatlantic alliance. Offering an analysis of NATO's evolution since 2001, it examines key topics such as the alliance's wars in Afghanistan, its military operation in Libya, global partnerships, burden-sharing and relations with the US and Russia.

The purpose of this paper is to untangle the capabilities portion of NATO's "transformation" initiatives and analyze their contribution to international security. The key questions asked are: What does NATO transformation entail, is it effective and what is its future? The conclusion concedes a measure of progress but identifies several shortfalls. The paper then makes a general recommendation for improving NATO's transformational capabilities. NATO's transformation efforts are balancing unsteadily between political will and military commitment. Foreign and defense ministers generally support transformation initiatives, but find their best intentions side-lined by fierce competition for domestic budgets. As can be expected from an international institution with a dual (political and military) identity, NATO's transformational work is proceeding in an uneven political-military manner. The bottom line, however, is that the political decisions on Prague Capability Commitment programs are disconnected from NATO's other military programs. Research was conducted using a variety of materials (official NATO documents, articles, reports, monographs and book chapters).