NATO is on the defensive: faltering in Afghanistan, divided over Russia, and uncertain about Iran and a host of other security problems. Doubts about the Alliance’s future are again on the rise – not for the first time, as seasoned observers will note. Rewriting the Strategic Concept, NATO’s core strategy document, is a chance to revitalize the Alliance by redefining NATO’s purposes for the future. NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has assembled an expert team led by a former US Secretary of state to take up the task. But the task will not be easy. Consensus within the Alliance is at historic lows. Not only does NATO comprise nearly twice the members it did the last time the Strategic Concept was rewritten, the nature of the security problems its members face has grown manifestly more complex.

A focus on our common problems

On the most basic level, the question that should drive the Strategic Concept revision and thinking about NATO’s future in general should be: how can the Alliance best prepare to serve the common security problems of its member states? This question itself has two parts: First, what are the most pressing security challenges facing the member states? Second, which of these can NATO reasonably be expected to help manage, were it to decide it wanted to? In other words, it is crucial that the rewrite process focus primarily on the threats member states face today, as opposed to NATO’s own problems. The key to the latter is to be found in the former, and the point of the rewrite should not be to ‘save NATO’ but to identify and articulate a coherent vision of how NATO can help preserve the security of the citizens of its members in a global environment that continues to change and evolve. At the same time, idées fixes about what NATO is and is not able to do will have to be relaxed in favor of realistic assessments of what NATO might be if it tried.

Focusing on the threats to member states means accepting, in theory, that an organization like NATO may no longer be needed and might be obsolete. Once the question is posed openly, however, the need for NATO should be self-evident. The vast majority of the security problems member states face today call for a multilateral approach. […]

OUTLINE

• A focus on our common problems
• The art of coherence
• Intellectual challenges
  - Future directions for the Alliance
  - NATO in the Greater Middle East
  - NATO and fragile states
  - NATO and non-state threats
• NATO’S European core
• The challenge ahead

Christopher S. Chivvis is a political scientist with the RAND Corporation in Washington D.C., and adjunct professor of European Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.