Adapt our Alliance Now and Together!

by Julian Lindley-French et al.

GLOBSEC
July 9, 2018

NATO is at a crucial decision point. The Alliance has made significant progress since 2014 in strengthening deterrence against a revisionist Russia and countering threats from the south. But continued questions about unequal sharing of burdens across the Atlantic threaten to erode the unity and common purpose that are the Alliance’s center of gravity.

It is political solidarity, now and in the future, that is the true defense against any and all adversaries. Only then will the Alliance be armed with the necessary strategic ambition needed to succeed in what is clearly going to be a challenging century for all of the Allies. Such ambition will only be realized if it is embedded in a new, more balanced transatlantic relationship in which the United States continues to afford its European Allies with the defense guarantee and security support vital to Europe’s stability, in return for European Allies plus Canada, conscious of the pressing and changing needs of American and global security, becoming more able and willing to help meet those needs, as they did in the wake of 9/11.

The November 2017 GLOBSEC NATO Adaptation Report, The Future Tasks of the Adapted Alliance is clear: “To lay the basis for long-term adaptation, NATO leaders should commission a strategy review at the July 2018 Summit that could be completed by the seventieth anniversary summit in 2019, and which might be embodied in a new Strategic Concept. NATO needs a forward-looking strategy that sets out how NATO will meet the challenges of an unpredictable and fast-changing world”.