he NATO Summit this year is getting a lot of attention. In years past, it was mostly a specific subset of foreign policy enthusiasts who paid attention to the summit. This one is different.
Editor’s Note: You can access this year’s NATO special edition bookazine here.
For years, if there was any public debate about the identity and future of NATO, that debate mostly revolved around whether the alliance should continue to exist at all. That’s unfortunate but you can understand. Two of the three most high-profile operations NATO has been involved in since the end of the Cold War—Kosovo and Afghanistan—were bad for NATO credibility in the popular imagination, regardless of how well or poorly the alliance performed in those operations. The question of NATO credibility was further complicated in the last decade by a trend within the West of turning inward and away from multilateralism.
Today, the threat environment in which NATO operates has evolved in a frightening way, and that’s caught the popular attention. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the obvious evolution, but it’s not the only one. China’s shift to a more threatening posture matters to NATO. And perhaps most significantly, cyber warfare has become a true asymmetric threat that, at its most threatening, endangers the foundations of our democratic institutions through disinformation and targeted attacks on key civil, private, and public infrastructure.
The shifting threat environment hasn’t taken NATO by surprise, and the alliance has been working for years to be future ready. What was lacking previously was not the realization, but real political support for a rejuvenated alliance.
Here we are today. Suddenly NATO matters in the popular mindset, so there’s the possibility of enough combined political will to support a more vital and effective NATO to meet tomorrow’s needs.
Diplomatic Courier partnered with the Permanent Secretariat of the Community of Democracies (CoD) for this special edition in part because they are thinking boldly about how to use this newfound political will to strengthen NATO. Perhaps the most fundamental shift in today’s threat environment is conceptual. Can democracies show resolve and solidarity in the face of continuous, multi-faceted, and often asymmetric aggression? Can our democratic institutions remain resilient in the face of cyberattacks not just on critical institutional infrastructure but on the very hearts and minds of the most fundamental unit of a democracy—the voter? What can, and should, NATO be doing to secure our democracies?
The question of whether and how NATO should encourage and support democratic governance is only one of a host of pressing questions facing the alliance. Diplomatic Courier and CoD asked our networks of experts to consider that question along with two others. These are how NATO should steer its future relations with Ukraine and/or Russia and whether/how NATO should seek to become a more proactive player globally. In all three questions, the conceptual has become as pressing a question as more traditional questions of force structure and doctrine.
The future of NATO is about security, but it’s also about how we conceptualize security and how we go about most effectively and ethically pursuing our security goals. It’s critical that we make the right choices. We hope this collection of articles and analyses help you think about what those right choices might look like.
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Imagining the NATO We Deserve
Photo via Adobe Stock.
July 6, 2023
This NATO summit is different from any in the past few decades—the war in Ukraine illustrates how the very identity of NATO must evolve in an increasingly tumultuous geopolitical environment. How it will evolve is the topic of Diplomatic Courier's latest publication, writes Shane Szarkowski.
T
he NATO Summit this year is getting a lot of attention. In years past, it was mostly a specific subset of foreign policy enthusiasts who paid attention to the summit. This one is different.
Editor’s Note: You can access this year’s NATO special edition bookazine here.
For years, if there was any public debate about the identity and future of NATO, that debate mostly revolved around whether the alliance should continue to exist at all. That’s unfortunate but you can understand. Two of the three most high-profile operations NATO has been involved in since the end of the Cold War—Kosovo and Afghanistan—were bad for NATO credibility in the popular imagination, regardless of how well or poorly the alliance performed in those operations. The question of NATO credibility was further complicated in the last decade by a trend within the West of turning inward and away from multilateralism.
Today, the threat environment in which NATO operates has evolved in a frightening way, and that’s caught the popular attention. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the obvious evolution, but it’s not the only one. China’s shift to a more threatening posture matters to NATO. And perhaps most significantly, cyber warfare has become a true asymmetric threat that, at its most threatening, endangers the foundations of our democratic institutions through disinformation and targeted attacks on key civil, private, and public infrastructure.
The shifting threat environment hasn’t taken NATO by surprise, and the alliance has been working for years to be future ready. What was lacking previously was not the realization, but real political support for a rejuvenated alliance.
Here we are today. Suddenly NATO matters in the popular mindset, so there’s the possibility of enough combined political will to support a more vital and effective NATO to meet tomorrow’s needs.
Diplomatic Courier partnered with the Permanent Secretariat of the Community of Democracies (CoD) for this special edition in part because they are thinking boldly about how to use this newfound political will to strengthen NATO. Perhaps the most fundamental shift in today’s threat environment is conceptual. Can democracies show resolve and solidarity in the face of continuous, multi-faceted, and often asymmetric aggression? Can our democratic institutions remain resilient in the face of cyberattacks not just on critical institutional infrastructure but on the very hearts and minds of the most fundamental unit of a democracy—the voter? What can, and should, NATO be doing to secure our democracies?
The question of whether and how NATO should encourage and support democratic governance is only one of a host of pressing questions facing the alliance. Diplomatic Courier and CoD asked our networks of experts to consider that question along with two others. These are how NATO should steer its future relations with Ukraine and/or Russia and whether/how NATO should seek to become a more proactive player globally. In all three questions, the conceptual has become as pressing a question as more traditional questions of force structure and doctrine.
The future of NATO is about security, but it’s also about how we conceptualize security and how we go about most effectively and ethically pursuing our security goals. It’s critical that we make the right choices. We hope this collection of articles and analyses help you think about what those right choices might look like.
