The Alliance is facing a broad range of challenges of unprecedented complexity and increasing urgency. Grappling with a revanchist Russia to its east and an arc of instability to its south, NATO must take bold and innovative steps to respond to the rapidly evolving security environment. This collection of work provides proactive, responsive, and policy-relevant advice at the strategic level for transatlantic security community leaders on topics ranging from the implications of the unfolding crisis in Ukraine to transatlantic energy security and NATO’s role in Arctic security. These various projects analyze the threats beyond NATO’s horizon, and how the threats NATO faces today will impact it in the decades to come.
KEY OUTPUTS
NATO’s New Strategy: Stability Generation
The new threat landscape the transatlantic community faces means that NATO must adapt its strategy to remain relevant. While many transatlantic policymakers and thought leaders have called for a new strategy for NATO, few have outlined what that strategy should actually entail. This report proposes that NATO adopt a new strategy called “Stability Generation,” built on the concept of ensuring stability in the NATO region and reducing the threat of significant conflicts in NATO’s neighborhood.
Read the Publication:
NATO’s New Strategy: Stability Generation
NATO’s Maritime Strategy
NATO faces a new and challenging security environment dominated by a revanchist Russia increasingly willing to challenge the West and turbulence and violence across the Mediterranean’s southern rim. In this new security environment, the maritime domains around Europe are potential friction zones and where these challenges increasingly play out. The Alliance, however, has not yet done enough to prepare for these new challenges in the maritime domain. This body of work outlines elements of an updated Alliance maritime strategy, identifying policies, capabilities, and operations to protect NATO interests in a resource-constrained environment.
Read the Publications:
Updating NATO’s Maritime Strategy
The Naval Alliance: Preparing NATO for a Maritime Century
Restoring the Power and Purpose of the NATO Alliance
The Alliance faces the greatest threats to peace and security in Europe since the end of the Cold War. The most pressing, fundamental challenges include a revanchist Russia, eroding stability in the greater Middle East, a weakened European Union, and uncertain American and European leadership. To tackle these challenges, Ambassador R. Nicholas Burns, former Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs and US Ambassador to NATO, and General James L. Jones, former National Security Advisor and Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO, argue that what NATO needs most is determined political leadership backed by a long-term strategy to restore its power and purpose.
In a flagship Atlantic Council report, Burns and Jones lay out several concrete recommendations for what the Alliance should do at its 2016 Warsaw Summit and beyond. The report is the culmination of a four-month long study on NATO’s future strategic priorities, co-chaired by Ambassador Burns and General Jones. Numerous leaders from across the political spectrum and across the Alliance were consulted throughout this project, including at an exclusive workshop hosted at the Atlantic Council.
Read the Publication:
Restoring the Power and Purpose of the NATO Alliance
Read the Workshop Recap:
Restoring NATO’s Power and Purpose
KEY EVENTS
Unwrapping the NATO Warsaw Summit
Implementing the decisions made at the Warsaw Summit is as important as the Summit itself. It will be crucial to monitor the commitments made at the Warsaw Summit and how individual nations are following through on their pledges to work together and contribute to collective security in both the east and the south. To jumpstart this discussion, the Atlantic Council hosted a private roundtable with General Denis Mercier, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander, who briefed out the key deliberations and conclusions of the Alliance’s July 8-9 Warsaw Summit.
Read the Recap:
Unwrapping the NATO Warsaw Summit
NAC-D Debrief
Just weeks ahead of the Warsaw Summit, the Atlantic Council hosted a private session with James J. Townsend, Jr., Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for European and NATO Policy at the US Department of Defense, to debrief the NATO Defense Ministerial meeting held on June 14-15.
Read the Recap:
NAC-D Debrief with James J. Townsend, Jr.
The Road to NATO’s Warsaw Summit
In the wake of the March 22nd terrorist attacks in Brussels, Air Marshal Sir Christopher Harper, Director General of the International Military Staff (IMS) at NATO Headquarters in Brussels, visited the Council to discuss how the challenges emanating from NATO’s southern flank are impacting the Alliance and its partners as they prepare for the seminal NATO Warsaw Summit this summer.
NATO: Projecting Stability in an Age of Instability
In April, the Atlantic Council hosted a special event with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg to discuss NATO’s strategy for south and preview the agenda for the upcoming NATO Warsaw Summit in July. Secretary General Stoltenberg discussed the broad range of urgent and complex challenges facing the Alliance, outlining several steps NATO must take to respond to the rapidly evolving transatlantic security environment.
Read the Recap and Analysis:
NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg Stands Up for the Alliance
Forging a Modern Alliance
In February, the Atlantic Council hosted a private roundtable with General Sir Adrian Bradshaw KCB OBE, Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe (DSACEUR). General Bradshaw discussed key challenges and priorities for the Alliance in the run-up to the Warsaw Summit.
Registration for this event is now closed.
Please join us on Thursday, September 24 from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. for a conference on the major challenges facing NATO and the political and military way forward as the Alliance approaches its crucially important Warsaw Summit in 2016. The keynote address will feature H.E. Ine Eriksen Soreide, Minister of Defense of Norway, and the Hon. Chuck Hagel, Distinguished Statesman of the Atlantic Council and former Secretary of Defense of the United States.
Panel 1: Introduction and NATO’s new threat horizon
Panel 2: From Wales to Warsaw: Forming a coherent strategy for NATO
Panel 3: Elements of a new transatlantic strategy
Registration for this event is now closed.
Please join us on Thursday, September 24 from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. for a conference on the major challenges facing NATO and the political and military way forward as the Alliance approaches its crucially important Warsaw Summit in 2016.
The transatlantic community faces urgent challenges on multiple fronts. In the East, the crisis in Ukraine continues unabated, coupled with Russian assertiveness and pushing West-Russia tensions to an all-time high in the post-Cold War environment. In the south, conflicts in the wider Middle East have fueled the rise of new terrorist groups and catalyzed one of the worst refugee crises that Europe has faced since World War II. At the same time, the transatlantic community faces challenges in political unity, from ongoing debates about burden-sharing and defense spending to the rise of fringe political parties to new cracks and fissures in European unity and solidarity.
The Atlantic Council is convening leading experts from across Europe and North America to analyze these critically important issues, what they mean for NATO’s future, and what policies and strategies NATO and its members should consider ahead of the Warsaw Summit in 2016.
September 24, 2015
9:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Atlantic Council
1030 15th Street NW
12th Floor (West Tower Elevator)
Washington, DC
Representatives of the press are welcome. This event is on the record.
VISITING THE COUNCIL: Metro and parking info