LOOK BACK ON THE WASHINGTON SUMMIT

Atlantic Council at the NATO Summit in Washington

Live commentary, authoritative analysis, and high-level events covering NATO’s Washington summit, courtesy of our experts.

Essays on the Alliance’s future

NATO’s seventy-fifth anniversary is a milestone in a remarkable story of reinvention, adaptation, and unity. However, as the Alliance seeks to secure its future for the next seventy-five years, it faces revanchist old rivals, escalating strategic competition, and uncertainties over the future of the rules-based international order. 

With partners and allies turning attention from celebrations to challenges, the Atlantic Council’s Transatlantic Security Initiative invited contributors to engage with the most pressing concerns ahead of the historic Washington summit and chart a path for the Alliance’s future. This series features seven essays focused on concrete issues that NATO must address at the Washington summit and five essays that examine longer-term challenges the Alliance must confront to ensure transatlantic security. 

Related program

The Transatlantic Security Initiative, in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, shapes and influences the debate on the greatest security challenges facing the North Atlantic Alliance and its key partners.

Content

New Atlanticist

Oct 20, 2020

Defense Secretary unveils a new strategy for bolstering allies and partnerships in an era of great-power competition

By David A. Wemer

As the United States prepares for long-term competition with adversaries such as China and Russia, the Department of Defense is unveiling new plans to strengthen America’s network of alliances and partnerships. “Our global constellation of allies and partners remain an enduring strength that our competitors and adversaries simply cannot match,” US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said during an Atlantic Council Front Page event on October 20.

China Defense Industry

ACFrontPage

Oct 20, 2020

Transcript: Strengthening US alliances and partnerships with US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper

By Atlantic Council

Secretary Esper discussed how the United States can expand and deepen its global networks of allies and partners, leverage security and defense cooperation to build allied capacity and capability overseas, and improve interoperability to ensure more seamless combined operations against great-power adversaries.

China Defense Policy

In the News

Oct 16, 2020

Wieslander joins Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies to discuss national perspectives on EU mutual assistance clause

Europe & Eurasia European Union

Elections 2020

Oct 15, 2020

Five big questions as America votes: NATO

By Transatlantic Security Initiative

Although US leadership will continue to be the driving force behind NATO’s strategy, direction, and solidarity going forward, the extent of the United States’ commitment to the Alliance and its future role is still being called into question.

Elections NATO

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Oct 14, 2020

Listen to women

By Lisa Aronsson

Twenty years after its creation, NATO should affirm the strategic significance of the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda and define what it means for an era of great power competition.

Europe & Eurasia NATO

NATO 20/2020

Oct 14, 2020

Design a digital Marshall Plan

By The Hon. Ruben Gallego and The Hon. Vicky Hartzler

NATO allies, led by the United States, must cooperate in securing national 5G communications systems in Europe and beyond against malign Chinese influence.

Cybersecurity Digital Policy

NATO 20/2020

Oct 14, 2020

Digitalize the enterprise

By Jeffrey Reynolds, Jeffrey Lightfoot

If NATO is to unlock new frontiers of innovation and harness emerging technology, digitalizing how it does business is the key.

Defense Technologies Digital Policy

NATO 20/2020

Oct 14, 2020

Put NATO back in the narrative

By Bridget Corna and Livia Godaert

NATO can recapture the imagination of allied publics by telling its own story better and in new ways to new audiences.

Europe & Eurasia Media

NATO 20/2020

Oct 14, 2020

‘Game out’ decision making

By AM Sir Christopher Harper, KBE, RAF (Ret.)

In an era where the distinction between peace and conflict is increasingly complex, NATO should retain its competitive advantage by using synthetic environments and virtual worlds to support rapid, efficient, and effective strategic decision making.

Conflict Crisis Management

NATO 20/2020

Oct 14, 2020

Rethink and replace two percent

By Derek Chollet, Steven Keil, and Christopher Skaluba

NATO’s two percent metric is reductive and politically fraught but offers lessons for better ways to measure burden sharing.

Defense Policy Europe & Eurasia

Experts

Events