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

Defense Industrialist

Oct 3, 2017

The military implications of Catalonian secession—an update

By James Hasik

assuming that Catalonia was admitted to NATO, what would the newly independent country contribute? At the 2014 Strategic Foresight Forum at the Atlantic Council, Anne Marie Slaughter of the New America Foundation opined that an independent Catalonia would do a fine job of defending itself. After all, Catalonia is a country of over 7 million people, with more than $300 billion in GDP. Spending just 1.6% of that—well below the widely-ignored NATO threshold, of course—provides over $4.5 billion annually. y de-emphasizing the military forces that any landlocked country will have, and instead steering investments towards those it is comparatively positioned to provide, Catalonia could punch above its weight in European political affairs.

Defense Policy Eastern Europe

New Atlanticist

Sep 21, 2017

With a Little Help from My Friends: How Sweden is Balancing its Security in the Baltics

By Anna Wieslander

Sweden is currently conducting its largest military exercises in over twenty years. Almost 20,000 Swedish troops are participating in Aurora17, which will run until September 29. They are joined by military units from Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Lithuania, Norway, and the United States, which has sent more than 1,000 troops, including a Patriot missile battery, […]

NATO Northern Europe

MENASource

Sep 8, 2017

Turkey’s fighter pilot problems

By Aaron Stein

The failed coup-attempt on July 15, 2016 upended the Turkish Air Force and prompted the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) to purge pilots and air crews from the military. The Air Force played a central part in the failed coup attempt. Although only some two-dozen F-16 pilots took part in the coup in eleven […]

NATO Partnerships Turkey

In the News

Sep 5, 2017

Braw in Defense One: Russia Has 100K Troops On the Move. Here’s Why NATO Can’t Do the Same

By Elisabeth Braw

Read the full article here.

NATO Russia

In the News

Sep 5, 2017

Braw in Defense One: Russia Has 100K Troops On the Move. Here’s Why NATO Can’t Do the Same

By Elisabeth Braw

Read the full article here.

NATO Russia
Ambassador Kay Bailey Hutchison and Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Aug. 28, 2017

NATOSource

Sep 1, 2017

New Ambassador: US Remains United Behind NATO

By Kay Bailey Hutchison, New York Times

I was nominated as United States ambassador to NATO by President Trump in late June.

NATO Security & Defense

In the News

Aug 30, 2017

Kroenig in Defence 24: NATO Should Recognize the Russian Missile Threat to Europe

By Matthew Kroenig

Read the full article here.

Missile Defense NATO

New Atlanticist

Aug 30, 2017

European Bureaucracy, Not Russia’s Military Exercises, Seen as a Bigger Challenge

By Teri Schultz

Top US military commander in Europe, Army Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, calls for a ‘military Schengen zone’ As Zapad 2017 looms, the top US military commander worries more about Europe’s sluggish bureaucracy than Russia’s snap military exercises. One word is dominating transatlantic security and defense discussions heading into September: Zapad. The word, which means “west” […]

NATO Russia

New Atlanticist

Aug 21, 2017

NATO’s Cyber Domain Concept Shows Increased Maturity in Understanding of Cyber Threats

By Klara Jordan

Recently, there have been a number of articles that explore the important and ongoing debate about the capabilities and policies NATO needs in order to deter and defend against the ever-looming cyber threats.  While many such articles accurately highlight the urgent need for NATO and its member states to develop a more proactive approach to […]

NATO Security & Defense

New Atlanticist

Aug 8, 2017

NATO Needs an Offensive Cybersecurity Policy

By Barbara Roggeveen

Modern-day warfare is as much about cyberattacks and the protection of communication and information systems as it is about kinetic military action. In 2016, NATO’s institutional networks experienced on average 500 cyberattacks a month—an increase of roughly 60 percent from the year before. Other recent, high-profile, transnational cyberattacks, such as the WannaCry ransomware attack and […]

Cybersecurity NATO

Experts

Events