All in-depth research & reports

Issue Brief

Mar 21, 2016

Train, hone, deter

By Matt Brand

NATO exercises play a vital role in ensuring that Alliance forces can respond to any contingency quickly and effectively. Not since the early 1990s has NATO’s exercise program drawn as much attention from NATO’s national leaders as it does now, due in large part to Russia’s increasingly aggressive misbehavior. The NATO exercise program provides the vital functions of keeping the member states’ forces interoperable by integrating new technologies into the force, practicing new doctrine, and validating units for their rotation into contingency roles, like the NATO Response Force.

Europe & Eurasia
NATO

Issue Brief

Feb 3, 2016

The renewed Russian nuclear threat and NATO nuclear deterrence posture

By Matthew Kroenig

Over the past decade, Russia has made nuclear weapons a predominant element of its national security strategy and military doctrine, while NATO has consciously de-emphasized its nuclear posture.

NATO
Nuclear Deterrence

Issue Brief

Aug 14, 2014

Why nuclear deterrence still matters to NATO

By Matthew Kroenig and Walter B. Slocombe

Over the past two decades, nuclear weapons have been deemphasized in NATO planning, but this should not be interpreted to mean that the Alliance has abandoned the core principle that a nuclear attack will meet a nuclear response, or that NATO will not retain the necessary means to deliver such a response. In the latest […]

Europe & Eurasia
NATO

Issue Brief

Oct 31, 2013

Global trends and the future of NATO: alliance security in an era of global competition

By Barry Pavel and Magnus Nordenman

The latest issue brief by Barry Pavel, Atlantic Council VP and director of the Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security, and Magnus Nordenman, Brent Scowcroft Center deputy director, argues that global shifts in economic and military power, demographics, resource demand, and other critical megatrends will require NATO to overhaul its long-term strategy for the future. […]

Europe & Eurasia
NATO

Issue Brief

Mar 22, 2012

The transatlantic bargain after “the Pivot”

By Barry Pavel and Jeffrey Lightfoot

In the issue brief “The Transatlantic Bargain After ‘the Pivot’,” authors Barry Pavel, director of the Council’s International Security Program, and Jeff Lightfoot, program deputy director, argue that as the United States reassesses its defense priorities towards the Indo-Pacific region amid cutbacks on defense spending, European partners in NATO must take on a larger responsibility […]

Defense Policy
National Security
Nuclear ICBM

Issue Brief

Aug 30, 2011

Future options for NATO nuclear policy

By Jeffrey A. Larsen

The United States has maintained forward-deployed nuclear weapons in Europe for more than six decades. That may soon come to an end, argue Dr. Jeffrey A. Larsen, a retired Air Force command pilot and expert on arms control, in his Atlantic Council issue brief “Future Options for NATO Nuclear Policy.”  Unless current trends are altered, […]

Europe & Eurasia
NATO