NATO in Search of a Vision

Analysts are lining up to predict and dissect the future of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. NATO in Search of a Vision offers a diverse set of hypotheses, allowing the reader to reach his or her own conclusion about what lies ahead for the world's most powerful military alliance. -- Ivo H. Daalder, ambassador, U.S. mission to NATO NATO's celebration of its first sixty years has spawned a number of books seeking to explain its past and to project its future. There is no better volume to serve these purposes than NATO in Search of a Vision. As the Alliance constructs its new strategic concept in 2010, it should look to this book for guidance in weighing the role of globalization, managing internal divisons in an enlarged organization, and coping with external challenges. -- Lawrence Kaplan, emeritus director, Lyman L. Lemnitzer Center for NATO and European Union Studies This book offers a comprehensive analysis of NATO's need for a coherent, convincing vision; dealing with conceptual, organizational, operational, geographical, and demographical challenges and opportunities past and present, it is a must read for scholars as well as practitioners. -- Magnus Petersson, senior research fellow, Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies, and head of the NATO in a Changing World research programme NATO is busier than ever, but many see an Alliance adrift. A new consensus is needed on the challenges to transatlantic security and NATO's role in meeting them. In NATO in Search of a Vision, Gulnur Aybet and Rebecca Moore have brought together many thoughtful analysts to address this question, and they frame the issues clearly and succinctly. -- Daniel Hamilton, director, Center for Transatlantic Relations, Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies This important and timely volume is a welcome addition to the debate over NATO's future. -- James Goldgeier, The George Washington University and Council on Foreign Relations

NATO has to articulate a strategic vision designed to determine how, when, and where its capabilities should be used, the values underpinning its missions, and its relationship to other international actors such as the European Union and the United Nations. This work examines the key issues that NATO must address in formulating a strategic vision.As the NATO Alliance enters its seventh decade, it finds itself involved in an array of military missions ranging from Afghanistan to Kosovo to Sudan. It also stands at the center of a host of regional and global partnerships. Yet, NATO has still to articulate a grand strategic vision designed to determine how, when, and where its capabilities should be used, the values underpinning its new missions, and its relationship to other international actors such as the European Union and the United Nations. The drafting of a new strategic concept, begun during NATO's 60th anniversary summit, presents an opportunity to shape a new transatlantic vision that is anchored in the liberal democratic principles so crucial to NATO's successes during its Cold War years. Furthermore, that vision should be focused on equipping the Alliance to anticipate and address the increasingly global and less predictable threats of the post-9/11 world. This volume brings together scholars and policy experts from both sides of the Atlantic to examine the key issues that NATO must address in formulating a new strategic vision. With thoughtful and reasoned analysis, it offers both an assessment of NATO's recent evolution and an analysis of where the Alliance must go if it is to remain relevant in the twenty-first century.