My first adult “job” was as a machine gunner for the Marines, and eventually as security for U.S. diplomatic missions abroad—in Colombo, Sri Lanka during the September 11 attacks. Security, diplomacy, and when/why we intervene has always been fascinating to me and—at the core of that—NATO.
On September 11, NATO was at an inflection point—learning on the fly to pivot toward a geostrategic environment shaped by asymmetric warfare and terror tactics. But it’s not as though NATO had a particularly cohesive identity before that, as it was institutionally coming to terms with what sort of mission a post–Cold War NATO should be about. There arguably have been other inflection points, something around the Russian invasion of Ukraine, perhaps, or the shift toward soft power we saw as disinformation became a defining trait of the geostrategic theater.
This looks a lot like NATO is in the midst of a long–term identity crisis, reeling from shift after shift in the threat environment and made all the worse as the politics of core member states drift further apart. Instability is here to stay for the foreseeable future—the term “polycrisis” feels bombastic but it’s appropriate, and societal fragmentation on domestic fronts isn’t bringing a change for the better any closer.
NATO was created with a specific purpose in mind, oriented toward logics of the world post–World War II. As the world has changed post–Cold War, NATO’s mission has become less well–defined, but still an effective and important institution. But is it falling behind? The pressures on NATO now are great, both from diverging domestic politics among members and from rapidly evolving external threats. But those threats underscore just how much good NATO could do as the world becomes less stable.
In the leadup to the July summit this year, we asked our network of experts what the future of NATO looks like, and what a cohesive vision for a better future might entail.
