Abstract
This paper examines the possibilities and conditions for the formation of military alliances in the future, providing strategic analysts with a template to analyze key and relevant trends. It provides an operational definition of alliances, before examining the drivers of alliance formation and of alliance cohesion. These discussions help establish a set of criteria required to analyze the future of alliance formation. The fourth section builds a set of guiding questions for strategic analysts and discusses several likely challenges for NATO. In terms of potential adversaries, the key challenge for NATO is to gauge the growing relationship between Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. Another issue to monitor is the potential evolution of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), which could serve as the springboard for bilateral or minilateral alliances in the future, depending on the evolution of the relations between Russia and China. A third challenge will be to identify the proper cooperation format with the evolving alliance formats in the Pacific. A good case can be made that NATO should be “with” the Pacific instead of “in” the Pacific, but there is a real risk to trigger security dilemmas in the Indo-Pacific if NATO becomes too visibly and explicitly present. NATO leaders should then carefully consider the nature and the extent of NATO’s relationship with like-minded alliances in the Indo-Pacific region.