Peter Viggo Jakobsen

In a nutshell, this paper’s main argument is that NATO has been exceptionally successful in transforming its security environment. Ironically, this is the main reason that the Alliance is today faced with mounting challenges. By fulfilling its core purposes and creating a generally benign security environment, the Alliance has thus (to some extent) undermined its traditional raison d’être without agreeing on a new unifying core mission. We set out by examining the “NATO-in-crisis-literature” and argue that the Alliance’s many challenges can be boiled down to three major issues: Strategic divergence, a declining ability to act militarily, and fading public understanding of what NATO does. In the paper’s second section, we demonstrate how NATO has unwittingly contributed to its own sense of predicament by creating a benign security environment. We argue that the absence of serious threats to allied (an in particular European) security has, in fact, been a major cause of the Alliance stress. In the third and final section we examine the implications for NATO operationally. We conclude that, as serious as the challenges to the Alliance might be, they are in essence a sign of success and of NATO’s good fortune to be residing in a world free of existential threats.