Natos New Strategic Concept And Peripheral Contingencies

On July 15-16, 1999, RAND's Center for Middle East Public Policy and the Geneva Center for Security Policy held a workshop on the likelihood of out-of-area roles for NATO, with emphasis on the Middle East. The 25 attendees explored NATO's role in operations beyond its borders, European capabilities for power projection, Western policy toward the Middle East and the Gulf, the Arab-Israel area and external power intervention, and external intervention and the Persian Gulf. There was a general consensus that any military action required in the Gulf or Middle East would probably be carried out by a coalition of willing NATO members rather than NATO as an institution. The gap between U.S. power projection capabilities and those of Europe is particularly striking in modern and transport aircraft and in smart weapons. The disparity was particularly evident in the Kosovo conflict. Considerable attention was given to Turkey's role in Middle East affairs, particularly the

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is the world’s largest, most powerful military alliance. The Alliance has navigated and survived the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the post-9/11 era. Since the release of the 2010 Strategic Concept, NATO’s strategic environment has again undergone significant change. The need to adapt is clear. An opportunity to assess the Alliance’s achievements and future goals has now emerged with the Secretary General’s drive to create a new Strategic Concept for the next decade—an initiative dubbed NATO 2030. A necessary step for formulating a new strategic outlook will thus be understanding the future that faces NATO. To remain relevant and adjust to new circumstances, the Alliance must identify its main challenges and opportunities in the next ten years and beyond. This book contributes to critical conversations on NATO’s future vitality by examining the Alliance’s most salient issues and by offering recommendations to ensure its effectiveness moving forward. Written by a diverse, multigenerational group of policymakers and academics from across Europe and the United States, this book provides new insights about NATO’s changing threat landscape, its shifting internal dynamics, and the evolution of warfare. The volume’s authors tackle a wide range of issues, including the challenges of Russia and China, democratic backsliding, burden sharing, the extension of warfare to space and cyberspace, partnerships, and public opinion. With rigorous assessments of NATO’s challenges and opportunities, each chapter provides concrete recommendations for the Alliance to chart a path for the future. As such, this book is an indispensable resource for NATO’s strategic planners and security and defense experts more broadly.

This book examines the role of NATO in the Middle East. It reviews the strategic importance of the region and why it has become a source of instability, looks at US and international initiatives to counteract this instability and charts the development of NATO in this context.

"As the United States continues to adjust to its role in the post-Cold War world, the transatlantic partnership remains fundamental to US security concerns. Commander Gunning[alpha]s paper is a wake-up call suggesting that Europe is concerned about US intransigence when it comes the security partnership with Europe. While the United States has often encouraged the Europeans to improve capabilities and take on a greater share of the defensive burden, their recent efforts to do so have often been viewed as paradoxical to US concerns. Policymakers on this side of the Atlantic worry that Europe in some ways is moving towards going it alone with the development of the European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP). Still, US desires for increased burdensharing need to be reconciled with ESDP. Commander Gunning highlights these differences and spells out how, in his opinion, it is possible for the United States to remain engaged in Europe and to allow the European Union to develop its own defense identity. The differences of opinion between the two sides are more "speed bumps" than "road blocks" and some disagreement and frustration is to be expected. The conclusion here is that security interests on both sides of the Atlantic will be served in the long run by encouraging the development of a more autonomous European defense capability and through American patience as that process unfolds."--Forward.

As counter-profileration is expected to become the central element in the new national security policy of the US, such actions will constitute a central element of every major international conflict in the first decades of the 21st century. One of the most important geostrategic phenomena of the past decade has been the extraordinary diffusion of war-making capabilities from the developed North to the developing South. In the eyes of some proliferant states, possessing nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) weapons would not only add to their regional stature, but would also offer an asymmetrical counter to the West’s massive superiority in conventional forces. In the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East, a number of countries are assumed to possess varying levels of NBC-weapons capabilities. Reasons for concern include the fact that such weapons have been used in the past; the region’s geographic proximity to Europe and the vital interests of the West (which is prepared, under certain circumstances, to use force to protect them); the multiplicity of conflicts and other security problems; and the general instability in the region (including the spread of religious extremism). This important and timely book assesses, in detail, the accuracy of predictions, and perceptions, about a possible military threat from the Southern Mediterranean (Muslim) world; and their impact on NATO’s political and military posture. Thanos P. Doxos presents an assessment of the Alliance’s options for dealing with the problem. This book represents an invaluable, topical resource for researchers and policy makers.