Earlier this years, NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg appointed an independent study group for the purpose of examining the organization’s challenges in the coming decade.
The Secretary General particularly tasked the researchers with providing recommendations in three areas: reinforcing unity, solidarity, and cohesion, and cementing the alliance; increasing political consultation and coordination between NATO members; and Strengthening NATO’s political role to address current and future challenges.
Their research, just released, indicates that NATO must adapt to meet the needs of a more demanding strategic environment marked by the return of systemic rivalry, persistently aggressive Russia, the rise of China, and the growing role of emerging and destructive technologies, at the same time that it faces elevated transnational threats and risks.
The group notes that “The overarching political objective for NATO must be to consolidate the transatlantic Alliance to ensure that it possesses the tools, cohesion, and consultative attributes to provide collective defence in this more challenging landscape. NATO’s political dimension must adapt in order to maintain and strengthen its efficiency as well as ensuring its relevance for all Allies.”
Among the key recommendations:
1. Allies should seek to preserve NATO’s three core tasks and enhance its role as the unique and essential transatlantic forum for consultations; it should update content related to the principles undergirding the NATO Alliance, changes to the geostrategic environment (including both Russia and China), and the need to incorporate terrorism more fully into NATO’s core tasks.
2. NATO should continue the dual-track approach of deterrence and dialogue with Russia. The Alliance must respond to Russian threats and hostile actions in a politically united,determined, and coherent way, without a return to ‘business as usual’ barring alterations in Russia’s aggressive behaviour and its return to full compliance with international law. At the same time, NATO should remain open to discussing peaceful co-existence and to reacting positively to constructive changes in Russia’s posture and attitude. NATO should evolve the content of its dual-track strategy to ensure its continued effectiveness by raising the costs for Russian aggression and develop a more comprehensive response to hybrid forms of Russian aggression, while at the same time supporting increased political outreach to negotiate arms control and risk reduction measures.
3. NATO must devote much more time, political resources, and action to the security challenges posed by China – based on an assessment of its national capabilities, economic heft, and the stated ideological goals of its leaders. It needs to develop a political strategy for approaching a world in which China will be of growing importance through to 2030. The Alliance should infuse the China challenge throughout existing structures and consider establishing a consultative body to discuss all aspects of Allies’ security interests vis-à-vis China. It must expand efforts to assess the implications of China’s technological development and monitor and defend against any Chinese activities that could impact collective defence, military readiness or resilience in the Supreme Allied Commander Europe’s (SACEUR) Area of Responsibility.
4. Emerging and disruptive technologies are a challenge but also opportunity for NATO. Competing with the efforts underway by large authoritarian states to achieve dominance in key EDTs must be a strategic priority for the Alliance and its members. NATO should serve as a crucial coordinating institution for information-sharing and collaboration between Allies on all aspects of EDTs that have a bearing on their security. NATO should hold a digital summit of governments and private sector with the aim of identifying gaps in collective defence cooperation in security-related AI strategies, norms, and research and development (R&D), and safeguarding against the malign and aggressive use of AI.
5. Terrorism poses one of the most immediate, asymmetric threats to Allied nations and citizens. NATO should more explicitly integrate the fight against terrorism into its core tasks. This fight should be given a place within NATO structures, supported by necessary resources, commensurate with the threat that it poses. NATO should enhance the fight against terrorism as part of the hybrid and cyber conversation and ensure that the threat from terrorism figures in exercises and lessons learned. NATO should strive to improve current practices of intelligence-sharing among Allies to achieve better, common situational awareness in key areas including emerging safe havens and terrorists’ use of EDTs, as well as hybrid tactics.
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7. NATO should reaffirm its support for arms control while maintaining an effective nuclear deterrence. It should play an enhanced role as a forum to debate challenges to existing arms control mechanisms and consult on any future arrangements. NATO should continue to support the strengthening of effective verification regimes and enable monitoring capabilities and enforcement mechanisms. It should develop an agenda for international arms control in key areas of EDT with military application. NATO should further adapt its defence and deterrence posture in the post Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty setting to take into account the threat posed by Russia’s existing and new military capabilities. It should continue and revitalise the nuclear-sharing arrangements that constitute a critical element of NATO’s deterrence policy. 13
8. Climate change will continue to shape NATO’s security environment. While modulating emissions is primarily a national competency, NATO has a role to play in increasing situational awareness, early warning, and information sharing, including by considering the establishment of Centre of Excellence on Climate and Security. It should build on efforts to include climate change and other non-military threats such as pandemics in NATO planning on resilience and crisis management, with an emphasis on making energy and telecommunications grids better able to withstand weather events. NATO should revise its 2014 Green Defence framework and make more strategic use of the Science for Peace and Security programme in order to develop and implement better green military technology.
9. Maintaining political cohesion and unity must be an unambiguous priority for all Allies. Allies on both sides of the Atlantic must reaffirm their commitment to NATO as the principal institution for the defence of the Euro-Atlantic area. Allies should pledge themselves to a code of good conduct to abide by the spirit as well as the letter of the North Atlantic Treaty. Allies should maintain and meet agreed burden-sharing requirements. NATO should reassert its core identity as an Alliance rooted in the principles of democracy, and Allies should consider establishing a Centre of Excellence for Democratic Resilience dedicated to providing support to individual Allies, upon their request, for strengthening societal resilience to resist interference from hostile external actors in the functioning of their democratic institutions and processes. When disputes between Allies arise, the Secretary General should continue to provide his good offices and consider more closely involving other Allies as informal mediators.
10. The Group calls for transatlantic consultation to be strengthened in a systematic, credible, and powerful manner. Allies must reaffirm the role of the North Atlantic Council as a genuine forum for consultation on major strategic and political issues. Allies should strive to hold national policies to the line of policy developed at NATO. The Alliance should institute a practice whereby Allied Foreign Ministers make a periodic appraisal of the Alliance’s political health and development. NATO should hold more frequent Ministerials and, when appropriate, expand their format. It should resume the practice whereby the number of annual Foreign Ministerials matches the number of Defence Ministerials, with meetings alternating between NATO HQ and Allied capitals. It should hold more informal meetings and institute regular consultations on issues beyond the traditional agenda, including meetings of NATO Political Directors or other senior officials for e.g., Middle East, African, and East Asian affairs as well as cyber and other topics as appropriate.
11. NATO and the EU should seek to reinvigorate trust and understanding at the highest levels. At the next NATO Summit or the next available opportunity, it would be useful for NATO and EU Heads of State and Government to meet in a special formal session to review the current state of the relation ship and examine areas for greater cooperation. The two organisations should create an institution staff link through a permanent political liaison element in NATO’s International Staff (IS) and the European External Action Service (EEAS). NATO should welcome EU efforts towards a stronger and more capable European defence capacity insofar as these strengthen NATO, contribute to a fair transatlantic burden-sharing, and fully involve non-EU Allies. Ongoing European efforts should be better used to increase the share of European Allies in support of NATO capability targets.
12. NATO should outline a global blueprint for better utilising its partnerships to advance NATO strategic interests. It should shift from the current demand-driven approach to an interest-driven approach and consider providing more stable and predictable resource streams for partnership activities. NATO’s Open Door Policy should be upheld and reinvigorated. NATO should expand and strengthen partnerships with Ukraine and Georgia, seek to heighten engagement with Bosnia and Herzegovina, and counter destabilisation across the Western Balkans. NATO should energise the MediterraneanDialogue (MD) and the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative (ICI) through strengthened political engagement, capacity building, and resilience enhancement. It should deepen cooperation with Indo-Pacific partners, including by strengthening information-sharing and creating regularised dialogues on technological cooperation and pooling of R&D in select fields.
13. The principle of consensus is a cornerstone of the Alliance, but NATO must be diligent in ensuring that it remains capable of reaching and implementing decisions in a timely fashion. NATO should strengthen measures to ensure that consensus-based decisions are implemented and not diluted in follow-on work. It should consider bolstering the Secretary General’s chief executive role in order to make decisions on routine matters and to bring difficult issues into the open at an early stage. NATO should create a more structured mechanism to support the establishment of coalitions inside existing Alliance structures and should examine ways to time-limit decision making in crisis. To deal with the growing frequency of single-country blockages involving external bilateral disputes, it should consider raising the threshold for such blockages to the Ministerial level.
14. With regard to political structure, staffing, and resources, NATO needs a strong political dimension to match its military adaptation. NATO should consider increasing the delegated authorities of the Secretary General to make meaningful decisions on personnel and certain budgetary matters. It should institute a practice of outside-in audits of the administrative functioning of the organisation and require a functional review process once every five years. Allies that make up a low proportion al share of the civil budget should raise their national contributions. NATO should establish a centre of higher learning to cultivate future talent outside of NATO and launch a scholarship program, tentatively called the Harmel Fellowship Programme, under which each Ally would fund a scholarship programme for at least one individual every year from another NATO Ally to undertake postgraduate
Illustration: NATO