Will NATO be able to adapt to strategic change?

Rather than going back to the basics of being a alliance that protects the territoriums of its members, NATO should dare to think big and out of the box. Professor Trine Flockhart’s new DIIS report suggests that the Warsaw Summit will take place at a crucial time, where the character of the emerging strategic environment is becoming more clear. What appears on the horizon is a multi-order world characterized by diversity in both power and principle. NATO’s most urgent task at the Warsaw Summit is to prepare for the coming multi-order world.

As NATO is preparing the summit in June 2016 in Warsaw, the alliance is faced by many challenges; relations with Russia regarding Ukraine and Syria, how to deal with IS/Daesh and how to accomodate the continuing rebalance to Asia as well as many other issues. The report takes a close look at the ongoing changes in the strategic environment and assesses NATO’s strengths and weaknesses in meeting the challenges of operating in a multi-order world. The author urges NATO leaders not be tempted to ’go back to basics’ but to dare to think big and out of the box on the role NATO might play in a multi-order world.

Trine Flockhart is Professor of International Relations at University of Kent