Alliance faces “most complex strategic environment” in its history – Experts say NATO must be retooled for a new “Age of Disruption”
A panel of independent experts, including former senior U.S. and European government and military officials, argues that the NATO Alliance must urgently adjust to a more volatile “Age of Disruption” that threatens allies’ security in serious and often unpredictable ways. They warn that this age of disruption will take a dramatic turn for the worse if NATO fails to deter Russia from further invasion of Ukraine.
The panel, including HCSS Director of Research Tim Sweijs, contends that the Alliance’s strategic competition with Russia is magnified by challenges posed by a militarily powerful and technologically advanced China, as well as terrorism and the disruptive security implications of emerging technologies, disturbances to critical societal functions, climate change and threats to the global commons.
The panel urges allies to retool NATO through an approach they call “One Plus Four.” The One is allied cohesion and more effective decision-making, which they contend must be the central strategic underpinning of a new Strategic Concept for the Alliance. NATO must then update and upgrade its three core tasks — collective defense, crisis management, and cooperative security – and add a fourth core task: building comprehensive resilience to disruptive threats to allied societies. Collective defense should be declared the premier core task.
These four tasks require NATO allies to integrate their capacities across all domains: land, sea, air, space, and the digital domain. New Deterrence Initiatives should be launched with Ukraine and Georgia. Moreover, the Indo-Pacific and North Atlantic theaters are increasingly linked. NATO’s ability to address traditional and unconventional threats in Europe is becoming intertwined with its ability to address related challenges to Alliance security interests posed by China. And as the United States focuses greater military attention on the Indo-Pacific, NATO must thus transform itself into a more balanced transatlantic partnership in which Europe assumes greater strategic responsibility while reinforcing the transatlantic link.
The panel has met under the auspices of the Transatlantic Leadership Network, a non-partisan, not-for-profit grouping of experts from across the North Atlantic space. Participants included experienced experts from a variety of U.S. and European institutions.
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