Europeanising NATO Brief Series

In response to the continuing threat from Russia and to US demands that they should assume primary responsibility for their own conventional deterrence and defence, NATO’s European Allies and Canada have set out to build “a stronger Europe in a stronger NATO”. In part, they anticipate that these efforts will persuade the US to remain committed to Europe’s security and ensure that the Alliance remains a key instrument for delivering a common transatlantic agenda. But a ‘Europeanised’ NATO must also allow Europeans to act, without the risk of American interference or veto, in the increasingly likely situations in which the US cannot or will not be engaged—otherwise they will be tempted to create expensive, duplicate structures and capabilities elsewhere to deal with European-only contingencies.

Properly Europeanising NATO will thus mean a profound transformation. There are difficult practical questions to be resolved, such as how planning, command structures and capability profiles must be adjusted to cope with the new circumstances. But there will also be broader political and strategic fallout as a militarily stronger and more confident Europe seeks a greater role in Alliance decision shaping and making.

ICDS’s Europeanising NATO briefs explore some of these issues. They take, as a starting point, the willingness of the European Allies and Canada to further shift the burden of collective deterrence and defence towards themselves and examine some of the component parts of this challenge and its wider implications.

• Brief I: European Leadership by Alessandro Marrone
• Brief II: Planning by Neeme Väli

Views expressed in ICDS publications are those of the author(s).