An Alliance in Change: The Development of NATO’s Self-Defense Dimension
Publish date: 2012-02-01
Report number: FOI-R--3204--SE
Pages: 45
Written in: Swedish
Keywords:
- Afghanistan
- Allied Solidarity Force (ASF)
- Article 5
- CSDP
- CFSP
- enlargement
- European Union
- Germany
- NATO
- NATO Response Force (NRF)
- partnership
- strategic concept
- United States
Abstract
This report analyzes the evolution of NATO's self-defence dimension, as it has evolved in the past few years. The central research question is the following: why is it that self-defence, in particular in terms of territorial defence, has become such a salient issue for NATO during the last several years, despite the fact that hardly any NATO member state currently faces a direct territorial threat? Particular emphasis is placed on an analysis of NATO's new strategic concept, which strongly underlines the collective defence of the alliance's member countries. The findings of the report are that geopolitical factors - such as the U.S. military presence in Europe and the development of Russia's security policies - largely determine how the NATO alliance handles the issue of collective defence. The U.S. role in Europe might decrease slightly but is likely to remain at a level around or just below the situation today. This means that the country's influence as a superpower in Europe will remain. Russia's development is more uncertain; the war against Georgia in 2008 was one of the most important drivers for many of the NATO members to start to underline again the self-defence dimension of the alliance. In terms of the NATO self-defence dimension, the internal NATO debate was able to further the concept of military contingency planning in a way separate from the discussion on which actors it should guard against. This facilitated the acceptance of the contingency plans also in the NATO countries which did not believe that Russia is or will be a potential threat. In any case, Russia will most likely be a very important defining issue for how the contingency planning process will be executed in the future. NATO's renewed emphasis on collective defence means that NATO exercises in the Baltic region will increase. This may give ample opportunities for Sweden to take part in those exercises, including such with territorial defence-related scenarios.