1. Challenges to NATO's Nuclear Strategy
- Author:
- Andrea Gilli
- Publication Date:
- 12-2021
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- NATO Defense College
- Abstract:
- In 2022, NATO will present its new Strategic Concept. Since 2010, when the previous Strategic Concept was published, NATO and the world have changed significantly. At the time, NATO was primarily engaged in crisis management, including in operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Strategic Concept enabled the Alliance to further expand – conceptually and geographically – its out-of-area activities, together with the core tasks of cooperative security. Eleven years later, the dominant paradigm of international politics is great power competition: in other words, countries like Russia and China are competing with the West strategically, economically, militarily, and in terms of values. Many things have remained constant, however: one is the centrality of nuclear weapons for NATO’s deterrence and defence posture. Since 2010, Allies have continued to affirm that as long as nuclear weapons exist, NATO will remain a nuclear alliance, notwithstanding the Alliance’s ultimate goal of a world free of nuclear weapons.
- Topic:
- Security, Defense Policy, NATO, Arms Control and Proliferation, Nuclear Weapons, Military Strategy, and Deterrence
- Political Geography:
- Europe and North America