1st Edition

NATO and Collective Defence in the 21st Century An Assessment of the Warsaw Summit

Edited By Karsten Friis Copyright 2017

    This book presents a cutting-edge assessment of NATO's collective defence strategies in the immediate aftermath of the July 2016 NATO Warsaw Summit.

    Collective defence and deterrence came back on the agenda at the 2014 Wales Summit following the Russian annexation of Crimea, and was in many respects a game changer for NATO. The Warsaw Summit was a follow-up and operationalization of the Wales Summit, as well as adding further initiatives to the agenda. But is NATO delivering? This book provides a thorough assessment of the on-going debates and discussions taking place within and outside of NATO in Europe and North America. In its return to deterrence, NATO is confronted with challenges relating to strategic thinking, capability development, and the role of nuclear weapons. It has also raised questions about the future prospects for NATO membership for countries such as Sweden and Finland, with broader implications for the security situation in the Baltic region. Central to all this is of course NATO’s relationship with Russia and questions of a new security dilemma, in turning bringing to the fore the challenge of maintaining an appropriate balance between deterrence and dialogue. The chapters in this volume address these questions and provide a much-needed analysis of the results of the NATO Warsaw Summit.

    This book will be of interest to policymakers and students of NATO, international security, European Politics, security studies and IR in general.

    1. Introduction: NATO after the Warsaw Summit, Karsten Friis

    2. NATO’s Responses to Russian belligerence: An Overview, Jeffrey A. Larsen

    3. Can NATO’s new Very High Readiness Joint Task Force deter?, Jens Ringsmose & Sten Rynning

    4. Modern deterrence? NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence on the eastern flank, Robin Allers

    5. More teeth for the NATO-Tiger: How the Framework Nations Concept can reduce NATO’s growing formation-capability gap, Claudia Major & Christian Mölling

    6. NATO Nuclear Adaptation at the Warsaw Summit, Jacek Durkalec

    7. Divided by geography? NATO’s internal debate about the eastern and southern flanks, Patrick Keller

    8. NATO and Russia: Spiral of distrust, Julie Wilhelmsen & Jakub Godzimirski

    9. Sweden and Finland: To be or not to be NATO members, Ann-Sofie Dahl

    10. Rethinking strategy: NATO and the Warsaw Summit, Christopher Coker

    11. Conclusions: Looking towards Brussels 2017 and Istanbul 2018, Karsten Friis

    Biography

    Karsten Friis is Head of the Security and Defence Research Group at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) and co-editor of Conflict in Cyber Space: Theoretical, strategic and legal perspectives (Routledge, 2016).