Publication

Cooperation has become increasingly important for NATO and the UN to cope with the complex demands of modern crisis management. The organizations’ collaboration has however remained restricted to a limited number of operations of mutual interest. The paper argues that NATO and the UN only cooperate closely under certain conditions: when both sides perceive the need to access external resources to fulfill organizational goals and when they lack politically and financially feasible alternatives. Potential alternatives are the procurement of sufficient capacity and expertise to act independently, or justifying to ‘go it alone’ based on claimed operational necessity or moral imperatives.