Publication

2348. This paper agrees that NATO should put a premium on collective defense, but that doesn’t mean going back to the concept's roots. Given the post-Cold War world it now operates in and the changed dynamics within the Alliance itself, NATO has to redefine what collective defense means in contemporary terms. It should, for example, 1) account for the security challenges being faced by its southern allies; 2) find an appropriate balance between traditional collective defense and crisis management; and 3) while performing these tasks, not forget to factor in its third core task – cooperative security.