The Need for NATO?
The need for NATO and its survival in the new world order. NATO responding to new challenges. Threats from China and Russia, burden-sharing, rising costs, European defence policy, enlargement, new roles and new partnerships.
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The Need for NATO?
Abstract The need for NATO and its survival in the new world order. NATO responding to new challenges. Threats from China and Russia, burden-sharing, rising costs, European defence policy, enlargement, new roles and new partnerships. Keywords New world order • Future threats • Challenges
Introduction: Does NATO Have a Future? Will NATO survive the next 70 years? Much will depend on future threats, whether NATO is viewed as the most appropriate and least-cost solution to these threats and whether NATO will adjust to survive. The future is uncertain and no one can predict it accurately. Uncertainty means the emergence of new threats embracing known/knowns but the more difficult threats are the known/unknowns and especially the unknown/ unknowns. Defence policy-makers have to deal with these uncertainties. They have to make judgements about the likely future threats, the form these will take and their geographical locations over a time-scale of at least 50 years. If policy-makers get it wrong, the price paid might be defeat in battle, national conquest and foreign occupation. Views about future threats require judgements on future military forces, non-conventional military forces (e.g. guerrilla forces; terrorists © The Author(s) 2020 K. Hartley, NATO at 70, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54395-2_2
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and their weapons) and possible developments in new technology. NATO has to respond to these new and developing threats. It has responded successfully in the past. The classic example was the end of the Cold War when there was pressure to disband NATO. Its critics claimed that its job was done and it was no longer needed. Instead, NATO showed that it was capable of adjusting to change and acquired new roles and new members, including members from the former Warsaw Pact.
A Previous Look at the Future A previous economic study of NATO considered its future over the period 1999 to the near term and long term (Sandler and Hartley 1999). A major issue identified was the optimal membership size of NATO and the need to measure the marginal or incremental benefits and costs that new members add to the NATO alliance. New functions appear to have been added without regard for the strains they may create for the alliance. There is also scope for developing a more dynamic theory of burden-sharing to replace current static theories. The development of the European Union’s defence policy required understanding of Europe’s defence industrial base and its structure, conduct and performance. Further strains on the alliance will arise from costs imposed on the same small subset of NATO allies (Sandler and Hartley 1999, p. 265). In the near term, it was forecast that NATO will consist of two approximately equal-sized allies, namely, the USA and the European Union with defence burdens shared fairly equally. One big question identified in 1999 was whether the NATO allies were prepared to move away from unanimous decision-making to allow the alliance to act quickly. Otherwise, the fear is that as
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