One Plus Four: What NATO’s New Strategic Concept Should Say and How to Achieve It

Abstract

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) must pivot to address a new era of persistent threats and disruptive challenges unbounded by geography. Reaffirming NATO’s cohesion as an alliance of democracies will be paramount. Each of NATO’s core tasks—defense and deterrence, crisis management, and cooperative security—must evolve to meet new dangers. The Alliance should add a fourth core task of comprehensive resilience: the ability to anticipate, prevent, and, if necessary, protect against and move forward from disruptions to critical functions of allied societies. A more capable Europe is essential to each of these tasks.