Lama Abdelaziz
As NATO approaches its eighties, the Alliance is at a crossroads. The decades of post-Cold War complacency due to the perceived “peace dividend” have evaporated as the return of great power competition in Europe and the shifting of geopolitical gravity to the Indo-Pacific occur simultaneously. NATO’s future will be determined by its ability to transform itself into a truly global security provider in the next decade. The Alliance must ensure its fifth-generation capabilities to counter China’s rise and the military revolution that is currently underway.
At the same time, NATO has to guarantee the protection of its European members while at the same time balancing the European ambitions to pursue strategic autonomy. The central dilemma for the Alliance in the next decade will be related to the tension between European strategic autonomy and the need to rely on the U.S. as the ultimate security provider in a multipolar world.
Firstly, NATO’s expansion beyond the Euro-Atlantic area and into the Indo-Pacific is both inevitable and overdue. The Alliance’s 2022 Strategic Concept statement that recognized the challenge posed by China’s ambitions and coercive policies represents a shift in NATO’s strategic culture. It has created friction in the Alliance, with the European partners being concerned that the U.S. will reduce its commitment to defend Eastern Europe.
However, the Alliance’s security architecture is already global, with the cyber domain and the maritime domain being connected. The actions of China in the South China Sea have direct implications for the security of NATO’s European members. Therefore, the Alliance’s future strategic concept should be one of “360-degree defense,” with the defense of the Taiwan Strait being inseparable from the defense of the Baltic states.
Secondly, NATO’s current burden-sharing formula is inadequate to deal with the challenges of the 21st century. Despite the significant increases in European defense spending following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, NATO’s European members still rely on the U.S. for strategic support. The “European Strategic Autonomy” vision, which is championed by France, is a sound idea that will allow the U.S. to focus its strategic attention on other theaters.
However, it would require a much deeper level of defense integration than what has been achieved so far. Without a significant increase in the defense spending, and without the corresponding increase in the defense production, NATO will remain incapable of countering hybrid and conventional threats in multiple domains simultaneously. The U.S. cannot be the sole provider of NATO’s security needs in the future as it will have to deal with peer competitors in both the Indo-Pacific and the Euro-Atlantic areas.
The trends in the NATO defense spending can be seen in the reports from the NATO Secretary General and the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Both indicate that NATO allies are prioritizing military spending over other areas of public spending. The fact that most NATO members spend above 2% of GDP on defense is a sign that the Alliance is serious about its strategic goals. The increase in the “Indo-Pacific Partner Exercises” indicates that NATO is serious about its strategic intentions in the region.
The partnerships with the “IP4” (Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and the Republic of Korea) will be critical for NATO to build a network of alliances capable of countering China’s growing influence. It is evident that NATO is transforming from a regional alliance into a global security provider with the capacity to confront revisionist powers. However, the gap between political rhetoric and military capabilities is still significant, with NATO being unable to compete with China in critical areas such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing.
NATO’s strategic concept for the next decade should be one of “principled adaptability” that will allow the Alliance to transform itself into a global security provider. NATO should pursue two strategic initiatives in the next decade. The first is to establish a “Global Security Council” within the NATO framework that will focus on maritime security and cyber defense in particular.
The partnerships with the IP4 need to be formalized at the NATO level to ensure that there is a unified approach to great power competition. The second strategic initiative should be to rebalance the transatlantic security architecture in favor of the European NATO members. In other words, NATO should transform from a system that relies on the U.S. as the “guarantor” of peace into the one that provides collective security.
The U.S. should retain its role as the provider of strategic deterrence while the European allies focus on conventional military capabilities. The reconciliation of these two strategic visions is the only way for NATO to ensure its relevance in the next decade.
Lama Abdelaziz is an Egyptian student currently pursuing a BSc in Politics and International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). As a young policy researcher and intern at PolicyEast, her academic interests are focused on global governance, international law, climate change, and regional power dynamics.
