Introduction

The North Atlantic Alliance (NATO) is the longest lasting political-military pact based on a principle of a mutual and solidary defense that still exists. After 66 years, NATO has shifted away from the mission that gave it birth. Since its beginning, the Alliance's main goal was to protect its members from the armed aggression of the Soviet Union and the Moscow-led Warsaw Pact. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the Communist Bloc in Central-Eastern Europe significantly changed the security environment surrounding NATO. The threat of a military clash between the West and the East suddenly ceased to exist, and NATO was faced with a wide array of new challenges and tasks. This shift forced the Alliance to look for a new mission within a post-Cold War international structure. This new situation also required NATO to examine to what degree this organization should remain the institutional and operational foundation of security in the Euro-Atlantic area.

Since the end of the Cold War, many initiatives have been proposed to consolidate the role of the Alliance within a new international environment. In this regard, two tendencies can be noticed. First, an important element of NATO's new approach is a steady evolution from a collective defense towards cooperative defense. Second, the nature of the challenges and threats to security in the contemporary world will determine the direction of NATO's institutional and operational change. In particular, the so-called “new challenges and threats” highlight the necessity of enlarging forms of cooperation, not only with NATO member states, but also with partners from areas beyond NATO's geographical range.

NATO has gradually changed its rationale and its mission. The initial NATO concept of solidary defense has been augmented by the above-mentioned concept of cooperative security, which is working with partner states from adjacent regions on security matters. After the Cold War, NATO's new approach seeks to minimize the emphasis on “hard-security” issues and focusing more on new threats such as asymmetric challenges, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), threats to a safe flow of energy resources, or the lack of political stability in regions bordering the Alliance. An important driver influencing this change, which NATO must face as a security organization, is globalization. Globalization is a major contributor to challenges such as international terrorism or illegal migration, both of which are also a result of political instability.