NATO’s Next Strategic Concept: Prioritise or Perish

NATO has embarked on the renewal of its Strategic Concept, the latest version of which dates to 2010. The question is whether this opportunity for renewal will result in a broad and elastic set of core tasks that have wide political appeal but that are ill suited to meet NATO’s strategic challenges. The Alliance opted for political convenience in 2010, and since then the complexity of Alliance politics has only increased. Allowing political considerations to dictate the contents of the new Strategic Concept would, however, bode ill for NATO’s ability to manage not only great-power competition but also an internal political–military divide that has become increasingly visible as NATO has adapted to Russia’s post-2014 revisionism. NATO’s next Strategic Concept should therefore put collective defence at the top of its list of priorities, reinvigorate NATO’s narrative of values, and encourage enhanced and sustained in-house political–military dialogue.