NATO initiatives

: institutional reactions to its perennial dilemmas?

Abstract

NATO periodically announces new initiatives, but, when the time of implementation comes, many either remain on paper or have a very limited operational translation and they vanish from NATO’s agenda shortly after their adoption. The purpose of this research is to investigate the reasons behind the widespread lack of implementation and disappearing of NATO initiatives. This project argues that there is a recurring pattern in NATO policy-making according to which ‘focussing events’ trigger interallies crises linked to the ‘perennial dilemmas’ of the Alliance – the management of the transatlantic relationship and NATO’s raison d’être. In this framework, the formulation of new initiatives represents an institutional device to mitigate crises and perpetuate the organisation’s existence. Many initiatives of the Alliance are therefore not necessarily adopted to be implemented. A transversal analysis of NATO initiatives overtime, combined with a deep study of the elements accompanying the formulation of three specific initiatives (AD-70, DCI and NRF) used as case studies provide evidence to support this argument.

Date of Award	1 Dec 2019
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	King's College London
Supervisor	Tim Bird (Supervisor) & Andrea Ellner (Supervisor)