NATO’s new Strategic Concept: Moving from Theory to Practice
NATO’s new Strategic Concept: Moving from Theory to Practice

Summary/Abstract: Many strategic concepts and security doctrines do not live up to expectations. The reasons for this are multiple. They sometimes simply describe what an organisation is doing rather than stating what it should do if it is to fulfil its core mission. Or these concepts set out grandiose ambitions that are not backed up by sufficient resources and political will to implement those ambitions. It also happens that intense political debates and bureaucratic rivalries, leading up to the approval of a new concept, inevitably impose painful compromises and ambiguities on the final product. The result is incoherence and the avoidance of necessary choices that make the new concept difficult to implement. In this way and despite much hard work, the concept fails to provide the clear sense of direction that was its initial “raison d’être”. Another frequent failing is when concepts set out a clear intellectual vision and set of priorities but then say little or nothing about the organizational reforms that are essential to implement such a vision. When such a mismatch occurs, either the structures take years to catch up with the new level of ambition; or the vision itself is gradually watered down by the resistance of the old structures. All this to say that devising a new Strategic Concept is a necessary stage in the modernization of any organization given the accelerating pace of change in the world today; but it is also one of the most difficult. As Alexis de Tocqueville once noted: the most perilous moment in the life of any regime is when it tries to reform itself.

• Details
• Contents