(Re)focusing the Atlantic Alliance: Reframing Security Readings into a Peace Agenda
(Re)focusing the Atlantic Alliance: Reframing Security Readings into a Peace Agenda

Summary/Abstract: Bringing a new reading to collective defence after the Cold War allowed, among other things, an expansion of NATO’s tasks as well as membership. This being said, it is high time for deep reflection about the opportunities and limitations for the Alliance from the perspective of the promotion of peace, more than 25 years after the end of the bipolar order. Drawing on the introductory remarks to this special issue, the paper will focus on 1) the strategic differences between a security versus a peace agenda for NATO in the context of increasingly transnational and complex threats, 2) Russia as both a necessary ally and a challenger at NATO’s borders, including its positioning regarding a “shared neighbourhood” with the European Union (EU) and the Atlantic Alliance, as well as Moscow’s investment in the development of military alliances to the east (the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, or CSTO), 3) the Middle East as a geostrategic area where the conflation of competing interests, norms and values has revealed complex dynamics, both in-country and regional, and impacted on the NATO space (for example, the effect of the Syrian conflict), and 4) whether the conceptualisation on a “European security architecture” remains useful or has become meaningless in face of current challenges.

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