CIAO DATE: 05/2011
April 2011
Danish Institute for International Studies
NATO now has a new Strategic Concept entitled Active Engagement – Modern Defence, agreed at the Lisbon Summit on 19 November 2010. The new Strategic Concept is heaped with high expectations, that it will produce what US Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder has called a ‘NATO Version 3.0’, which will ensure that the Alliance is fit for facing the challenges of the 21st century. By all accounts the successful adoption of the long awaited new Strategic Concept is a positive achievement, and Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has been applauded for the well-managed open and inclusive process leading to its adoption. Furthermore NATO now seems set to be a very different NATO from the NATO founded in 1949 (Version 1.0) and from the ‘New NATO’ of the 1990s (Version 2.0). The hope is that the 2010 Strategic Concept will end a rather traumatic period in the history of the Alliance (Version 2.5), which has been dominated by a ‘crisis narrative’ in which the role of NATO has been unclear, relations between allies have been strained and success in the primary engagement in Afghanistan has been sadly lacking.
Resource link: After the Strategic Concept: Towards a NATO Version 3.0 [PDF] - 348K