At his first press conference following the election, the president reiterated statements made on the campaign trail that NATO – the Western alliance defending Europe and North America for decades – was “obsolete.” The year was 1966, and the president was Charles de Gaulle of France.  De Gaulle followed these statements with concrete action, expelling U.S. and NATO forces from French territory and removing French forces from NATO’s integrated military command structure.  It was perhaps the greatest crisis in the now nearly seventy year history of the Alliance. But this critical juncture in NATO also opened the door to wide ranging reforms in the organization and strategy of the Alliance.  Many of these adaptations proved so successful that they endured …

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is a more global institution than its name implies. Although the security of its European and North American member states forms its core purposes, a strictly transatlantic or regional view is too narrow to fully describe what NATO does. NATO’s global engagement consists of three essential features.  First, military operations – from peacekeeping to full spectrum war fighting – involves NATO in places far away from its home Euro-Atlantic area.  Second, NATO maintains political and military ties with countries in neighbouring regions and around the world. Third, NATO is a significant enough global actor to interact with global trends. NATO’s membership may be regional, but its activities are global. The post-Cold War ‘out of area’ debate …