From Lisbon to Madrid: The Evolution of NATO’s Strategic Concept
By Naz Gocek, Guest Contributor
Moving on a scale of centuries, the typical introductory class to international relations can feel like a neat and effortless voyage through millennia. Centuries generally feel more digestible than decades because they lend themselves nicely to broad, causal narratives. But such narratives belie the world’s volatility which becomes readily apparent when one zooms in on individual decades.
NATO’s Strategic Concept is a case in point. The document defines the Alliance’s purpose and for the decade ahead. The most recent version — NATO’s eighth Concept since 1949 — was adopted in June by leaders from 30 NATO states in Madrid. When compared to the previous Strategic Concept adopted in Lisbon in 2010, the Madrid Concept shows just how much can change in twelve years. After all, how many of us predicted the rise of China, the resurgence of the Taliban, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (which began in 2014 and was escalated this year), or a global pandemic, all at once? In contrast to the physical distance from Lisbon to Madrid, NATO’s Strategic Concept has travelled a long way since 2010.
The New Strategic Concept
Deterrence First
The drastic changes start with the strategic environment. The return of conventional multi-domain warfare in Europe has made obsolete the Lisbon Concept’s declaration that “the Euro-Atlantic area is at peace and the threat of conventional attack against NATO territory is low”, leading to a renewed emphasis on deterrence and defense. The Madrid Concept declares that the region is neither at peace nor safe from an attack and thus, Allies must “significantly strengthen our deterrence and defense as the backbone of our Article 5 commitment to defend each other.” That said, while defense and deterrence is elevated, NATO’s raison d’être of collective defense and the core tasks flowing from it (deterrence and defense, crisis prevention and management, and cooperative security) remain the same.
Spotlight on Russia
The source of NATO’s “deterrence first” policy is of course its age-old foe to the east. To say that NATO has changed its tone regarding Moscow is an understatement. The Lisbon Concept expressed faith in the maintenance of a strong NATO–Russia partnership and made a commitment to enhance cooperation between the two. This is a far cry from the Madrid Concept, which censures Russia’s second invasion of Ukraine and labels Moscow “the most significant and direct threat to Allies’ security and to peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area.” Although the document notes that NATO is “willing to keep open channels of communication” to prevent escalation, it stresses that any changes are off the table until Russia complies with international law.
Introducing China
To observers today, it’s hard to believe that China is not mentioned even once in the Lisbon Concept. The Madrid Concept, on the other hand, details Beijing’s multifaceted expansion of its power through policies that often comprise “systemic challenges” to the Alliance’s interests. However, the document also declares that NATO will “remain open to constructive engagement,” which denotes many Allies’ somewhat ambivalent approach to China.
Security Redefined
The Madrid Concept also demonstrates NATO’s adoption of a more holistic understanding of security. The Lisbon Concept only mentioned resilience once. By contrast, the new Strategic Concept mentions the concept of resilience a dozen times, tying it to cross-cutting topics like governance, climate change, and gender. Noting that these are all determinants of security, it commits Allies to pursuing “a more robust, integrated and coherent approach to building […] resilience against military and non-military threats.”
The rise of resilience is closely connected to that of hybrid threats — another new addition in the Madrid Concept. The new Strategic Concept posits that Allies will work to counter “the coercive use of political, economic, energy, information and other hybrid tactics” and goes as far as affirming that hybrid operations and cyber activities “could reach the level of armed attack” and thereby lead to an invocation of Article 5.
More on Madrid
The Strategic Concept must also be analyzed in the context of other significant aspects of the Madrid Summit. For instance, NATO leaders showed that the Alliance’s shift towards deterrence was not mere rhetoric by committing to revising its force posture. They agreed to (i) scale up the NATO Response Force from 40,000 to 300,000 soldiers, (ii) develop the capability to scale up multinational battlegroups on the Alliance’s eastern flank to brigades as needed, and (iii) pre-position military equipment and facilities in frontline countries.
The summit was also consequential for non-NATO members. Most notably, NATO officially extended a membership invitation to Sweden and Finland. Additionally, heads of state and government from Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and South Korea attended the summit for the first time (as observers), thereby reaffirming the Strategic Concept’s commitment to increasing cooperation with Indo-Pacific nations.
What’s Next for NATO?
The Madrid Concept represents an important recalibration of the strategic vision laid out by the Lisbon Concept of 2010 and reflects tectonic shifts in the global political landscape since 2010. Nevertheless, the strategic environment remains dynamic and the precise impact that these shifts and the Concept will have remains to be seen. For example, the war in Ukraine is far from over; Sweden and Finland’s accession is not a foregone conclusion; US-China relations are rapidly deteriorating, and the effects of emerging technologies on the future of war are only beginning to take shape. In this light, it is vital for policymakers and observers to ask the right questions about the continued evolution of NATO. Here are some suggestions:
Enlargement and Relations with the EU
- What obstacles lie in the way of Sweden and Finland’s membership?
- How will enlargement affect the Alliance’s activities in the Arctic?
- How will NATO–EU relations change when they share even more members?
NATO in the World
- How should NATO balance its commitment to its eastern flank with more global goals like investing in its Indo-Pacific partnerships? What form might such partnerships assume?
- Will we see NATO assume a more assertive role against China, or will that be left to individual Allies?
- The million-dollar question: if and when the war in Ukraine ends, what will the Alliance’s relationship with Ukraine and Russia look like?
Capability Development
- The war in Ukraine has made conventional warfare relevant again, with heavy artillery and armor dominating headlines once more. How should NATO balance more traditional aspects of warfare with newer challenges like emerging and disruptive technologies?
- How will the Strategic Concept be translated into defense planning efforts?
- Will the economic fallout of the pandemic and Russia’s invasion combined with the need to replace weapons given to Ukraine hamper NATO’s ability to implement the Strategic Concept?
- Will burden-sharing return to the top of the US agenda?
- Will higher European defense budgets lead to more duplication or more integration?
What we’re following…
VD: A few days ago, Ukraine launched its long-awaited Kherson counteroffensive. The operation will likely take some time to unfold, but if Ukraine succeeds, it will hopefully further persuade its Western partners of its ability to win, shoring up a united Western front and demonstrating to Putin that time is not on his side. If Kyiv bites off more than it can chew, however, then it might give ammunition to those in the West calling for talks with Russia.
Additionally, Mikhail Gorbachev, the last General Secretary of the Soviet Union, passed away this week. His legacy in Russia and internationally remains contested, with many Western public figures praising him for his contribution to the end of the Cold War, while leaders in the Baltic states condemn him for his role in the deaths of pro-independence protesters in Lithuania, Latvia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia in 1991. My own opinion is somewhere in between: the suppression of the protesters was morally abhorrent, but to me the surprising thing is that there weren’t more deaths — ultimately, Gorbachev did not take even harsher action to prevent the collapse of the Soviet empire, and I can’t imagine that one of his predecessors, like Andropov or Brezhnev, would have done the same. See Mark Galeotti’s piece on this here.
What we’re reading…
VD: I’ve just finished reading M.E. Sarotte’s Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate, which is quite fitting for a brief on NATO. The book uses declassified archival materials on negotiations between the US, its European allies, the Soviet Union and later Russia on German reunification, NATO enlargement, and arms control during the 1990s. In doing so, Sarotte aims to shed light on the decline in US-Russia relations in that era and the present day.
The book’s overarching argument is that NATO enlargement was not the sole reason for worsening relations, but that it certainly played a part. Sarotte argues that an alternative to the deterioration of relations was possible through institutional set-ups like the Partnership for Peace (PfP), which could have created a broader European security order that included Russia without foreclosing enlargement in the future. She qualifies this claim by stating that Russia was itself in large part responsible for the decline in relations, though she also blames US Republican unilateralism following the GOP’s 1994 midterm victory. This being said, Sarotte also writes that the past cannot be undone, and that at the time of writing (2021), NATO was (and I would say remains) the best framework for trans-Atlantic action in relation to Russia. She concludes her book with some lessons that the ’90s hold for the present and future.
A key takeaway for me was the importance of not just the what but also the how of any policy. Sarotte writes that even had Clinton stuck with PfP for longer and decided to enlarge NATO thereafter anyway, there were still ways the US and its allies could have done this that would have reduced the strain on relations with Russia. This includes things like discussing Moscow’s grievances more charitably, a more drawn-out enlargement timeline, and openness to country-specific forms of NATO membership that still included an Article 5 guarantee.
Not One Inch is a fascinating read, and I recommend it to anyone interested in trans-Atlantic and Russia-West relations. There are also quite a few fun little stories that appear throughout, such as that of British diplomats bursting out in laughter upon learning that the US Senate NATO Observer Group is shortened to “SNOG”.
One of the next books on my list is Vladislav Zubok’s Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union. Hopefully I’ll have a more informed opinion on Gorbachev by the end of it.
