Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: NATO's military response to international terrorism includes the creation of a new Response Force (NRF) that is supposed to be able to react very quickly - within five days - to crises in far-away regions and simultaneously to modernize, indeed revolutionize, European forces. While the blueprint has the appearance of coherence it might also be structurally flawed: the eagerness of NRF advocates to implement the concept could cause allies who must bear the burden of change to resist transformation in favour of incremental change. An essential question - for NATO as well as experts on political and organizational change - is therefore whether NATO is rushing to failure or has found a means to overcome traditional sources of resistance to change. Change is promoted not only by NATO member states such as the United States, but by large parts of NATO's international staff, civilian as well as military, which for most of the 1990s laboured to promote the type of military changes inherent in the NRF. Most allies support the NRF in principle but policy-makers need to cope with diverging foreign policy, budgetary, and industrial interests that can - as in the past - inhibit the fulfilment of political promises. Military organizations may in addition be reluctant to revise fundamentally their ways of war if they lack trust in the process of change. The NRF is only a couple of years old but the crucial first stages of reform will tell us how these interests are coming together and whether force structure transformation is likely. The paper will also contrast the NRF with the force planning regime of the Europea Union and assess the implications for the political and organizational study of military change.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Almost sixty years after its foundation, the question of what NATO is still preoccupies a lot of IR scholars. Common characterizations range from alignment over alliance to security community, and from United Nations? subcontractor to an instrument of maintaining Western predominance by military means.Puzzling enough, especially the rationalist-inspired accounts of NATO leave aside the important question of what the appropriate level of analysis is. But making statements about NATO requires taking NATO as NATO seriously.Obviously, NATO is constituted by its member states, but as a structure that enables coordinated, common and collective action, it always produces effects of a genuine quality that cannot be grasped entirely from a perspective that reduces international institutions to mere products of states? willingness to co-operate and to pursue their own interests.Analyzing NATO as NATO means to examine the secretary-general?s as well as the North Atlantic Council?s capacity of creative action.The paper will illustrate the theoretical and methodological implications of the suggested perspective by focusing on NATO?s policy on the devastating situation in Sudan which might become the occasion for the institution?s first engagement in Africa, thereby finally manifesting its latent influence on North-South relations.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: In 1990 with the Soviet threat waning, NATO set out deliberately to enhance its political dimension. The Allies also adopted a new political mission; namely, the creation of a Europe whole and free. Thirteen years later Europe is, on the whole, unquestionably more democratic,and cold war divisions have receded significantly. New institutions exist, including the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, the Partnership for Peace, and the NATO-Russia Council. NATO,itself, will have grown to twenty-six members by 2004. Yet, recent tensions within NATO over Iraq have once again led to predictions of NATO's imminent demise. Even U.S. Ambassador to NATO Nicholas Burns acknowledged that these differences had put a serious strain on Trans-Atlantic Ties. This paper will examine the state of NATO's political dimension today. Questions to be addressed include: Can the shared values that were so frequently invoked as NATO's foundation during the 1990s continue to sustain the transatlantic relationship? Or will the absence of a clearly defined common threat prove fatal to a sense of true solidarity amongst the Allies, as some realist scholars argued during the early and mid-1990s. What impact are NATO's newest members and the Prague invitees having on the Alliance? Is NATO at risk of becoming a sort of toolbox to which the United States goes for support rather than a genuine alliance?

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: NATO has seen numerous changes to its membership and its scope of operations since 1991, when the alliance first began to foster security partnerships with former Warsaw Pact adversaries. In particular, what began as a single partnership program, the Partnership for Peace, has expanded to include bilateral Partnerships with Russia and Ukraine as well as the Mediterranean Dialogue and the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative with states in the Middle East. However, simultaneous to the development of these partnerships, the alliance itself has experienced numerous stresses as allies have attempted to reconcile competing security interests. In this context, in which a strained NATO extends cooperation with an ever-larger cast of non-members, this paper attempts to evaluate the rationale for NATO?s partnership agreements. It develops an argument about the role of norms and interests in advancing security cooperation and then assesses the relative weight of the norms used to justify expanding partnerships with the real geostrategic interests of the NATO allies and their partners. The paper then draws theoretical and practical implications for the future of security cooperation in the NATO framework.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: How the approaches to the ensuring of international security have changed in the beginning of the 21 century? Is there any future for military-political alliances? Do Russia – NATO relations influence international security? What are the implications of NATO reformation for the international security system? Following presentation is an attempt to answer these questions in framework of Russia-NATO relations.