Towards a Grand Strategy for an Uncertain World - Renewing Transatlantic Partnership
16-Jan-08

Written by General (ret.) Dr. Klaus Naumann, Former Chief of the Defence Staff Germany, Former Chairman Military Committee NATO, General (ret.) John Shalikashvili, Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States of America, Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, Field Marshal The Lord Inge, Former Chief of the Defence Staff United Kingdom, Admiral (ret.) Jacques Lanxade, Former Chief of the Defence Staff France, Former Ambassador, and General (ret.) Henk van den Breemen, Former Chief of the Defence Staff the Netherlands

Executive summary

"We strongly recommend a maximum of NATO-owned and operational multinationally manned component forces, in particular in the areas of command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance."

In every country, and at all times, we like to rely on certainty. But in a world of asymmetric threats and global challenges, our governments and peoples are uncertain about what the threats are and how they should face the complicated world before them.

After explaining the complexity of the threats, the authors assess current capabilities and analyse the deficiencies in existing institutions, concluding that no nation and no institution is capable of dealing with current and future problems on its own. The only way to deal with these threats and challenges is through an integrated and allied strategic approach, which includes both non-military and military capabilities.

Based on this, the authors propose a new grand strategy, which could be adopted by both organisations and nations, and then look for the options of how to implement such a strategy. They then conclude, given the challenges the world faces, that this is not the time to start from scratch. Thus, existing institutions, rather than new ones, are our best hope for dealing with current threats. The authors further conclude that, of the present institutions, NATO is the most appropriate to serve as a core element of a future security architecture, providing it fully transforms and adapts to meet the present challenges. NATO needs more non-military capabilities, and this underpins the need for better cooperation with the European Union.

Following that approach, the authors propose a short-, a medium- and a long-term agenda for change. For the short term, they focus on the critical situation for NATO in Afghanistan, where NATO is at a juncture and runs the risk of failure. For this reason, they propose a series of steps that should be taken in order to achieve success. These include improved cost-sharing and transfer of operational command. Most importantly, the authors stress that, for NATO nations to succeed, they must resource operations properly, share the risks and possess the political will to sustain operations.

As a medium-term agenda the authors propose the development of a new strategic concept for NATO. They offer ideas on how to solve the problem of the rivalry with the EU, and how to give NATO access to other than military instruments. They further propose bringing future enlargement and partnership into line with NATO’s strategic objectives and purpose.

In their long-term agenda the authors propose abandonment of the two-pillar concept of America and Europe cooperating, and they suggest aiming for the long-term vision of an alliance of democracies ranging from Finland to Alaska. To begin the process, they propose the establishment of a directorate consisting of the USA, the EU and NATO. Such a directorate should coordinate all cooperation in the common transatlantic sphere of interest.

The authors believe that the proposed agenda could be a first step towards a renewal of the transatlantic partnership, eventually leading to an alliance of democratic nations and an increase in certainty.

* * *

Preface

In every country, and at all times, we like to rely on certainty. Certainty about the past, the present and even the future. Yet certainty is based not on inevitability, but rather on social and intellectual needs. We seek to uphold a common and stable experience, shunning the arbitrary in favour of closure in debate. Certainty can promote strong society and social interdependence. While 100 per cent certainty may be unattainable, it is clear that in periods of great – even overwhelming – uncertainty something serious is happening to our institutions and our societies.

Certainty in our world is today being eroded by a proliferation of information, knowledge and choice. The erosion of certainty is accelerated by rapid technological, social and cultural change. On occasion, that change occurs too fast for some of our major institutions to cope with.

In certain important senses, we are today operating in a mist. Through that current mist a wide range of challenges are appearing. The challenges are acute, and no less so because our certainties are in retreat. If they were stronger, our resolve to address these problems might have stiffened. But the loss of familiar certainties reveals that we lack such resolve.

There are six principal challenges that the authors of this report identify as the prime challenges facing the global community today.

The first is demography. Population growth and change across the globe will swiftly change the world we knew. The challenge this poses for welfare, good governance and energy security (among other things) is vast.


Then there is climate change. This greatly threatens physical certainty, and is leading to a whole new type of politics – one predicated, perhaps more than ever, on our collective future.


Energy security continues to absorb us. The supply and demand of individual nations and the weakening of the international market infrastructure for energy distribution make the situation more precarious than ever.


There is also the more philosophic problem of the rise of the irrational – the discounting of the rational. Though seemingly abstract, this problem is demonstrated in deeply practical ways. There are soft examples, such as the cult of celebrity, which demonstrate the decline of reason. And then there are the harder examples, such as the decline of respect for logical argument and evidence, a drift away from science in a civilisation that is deeply technological. The ultimate example is the rise of religious fundamentalism, which, as political fanaticism, presents itself as the only source of certainty.


Another challenge is the weakening of the nation state. This coincides with the weakening of world institutions, including the United Nations and regional organisations such as the European Union, NATO and others.


Finally, there is what one might refer to as – despite all its benefits – the dark side of globalisation. Interconnectedness has its drawbacks. These include internationalised terrorism, organised crime and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, but also asymmetric threats from proxy actors or the abuse of financial and energy leverage. Migration continues to provide challenges across the world. And dramatic diseases such as HIV/AIDS and SARS have the potential to spread around the world faster than ever before. Taken together, globalised threats are wide in scale and unprecedented in complexity.
But identifying these problems is only the start. We must attempt to understand what might be next.

In considering issues likely to arise, we are mocked by predictions from the past that have failed to come true. But in themselves, these can offer a lesson. One widely made prediction, which can now be dismissed, was the issue of loss of identity through convergence. Against the backdrop of the troubles in the Middle East, and also the micro-national squabbles in the West, we can see that globalisation has not entirely eroded national identities. This re-emergence of identity politics might be held up as a warning to all potential seers.

Though there will be issues that stable states and properly functioning international organisations might be able to deal with, deeply challenging problems like those in the Middle East, Africa and Afghanistan, where Western credibility is at stake, may tempt us into either intervention or isolation. Either way, these problems will confront us. Isolationism is back as a political problem. Its previous expressions may appal, even as the desire to intervene appeals.

State failures, if they are allowed to happen, could yet combine with other factors such as urbanisation and the rise of fundamentalisms to usher in a new, illiberal age. That age would be not just uncertain but deeply perilous. It is a future that we must avoid; but in order to avoid it, we must first admit the uncomfortable fact that it is possible.

The present authors approach the challenges of today from a Western perspective. We also do so as military men – though military men who have worked happily across national lines over many years. It is a pleasure to be able to demonstrate that we can still do so.

In writing this paper, we do not aim, and would not presume, to offer a prescription for today’s world. Rather, we simply hope to share some thoughts on today’s world that have been gathered from experience – experience acquired over many years, marked by great movements of history, which happily never brought the ultimate challenge. We recognise this with deep gratitude – not least gratitude for the resolve of our joint nations and their prevailing will to stand together during the Cold War. If it is not presumptuous to do so, we hope that in this paper we offer something that might be helpful to those who now carry a heavy responsibility in demanding times, and hope, in gratitude, that we can pay a little back.

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North Atlantic Treaty Organization

We see NATO as an organisation of particular importance, since it is the only organisation that commits the US and Europe, in a legally and mutually binding way, to defend each other collectively. NATO is a political organisation that can deploy military means. Today’s NATO is in the process of military transformation, and it has seen some political adaptation. But at its core, the political organisation is, to a large degree, still a Cold War organisation. The cumbersome political structure does not reflect how much the world has changed. It is little suited to the swift political–military requirements of the present era, and it simply cannot take advantage of transformed military capabilities, which would enable the alliance to respond at short notice and conduct operations at a high operational tempo. Today, rapid response is of the essence. Therefore the outdated and weighty stove-pipe systems of specified committees and bottom-up reporting structures need to be seriously reconsidered. As NATO is heavily involved in operations, we feel it is appropriate to differentiate in our agenda for change between immediate, medium-term and long-term steps.

The Immediate Agenda


"NATO is facing a real challenge in Afghanistan, where self-inflicted restrictions deprive NATO of a possible success"
In our opinion, the NATO political structure is crying out for review, adaptation and restructuring. At the core is restructuring of the decision-making process. The process that exists within NATO needs a radical overhaul. NATO needs to take political decisions jointly, i.e. based on a unanimous vote of all its members. It is not only for political but also for military reasons that such unity is required. This applies to decisions taken at the NATO Council level, but there is no need for unanimous decisions at all subordinate levels as well. If there are occasions on which allies disagree, the reasons for disagreement will, in the end, always be political in nature. The reasons should, therefore, be brought as expeditiously as possible to the attention of the one and only body that can take political decisions in NATO – the NATO Council. We therefore propose, as the first step in our agenda for change, that NATO should abandon the consensus principle at all levels below the NATO Council, and introduce at the committee and working-group levels a majority voting rule. This would enable NATO to take quick decisions in crises, when minutes matter.

A NATO Council decision has never constituted a binding obligation to commit forces or to contribute militarily. It has always been left to individual nations to contribute what capabilities or forces they can. But nations that do not contribute forces should also not have a say in the conduct of military operations. We therefore propose, as a second change, that only those nations that contribute to a mission – that is, military forces in a military operation – should have the right to a say in the process of the operation. This structure would highlight the need and the opportunity for commitment, and commitment would be rewarded at the table. Those who do not commit forces must, of course, be kept informed; but they would have no role to play, so long as the operation unfolds as politically authorised.

The next urgent step aims at improving NATO’s intelligence capabilities. It is our impression that, despite many improvements in recent years, too many of NATO’s current intelligence arrangements are still driven by Cold War procedures, in which NATO had some warning time and sufficient capabilities to detect the Warsaw Pact’s activities. Today, time is of the essence, and a threat may arise entirely unexpectedly, from any direction, surprising in both nature and scope. The existing intelligence provisions are not good enough. We therefore propose, as our step number three, a full- fledged review of NATO’s intelligence.

The next change we suggest in order to enhance NATO’s capabilities is the abolition of the system of national caveats, as far as this is possible. The system of national caveats has proved to be a major impediment to operations in the past and a major cost-driving factor. That said, we are well aware that the removal of all national caveats is an impossibility, requiring sovereignty to be voluntarily ceded; and this nations may not be willing to do.

Operational command

The three levels of command are Full Command, Operational Command and Operational Control. Full command includes full responsibility for the soldier, including recruitment, training, outfitting, but also personnel management. Operational command is the delegation of command within a particular theatre of operations. And operational control is the delegation of command in a theatre of operations for a specific mission.

While full command is an important element of national sovereignty, and should be left with nations, it is our view that NATO currently needs more operational command. Many nations do not give NATO commanders more than operational control and, furthermore, burden their contributions with national caveats. Unfortunately, such operational control limits the commander’s freedom of action and leads to inefficiencies, such as a duplication of tasks; it may even lead to mistrust on the ground.

We therefore propose that the NATO commander in theatre be given operational command. At the latest, this transfer of authority to the operational commander should be made the moment troops arrive in the theatre of operations. Nations should refrain from imposing caveats and should lift existing national caveats. This would require that, when they take decisions in the NATO Council, nations should agree on the political objectives of the operation and on the concept of operations, plus the associated rules of engagement. Nevertheless, it ought also to be stressed that there are some areas where national control cannot be delegated. The use of nuclear weapons must, of course, remain the prerogative of the nuclear powers.

The appointment of the operational commander and the representation in headquarters of participating nations should reflect national contributions and national preparedness to share the risks and burdens.

In addition, there are certain other areas in which pre-delegation of a response capability will be necessary to protect NATO, where we cannot wait for the NATO Council to decide on a course of action, such as the acute crisis of a missile attack or cyber attack. This will require the political decision to pre-delegate authority to a military commander to launch defensive measures. To this end, the NATO Council must consider the establishment of suitable NATO Command Forces, and must decide on the degree of pre-delegated authority to use force.

In addition to command and control issues, the administrative side of NATO requires review.

NATO administration

There is little doubt that the costs of the NATO Headquarters, the integrated command structure and subordinate jointly manned and funded agencies need to be funded collectively. But whether there is still a need for a common infrastructure budget is a question that should at least be raised. We could imagine that the infrastructure budget might be replaced by a common procurement budget for assets and capabilities that NATO may wish to fund, and later operate, collectively, as in the case of the badly needed Alliance Ground Surveillance (AGS) system. Infrastructure, with the exception of headquarters, would thus become a national responsibility.

New procedures for funding NATO operations are urgently needed. The current cost-sharing system of ‘costs lie where they fall’ must be abandoned entirely. At present, that means that those who contribute are bearing both the risk of casualties and the financial burden, whereas those who simply talk are rewarded twice. Such a principle can erode NATO’s cohesion and it definitely reduces NATO’s ability to sustain operations. What is needed is a common cost-sharing formula, to which all allies contribute. We therefore recommend the creation of a commonly financed NATO operations budget. Such a budget could ensure that if NATO agrees something, then NATO will see it through properly.

Information operations

As NATO is engaged in operations in Afghanistan – operations which, in some places, are of an intensity that NATO forces have not seen before – one of the discrepancies of our time becomes obvious: some of our armed forces are fighting wars, but the societies from which they come live in peace. But as the world is interconnected through almost instantaneous communication, each and every event is immediately flashed up on the TV screens at home, sometimes faster than the chain of command is able to react. In addition, quite often it is the enemy that triggers the information, with the intention of weakening the alliance’s cohesion and national support for ongoing operations. To overcome this disquieting state of public relations affairs, NATO must urgently develop an information strategy that will get it and its nations back into the driving seat; otherwise it runs the risk of losing on the home front, even as its forces win at the tactical or operational level.

Therefore NATO must develop an information strategy that can serve three objectives simultaneously:

It must influence the world’s perception that NATO is a force for good.


Second, it must be on the screens before the opponent starts spreading the news, i.e. NATO has to win and maintain information dominance in public relations.


Third, it must help to win the hearts and minds both of its own nations (for NATO’s just course), and of the people in the theatre of operations.
These proposals in our agenda for immediate change are steps that need to be taken while NATO is engaged in operations such as those in Afghanistan. They are steps to repair an engine while it is running in high gear, but they are not in themselves sufficient to get NATO ready for the challenges ahead. We therefore propose two additional sets of steps in our agenda for the change of NATO: medium-term steps and long-term steps.

The Medium-Term Agenda for Change

Nobody can seriously dispute the need for NATO to review its 199 strategic concept. NATO itself acknowlegded the necessity of having a new strategic guideline when it accepted, at the 2006 Riga Summit, the Comprehensive Political Guideline (CPG), but this document is no substitute for the still-missing strategic concept.

NATO should take advantage of the new impetus towards mature transatlantic relations, which was noticeable in Germany in the autumn of 2005 and which one can now see in France. With a new British Prime Minister in office and a new US administration taking office on 20 January 2009, now is the right time to draft a new strategic concept. An ambitious option would be to agree it at the 2009 summit, which will mark NATO’s 60th anniversary. If this is too ambitious for the NATO bureaucracy to agree at the 2008 summit, then the process of developing a new strategic concept might be set in motion at the 2009 summit, aiming for agreement on the new strategy at the next summit.

We suggest that NATO should develop a grand strategy that encompasses much more than the military domain, and we propose the strategy that we spelt out in Chapter 3 as the initial building block for such a debate.

Simultaneously, NATO should address its biggest shortcoming at this time – its lack of means other than military. As a first step, it should look for an interim remedy, as we live in a world that does not permit us to wait endlessly.

It is our firm belief that the use of military force is by no means the only – or the inevitable – means by which to tackle crises. In very many cases, the use of force is counter-productive to the strategic objectives. We also firmly believe that one can no longer win in an armed conflict simply by killing or capturing as many of the enemy as possible or by just destroying his power base. Non-military means must be part of an integrated strategy: one in which non-military means are coordinated and deployed with maximum precision, concision and integration – the way a military mission should be conducted.

The possibilities here relate greatly to the use of escalation dominance. Recent history is replete with examples of possible escalation by non-military means being squandered because of imprecise objectives and disagreement at the highest level over aims.

Integrated approach

Since NATO does not possess this set of instruments, we propose either exploring the option of a ‘Berlin Plus in Reverse’ agreement with the EU or widening the Canadian initiative of a ‘comprehensive approach’, which is under discussion in NATO as a step to be taken by all NATO nations. The Berlin Plus arrangement between NATO and the EU allowed for NATO military assets and capabilities to be used for EU-led operations, and represents an example of what we consider to be an integrated and allied approach in action.

‘Berlin Plus in Reverse’ would be the mirror image, and would see the EU coming to the aid of a NATO-led operation with non-military assets and capabilities, on a case-by-case basis.

Most obviously, the EU could help with police and paramilitary forces, such as the Italian Carabinieri, on request from NATO for NATO-led stabilisation operations; but it could also support NATO with soft-power instruments that the EU has at its disposal.

In addition to such a solution, the non-EU/NATO nations should pledge that they will also make contributions of a similar nature and scope as those NATO nations that are EU members.

As an additional step, we propose a review of the existing set of tools for other than military steps, such as sanctions, the entire tool-kit of ‘defence diplomacy’, etc. This should be done first in NATO, then coordinated with the EU, and thereafter be brought to the attention of the OSCE or the UN.

Obviously, an arrangement such as ‘Berlin Plus in Reverse’ can be negotiated only if there is an end to the obstructions of NATO–EU cooperation that are currently damaging both organisations. We therefore call on all parties involved to free up the ongoing efforts to achieve a better and more profound EU–NATO cooperation, to negotiate in good faith and without imposing preconditions that render the entire project hostage to narrowly defined national egoisms.

Enlargement and the three circles


"The authors offer ideas on how to solve the problems of the rivalry with the EU"
As we noted above, and as NATO has declared repeatedly, its doors should always remain open for aspiring nations to apply for full membership. On the other hand, one should not close one’s eyes to the reality that NATO’s digestion has not yet fully recovered from the recent rapid process of enlargement. In the course of this, NATO compromised on some of its standards. In some member countries, question marks remain with regard to good governance, and there are also doubts whether the new members have lived up to the commitments they undertook upon accession to NATO. Needless to say, some of them can, as an excuse, point readily to many of the old members, who also failed to set a good example in honouring their commitments. But we feel that NATO should learn its lessons from the experience.

We therefore propose that NATO should state that it will not extend membership invitations to countries in which the standards of NATO members – such as democracy, respect for human rights, the rule of law and good governance – are not fully adhered to. It should also be agreed that the alliance will not accept any country as a member which has unresolved territorial claims or which is involved in ongoing armed conflicts. The reason for this is the commitment of NATO to defend any country collectively, and to seek future members’ contribution to the collective defence of the NATO Treaty Area. In addition, we suggest that NATO should look at future enlargement and partnership arrangements through the lens of its strategic objectives.

As geostrategy is back on the stage, we could imagine NATO developing, as part of its future grand strategy, a concept for enlargement and cooperation that is based on the idea of mutual collective security, and on the following geostrategic concept.

NATO must seek clarity on its geographical dimension. NATO must act where its members’ security is at risk. To this end, NATO took a decision at the 2002 Prague Summit to act wherever necessary. NATO thus became a global alliance, but not a global policeman. In translating the proposed strategy into spheres of action, a concept of three concentric circles emerges. The three circles represent three spheres of alliance and partnership.

The inner circle will always remain the NATO Treaty Area (NTA) that is committed to collective defence, or the Collective Security Area (CSA). The second circle encompasses a wider sphere of partnerships in the Common Security Zone (CSZ). And the third circle of more distant partnerships and allies is the Outer Stability Area (OSA).

These areas are not limited, either geographically or politically. The inner circle of the NATO Treaty Area will change as enlargement progresses, based on NATO’s invitation to begin accession talks and on the prospective future member’s ability to meet a NATO member’s commitments. These three circles are not static, but form a framework, within which we can both categorise NATO’s responsibilities, partnerships and activities, and guide the process of enlargement.

When considering NATO enlargement to full membership, the geostrategic sphere must be taken fully into account, as must the capabilities of the current members to defend new members collectively; but so also must the capabilities of new members to defend everyone else collectively. Article 5 is an important two-way street, and we cannot extend membership in a manner that would dilute its meaning and value.

The middle ring, the CSA, concerns the various categories of NATO’s external relations. These include the Partnership for Peace (PfP), the Membership Action Plan (MAP) and the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative (ICI), which elevated the Mediterranean Dialogue to a full-fledged security partnership in 2004, as well as the NATO–Russia and NATO–Ukraine partnerships. The middle ring or CSA is the area in which the partners seek to achieve collective security through conflict and crisis prevention, and by means of which NATO may keep armed conflicts at a distance from the NATO Treaty Area.

Nonetheless, membership of the CSA partnerships should not be seen as a way of getting cheap membership of NATO. Becoming a member of the middle ring also comes with obligations.

The outer circle, or OSA, is the area in which NATO seeks to promote stability through either permanent or ad hoc cooperation with nations that are neither members nor partners, but that share with the NATO nations certain basic values and convictions and that have similar security interests. This cooperation will seek the permanent exchange of intelligence and ever growing standardisation of formats and procedures, and it may lead, on a case-by-case basis, to coalitions of the willing in interventions, as well as in post-intervention stabilisation operations.

We propose that NATO should consider the option of such a concept, since it would not only enhance security, but would also contribute to strategic stability. It could help to improve the relationship with Russia – which still views NATO encroachment and encirclement as a threat – and could dispel the notion that an ever increasing NATO would become an instrument used to contain China.

Having mentioned Russia and China, one could add India as a country that should also be assured of NATO’s intention of seeking cooperation and partnership and of avoiding conflict and negative competition. NATO must make every effort to revitalise the NATO–Russia partnership, despite the more confrontational noises that have recently emanated from Moscow. It is worth NATO’s while to consider whether similar agreements could be sought with China and India.

As a last step in our medium-term agenda for change, we propose that a force structure review should be launched, to take stock of where NATO really stands in the process of military transformation and what can be achieved by the time a new strategic concept is applied. It should be a realistic force structure review, which, instead of giving the politicians the usual rose-tinted NATO picture, will deliver the sober analysis they will need as they decide how future scarce resources are to be spent. If this report is ready in time for the 2009 summit, it must not hesitate to pursue a ‘name and shame’ policy as far as the nations’ commitments are concerned.

The Long-Term Agenda for Change

Following agreement on a future NATO grand strategy, NATO will have to embark on a full review of its capabilities of implementing such a strategy.

The easy part will be the review of NATO’s military capabilities. Such a review must be focused on flexibility, deployability and sustainability; but its point of departure must be a solid medium- to long-term political commitment to implement appropriate force structures. To this end, nations should abandon such mechanisms as the French ‘loi de programmation’ or the Danish ‘defence contract’, and instead be supported by an appropriate defence industrial basis. The force structure review proposed in our medium-term agenda, which aims to take stock of the transformation process, would serve as the foundation and point of departure.

We propose to use it as a stepping stone to the development of a generic NATO force structure model. If possible, it should be developed in close cooperation with the EU, so that it might be used by the EU as well.

Depending on the results of such a wide-ranging force structure effort, NATO must then consider the extent to which it may wish to establish NATO-owned and operated multinationally manned and funded component forces, particularly in the enabling forces category – that is, the forces that set up logistics, command and control, communications, reconnaissance and intelligence, that precede the deployment of main body forces and support forces.

We see multinational NATO-owned and operated component forces as key to a quick and affordable modernisation of NATO’s forces, but we stress that this approach can only be taken if nations are willing to agree to a firm and binding commitment that these forces will be at NATO’s unrestricted disposal for any operations that the NATO Council might authorise.

And it must consider the establishment of disaster relief forces and deployable police or military-police components.

Three models of multinational forces

When it comes to structuring all these multinational forces, there are three basic models available: the AWACS Component Force Model, the Pool Model and the Two Pillar Model.

The Airborne Warning and Control System, or AWACS Component Force model functions well, and this is multinationally funded and owned.

The Pool Model involves pooling assets of a similar nature and similar purpose under a single arrangement; for example, in bringing together the British Hercules C130 and German A114 cargo aircrafts and amphibious shipping. The Pool Model establishes a common C4 component (command, control, communications, computers) and individual nations make national assets available.

The Two Pillar Model concerns an integrated, multinationally manned European component, combined with an American–Canadian command and control (C2) component. This arrangement allows the Americans to maintain their national prerogative, working together without having the Americans and Canadians integrated with European forces. It brings together, under a NATO C4 component, dedicated EU component forces and fully interoperable US and Canadian assets.

We strongly recommend looking into the establishment of a maximum of NATO-owned and operated multinationally manned component forces, in particular in the areas of command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance (C4ISR), military police, disaster relief engineers, airborne fire fighters and transportation, including air to air refuelling (AAR).

Depending on the details of a future grand strategy, there may be additional implementation steps, such as the coordination and concentration of foreign and development aid, the common financing of reconstruction efforts, etc.

It may be premature to consider at this time the extent to which this will have to be done within the NATO framework, or whether the strategy will lead to fresh ideas on how to make the common and comprehensive zone of common security from Finland to Alaska become a reality. But it should be clear that, even if all the steps we propose for NATO are taken, much would still depend on other organisations acting across the spectrum of action. Moreover, NATO’s ability to implement the proposed grand strategy will also depend on implementation of the steps proposed for the UN and the OSCE, and on the degree of NATO–EU cooperation.

* * *

Helping to restore certanty

What we propose in our agenda for change is not intended to be prescriptive. Nor do we pretend to have covered all the issues that need to be considered. But we do believe that we are proposing an agenda that is feasible and affordable, and that could strengthen and deepen the cooperation between the two truly mutually indispensable partners, North America and Europe. It is an agenda rooted in the firm conviction that none of our nations is any longer capable of dealing with the complex and challenging world in which we live on its own, and that all of our nations have but one chance: We must stand shoulder to shoulder; we must share the risks and the burdens; and we must show the common resolve to see our commitments through and to prevail.

It is an agenda which, when implemented, will make it easier to provide security for the citizens of all nations between Finland and Alaska, while helping to prevent war and armed conflict elsewhere – or at least to contain and end it as quickly as possible. We could thus create the breathing space our nations will need to cope with the tremendous challenges the next decades will bring. We might, in the medium to long term, thus be capable of restoring certainty – something which we see as the most important prerequisite for functioning societies. Certainty is not all we need; but without it there will be nothing.

 http://www.worldsecuritynetwork.com/showArticle3.cfm?article_id=15390&topicID=31

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