Core Tasks and Principles in NATO’s 2022 Strategic Concept

By Danielle Piatkiewicz, Gen. Zoltán Szenes, LTG Andrzej Fałkowski, Igor Merheim-Eyre this article was originally published in EUROPEUM, in October 2021.

NATO’S Core Tasks and Principles

● NATO remains the strongest and most successful alliance in history. NATO’s fundamental and enduring purpose has not changed since the 2010 Strategic Concept. This should be clearly underlined in the 2022 Strategic Concept: NATO’s ultimate goal is to safeguard the freedom and security of all its members by political and military means. The basic ingredients for this mission remain in force: military strength, political solidarity, unity and cohesion, combined with pursuit of a long-term stable international environment.

● The 2022 Strategic Concept should be based on the premise that NATO Allies form a unique community of values, committed to the principles of individual liberty, democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. The fact that Allies remain committed to these foundational values is one of the most important factors in ensuring the durability of the Alliance. As the Reflection Group, appointed by the NATO Secretary General, underlined in its 2019 report “NATO 2030: United for a New Era”, a shared democratic identity is what distinguishes NATO from its adversaries and competitors.

● At the 2021 NATO Brussels Summit, the Allies decided to open a new chapter in transatlantic relations. This was predominantly a political act, signalling Allied openness to the re-emergence of American leadership in NATO. The 2022 Strategic Concept should be clear about the centrality of transatlantic relations and the firmness of the political and military bonds between Europe and North America. For all its member states, NATO should be a point of reference for any discussion that touches upon Euro-Atlantic security. No other international organisation, including the European Union, can replace NATO in its core mission of collective defence. Moreover, the consolidation of the transatlantic alliance in the next decade should allow the Allies to be even better prepared to operate in the era of strategic competition. At the same time, the 2022 Strategic Concept should characterise NATO as a regional organisation that concentrates on the preservation of Euro-Atlantic peace and security. A global NATO should be excluded, even if the Alliance was politically ready to face global challenges such as pandemics or the impact of climate change on security.

● The 2010 Strategic Concept stated that the security of NATO members on both sides of the Atlantic is indivisible. This must remain a central element of the Allied approach in the era of strategic competition, and be reconfirmed in the 2022 Strategic Concept. The core principle of indivisibility of security serves as a cementing component between the different threat perceptions among Allies and is the political glue of this unique community. This is especially vital in any discussions between Allies and Russia on arms control. Arms control measures should maintain the strategic unity and political cohesion of the Alliance, and should safeguard the principle of the indivisibility of Alliance security by avoiding the creation of areas of unequal security.

● Since 2010, NATO’s security environment has substantially changed. As the Reflection Group rightly pointed out, the 2010 Strategic Concept recommended cultivating a strategic partnership with Russia, made limited mention of terrorism, and did not mention China at all. Based on this assessment, the 2010 Strategic Concept formulated three essential core tasks: collective defence, crisis management and cooperative security. These have guided NATO and the Allies over the last decade. The 2022 Strategic Concept should maintain the three core tasks approach. However, it needs to adapt to the current security environment, which is more volatile and unpredictable, and is marked by increasing competition on one hand and the reconfiguration of partnerships on the other. The importance and role of each core task in NATO’s overall strategy should be measured against and guided by this assumption.

● The 2022 Strategic Concept should acknowledge that Russia’s growing multi-domain military build-up, more assertive posture, novel military capabilities and provocative activities, including near NATO borders, increasingly threaten the security of the Euro-Atlantic area and hence contribute to instability along NATO borders and beyond. The same can be said for its large-scale no-notice and snap exercises, continued military build-up in Crimea, deployment of modern dual-capable missiles in Kaliningrad, deepening military integration with Belarus, and repeated violations of NATO Allied airspace.

● Russia’s military-backed destabilisation campaign, intended to impose conditions of unpeace in the Euro-Atlantic space, extends well beyond NATO’s eastern flank. It includes conducting grey zone operations, particularly in the information and cyber sphere, in order to translate incremental gains at the operational level into strategic gains in its long-term conflict with NATO. The 2022 Strategic Concept should set realistic expectations with regards to Russia. There is no reason to expect Russia’s posture toward NATO to drastically change for the better in the mid-to-long term, whether President Vladimir Putin remains part of the equation or not.

● The 2022 Strategic Concept should integrate the fight against terrorism into NATO’s core tasks much more explicitly than the 2010 document. Terrorism, in all its forms and manifestations, continues to pose a direct threat to the security of Allied populations, and to international stability and prosperity. The Strategic Concept should clearly underline that nations retain the primary responsibility for their domestic security and resilience. However, the fight against terrorism also demands a coherent long-term effort by the international community as a whole, involving a wide range of instruments and actors. Cooperation in NATO adds value to Allies’ national efforts and capacity to prevent, mitigate, respond to and be resilient against acts of terrorism.

● The 2022 Strategic Concept should concentrate on the parameters of a political strategy for approaching a world in which China will be of growing importance through to 2030. The global impact of China’s rise certainly requires a cohesive response by the West. Therefore, it appears certain that these challenges will become more prominent inside the Alliance in the coming decade. NATO’s role in coordinating the response of the so-called “West” should be well calibrated, taking into consideration the fact that the Alliance will remain a regional organisation that predominantly concentrates on the preservation of Euro-Atlantic peace and security. Therefore, a more robust NATO stance on China should not result in attention and, more importantly, resources being diverted from deterrence and defence against Russia. Instead, NATO’s priorities with regards to China should concentrate on topics such as enhancing Allied resilience, protecting the Alliance’s technological edge, enhancing NATO’s standardisation efforts, evaluating Chinese-Russian cooperation, and coordinating Allied approaches to arms control, disarmament, and non- proliferation efforts. Nevertheless, NATO cannot ignore the possibility or the consequences of a confrontation between China and the United States.

● The three core tasks remain vital pillars for maintaining political solidarity, unity and cohesion between the Allies. However, the 2022 Strategic Concept should restore collective defence as the task that could be best described as primus inter pares. Collective defence is the only core task that is derived directly from the Washington Treaty. Up to now, as many as five out of the seven Strategic Concepts in NATO’s history have been collective defence centric. Collective defence should therefore remain at the heart of the Alliance, as set out in article 5 of the Washington Treaty.

● In the last seven years, NATO has undergone its biggest military adaptation since the end of the Cold War. At every Alliance Summit since 2014, Allies have taken additional decisions to reinforce NATO’s deterrence and defence posture (the Readiness Action Plan and Very High Readiness Joint Task Force in 2014; enhanced forward presence on NATO’s eastern flank in 2016; the NATO Readiness Initiative and update of the NATO Command Structure in 2018). NATO also declared cyber and space to be new operational domains, alongside air, land and sea. Allies have also agreed that in cases of hybrid aggression, NATO could decide to invoke article 5 of the Washington Treaty, as in the case of a conventional armed attack. Moreover, at the 2021 NATO Summit the Allies decided to take forward NATO’s new military strategy through the implementation of two significant military concepts. The deterrence and defence concept (DDA) provides a single, coherent framework to contest, deter and defend against the Alliance’s main threats in a multi-domain environment, and strengthens NATO’s preparedness to address challenges, particularly pervasive instability and strategic shocks. The warfighting concept (NWCC) provides a long-term vision for maintaining and developing NATO’s decisive military edge. The 2022 Strategic Concept should properly reflect all these collective defence building blocks. It should also help to build deterrence into IQ within Allies and in NATO; ensure a coherent and proactive approach across an Alliance of multiple decision-making centres; and appropriately emphasise the roles of forward presence, reinforcement, readiness and enablement. The 2022 Strategic Concept should also confirm that NATO needs a proactive deterrence in peacetime to pose strategic dilemmas to adversaries, offer asymmetric options, and change the balance of advantage in our favour in advance of any crisis. Finally, it should reiterate the Allies’ commitment to maintaining an appropriate mix of nuclear, conventional and missile capabilities for deterrence and defence, and to the 2014 Defence Investment Pledge in its entirety.

● The 2010 Strategic Concept underlined NATO’s unique and robust set of political and military capabilities to address the full spectrum of crises – before, during and after conflicts. The 2022 Strategic Concept should confirm that NATO provides the framework within which Allies can work and train together, in order to plan and conduct multinational crisis management operations. However, the 2022 Strategic Concept should also set a realistic level of ambition, based on the lessons learned from NATO’s operational engagement in Afghanistan. The potential way ahead for NATO should be based on the assumption that prevention is better than intervention. The Alliance should strengthen its ability to provide training and capacity building support to partners, recognising that conflict, other security developments and pervasive instability in NATO’s neighbourhood directly impact Allied security. This approach should be underpinned by a strengthened civil preparedness among both Allies and partners. Finally, the 2022 Strategic Concept should reconfirm the clear link between NATO crisis management and article 5 operations. This should lead to a renewed emphasis on collective defence within the NATO Crisis Response System: the overarching process that articulates NATO’s crisis management role.

● The 2010 Strategic Concept added cooperative security as a core task. This approach reflected the unfounded optimism about a cooperative Russia, represented also by the misguided efforts to reset relations with Moscow after the 2008 Russian-Georgian war. Based on the current and foreseeable strategic environment, the 2022 Strategic Concept will have to adapt the character and content of this core task, including its name, which does not reflect the strategic reality. Cooperative security today should be translated into ways and means of establishing partnerships for shared security; “partnerships for shared security” could also become the new name of the core task. This should be achieved by building two-way partnerships with those countries and international organisations – first and foremost the European Union – that can substantially and demonstrably help NATO address its strategic priorities. The 2022 Strategic Concept should clearly underline that partnership policy is not a goal in itself, but a means to enhance Allied security. For its advancing work on cross-cutting challenges, NATO should make more use of thematic rather than only geographic groupings. The same logic should apply to the Allied contributions to arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation. The 2022 Strategic Concept should confirm that the basic goal of the Alliance’s arms control policy is to enhance security and stability at the balanced level of forces and armaments consistent with the requirements of the strategy of deterrence. It should also reconfirm the agreed Allied guiding principles in arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation: security, stability and verification. Finally, the 2022 Strategic Concept should put additional emphasis on the Open Door policy, which is a founding principle of the North Atlantic Treaty. The enduring attractiveness of membership to non-member countries testifies to NATO’s success as an alliance.

● The three core tasks should be supported by an overarching goal of enhancing Allied resilience. Resilience is an essential basis for credible deterrence and defence, but remains vital also in crisis management and partnerships for shared security. Therefore, the 2022 Strategic Concept should reaffirm Allied commitments to strengthen national and collective resilience; this is firmly anchored in the Washington Treaty, particularly article 3. Resilience should be perceived as the Allied first line of defence. More resilient countries have fewer vulnerabilities that can be used as leverage or targeted by adversaries. Therefore, resilience is an important aspect of deterrence by denial: persuading an adversary not to attack, by convincing it that an attack will not achieve its intended objectives. Resilient societies also have a greater propensity to bounce back after crises: they tend to recover more rapidly and are able to return to pre-crisis functional levels with greater ease than less resilient societies.

● The 2010 Strategic Concept underlined that NATO remains the unique and essential transatlantic forum for consultations on all matters that affect the territorial integrity, political independence and security of its members, as set out in article 4 of the Washington Treaty. The 2022 Strategic Concept should reinforce those provisions by emphasising that Allies must strengthen NATO as a genuine forum for consultation on the major strategic and political issues they face. As the Reflection Group stressed, at all levels, NATO should aspire to become a progenitor and essential forum for debate on the primary security challenges that will define the coming decade.

● The 2022 Strategic Concept should put constant adaptation and modernisation at the centre of the Allied approach to NATO’s core tasks and principles. NATO must remain an alliance that constantly modernises and adapts to new threats and challenges.

Conclusion

● The 2022 Strategic Concept should be clear about the centrality of transatlantic relations, and the firmness of the political and military bonds between Europe and North America. For all its member states NATO should be a point of reference for any discussion that touches upon the Euro-Atlantic security. In fact, no other international organisation, including the European Union, can replace NATO with its core mission of collective defence.

● Three core tasks remain a vital pillar that helps to maintain political solidarity, unity and cohesion between Allies. Yet, the 2022 Strategic Concept should restore collective defence as the task that could be best describe as primus inter pares. Collective defence is the only core tasks that is derived directly from the Washington Treaty.

● The 2022 Strategic Concept should confirm that NATO provides the framework within which Allies can work and train together in order to plan and conduct multinational crisis management operations. Yet, the 2022 Strategic Concept should set a realistic level of ambition, based on the lessons learned from NATO’s operational engagement in Afghanistan. Therefore, the potential way ahead for NATO should be based on the assumption that prevention is better than intervention.

● The 2010 Strategic Concept added cooperative security as a core task. This approach reflected the unfounded optimism about cooperative Russia, represented also by the misguided efforts to reset relations with Moscow after the 2008 Russian-Georgian war. Based on the current and foreseeable strategic environment, the 2022 Strategic Concept will have to adapt the character and content of this core task, including its name which does not reflect the strategic reality. In fact, cooperative security today should be translated into ways and means of establishing partnerships for shared security which could also become the new name of the core task.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Danielle Piatkiewicz

Danielle is a research fellow at EUROPEUM, focusing on issues around Transatlantic and Central and Eastern European foreign and security relations, democracy promotion and NATO. She is also an independent consultant for the Alliance of Democracies Foundation and Founder of DEP Consulting. Previously, she was a senior program coordinator for The GMF Asia and the Future of Geopolitics programs (Washington, DC). Before that, she worked as a program assistant in GMF’s Wider Atlantic program in Brussels and program intern in Warsaw. Before joining GMF, she worked for the European Institute of Peace in Brussels (EIP).

Zoltan Szenes

Prof Gen (Ret) Zoltán Szenes holds MSc from the Defence College of Logistics and Transportation (Sankt Petersburg, Russia) and the Budapest University of Economic Science (World Economics), as well as a PhD (Military Science) from the National Defence University, Budapest. During his active military carrier he had different staff and command positions in tank regiment, infantry division, Command of the Hungarian Defence Forces and Ministry of Defence of Hungary. He was the Hungarian Military Representative at NATO and WEU in Brussels. From 1999 – 2002, he served with NATO AFSOUTH as Chief of Logistics Division in Naples (IT). Gen Szenes was the Chair of the Committee for the Military Sciences at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (2008-2014). Currently he is a President of the Hungarian Association of Military Science.

Andrzej Fałkowski

Lieutenant General (Ret.) with over 40 years of military service. Has held various senior management, military and diplomatic positions incl. Polish Military Representative to the NATO and EU Military Committees in Brussels (2014-18), Deputy Chief of General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces (2013-14), Defense, Military, Naval and Air Attaché in Washington D.C. (2011-2013), Assistant Director of the NATO IMS and Director of the Logistics and Resources of the NATO IMS (2008-2011), Deputy Head of the Strategic Planning Directorate J-5 of the General Staff of the PAF in Warsaw (2003-06), Councilor in the Permanent Delegation of the Republic of Poland to NATO (1998-2003). Currently a Strategic Advisor on the Defense Reform Advisory Board for Ukraine.

Igor Merheim-Eyre

Dr Igor Merheim-Eyre, Ph.D., is a Research Fellow at the Global Europe Centre (University of Kent) and works in a policy advisory role in the European Parliament. His main areas of focus include transatlantic relations and wider European security.