Publication

This paper discusses what approach to military integration NATO could adopt following its decision to focus more on collective defense and the security of its members in light of a resurgent Russia. The main arguments of the paper include 1) that NATO’s strategic return to a focus on collective defense creates a problem for most of the Alliance’s models for multinational cooperation, as they mainly deal with low-intensity operations over long distances; 2) that most of the current models of integration increasingly fail to take note of basic principles of war as well as the political realities of defense politics; and 3) that such integration cannot be cost-effective and militarily efficient at the same time, meaning it will have become more like the system that existed in the 1990s than the 2000s.