Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2026

DOI

10.1007/s44282-026-00594-1

Publication Title

Discover Global Society

Volume

4

Issue

1

Pages

234 (23 pp.)

Abstract

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has transformed dramatically since the end of the Cold War. As a collective defense alliance, it was primarily focused on defending itself against the Soviet Union. NATO is now focused on addressing multiple types of threats: traditional, hybrid, and non-traditional. This study uses a qualitative methodological approach that includes a systematic content review of NATO’s Strategic Concepts from to 1991–2022; NATO Summit Communiques; NATO Defense Planning Guidance and Elite Speeches. This allows us to analyse the causes and effects of NATO’s transformation over time. Our results suggest that because of Russia’s actions as a “revisionist” state, NATO has reverted to focusing on collective defence. However, NATO has also broadened its operational scope to counter new forms of cyber and hybrid threats [27]. While NATO has improved its deterrence capabilities through adaptation and the cohesiveness of its members has increased, significant problems remain. These include differences in burden sharing by member countries, differing views among member countries regarding how much political independence they want from their relationship with the United States, and increasing levels of tension regarding the potential trade-off between greater strategic autonomy for Europe versus increased dependence upon the U.S. Ultimately, this study concludes that NATO’s relevance in an increasingly unpredictable global security environment will be determined by whether it can maintain a political coalition that supports both military deterrence and innovation in technology and strategic thinking.

Rights

© 2026 The Author.

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this license to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. 

Data Availability

Article states: "No datasets were generated or analysed during the current study."

ORCID

0009-0006-9633-0945 (Edmond)

Original Publication Citation

Edmond, C. (2026). NATO's evolution and European security dynamics. Discover Global Society, 4(1), Article 234. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44282-026-00594-1

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