Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, NATO has gone back to basics and its raison d’etre of collective defense. That doesn’t mean, however, that the alliance can afford to neglect its commitment to dealing with emerging incidents and crises before they devolve into bloody military conflicts. As Supreme Allied Commander Europe Gen. Chris Cavoli recently told the Senate Armed Services Committee, “NATO is not a one problem alliance.”
Even as its top priority remains deterring and defending against Russian irredentism, failing to maintain its crisis management capabilities presents its own security risks. NATO should seek to bolster its crisis management efforts through targeted prevention, enhanced readiness, and strategic partnerships to address security threats worldwide.
The definition of NATO crisis management has evolved over the years. In the 1990s and 2000s, it was primarily associated with out-of-area peacekeeping and stabilization operations. Today, the need for crisis management operations can arise from a broad range of events— from military aggression to humanitarian disasters to technological disruptions. The lines between Article 5 defense missions and crisis management are becoming blurrier—so-called hybrid warfare that exploits the gray area between peace and war are a case in point—which means NATO cannot be optimally prepared for either mission without being prepared for both.
NATO is trying to adapt for future contingencies. Rather than managing crises as they arise, the NATO 2022 Strategic Concept focuses on preventing and responding to crises that “have the potential to affect Allied security” and the recent 2024 Summit Declaration reiterates this objective. This approach is aimed at ensuring that NATO can better maintain regional stability by preventing adversaries from exploiting minor incidents to promote instability for geopolitical gain.
Along with the alliance’s new strategic documents, force and capability changes are being made to adapt to an environment in which crises are the norm, not the exception. NATO unveiled a new force model at the 2022 Madrid Summit to promote a heightened state of readiness and adaptability to address emerging crises before they metastasize.
The force model is underpinned by “high readiness forces across domains” included in a new Allied Response Force, consisting of a planned five hundred thousand troops, and supports the alliance’s new Concept for the Deterrence and Defense of the Euro-Atlantic Area. The goal is to strengthen the alliance’s deterrence posture and crisis management capabilities without compromising overall readiness.
What does this mean for NATO operationally? In the near term, active crisis management missions will likely remain operational albeit at limited levels compared to past efforts such as the International Security Assistance Force, which conducted military training and rebuilding efforts in Afghanistan. Future efforts should draw on existing NATO initiatives that focus on the crisis prevention side of crisis management.
A key example of this is the Kosovo Force, active since the violence in the Balkans in 1999 and engaged in developing local security organizations for Kosovo. Another would be the broadening of the NATO Mission in Iraq, a noncombat advisory and capacity-building mission aimed at helping Iraq build better security institutions to stabilize the country and combat terrorism. While some may view these efforts as security cooperation and institution building rather than crisis management, both missions aim to foster stability in their respective host countries to diffuse crises before they require larger intervention.
NATO’s crisis management operations also extend to the maritime domain with the alliance’s Standing Naval Forces, Operation Sea Guardian, and the Aegean Activity. The Baltic Air Policing mission in Europe and ongoing cooperation with the African Union also illustrate NATO’s comprehensive focus on security. These areas, while becoming more limited in relation to collective defense efforts, are like muscles the alliance has effectively trained in the past twenty years, and which it will likely continue to exercise.
New crisis management missions outside NATO territory remain unlikely, as the scars of Afghanistan and worsening security situations in the Middle East and the Sahel may limit engagement in these regions, even as terrorism remains a key threat. This makes preventing crises before they occur even more important. Rather, the focus in NATO’s south will likely be primarily on dialogue, partnership building, training, and security cooperation on shared issues while limiting on-the-ground military engagement, as recent operational and political efforts suggest.
Given this state of play, what should NATO do? In bolstering crisis management, NATO’s interaction with other multilateral organizations is crucial. Collaborating with entities such as the European Union, the United Nations, and regional organizations like the African Union and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) can enhance the collective ability to respond to complex and emerging crises. This collaboration should include political, civilian, and military tools.
NATO cooperation with the United Nations also should focus on sharing lessons learned, best practices, and standards, including in key areas like women, peace, and security and civilian protection. In addition, NATO should consider pursuing strategic partnerships even with subregional organizations such as the Economic Community of West African States or the Intergovernmental Authority on Development in East Africa. Joint exercises, shared intelligence, and coordinated response plans with these subregional partnerships could be productive. With the European Union, the focus can be on operational coordination in crisis management efforts and resource sharing, while with the African Union, focus on issues such as capacity building and training can elevate the substantive nature of the partnership.
Finally, NATO’s collaboration with OSCE can provide a platform for dialogue and conflict resolution in areas where military intervention could be avoided given OSCE’s complementary expertise in in preventive diplomacy and conflict prevention.
As the alliance transitions to its new Allied Response Force model, it should continue the development of highly ready forces that can respond to fight both conventional and unconventional crises. On the force development side, the focus should be on training and exercises, especially no-notice exercises, to ensure an alliance-wide standard of readiness exists for crisis contingencies.
Most importantly, allies should make a purposeful effort to redefine crisis management in a changing geopolitical environment. The annual review of the NATO Crisis Response System should include an emphasis on more prevention activities, integrating lessons learned in crisis management from contexts such as Ukraine or counter-ISIS efforts, while anticipating future crisis scenarios. This should be coupled with a much-needed update to allied joint publications on crisis response operations.
Insecurity and fragility in neighboring countries that fuel migration and terrorism or attacks on critical infrastructure, whether on allied territory or not, all have the potential to impact alliance members’ security without crossing into collective defense scenarios. Bolstering NATO exercise slates to work through more robust and realistic contingencies and understanding potential scenarios for action can help NATO be more prepared.
An enhanced commitment to crisis management for a new age of great power rivalry could better position NATO to promote stability by preventing emerging crises from becoming full-blown military conflicts.
Paul Schaffner is a policy analyst at RAND, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research institution, who focuses US grand strategy, alliance building, and transatlantic security.
Anca Agachi is a (defense) policy analyst at RAND with expertise in NATO’s adaptation and transformation and emerging threats.
Jack Lashendock is a policy analyst at RAND specializing in global governance and multilateralism.
The views expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official position of RAND, the United States Military Academy, the Department of the Army, or the Department of Defense.
Image credit: GPA Photo Archive
With regard to the topic of this article — which is "The Future of NATO Alliance Crisis Prevention and Management" — with regard to this such topic, I believe that entities such as NATO and the UN really do not understand (or simply knowingly ignore?) the relationship between:
a. Efforts to achieve political, economic, social and/or value change and
b. The enduring instability and crisis that is CAUSED by (and therefore certainly is not prevented and/or managed by) these such initiatives.
As to this such suggestion, let us consider, for example, (a) the first sentence from the sixth paragraph from the bottom of our article above (in this regard, see the quoted item provided immediately below), and (b) the fact that "change" initiatives, such as these, tend to CAUSE — rather than to prevent and/or lend themselves to "management" — enduring instability and crisis:
"NATO cooperation with the United Nations also should focus on sharing lessons learned, best practices, and standards, including in key areas like women, peace, and security … "
As an example of how "women, peace, and security" "change" initiatives typically CAUSE — rather than prevent and/or lend themselves to "management" — crisis and instability; as an example of this phenomenon, consider the Old Cold War example provided below; wherein, the Soviets/the communists, back near the end of the Old Cold War (and much like the U.S./the West more recently?), (a) undertook a "women, peace and security" initiative in Afghanistan and, thereby, (b) CAUSED (rather than prevented and/or managed) a crisis of huge proportions that continues even unto this day:
“The overt attack on Afghan social values was presented, by the resistance forces, as an attack on Islamic values. This was also seen as an attack on the honor of women. The initiatives introduced by PDPA (the communist Peoples Democratic Party of Afghanistan) — to impose literacy on women and girls — inevitably raised questions as to the potential role of women outside the home. This provoked defensive actions from men, concerned with protecting the honor of women with their families, and to also ensure that traditional roles of women within the domestic sphere continued to be performed. It also generated fears that the important roles of women, as the primary vehicles for passing traditional and Islamic values from one generation to another, would be undermined if they were exposed to external and, particularly, non-Islamic values. This enabled the exiled radical Islamic parties to claim leadership of the resistance and to also declare a jihad. (Item in parenthesis above is mine. See Page 58, Chapter 4 [The Soviet Military Intervention] of Peter Marsden’s book “Afghanistan: Aid, Armies and Empires.”)
(As we can see from the example provided above, if your "women, peace and security" "change" initiatives have, actually and in fact, [a] "enabled exiled radical Islamic parties to claim leadership of the resistance" and [b] CAUSED [rather than prevented and/or managed] a jihad that endures even unto this day, then, [c] you certainly cannot claim to have either [1] "prevented" a crisis and/or [2] been able to "manage" same?)
Thus, it is the exceptionally well-known and understood "cause and effect" relationship — between (a) efforts to achieve revolutionary political, economic, social and/or value change and (b) the typical and common occurrence of significant and enduring instability and crisis CAUSED by such initiatives — that entities such as the UN and NATO — re: their crisis prevention and/or management discussions — STILL do not seem to understand — and/or — STILL choose to knowingly ignore?
Note that — from the perspective that I provide above — what NATO and the UN must prepare for — with regards such things as "crisis prevention" and/or "crisis management" — this is the continuing and escalating crises which have been caused by (a) the U.S./the West's post-Cold War efforts to achieve revolutionary political, economic, social and/or value change both at home and abroad and by (b) the efforts of those — both at home and abroad — who feel that they have already, and/or in the near future will, lose (further?) power, influence, control, status, prestige, privilege, safety, security, etc., if these such changes are realized/continue to be realized.
(Herein to note that all three of the conflicts of our current time — the so-called "war on terrorism, the so-called "great power competition" and the so-called "civil war" going on within the U.S./the West itself today — all three of these such conflicts can be seen from "the threat posed by unwanted political, economic, social and/or value change" perspective that I offer immediately above?)
In support of my arguments above — regarding the idea that if you are intent on achieving political, economic, social and/or value change both at home and abroad (for example, as relates to such things as women's rights) — then you must understand that — both at home and abroad — these will often be "instability"/"crisis-creating" activities — and thus cannot be "crisis-preventing" and/or "crisis-management" activities — as to those such arguments, consider the following from "Freedom House:"
“The combative narratives promoted by these and other antidemocratic leaders have popular appeal in part because they take advantage of widespread anxiety about political, socio-cultural, and economic change. Over the past several decades, trends associated with globalization have included increased education for women, higher rates of female participation in formal employment, the relative decline of male-dominated manufacturing jobs in many industrialized countries, increased political power and representation for women, and the arrival of immigrants in higher numbers or from new source countries. A significant share of voters are receptive to politicians who promise to push back against one or all of these trends—often blurring the distinctions between them—and restore a sense of control and power.” (See “The Nationalist Connection” section of the June 18, 2019 “Freedom House” article “Why Strongmen Attack Women’s Rights: Authoritarian Rulers Around the World are Leading Attacks on Women’s Rights” by Colleen Scribner.)
Also note that — even in our own Joint Publication 3-22, Foreign Internal Defense (see Chapter II, Internal Defense and Development, and Paragraph 2, Construct) — the relationship between (a) "development" (political, economic, social and/or value change) activities and (b) "unrest in the society" (instability) results — this such relationship is both formally and explicitly acknowledged:
a. An IDAD (Internal Defense and Development) program integrates security force and civilian actions into a coherent, comprehensive effort. Security force actions provide a level of internal security that permits and supports growth through balanced development. This development requires change to meet the needs of vulnerable groups of people (for example, such as women?). This change may, in turn, promote unrest in the society. The strategy, therefore, includes measures to maintain conditions under which orderly development can take place." (Items in parenthesis above are mine.)
Thus to ask:
a. If both the UN and NATO are set on achieving "balanced development" more throughout the world,
b. Then must not the UN and NATO — much as does JP 3-22 above — acknowledge that these are "unrest in the society"/"instability"-creating activities — and thus are not "preventing crisis" and/or "managing crisis" activities that they are undertaking?
NATO countries like germany, france and UK have totally forgotten what led to the outbreak of the Great War (ww1).
The war caused over 40 million casualties worldwide, including famine and disease toll, and What caused the war.
British and french huge desire to get directly invoved in a german-slav quarrel.
Today, same exact mistake or myopia now gripping european nations in NATO.
Ww3 in europe in 2025 then.