Browsing by Subject "U.S. Foreign Policy"

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Remarks by Condoleezza Rice at National Press Club Luncheon
(Office of the Press Secretary, 2001-07-13) U.S. Government
Selective Understanding: Misaligned Strategies and Threat Perceptions among NATO Members, NATO Aspirants, and Russia
(2023-05) O'Bryon, Conor
NATO, created as a collective defense alliance in 1949 to counter the Soviet military threat to continental Europe, lost its cohesive strategic outlook in the post-Cold War era due to the misaligned strategies and threat perceptions held by current and prospective members of the Alliance. Russia, too, would hold a perception of the “new NATO” that was out of sync with the rest of Europe and the United States. The misalignment among NATO members and aspirants, and between NATO and Russia, existed since the end of the Cold War, with the disconnects of the 1990s forming the foundation for even greater misalignment after 2000. As a result of NATO’s internal misalignment on mission, strategy and threat perceptions – exacerbated by a post-9/11 shift in focus to counterterrorism – the alliance was, ironically, ill-prepared to address the rise of an authoritarian Putin and the reemergence of the Russian threat. As of spring 2023, after 30 years of attempts to create a stable and free Europe that included a democratic Russia, the members of the North Atlantic Alliance have shifted away from such aspirations and realigned around NATO’s original raison d’etre: collective defense of Western freedom and democracy against Russian aggression and authoritarianism. The European continent has gone full circle, returning to an East-West standoff reminiscent of the Cold War.