Conclusion

The twenty-first century has already delivered a number of surprises sufficient to establish its claim to military and political nonlinearity. One of these surprises is that NATO is still in existence, despite predictions of its demise at the very end of the Cold War. Instead, NATO has transformed its missions, expanded its membership and perched its military footprint and political commitments far from the inter-German border, that pivotal piton of Cold War angst. NATO supported u S military operations in Afghanistan as part of the war against transnational terrorism conducted by the United States and its allies, a protracted conflict between states and fluid networks of fighters. As the Obama Administration assumed office in January 2009 and leaned into the wind of the “graveyard of empires,” it took NATO’s democratic passions, political purposes and military power along with American forces and commitments there. The enormity of the twenty-first century challenge faced by NATO was summarized for the benefit of a NATO audience by Professor Colin S. Gray, university of Reading, uK, during a friendly but critical presentation thus: Today, it is hard to settle upon a central organizing strategic concept for the Alliance that has useful meaning, because NATO lacks a functioning political compass upon which there is genuine multilateral consensus. it is a maxim that you cannot have a sound strategy when policy is absent. if the political ends are vague or unspecified, how can you choose methods and means that are fit for the purpose? 1