New Research Division Publication

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  Research Paper 97: “NATO’s 2014 Summit Agenda”, by By Karl-Heinz Kamp.

The next NATO summit is scheduled for 2014: whereas meetings of the heads of state and government of the European Union occur every few months, NATO summits are still celebrated as special events. However, regardless of all the media hype accompanying these gatherings, they have a very important function in giving political guidance to NATO’s bureaucratic and military apparatus. Hence the fierce competition among NATO allies on the topics that should be tackled at a summit. Member states try to squeeze all of their regional or individual concerns into the summit agenda. This entails the danger of getting lost in subjects which may be relevant, but where solutions are not readily available. When this occurs, frustration seems inevitable: the Syria crisis or the all-too-familiar “capabilities gap” are examples of the kind of issues which, potentially, contribute more to transatlantic tensions than to fostering NATO’s cohesion.

The NDC’s latest Research Paper tries to identify those topics which are of overarching importance for NATO’s future in the post-2014 era and which, therefore, require direction at the highest political level. In ascending order of relevance, these are: NATO-Russia relations, missile defence, cyber threats, NATO enlargement, the US pivot to Asia, the evolution of NATO’s partnership concept, and NATO’s narrative for the post-2014 era.

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