Just an Internal Exercise? NATO and the ‘New’ Security Challenges

Abstract

In Chapter 1 of this edited volume, Mark Webber suggests that the past and present character of NATO is a question that is partly functional, partly geographic and partly political. During the Cold War the member states agreed that NATO’s task was to deter the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact from attacking Western Europe and North America, and — if that did not succeed — to defend NATO’s territory; the function was to deter and defend, the geography was the North Atlantic area and the policy was agreed upon.