NATO New Horizons

Today’s world is characterised by deep uncertainty. Demographic pressures, climate change, scarcity of food, water and energy, financial turmoil, search for identity, nuclear proliferation, new forms of warfare and the discontents of globalisation pose interrelated and complex challenges for the global community. The local impacts the global and vice-versa. Proliferation of information as well as rapid technological, social and cultural change add to a feeling of uncertainty and vulnerability.  At the same time, they create new opportunities and incentives for cooperation and problem-solving. In general, the strategic environment of today is unprecedented in its complexity and unpredictability.

These developments challenge existing world institutions, such as NATO, the EU and the UN as well as regional institutions, to rethink their role, interaction and capacities – and to prepare for continuous change. The New Horizons project of the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies (HCSS) seeks to stimulate the debate by generating new ideas and thinking about the transatlantic community’s role in a changing global security environment, recognising that NATO is a key component in today’s international security architecture. New Horizons builds on a recently published pamphlet “Towards a Grand Strategy for an Uncertain World: Renewing Transatlantic Partnership.” 

One only has to look at Afghanistan to see that today’s security challenges stretch the transatlantic community’s capabilities and political cohesion. Without substantive change, the Alliance’s credibility as a constructive player in global security is at stake. It also opens new opportunities for a transformed transatlantic security framework. Yet, the current debate often underestimates the strength and (geo-) political clout the transatlantic community, NATO included, continues to harbor – much of it as of yet untapped. Navigating an uncertain future by identifying  the challenges and opportunities the transatlantic community confronts and finding robust and constructive ways to address them is key to the New Horizons project. 

This project aims to generate truly innovative ideas about the New Horizons NATO could reach in the coming decades. HCSS has designed a broadly inclusive interactive on-line consultation with a variety of ‘constituencies’ (communities) from across the world through the use of new groupware technologies. The on-line system guarantees anonymous collaboration of all participants. These discussions will be analysed and summarised in individual strategic assessments (one per community) and subsequently synthesised in a comprehensive report.