Experts' Corner on Partnerships (Fall of Wall era)

The Experts' Corner provides a deeper look at NATO in history. Here you will find a selection of primary sources related to NATO and the build-up of its partnerships after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact.

• Films and videos
• Audio files
• Declassified documents
• Communiqués
• Speeches and articles
• NATO publications from the past
• Suggested reading

Suggested reading

Alexander, Yonah and Richard Prosen, editors. NATO: From Regional to Global Security Provider. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2015.
This book focuses on NATO’s organizational changes and membership expansion, emerging security challenges, military and non-military capabilities and NATO’s growing relationships with other governmental and non-governmental bodies. The expanding participation of civil society and growing involvement of new key NATO interlocutors (e.g. NGOs, academics) have created new international partnering opportunities as a means of bolstering global security through innovative public-private partnerships.

Bonvicini, Gianni and Maurizio Cremasco, Reinhardt Rummel, Peter Schmidt, editors. A Renewed Partnership for Europe: Tackling European Security Challenges by EU-NATO Interaction. Badan-Baden: Nomos, 1995.
The end of the Cold War lifted the Iron Curtain that divided Europe for 45 years. However, in its place new challenges have arisen that call on the continent to re-examine its security commitments and its relationship with the United States. In a four part analysis the book delves into the nature and scope of these challenges, and identifies strategies to tackle the conflicts and crises that a new Europe may present.

Edström Håkan and Janne Haaland Matlary, Magnus Petersson, editors. NATO: The Power of Partnerships. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
Since the end of the Cold War, the changes in how security is perceived have placed NATO at the centre of scrutiny not only by academics but also by the organisation itself. This has caused three significant shifts in NATO's Strategic Concept, the last being in 2010. This book explores the current state of partnerships and the challenges NATO now faces with its new strategy. The political and military utility of all these partnerships is clear; they 'provide' more security than they 'consume'. But the utility of partners for NATO also changes over time.

Flockhart, Trine. “NATO’s Global Partnerships – A Haphazard Strategy?” In NATO Beyond 9/11: The Transformation of the Atlantic Alliance edited by Ellen Hallams, Luca Ratti and Benjamin Zyla, 278-296. UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
After the 9/11 attacks NATO began to embark on a more global strategy by attaching new importance to global security threats and by establishing partnerships that increasingly are linked with the term global. However, whether this ‘turn to the global’ can be wholly attributed to a paradigm shift, as is questioned in this volume, would suggest that NATO’s growing number of partners across the globe is the result of strategic planning following directly from the events on that fateful September morning. The chapter will show that this seems an improbable proposition.

Flockhart, Trine, editor. Cooperative Security: NATO's Partnership Policy in a Changing World. København: Danish Institute for International Studies, 2014.
In this DIIS Report, security researchers and practitioners with in-depth expertise on NATO and NATO’s partnerships are brought together to focus on NATO’s new partnership policy and on the role and meaning of the new concept, ‘cooperative security’. Overall the report argues that NATO’s approach to partnership should be seen as an essential component of a wider grand strategy to sustain a rule based liberal order in the 21st century.

Schmidt, Gustav, editor. A History of NATO: The First Fifty Years, volumes 1&3. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001.
These comprehensive volumes offer a study of NATO’s activities and development over the past five decades. Written by a team of international scholars, it analyses the factors which have made NATO the most successful political-military alliance in history. It also addresses the perennial problems of transatlantic relationships that the Alliance grapples with today.

Smith, Martin A. On Rocky Foundations: NATO, the UN and Peace Operations in the Post-Cold War Era. Bradford: University of Bradford, 1996.
This book is about the evolution of the political and operational relationship between NATO and the UN during the 1990s. After briefly assessing the Cold War institutional stand-off, the book traces the development of relations from the initial tentative contacts between the UN and NATO staffs which began in the spring of 1992, to the extensive, complex and often fraught cooperation forged between 1992 and 1996 in the crucible of the Bosnian crisis. Smith argues that despite the problems that have arisen, NATO and the UN need each other in order to enhance their capabilities and relevance in the post-Cold War security environment.

Smith, Martin A. Russia and NATO since 1991: From Cold War Through Cold Peace to Partnership? London: Routledge, 2006.
Since the re-emergence of Russia as an independent state in December 1991, debates and controversies surrounding its evolving relations with NATO have been a prominent feature of the European security scene. This is the first detailed and comprehensive book-length analysis of Russia-NATO relations, covering the years 1991-2005. It looks at the impact that the Kosovo crisis, September 11th, the Iraq war and the creation of the NATO-Russia Council have had on this complex relationship.

Yost, David S. NATO Transformed: The Alliance's New Roles in International Security. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 1999.
NATO, perhaps more than any other Cold War institution, embodied the West’s determination to deter potential Soviet aggression in Europe. Nearly a decade after the collapse of the Soviet empire, the Atlantic Alliance is engaged in cooperative security endeavors with former adversaries throughout Europe, including peacekeeping operations in Bosnia. In this ambitious study, Yost analyzes the major changes in the ways that NATO functions and the new roles that are emerging for it.

Yost, David S. NATO and International Organizations. Rome: NATO Defense College, 2007.
An examination of NATO's relations with the United Nations, the European Union, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe since the early 1990s, with due attention to the problems as well as the achievements. The paper also considers prospects for improved inter-​organizational coordination, bilateral and multilateral, with a view to more effective policy implementation.