Foreword

In the four years that Lord Robertson has been Secretary General of NATO, the strategic environment and the challenges facing the Alliance have changed almost beyond recognition. He came into office in the immediate aftermath of NATO's Kosovo campaign and for the best part of his first two years in office, events in the former Yugoslavia, in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia ª as well as in Kosovo, continued to dominate the Alliance's agenda. Then came 9/11. A day after terrorists flew passenger airliners into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington DC, NATO invoked Article 5, the collective-defence clause of the Washington Treaty, for the first time in its history. In this way, NATO effectively made combating terrorism an enduring Alliance mission. Moreover, since then, the Alliance has embarked on one of the most ambitious transformation programmes ever undertaken by an international organisation to adapt to the new, post-9/11 security environment.

This issue of NATO Review, entitled From Kosovo to Kabul and beyond, examines many of the issues that have come to the fore during Lord Robertson's period in office. In the first of four articles devoted to this theme, Lord Robertson looks back on his time as Secretary General and reflects on Alliance history, transformation and prospects. Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform in London, examines the evolution of Europe's Security and Defence Policy and its impact on NATO and transatlantic relations. Robert Serry, deputy assistant secretary general for crisis management in NATO's Operations Division, analyses the evolution of NATO's presence and activities in the former Yugoslavia. And David S. Yost of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, examines the implications for NATO of US strategic thinking.

In the debate, Andrés Ortega and Tomas Valasek discuss whether the challenges that NATO faces today are as great as those the Alliance faced in the Cold War. Robert Van de Roer, the diplomatic correspondent of NRC Handelsblad, profiles Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, NATO's incoming Secretary General. In the interview, General Götz Gliemeroth, commander of the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Afghanistan, discusses the challenges that the Alliance is facing in its first operation beyond the Euro-Atlantic area. Osman Yavuzalp of NATO's Political Affairs and Security Policy Division reviews two of the best recent books to appear on Afghanistan and Central Asia. And Zvonimir Mahecic, a security adviser to Croatian President Stjepan Mesic, analyses Croatia's relationship with NATO. Statistics compiled by the German Marshall Fund of the United States and the Compagnia di San Paolo examining attitudes on the two sides of the Atlantic to key security questions round out the issue.