Military Security in Central and Eastern Europe – from overarching principles to current NATO perspectives

Abstract

This year, NATO is celebrating its 70th anniversary and the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty. The Alliance was founded in the early days of the Cold War, but found itself in a new geopolitical situation after the col-lapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the bipolar world. The organi-zation has been transforming ever since and over time this transfor-mation has included both expansion and adaptation to new circum-stances. With the return of Russian neo-imperial ambitions in the re-cent years, NATO has been given new impetus. Emerging threats and challenges, which are mainly of a military nature, have been addressed by NATO through further recent adaptation processes which were based on the return to the core role of the Alliance, namely collective defense and deterrence. This, in turn, has created a boost of NATO ac-tivity on the ground, which means that improvement with regard to interoperability and integration is now in high demand.

Keywords

• security
• NATO
• military threat
• enhanced Forward Presence
• interoperability