An Examination Of The Shift Of The NATO Alliance’s Shape And Alliance Strategy

NATO has proven its ability to manage the fundamental tasks that determine European security in the late 20th century and for much of the early 21st century.However,two common misconceptions have previously emerged that the new era of global security environment and security situation has heralded the demise of NATO.The most common of these perceptions is that NATO must have a clear mandate to survive,and they ignore the fact that even during the Cold War,NATO played many other roles than deterring Soviet aggression.And another common misconception is that if NATO is to protect European interests in the post-Cold War period,it must expand its role with formal changes to the alliance and engage in the management and coordination of extra-regional disputes.However,the Kosovo war and more recently the Russo-Ukrainian war have shown that where NATO’s involvement in extra-regional disputes does not necessarily lead to success,only informal NATO alliance arrangements and strategic shifts catalyzed by subtle action are likely to provide the transatlantic security relationship with the considerable flexibility to achieve relative success.NATO’s long-standing strategic missions,such as responding to Russian actions,promoting European integration and security,fostering more equitable burden-sharing among allies,and maintaining US engagement in Europe,continue to be relevant to and currently in the process of expanding the NATO Alliance’s strategic shift.Research on the specifics of NATO’s strategic shift,the direction of the shift,the characteristics of the shift and the perceived strategic posture towards China has begun to increase in recent years as the intensity of the US-led Western bloc’s strategic competition with China has risen,both domestically and internationally.Within NATO,an international organization explicitly subordinated to the logic of hierarchy,it is the US,the main provider of security products and the main supplier of economic resources,that determines to a large extent the direction of the alliance’s strategic development and the evolution of its framework.As the strategic rivalry between the great powers intensifies,NATO’s ambition as a US-led regional military alliance and its desire to build a global security community will inevitably intersect with the strategic approaches of other regional powers or major international organizations.It is therefore an urgent need to understand NATO’s strategic shifts,the new intersections in its relations with China and the possible directions of its policies and strategies in the light of the changing situation.This paper begins with a review of the existing literature and points out that the trends and characteristics of NATO’s alliance strategy cannot be adequately explained at the level of classical international relations theory and international political studies,especially those dealing with the transformation of NATO’s alliance strategy in the context of US-EU-NATO trilateral relations,US-European relations and even US-China relations.Therefore,based on a review of existing theories and case studies,this paper first defines the concept of NATO’s"alliance strategic transformation",presents its characteristics and illustrates it with case studies.In addition,this paper will explain the direction of NATO’s strategic shifts based on the evolution of the alliance’s internal and external pressures and changes in strategic perceptions,in order to better understand the historical origins and evolutionary dynamics of NATO’s alliance and policy shifts,as well as NATO’s own historical trends.The analysis of these elements involves a structural realist hierarchical analysis of the international system,which will also be analyzed using alliance theory and the theory of relations between international organizations.Compared to the original theories,this paper places more emphasis on the role of NATO as an intergovernmental international organization(alliance)as an actor in international relations within the discussion of changes in the international system and influencing strategic change;secondly,it analyses the processes and outputs of interaction between its member states and partners and the domestic politics of some member and partner states.A multi-layered analysis examines the understanding of NATO’s strategic orientation and policy changes.In addition,this paper will also review the transformation proce ss of NATO alliance form and alliance strategy since the disintegration of the Soviet Union(1991).State changes are used to define the definition and characteristics of the alliance form and strategic transition,trying to examine how the internal and external pressures of the NATO alliance and the strategic narrative of the alliance in different periods affect the transatlantic security relationship and the NATO alliance form and strategic transition at different stages.