In the course of its 60 years, NATO has institutionalized three monumental transformations in world affairs: first, the end of the centuries-long “civil war” within the West for trans-oceanic and European supremacy; second, the United States’s post–World War II commitment to the defense of Europe against Soviet domination; and third, the peaceful termination of the Cold War, which created the preconditions for a larger democratic European Union.
These successes, however, give rise to a legitimate question: What next?
NATO now confronts historically unprecedented risks to global security. The paradox of our time is that the world, increasingly connected and economically interdependent, is experiencing intensifying popular unrest. Yet there is no effective global security mechanism for coping with the growing threat of chaos stemming from humanity’s recent political awakening.
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