NATO Review

At their February 2024 meeting, Allied Defence Ministers formally adopted NATO’s Biotechnology and Human Enhancement Technologies Strategy. Current NATO staff driving the development and delivery of this Strategy outline one of its main features: the first-ever set of Principles of Responsible Use for Biotechnology and Human Enhancement technologies in defence and security.

In February 1988, I sat in a plain interrogation room in Portsmouth, England, under arrest. I had been warned that what I said may be used to prosecute me, and my answers were written down word-for-word by a naval policeman, then taken page-by-by page to be typed up for me to sign. I was asked detailed questions about my sex life and about whom I counted among my friends in the armed forces.

In an article previously published on NATO Review, I explained that the nature of modern warfare is changing at a rapid pace. Consequently, wars are no longer merely about kinetic operations. This means that it is not just physical warfare, but also non-military strategies and tactics that define modern-day conflicts and wars.

Against a backdrop of conflict and global security concerns, 2023 may prove to have also been a pivotal year for automated nuclear weapons systems. A year that began with chatbots and Artificial Intelligence (AI) as the subjects of major news stories - some with particularly concerning headlines - ended with members of the United States Congress introducing legislation to ban AI systems from nuclear weapons and US President Biden signing an Executive Order on the subject. The issue was even raised in discussions between the United States and China at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, which met in San Francisco in November.

This year we are commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Czech Republic’s accession to NATO, which marked a watershed moment on the path to ensuring our national security. Joining NATO gave not only Czechia but also all of Central and Eastern Europe the greatest guarantee of security in its entire history.

I asked the receptionist at a Lviv hotel I was staying in if she had any Sellotape I could borrow. I had an important package to deliver, and it was crucial for it to be well wrapped. The woman handed her stationery set to me and I perched on the edge of a chair in the hotel lobby to get on with my task. The package I was wrapping could not be sent by ordinary mail. I had to deliver it personally because its destination was in the world of the dead.

In early February 2022, as the drumbeat of war grew louder and louder, I sat glued to my phone, scrolling social media, and starting to build what would eventually become Saint Javelin. It had been several years since I’d worked as a journalist in Ukraine, but I couldn’t focus on anything besides the impending invasion. As global leaders released waves of intelligence about Putin’s intentions, my mind began to replay key moments that shaped my understanding of Russia’s brutality against Ukraine.

Complacency is a lethal error in strategy making and warfare. As Russia has learned in Ukraine, overestimating your own capabilities and underestimating your enemy can lead to failure. NATO cannot take its own continued strategic success for granted.

During the horror of World War II, many Jewish families in Belgium were forced to hide their children in the hopes that they would avoid detection by the Gestapo and ultimately survive the war. In Belgium alone, more than 5000 children survived the genocide via disguise and concealment from the world. This is the story of Baroness Regina Sluszny: one of Belgium’s remaining Holocaust survivors, and one of the Hidden Children.

How policy planners can learn from the future to make better decisions now. “Don’t fight the problem, decide it!” This quote, attributed to former United States Secretary of State George C. Marshall, pithily sums up the attitude of effective policy planning in times of turbulence. The temptation to “fight” problems comes from the expectation that all problems are solvable. Yet some problems are unsolvable, and the fight becomes a losing battle.

NATO’s 2022 Strategic Concept defines climate change as a “crisis and a threat multiplier”, but what does that actually mean for NATO’s ability to deter and defend? At the NATO Summit in Brussels in 2021, Allies agreed to put climate change at the top of NATO’s agenda, endeavouring to become the leading international organisation when it comes to understanding and adapting to the impact of this epochal phenomenon on security. The new Strategic Concept, which was agreed at the 2022 Madrid Summit, reaffirmed this commitment. Since then, NATO has produced several flagship reports on the topic, which show how the effects of climate change have profound impacts on everyday life. However, there is still a strong need to explore how climate change affects NATO operations across different domains.

The war in Ukraine has underscored the growing geopolitical interdependence between the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific regions. For one, China has helped Russia cushion Western economic and political pressure. Indeed, Beijing’s image in Europe (which has been on a downward trajectory for years) has tanked as the perception of tacit support for Moscow’s assault on the Euro-Atlantic security order and global norms has spread. Conversely, diplomatic, economic and military support from Indo-Pacific partners like Australia, Japan, New Zealand and the Republic of Korea has helped to strengthen Ukraine’s resilience and uphold global norms. More broadly, the war has triggered an intense debate in the United States about how to reconcile the need to assist Ukraine while maintaining focus on the threat that China poses in the Indo-Pacific. This debate continues to raise questions about the implications of U.S. prioritisation for transatlantic relations and European security.

NATO’s multinational battlegroups need help transitioning verified technical interchangeability into national policies that allow them to operate, train, and maintain readiness from a common ammunition stockpile that is legally permitted and safe to use. In February and March of this year, the NATO Standardization Office coordinated with a team from the US Army War College (USAWC) to conduct a ground-level survey within three of NATO’s eight multinational battlegroups. The team’s most salient observation was this: battle group key leaders believe that national policies prevent ammunition exchange within their multinational formation. This perception may hinder a multinational unit’s wartime interoperability, and certainly impedes operational efficiency in peacetime.

Amongst the many vital strategic and security priorities on the agenda at the NATO summit in Vilnius, it was refreshing to see important discussions about space security taking place. Space has long been an important domain for military operations and has been used actively by NATO for its own satellite communications (SATCOM) programme for almost two decades. However, it was not until 2019 that NATO Allies formally recognised space as an operational domain, opening the door to a greater focus on how space can play a pivotal role in our defence.

The dismal performance of Russia’s conventional forces in the early days of the war in Ukraine risks convincing some in NATO that the future Russian threat to the Alliance can be deterred primarily via NATO’s conventional superiority, and that enhancing deterrence of Russian nuclear use in a future conflict is therefore no longer a high priority. This is a dangerous fallacy. It fails to take into account the relevant lessons learned from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the fundamental change in the future security environment in which NATO will have to deter or defeat Russian aggression and escalation.